President Biden announced Sunday that he will suspend his 2024 re-election campaign amid mounting pressure from within the Democratic Party for the president to end his 2024 bid after a disastrous debate performance last month.
The unprecedented announcement came as an increasing number of Democrat lawmakers had begun to publicly call for Biden to step aside and the party’s leadership reportedly was engaged in efforts to convince Biden, 81, he could not win in November’s general election against former President Trump, the 2024 GOP nominee who Biden defeated four years ago to win the White House.
And Biden quickly offered his “full support and endorsement” for Vice President Kamala Harris to take over as the party’s presidential nominee.
“It has been the greatest honor of my life to serve as your president,” Biden wrote in a public letter. “While it has been my intention to seek reelection, I believe it is in the best interests of my party and the country for me to stand down and focus solely on fulfilling my duties as president for the remainder of my term.”
Biden said he will formally address the nation later this week about his decision.
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“For now, let me express my deepest gratitude to all those who have worked so hard to see me reelected,” Biden wrote. “I want to thank Vice President Kamala Harris for being an extraordinary partner in all this work. And let me express my heartfelt appreciation to the American people for the faith and trust you have placed in me.”
Biden added: “I believe today what I always have: that there is nothing America can’t do – when we do it together. We just have to remember we are the United States of America.”
In a social media post, Biden backed Harris to take over as the party’s standard-bearer.
“My very first decision as the party nominee in 2020 was to pick Kamala Harris as my Vice President. And it’s been the best decision I’ve made. Today I want to offer my full support and endorsement for Kamala to be the nominee of our party this year. Democrats — it’s time to come together and beat Trump. Let’s do this,” Biden wrote.
The president’s endorsement is likely to dissuade any serious completion from other Democrats who may have mulled a bid for the presidential nomination and could clear a path for the vice president to succeed Biden as the party’s nominee.
Harris, in a statement about two hours after Biden’s announcement, said she is “honored to have the President’s endorsement and my intention is to earn and win this nomination. Over the past year, I have traveled across the country, talking with Americans about the clear choice in this momentous election. And that is what I will continue to do in the days and weeks ahead. I will do everything in my power to unite the Democratic Party—and unite our nation—to defeat Donald Trump and his extreme Project 2025 agenda.”
And the vice president praised her boss, thanking Biden “for his extraordinary leadership as President of the United States and for his decades of service to our country. His remarkable legacy of accomplishment is unmatched in modern American history, surpassing the legacy of many Presidents who have served two terms in office.”
A source familiar told Fox News that Biden and Harris spoke multiple times on Sunday ahead of the president’s stunning announcement.
Biden’s endorsement of Harris was quickly followed by two top party elders, former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State and former Sen. Hillary Clinton, the 2016 Democratic presidential nominee.
“We are honored to join the President in endorsing Vice President Harris and will do whatever we can to support her.”
And LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, one of the Biden campaign’s biggest donors, also quickly endorsed Harris.
“The Biden-Harris administration has put this country on the right track. It’s time for us to unite. I wholeheartedly support Kamala Harris and her candidacy for President of the United States in our fight for democracy in November,” Hoffman wrote in a social media post.
At least half a dozen Democratic senators also quickly backed Harris, with the number likely to grow. So did some top House Democrats, as the move to rally around the vice president picked up momentum.
But former President Obama didn’t endorse Harris, at least not yet.
“We will be navigating uncharted waters in the days ahead. But I have extraordinary confidence that the leaders of our party will be able to create a process from which an outstanding nominee emerges,” the former president wrote in a letter.
But Obama and former First Lady Michelle Obama were among the scores of top Democrats praising Biden for putting the nation and the party over personal ambitions.
“Joe Biden has been one of America’s most consequential presidents, as well as a dear friend and partner to me. Today, we’ve also been reminded — again — that he’s a patriot of the highest order.” the Obamas wrote.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said in a statement, “Joe Biden has not only been a great president and a great legislative leader, but he is a truly amazing human being. His decision of course was not easy, but he once again put his country, his party, and our future first.”
California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a top Biden surrogate, wrote in a social media post that Biden “will go down in history as one of the most impactful and selfless presidents.”
It was a very different reaction from former President Trump, the GOP presidential nominee.
“Crooked Joe Biden was not fit to run for President, and is certainly not fit to serve – And never was!” Trump charged in a post on his Truth Social platform.
Trump argued that “we will suffer greatly because of his presidency, but we will remedy the damage he has done very quickly.”
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And in an interview with Fox News Digital, Trump reiterated his claims that Biden was “not fit to serve” and asked “who is going to be running the country for the next five months?”
Republican presidential nominee and former President Donald Trump speaks at a campaign rally, Saturday, July 20, 2024, in Grand Rapids, Mich. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
Trump’s running mate, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, took to X to emphasize that “President Trump and I are ready to save America, whoever’s at the top of the Democrat ticket. Bring it on.”
Meanwhile, the Trump campaign quickly started fundraising off the blockbuster news. Within 440 minutes of the president’s announcement, the Trump campaign put out a fundraising post on X with the subject line, “Biden just suspended his campaign.”
MAGA Inc, the leading super PAC supporting Trump’s 2024 White House bid, quickly launched an ad charging that “Kamala was in on it. She covered up Joe’s obvious mental decline.”
The super PAC tells Fox News the new commercial will go up in the battleground states of Pennsylvania, Georgia, Nevada and Arizona as soon as possible, as part of MAGA Inc’s $5 million per week ad blitz.
Meanwhile, some top Republicans in Congress called on Biden to resign from office immediately.
Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., charged in a statement, “If Joe Biden is not fit to run for President, he is not fit to serve as President. He must resign the office immediately. November 5 cannot arrive soon enough.”
But White House spokesman Andrew Bates, in a statement, emphasized that “President Biden inherited an economy in freefall, a skyrocketing violent crime rate, and alliances in tatters from his predecessor. He turned that around to deliver the strongest economic growth in the world and the lowest violent crime rate in nearly 50 years, while making NATO bigger than ever. He looks forward to finishing his term and delivering more historic results for the American people.”
A source told Fox News that as of Saturday night the message from Biden and those around him was “all systems go” and “full speed ahead.”
The source said that around 1:45pm ET on Sunday, the president notified senior campaign members that he had changed his mind. The source added that campaign officials who in recent days were repeatedly denying reports of Biden suspending his campaign were all going off of “good information” and what they had been told at the time.
A different source confirmed to Fox News that the president met Saturday night in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware with his inner circle of longtime political advisers. Among them were Mike Donilon, Steve Ricchetti, Anita Dunn, Ron Klain.
President Joe Biden waves as he walks down the steps of Air Force One at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, Wednesday, July 17, 2024. Biden is returning to his home in Rehoboth Beach, Del., to self-isolate after testing positive for COVID-19. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh) (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)
Biden was diagnosed with COVID-19 on Wednesday, a revelation that came on the heels of several TV interviews and campaign appearances in which the president insisted he was remaining in the race. But the interviews failed to reassure supporters and provided critics – including those on the left – with further evidence that Biden was no longer up to the job.
Biden had delivered a strong welcome address to world leaders at last week’s NATO summit in Washington D.C. The showcase served as an opportunity to prove he was fit to continue his current term and eager and able to lead the nation for another four years.
For a time, it seemed Biden could survive the surge of calls for him to quit the race after House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer announced that they backed Biden’s bid.
But Biden, who has long been known for a propensity to commit gaffes, continued to stumble. His missteps included a glaring error on the world stage at the NATO summit. While speaking on live television, Biden referred to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as “Putin,” name-checking Russian President Vladimir Putin, whose invasion of Zelenskyy’s Ukraine has precipitated more than two years of hellish war.
Questions over whether Biden would end his campaign remained the top political story heading into last weekend.
But two blockbuster developments in rapid succession – the attempted assassination of Trump at the former president’s rally in western Pennsylvania on Saturday and Trump’s naming Monday at the Republican National Convention of Sen. JD Vance of Ohio as his running mate – briefly halted the fervor over Biden for a couple of days.
But the call on Wednesday by Rep. Adam Schiff, the Democratic Senate nominee in California, for Biden to end his campaign, as well as reporting that top Democrats such as Schumer, Jeffries, and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had frank conversations with Biden, quickly reignited the political crisis for the president.
Biden’s stunning announcement occurred during the roughest stretch of what was a more than year-long campaign for a second term. Doubts about his viability at the top of the Democratic Party’s 2024 ticket began seeping out into the mainstream after his halting delivery and awkward answers were placed on full display for a national audience during June’s presidential debate with Trump in Atlanta.
The performance sparked widespread panic within the president’s party and almost immediately spurred calls from political pundits, editorial writers and some party donors for Biden to step aside as the party’s 2024 standard-bearer.
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President Biden and former President Trump faced off at a debate in Atlanta on June 27, 2024. (Getty Images)
As Biden struggled to regain his footing, an increasing number of House Democrats publicly urged the president to end his re-election bid.
Biden huddled with worried Democrats, including governors and congressional leaders, in the wake of the debate debacle and also was engaged in “working the phones,” according to campaign officials.
He started last week in a defiant posture, sending a letter to congressional Democrats in which he vowed that he was committed to campaigning against and beating Trump in November. Biden also urged lawmakers to stop focusing on the debate and end the calls for his withdrawal – pleas that he said only helped Trump.
Biden followed that up with a call with members of the Congressional Black Caucus and also gained the support of members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus.
But concerns mounted and intensified. Democrat lawmakers met behind closed doors hoping to come to a consensus and support the president, but some were hesitant.
The Biden campaign met with Senate Democrats on Capitol Hill and, for days, the White House and the Biden campaign – and the president himself – said Biden had no intention of dropping out of the race.
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White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre had told reporters that the president was “absolutely not” considering dropping out.
And Quentin Fulks, the principal deputy Biden campaign manager, emphasized that “the president is in this race to win it. He is the Democratic nominee.”
On the day after the presidential debate, Biden acknowledged at a rally in Raleigh, North Carolina, “I know I’m not a young man, to state the obvious.”
President Biden reacts after speaking at a campaign rally in Raleigh, North Carolina, Friday, June 28, 2024. (AP Photo/Matt Kelley)
“Folks, I don’t walk as easy as I used to. I don’t speak as smoothly as I used to. I don’t debate as well as I used to,” Biden added. “But I know what I do know. I know how to tell the truth. I know right from wrong. And I know how to do this job. I know how to get things done. And I know, like millions of Americans know, when you get knocked down, you get back up.”
And the president, pointing to his 2024 rematch with Trump, emphasized, “I would not be running again if I did not believe with all my heart and soul that I can do this job.”
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But Biden soon was staring down a slew of polls showing his standing against Trump was slipping while concerns over his age were surging.
The president’s shocking announcement brings to an end his 2024 presidential campaign, which he launched in April of last year.
President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris held a “Black Voters for Biden-Harris” rally in Philadelphia on May 29, 2024. (Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post via Getty Images)
And it also seemingly brings to an end a half-century-long career in national politics.
Biden was first elected to the Senate representing his home state of Delaware in 1972. During his nearly four decades in the Senate, he notably drafted and steered to passage the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act and the Violence Against Women Act, chaired the Senate Foreign Relations and Judiciary committees and oversaw six Supreme Court confirmation hearings.
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He also ran unsuccessfully for the 1988 and 2008 Democratic presidential nominations.
After dropping out of the 2008 race, then-Democratic presidential nominee and Sen. Barack Obama named Biden as his running mate. Biden served eight years as the nation’s vice president as he and Obama won the 2008 election and re-election in 2012.
Biden considered, but ultimately decided against, a run for the White House in the 2016 election cycle, as he mourned the loss of his elder son, Beau, to brain cancer. With Biden on the sidelines, the party coalesced around the candidacy of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
But four years later, Biden launched a bid for the 2020 nomination. After dismal early finishes in the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary, Biden turned his campaign around and a landslide victory in the South Carolina primary propelled him to the Democratic nomination. Biden went on to defeat Trump and win the White House.
Fox News Patrick Ward contributed to this report
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