President Joe Biden has announced his withdrawal from the 2024 US Presidential race after notable Democrats mounted pressure on him to drop out due to his age and abysmal performance during the last Presidential debate against Republican Presidential candidate, Donald Trump.

Biden disclosed this in a statement posted on Sunday, July 21, 2024, that he will “stand down.”

“It has been the greatest honor of my life to serve as your President,” he wrote, in a letter posted on X. “And while I have intended 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.”

“I will speak to the Nation later this week in more detail about my decision,” he added.

In another post on X, Biden gave his “full support and endorsement” for Vice President Kamala Harris to be the Democratic Party’s nominee.

There have been concerns about Biden’s age since he embarked on his reelection campaign in April 2023. More party members have asked him to back out from the race following his poor performance with Trump at the CNN debate in Atlanta in late June 2024.

Biden, who at 81 is the oldest sitting President in history, spoke with a hoarse voice that his team attributed to a cold. Coupled with his meandering answers and inability to hit Trump hard on key Democratic issues, his performance left some pundits and politicians speechless.

The White House and campaign chalked up the performance as a “bad night.” Biden defiantly insisted he would remain in the race, constantly telling Democrats he was the best option to defeat Trump.

“I convinced myself of two things. I’m the most qualified person to beat him, and I know how to get things done,” Biden told ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos in his first post-debate television interview.

“Look. I mean, if the Lord Almighty came down and said, ‘Joe, get outta the race,’ I’d get outta the race. The Lord Almighty’s not coming down,” Biden said at the time.

However, early polling showed the debate’s negative impact. In Five Hundred and Thirty-Eight’s national polling average, Trump now leads by 2 percentage points over Biden, while the two candidates were just about tied on the day of
the June 27 debate.

And despite Biden and his campaign’s furious attempts at damage control, including a press conference after concluding a NATO summit in Washington where he took reporter questions for nearly an hour and tried to make the case he must “finish the job.” Despite these attempts, a steady drumbeat of Democratic lawmakers and public figures called on him to step aside as the nominee.

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