US President Joe Biden has admitted that his fellow Democrats convinced him that he would “hurt them” by staying in the race for the White House. He also identified former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi as a key figure who influenced his decision to quit.
Biden suspended his reelection campaign in late July, almost a month after a televised debate with former President Donald Trump exposed his apparent cognitive decline. In the weeks between the debate and his withdrawal, Biden was urged by liberal pundits, Democratic lawmakers, and party donors to end his campaign, as polls showed the 81-year-old incumbent losing ground to Trump.
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“The polls we had showed that it was a neck-and-neck race, it would have been down to the wire, and what happened was a number of my Democratic colleagues in the House and the Senate thought that I was going to hurt them in the races,” Biden told CBS News on Sunday, in his first interview since ending his campaign.
“And I was concerned if I stayed in the race, that would be the topic, you’d be interviewing me about why did Nancy Pelosi say – why did…and I thought it’d be a real distraction,” he added.
Pelosi was the first prominent Democrat to publicly question Biden’s mental fitness after the debate. Speaking to MSNBC the following week, she declared that it would be “a legitimate question to say: ‘Is this an episode or is this a condition?’”
Pelosi’s comments opened the floodgates for scores of influential Democrats to demand Biden’s withdrawal. Chief among these voices was Biden’s one-time boss, former President Barack Obama. According to the Washington Post, Obama “told people he is concerned that the polls are moving away from Biden, that former president Donald Trump’s electoral path is expanding and that donors are abandoning the president.”
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Along with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, Pelosi relayed Obama’s message to Biden, the newspaper claimed.
The former House Speaker denies leading any kind of effort to force Biden out. “He may think that my statement unleashed something…I don’t know, because I haven’t spoken to him since,” she told reporters earlier this week. Pelosi refused to say whether she had directly asked Biden to suspend his campaign, but said that she felt the president “did not have a campaign that was on the path to victory.”
Trump has characterized Biden’s withdrawal as a “coup” by the Democratic Party. “They all dumped him, and they said, ‘Either you get out nice or we’re going to go after you.’ And that’s what happened. And he had no choice. There’s no question about it,” he told the New York Post last month.