The outgoing president alluded only indirectly to his reasons for standing down, telling US citizens that "nothing can come in the way of saving our democracy".
ADVERTISEMENTUS President Joe Biden called on voters to defend the country's democracy in an address from the Oval Office, his first on-camera statement since he announced he has dropped his bid for re-election and thrown his support behind Vice President Kamala Harris.
“Nothing, nothing can come in the way of saving our democracy,” Biden said in a sombre coda to his 50 years spent in public office. “And that includes personal ambition”.
Biden's decision is the first time since the 1960s that a US president has voluntarily stepped out of a re-election campaign.
Biden used the 10-minute speech as an opportunity to set a narrative of his time in office. He outlined his achievements, saying that he felt his record was deserving of another term, but skirted around the political reality that it was his age that ultimately forced him to drop out.
Instead, he said he wanted to make room for "new voices, fresh voices, yes, younger voices," and that the time had come "to pass the torch to a new generation".
Biden did not call out Trump by name but nonetheless framed the upcoming election as an "inflection point" in the trajectory of American history. He has previously called Trump an "existential threat to democracy".
Time's up
The 81-year-old Biden, who was already the oldest president ever elected when he won the presidency in November 2020, faced mounting criticism within his own party following an abysmal debate performance against Trump last month.
The head-to-head encounter on CNN saw Biden repeatedly losing his train of thought and sometimes struggling to speak, overall appearing confused and exhausted.
Lawmakers and left-leaning voters who had previously been loyal to Biden immediately began questioning whether he was capable of defeating his former rival in November.
To try and fight back, the president began appearing in public more frequently and giving more televised interviews than usual, but these efforts to prove himself fit for re-election saw him make multiple embarrassing mistakes — including addressing Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as "President Putin" — that only convinced more people that his time was up.
Soon after that public gaffe, he was diagnosed with COVID-19 and retreated to recover at his home in Delaware. As the pressure continued to mount, Biden issued a statement announcing his withdrawal and immediately endorsed Harris to step into his shoes.
Since he withdrew, Harris has been met with an unexpected surge of enthusiasm from Democratic voters, pulling in a record-breaking fundraising haul in just 24 hours as euphoric memes using her words spread rapidly on social media.