Following pressure from his own party, President Joe Biden said on Sunday he will no longer pursue the Democratic Party nominee in the 2024 presidential race as its incumbent candidate and withdraw from the race for what would have been a second term in the White House.
The announcement on Sunday follows at least two public interviews in which Biden’s mental acuity was called into question, including a widely-broadcast debate involving former President Donald Trump — who was confirmed to be the Republican nominee for president last week — in which he struggled to answer many of the questions posed by moderators. In the second public appearance, he incorrectly referred to Vice President Kamala Harris as “Vice President Trump,” and confused the presidents of Ukraine and Russia.
In a letter published to his account on X (formerly Twitter), Biden said he was endorsing Harris as the Democratic nominee for president in an effort to unite the party in its quest to defeat Trump this year.
The decision to withdraw from the presidential race comes less than two months before ABC News is due to host its own presidential debate, which will now presumably see former President Trump square off against Vice President Kamala Harris. Less clear is who will be represented at a vice presidential candidate debate, which CBS News is trying to organize for later this month or early August. Harris has not named her running-mate.
