#Biden added that he dropped out of the #US presidential race because he didn’t want to be a distraction, and also discussed Israel’s war on Gaza.
In his first interview since dropping out of the presidential race, US President Joe Biden has told broadcaster CBS that he made the decision in order to maintain democracy in the United States.
Speaking on the CBS News Sunday Morning programme, Biden said: “The polls we had showed that it was a neck-and-neck race, would have been down to the wire … But what happened was, a number of my Democratic colleagues in the House and Senate thought that I was gonna hurt them in the races.”
Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, last week toured multiple political battleground states, packing rallies with thousands of people and building on the momentum that has propelled her since she took over at the top of the Democratic ticket after Biden stepped aside.
Biden, 81, ended his candidacy and endorsed Harris after a poor debate performance against Trump sparked turmoil within the Democratic Party and fueled concerns that he could not beat the former president or finish a second four-year term.
Harris has pulled ahead of Trump by four percentage points each in separate polls of voters in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania conducted by the New York Times and Siena College, a big change from polls in those swing states taken before Biden quit the presidential race last month.
Nationally, Harris was ahead of Trump by five percentage points, 42% to 37%, in an Ipsos poll published on Thursday, widening her lead from a July 22-23 Reuters/Ipsos survey, which found her up 37% to 34%.
Biden added that he dropped out of the US presidential race because he didn’t want to be a distraction, and also discussed Israel’s war on Gaza.
The 81-year-old leader abandoned his re-election bid and backed Vice President Kamala Harris as a presidential candidate in July.
Biden stressed that besides what the polls showed him, the main reason behind his decision was also to “maintain democracy” and “defeat Trump”, in reference to former President Donald Trump, who is once again the Republican Party’s presidential candidate.
“I thought it was important. Because, although it’s a great honour being president, I think I have an obligation to the country to do what [is] the most important thing you can do, and that is, we must, we must, we must defeat Trump.”
Polls initially showed that Trump had built a lead over Biden, including in battleground states, after Biden’s debate performance on June 27, when he appeared to struggle to speak coherently and when his performance strengthened the argument that he no longer had the cognitive ability to be president.
But Harris’s entry to the race has changed the dynamic.
An Ipsos poll published on Thursday showed Harris led Trump nationally 42 percent to 37 percent in the race for the November 5 election.
dential candidate, some within the party have been questioning whether she can beat Trump.
‘Ceasefire possible’
Besides the elections, Biden also spoke about Israel’s war in Gaza and highlighted that he still believes a ceasefire is possible before his presidency ends.
“The plan I put together, endorsed by the G7, endorsed by the UN Security Council, et cetera, is still viable. And I’m working literally every single day – and my whole team – to see to it that it doesn’t escalate into a regional war. But it easily can,” Biden told CBS.
Reporting from Washington DC, Al Jazeera’s Alan Fisher said one of the big reasons why the polls were telling Biden that he could not win re-election was because of his support for Israel in its war on Gaza – where almost 40,000 Palestinians have been killed – and his inability to secure a ceasefire.
“He [Biden] said he’s going to send more members of his team to Israel to get the deal done,” Fisher said.
On Thursday, Qatar, Egypt and the US called on Israel and Hamas to resume talks to reach a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip. In a joint statement, the three countries urged Israel and Hamas “to resume urgent discussion” on August 15 in Doha or Cairo “to close all remaining gaps and commence implementation of the deal without further delay”.