Former President Joe Biden said he does not believe his decision to withdraw from the 2024 presidential race came too late, dismissing suggestions that an earlier departure could have prevented President Donald Trump's re-election. In his first post-White House interview, Biden told BBC journalist Nick Robinson that the timing of his exit had little bearing on the final result.
"I don't think it would have mattered," Biden said. "We left at a time when we had a good candidate. She was fully funded." Biden endorsed his Vice President Kamala Harris as his successor in July 2024, just weeks after a widely criticized debate performance intensified scrutiny of his fitness for office.
Biden described the decision to step aside as "hard" but ultimately correct. "I think it was the right decision. It was just a difficult decision," he said.
Harris went on to lose the general election to Trump, prompting internal Democratic criticism that Biden's late withdrawal denied the party a full primary process and left Harris with too little time to mount an independent campaign.
Asked whether stepping aside earlier could have improved Democratic prospects, Biden doubled down: "I don't know how that would have made much difference."
The former president defended his decision to seek re-election, stating that his administration's legislative and policy achievements made it difficult to walk away midstream. "What we had set out to do, no one thought we could do," Biden said. "I'd become so successful in our agenda, it was hard to say, 'I'm going to stop now.'"
He added, "I meant what I said when I started, that I'm preparing to hand this to the next generation, the transition of government. Things moved so quickly that it made it difficult to walk away."
Biden faced mounting pressure to end his campaign after his June 2024 debate with Trump, during which he appeared frail, halting, and at times incoherent. He later attributed his poor performance to a cold.
The debate triggered a wave of concern among Democratic lawmakers, donors, and the media, accelerating his exit from the race less than a month later. For years, Biden's inner circle and many liberal commentators defended his mental acuity, often dismissing concerns as partisan attacks.
However, in the weeks following his departure, several reporters acknowledged that coverage of the president's cognitive decline had fallen short. Speaking at the White House Correspondents' Dinner, Axios political reporter Alex Thompson said, "We, myself included, missed a lot of this story... Biden's decline and its cover-up by the people around him is a reminder that every White House, regardless of party, is capable of deception."
