The president talked about his emotional decision to leave the race and his plans to campaign for the Harris-Walz ticket in the battleground state of Pennsylvania.
In his first sit-down interview since dropping his 2024 campaign, President Joe Biden told CBS News reporter Robert Costa that he bowed out because he feared being a distraction in the Democrats’ efforts to defeat Republican nominee Donald Trump. Their discussion, which aired on CBS Sunday Morning, touched on that infamous presidential debate, Biden’s plans for the rest of his campaign, and what another Trump presidency could look like.
“Although it’s a great honor being president, I think I have an obligation to the country,” Biden said. “The most important thing,” he continued, is “we must, we must, we must defeat Trump.”
D vs R = setting aside your own personal ambition in order to benefit the common good, vs wiping your ass with the common good in order to benefit your own personal ambition
The biggest challenge Democrats have had is that they want their policies to be good for everybody, even the people that hate them. This means democrats aren’t as excited about the policies and Republicans just hate everything they do no matter what.
The ACA was the perfect example of this. Dems could have done whatever they wanted, but chose a very conservative healthcare model. Dems were indifferent and Republicans just latched onto this as a lightning rod for their hatred.
Republicans on the other hand will give their base 100% of what they want with no compromise. If you didn’t vote for republicans, they don’t care what you want or how you feel. This gives their base massive enthusiasm.
Well, to benefit his own personal ambitions and to be able to pardon himself from all those pesky federal charges. Trump’s freedom may be on the line with this election, and he knows it.
That’s what they said last time and look where he is now. Sure, he’s a convicted felon and that’s sort of fun to say but that’s more of a historical footnote than a meaningful development. There’s still been no serious consequences to his actions and if I were to place a bet on it I would put money on the chance that there never will be.
There hasn’t been a Federal trial yet. It’s not that the charges “didn’t stick.” They haven’t been heard yet.
Oh I’m fully aware of the situation but I don’t think that changes anything I said. Do you think he’ll do prison time or be forced to dissolve any of his businesses as restitution for any of his crimes? If not then all we’re really debating is the degree to which rich and powerful people are treated differently than the rest of us.
I don’t know. Another one of his attorneys turned to testify against him in the election fraud case. The documents case could absolutely lead to jail time if Smith can push for another judge. Cannon can’t postpone indefinitely without repercussions.
As for payments, if he loses his appeal in NY, he’s on the hook for half a billion.
Saudi Arabia’s already given Trump $2 billion via his son-in-law (and that’s likely just the public part of what they’ve given him). He’s not going to give a shit about a few hundred million dollars judgement, even if it doesn’t die in the appeals process.
Another one of his attorneys turned to testify against him in the election fraud case.
Are you talking about the fairly recent news about Jenna Ellis? Unless I’m mistaken, she’s cooperating with a different set of fake electors cases that’s based out of Arizona.
Even as someone who follows this stuff fairly regularly, it’s impossible to keep track of all of Trump’s criminal cases… and that’s just the stuff we know about that prosecutors have picked up.
The documents case could absolutely lead to jail time if Smith can push for another judge. Cannon can’t postpone indefinitely without repercussions.
If he loses the election and if the Supreme Court stays out of it, I’d agree.
He also has sentencing scheduled in September for his felony convictions, though I don’t have a clue what that will be or what appeal timeline and whatnot looks like.
It’s frustrating to see all of this move so slowly. I know these things take time, but it feels like there was no urgency in 2021 when he left office to deal with the election interference and numerous, publicly known, criminal acts.
Theoretically, sure, I just don’t see any of that happening. That’s not all that different from the situation four years ago and at minimum that speed difference is a big part of what I’m referring to. Someone who stole $5000 would have started serving their sentence three and a half years ago but we’re still talking about maybe getting everything to line up to possibly take action against Trump if things go our way. That’s bullshit even if he does go to prison and as we’ve already established I don’t think that’s going to happen.
The only consequence he would ever face would be having to flee to Russia or Saudi Arabia to avoid prison time in the US, and that only if he weren’t given home incarceration.
I wouldn’t go that far. Don’t forget that the main reason Biden had to be pressured to step down in the first place was that he had effectively been foisted on lukewarm voters and that his cognitive decline had been purposefully hidden for quite some time before the infamous debate.
Yes, it’s good that he finally agreed to bow out of the race, but he only did it after weeks of massive pressure from the media and from within his own party. Without that, he would most likely be the presumptive nominee today and the Democrats would still be getting creamed in the polls.
Win or lose, Biden will have my respect for this. No matter where you live, it’s a rare thing to see a leader truly placing their nation’s good before their own pride. I hope others will learn by his example.
I agree… I was shocked when it was announced. But then again, the DNC establishment basically dragged him out of retirement to beat Bernie.
It’s deeply ironic to me that a) they almost certainly wouldn’t have been in this situation if Bernie had been the nominee last time, and b) as a direct result of that choice their nominee now is formerly the senator with the closest voting record to Bernie’s, running with the VP pick that Bernie suggested.
They tried to cut him off at the knees, but in the end, Sanders kind of ended up calling the shots.
Your commit fills me with hope, not just because I’m a Bernie fan, but because it shows that sometimes the better voice does win eventually.
A good choice by him. It can be hard to swallow one’s pride, but Biden’s first duty is to the USA, not to himself.
I’m not from the US. Is it really his choice? I thought it would be more democratic and the party members would vote for who they run, how they run, etc?
Well, effectively, what happened is that the Democratic Party had a primary election, where people voted on who they wanted the Democratic nominee to be. The thing is, conventional political wisdom is that the incumbent president has a large advantage simply from being the incumbent - people who are uncertain tend to stick to the status quo, and name recognition is as high as one could wish for. So, in the primary, no one serious ran against him because:
A. It would have been a waste of time and money
and
B. Doing so would’ve marked one out as very much ‘not a team player’, so to speak.
Thus, he won the primary election. However, after the primaries, he had a disastrous debate performance, and several highly influential members of the Democratic Party not only called for him to step down, but alleged mental decline (not necessarily dementia, but a serious decline in Biden’s sharpness and energy which raised questions about his ability to run the kind of vigorous campaign needed), even just since January of this year. Biden resisted calls to step down at first, and since he was the winner of the primaries, he was the only one who could realistically make the choice. He eventually bowed to public and private pressure and stepped down.
Thank you for the detailed explanation!
I see. Yes I watched the debate and he really didn’t do well, like he was on some medicine and partly asleep. My favorite part was when they discussed who is better at golf. Was a very important thing to get clear for people like me, that are worried of climate collapse.
But this isn’t new to Biden, is it? Confusing names and numbers has always been a Biden thing, I think, it’s not necessarily a health decline. Like my favorite American president quote is “America is a nation that can be defined in a single word: ashofootnae ehfoot, excuse me, at the foothills in the Himalaya…”
That’s why I thought the democrats had a meeting after the debate and saw that Biden’s campaign is not going well and the public thinks (doesn’t matter if rightfully or not) Biden is too old and mentally declining. Maybe, in order to save the sinking ship, it’s best to play a rather risky move of changing the nomine just a few months before election. Or maybe he was also peer pressured.
Anyway, if it was Biden’s initiative he does deserve a lot of respect for it!
There’s some argument over whether it was primarily Biden in decline or just the perception of Biden in decline, but, to be fair, insofar as judging the mood of the electorate is concerned, the two are one and the same.
I would go even further and say that the perception of the voters outweighs reality.
I’d be a little less skeptical of that claim if he hadn’t said that he’d be OK losing to Trump, “as long as I gave it my all.” I appreciate him stepping aside for the good of the country, but it took nearly a month of pressure from Democrats to get him to drop out, and I’m sure if the party leadership hadn’t turned in him, he’d be happy to take his chances against Trump.
He did drop out at the perfect time though, that could have been strategic
Less than two weeks before he dropped out, he wrote an open letter to congressional democrats in which he wrote:
I want you to know that despite all the speculation in the press and elsewhere, I am firmly committed to staying in this race, to running this race to the end, and to beating Donald Trump.
I have heard the concerns that people have — their good faith fears and worries about what is at stake in this election. I am not blind to them.
I can respond to all this by saying clearly and unequivocally: I wouldn’t be running again if I did not absolutely believe I was the best person to beat Donald Trump in 2024.
The voters of the Democratic Party have voted. They have chosen me to be the nominee of the party. Do we now just say this process didn’t matter? That the voters don’t have a say?
I decline to do that… I have no doubt that I — and we — can and will beat Donald Trump.
Unless this was all part of an elaborate hoax, it’s clear he had no intention of dropping out at that time.
Nothing but respect for anyone that old who can change their mind when they’re wrong. It’s easy to fall into a rut of stubbornness.
I don’t think it was a hoax, but campaign 101 is to be absolutely confident in your candidacy until the nanosecond you drop out. If you telegraph weakness to the voting public, and then end up staying in the race, that will be a millstone around your neck. Even if he was wavering in the weeks leading up to his dropout, there would be zero upside to communicating that publicly.
It’s possible, but I personally don’t buy that argument. He didn’t have to sit down and write that letter, but he did. That, plus the interview where he said that “giving it his all” was “what it was all about”, seemed obvious to me he was all for holding on tight despite everyone’s concerns.
To he honest, I think that if he had dropped out earlier it would have been better. He created a lot of panic within the base that didn’t need to be there. I suppose it’s not impossible that it was some kind of strategy to make Harris’ ascension more welcome and inevitable, but I think that’s giving him way too much credit.
Disagree entirely. This has left the Trump campaign totally twisting in the wind. They have no idea how to compete with a mixed-race independent and smart woman with her kindly dad running mate because they were hoping for Biden.
The attacks I’ve seen so far:
-
Harris laughs too much.
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Harris hugs people.
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Harris is a woman.
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Harris turned black all of the sudden.
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Harris is black.
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Walz… uh… something about tampons.
I mean, I don’t disagree that the switch has left Trump flailing, I just think that still happens if Biden drops out two weeks earlier than he did. It was clear by then that he had no chance of winning, and it would have saved voters a lot of fear and despair. You could argue that doing it after the RNC made the whole convention pointless, but given how poorly he’s done in a post Biden race, it’s just as likely that the entire thing would become an even more public meltdown.
Either way, I think the idea that this was a strategy is a fantasy. I think his actions and reporting at the time made it clear that he was planning to run, and it was only pressure from top Democrats that made him step down.
I guess it was 4d chess? Do you know who you sound like?
No I don’t. Do tell me who I sound like.
-
It’s still basically a 50/50 toss up. If Harris loses then we will all be wondering what may have happened if they stuck with Biden
It’s a 50/50 toss up after only 2 weeks of campaigning. Unless she does something to kill her own momentum, she’s in very good shape. Also, it’s pretty clear what would have happened if they stuck with Biden; Maine and New York were becoming competitive, there’s just no universe where he would have won.
Biden was at a 50/50 before he resigned. He was behind in the polls but they were all always within the margin of error.
Yeah, but he was on the downswing, while Harris is on the upswing. It just was not going to get better for him. Also, I can’t remember for sure, but I think he was significantly down on the most important swing states, and only polling about even nationally.
You might have time to wonder if that happens, but I’ll end up in the ovens pretty quick. Fuck racism and fascism.
I give him a pass for that statement. Biden was running on the platform of election trust and legitimacy. How else does he answer the question? “No, and I’ll fight tooth and nail to dispute the results if Trump wins?”. Maybe the democratic base would have loved to hear that, but it’s mixed messaging that would have been used as ammunition against him. He’s the President of the United States. He has to project confidence in the system, which means trying hard to win, but stopping right on the dot at “doing your best” and accepting the will of the people, even if it’s a distasteful outcome for everyone involved.
Honestly, I still think that’s a pretty terrible answer when your entire campaign messaging has been, “Democracy will end if you elect this man.” I think if he had said something like, “I understand the stakes of this election, I would feel horrible if I lost and let the American people down, but it less than 5 months to the election and I am the best positioned candidate to defeat him,” that would have been a much more reasonable answer. It would have been wrong (clearly), but at least it wouldn’t have sounded like he was losing a little league game.
Oh yeah, I hated the answer he gave too, but it was pretty clear he wasn’t expecting the question either. It was a bad answer and a mistake, but definitely one of the less egregious mistakes his campaign had been making in the weeks leading up to his departure from the campaign trail. At it’s core, being satisfied with doing your best is a sentiment most people can agree with, but one that falls short of what we actually needed. It did not resonate with the people who were upset with him at the time. We needed Biden to be ruthless after his debate disaster, but he was still playing softball at the major leagues.
Fair enough. It certainly wasn’t the worst gaffe from that period.
The bigger issue are voters clinging to the same shit as you.
His “giving his all” was too icky !
So apparently people couldn’t get past a great administration and hence we have a trump horse race.
I mean, we have a Trump horse race now vs. a Trump blow out before. You may think his administration was great. Personally, I was surprised by how strong on labor he was, but disgusted by his handling of Gaza, and I think his blind institutionalism has made him too slow to react to an out of control Supreme Court. But those opinions don’t matter; he was not going to win after that debate. He came across as senile and confused, and he was not going to energize the base he needed to win. No matter what you think of his administration, he lost the election on June 27th, and we’re just lucky someone made him see that before it was too late.
All politicians must learn this lesson. You are a public servant. It’s not about your ego or your legacy, it’s about what is best for the country and its people.
Thanks for your service, Diamond Joe. You did the world a service in beating Trump in 2020. Harris/Walz will finish him off, and we can get back to righting the ship the Republicans keep drilling holes in.
Possibly…God knows I felt the same dread you did
Dropping out because of “must defeat trump” is not a point-A-to-point-B reasoning. I think it was the right choice though. You can’t kick the can down the road forever.
Biden dropped out because all the donors withheld funds. They saw the writing on the wall.
Only Biden and his most loyal lib cultists actually thought he was a better candidate than anyone else.
Funny how he used to say that he decided to run again and then insist on not stepping aside for the exact reason he’s now giving for making the (correct and beneficial to the world) decision to bow to pressure from the rich donors and thus Nancy Pelosi to stand down.
It’s almost like he’s a notoriously dishonest and very vain old man trying to save face after having lost a power struggle…
Or a human being and a leader that is capable of change and sacrifice in the name of something bigger.
Whichever.
Nah, he was pushed out.
For the month that he stubbornly refused to withdraw, you guys told us that he was doing the right thing and anyone who said otherwise wanted Trump to win.
Then when he was forced to by major donors and their chief enforcer Pelosi, THAT was the best course of action to avoid another Trump presidency (true) that he decided on all of his own (extremely obviously false) because he’s a heroically self-sacrifying hero (gimme a break).
No matter what he does, you fanboys and fangirls say it’s the only right thing to do and that it was all his idea. It’s eerily reminiscent of the MAGA cult in its obsequiousness.
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https://www.vanityfair.com/news/story/joe-biden-drops-out-of-2024-race
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/story/biden-cbs-news-interview
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/story/biden-trump-debate-recap
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/president-joe-biden-highlights-from-first-tv-interview-since-exiting-2024-race/?intcid=CNR-01-0623
