The president of the United States, Joe Biden, announced that he is withdrawing as a candidate for reelection for the Democratic Party.
Biden offered his full support to Vice President Kamala Harris. "My first decision as the party’s candidate in 2020 was to choose Kamala Harris as my vice president. And it has been the best decision I have ever made. Today I want to offer all my support and endorsement to Kamala to be the candidate," he said in X .
In a phone call with CNN minutes after the news broke, former President Donald Trump said that Biden went "down in history as the worst president by far in the history of our country."
“I will do everything in my power to unite the Democratic Party — and unite our nation — to defeat Donald Trump and his extreme Project 2025 agenda,” she said.
Biden’s decision to bow out came after escalating pressure from his Democratic allies to step aside following the June 27 debate, in which the 81-year-old president trailed off, often gave nonsensical answers and failed to call out the former president’s many falsehoods.
“It has been the greatest honor of my life to serve as your President. And while it has been my intention to seek reelection, I believe it is in the best interest of my party and the country for me to stand down and to focus solely on fulfilling my duties as President for the remainder of my term,” Biden wrote in a letter posted Sunday to his X account.
Nearly 30 minutes after he delivered the news that he was folding his campaign, Biden threw his support behind Harris.
“Today I want to offer my full support and endorsement for Kamala to be the nominee of our party this year,” he said in another post on X. “Democrats — it’s time to come together and beat Trump.”
Harris faces a staggering political to-do list in the coming days: securing the votes of delegates to claim her party’s nomination, picking a running mate, and pivoting a massive political operation that had been built to reelect Biden to boost her candidacy instead. Harris, if elected, would be the first woman and the first person of South Asian descent to be president.
There were early signs that the party was moving to coalesce around Harris, who scored the endorsements of the Congressional Black Caucus and former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton even before she had commented on Biden’s decision to quit the race. But notably, former President Barack Obama held off, pledging support behind the eventual party nominee.