“I was concerned that if I stayed in the race, that would be the topic you’d be interviewing me about — why did Nancy Pelosi say ... And I thought it would be a real distraction.”
Pelosi, the former speaker of the House of Representatives, is reported to have organised the campaign to oust Biden and presented him with polling that showed he could not beat Trump.
In a statement to the nation days after stepping aside, Biden referred obliquely to the political pressure that had been brought to bear on him, but emphasised his decision was for the “sacred cause of this country”.
He said he “needed to unite my party” to protect democracy in the US, and he had put aside “personal ambition” to do so.
At the time, he did not name any of those who had urged him to drop out, although it had been reported Pelosi and the top Democrats in the House and Senate, Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer, had done so.
In his CBS News interview on Sunday, Biden said he wanted to be remembered as a President who “proved democracy can work” and said that was factored into his decision to leave the race.
“Although it’s a great honour being President, I think I have an obligation to the country to the most important thing I can do, and that is, we must defeat Trump,” he said.
Although he denied his dire presidential debate performance — in which he repeatedly froze and lost his train of thought — was the result of a “serious” condition, Biden acknowledged his struggles with age.
“When I ran the first time I thought of myself as being a transition President,” Biden said, having indicated in 2019 that he would probably serve only a single term in office.
“I can’t even say how old I am, it’s hard for me to get it out of my mouth.”
Momentum around the campaign to unseat Biden gathered after he made a series of gaffes in the weeks after the debate.
At the Nato 75th-anniversary summit in Washington DC, he referred to Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the Ukrainian leader, as “President Putin”, and called Harris “Vice-President Trump”.
Following criticism of his light schedule after ending his campaign, Biden insisted to CBS he was “working every single day” to avert a large-scale war in the Middle East.
Insisting a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas was still possible, he said: “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.”
The day before the interview was broadcast, the 81-year-old was pictured relaxing on Rehoboth Beach near his home in Delaware with his wife, First Lady Jill Biden, and granddaughter Naomi.
Biden said he would also work to get Harris elected, and was drawing up plans to campaign in the battleground state of Pennsylvania, where some have raised concerns about the Vice-President’s appeal.
‘Whatever Kamala thinks’
“We have to win Pennsylvania, my original home state,” Biden, who was born in Scranton, said. “I’m going to be doing whatever Kamala thinks I can do to help most.”
Biden’s decision to exit the presidential run came after weeks of acrimonious exchanges between him and the press and mounting frustration over his stubbornness to stay.
While Pelosi has sought to distance herself from accusations of forcing Biden out of the race, she was publicly disparaging about his campaign and re-election prospects this month.
“I’ve never been that impressed with his political operation,” she told the New Yorker on Thursday.
“They won the White House. Bravo. But my concern was: this ain’t happening, and we have to make a decision for this to happen. The President has to make the decision for that to happen.”
Pelosi, who stood down as House Speaker last year, but is still a hugely influential power broker in the party, also said she lost sleep over the decision to move against Biden, who she considers an old friend.
“I love him so much, I think he’s been a fantastic President of the United States,” Pelosi said.
In everything she did, she was motivated by a desire that “Donald Trump would never set foot in the White House again”.
