Joe Biden revealed his reason for dropping out of the presidential race as more Democrats call on him to step aside.
He said his doctor had to tell him directly that he had a medical condition that made it necessary.
“If I had a medical condition and doctors came to me and said, I have this problem and I have that problem,” Biden said in an interview with BET News.
The president’s physician, Dr. Kevin O’Connor, has said Biden, 81, is mentally and physically fit to serve as commander in chief.
But Democrats have questioned Biden’s fitness for president since his performance in the debate against Donald Trump, in which he fumbled for words and stared blankly into the camera.
President Joe Biden revealed to BET News what it would take to withdraw from the race
Biden has repeatedly changed the terms under which he would leave office.
He told ABC News he would only drop out if the “Lord Almighty” told him to. At a news conference in Washington, D.C., he said he would stay in the race unless his aides came to prove to him that he could never win.
In his interview with BET’s Ed Gordon, Biden said for the first time that he expected to give up the presidency after one term and hand it over to someone else. However, he decided to run for re-election because he believed his “wisdom” and experience would help heal the country.
“You may remember, Ed, I said I was going to be a transition candidate, and I thought I could put this behind me and hand it off to someone else,” Biden said. “But I didn’t expect things to be this, this, this divisive. And I think, frankly, the only thing that age brings is a little bit of wisdom.”
He added that “there is much more to do, and I don’t want to give up that work just like that.”
The full interview with BET will air Wednesday night at 10 p.m. Eastern Time.
Meanwhile, Biden faced a stark new poll on Wednesday showing that a majority of Democrats want him to withdraw from the presidential race as the party prepares to secure his nomination.
An AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs survey found that 65% of Democrats want Biden to drop out of the race and let the party nominate another candidate. It also found that only 3 in 10 Democrats have confidence in his mental abilities to serve as president.
The results undermine Biden’s claim that “average Democrats” want him to stay in the race and that only “the elite” want him to withdraw.
Biden has spent the past two weeks trying to turn the rising tide against him. But the poll, conducted after his disastrous debate with Donald Trump, shows he has failed to convince Democrats to stay in his corner.
Donald Trump at the Republican National Convention
He claims that many voters are not yet paying attention to the race.
“The point is, we’re just getting into the game,” Biden said in an interview with BET News on Tuesday.
The poll found that black Democrats are among Biden’s strongest supporters, with about half of respondents saying he should continue to run, compared with about 3 in 10 white and Hispanic Democrats.
The poll also shows that support for Biden and Trump differs among their parties, with just 37% of Democrats thinking Biden can win, while 72% of Republicans think Trump can win.
The poll comes as Democrats virtually nominate Biden for re-election, but they are delaying a date for the delegate vote after many Democrats raised objections to the planned process.
The new date for the delegate vote is the first week of August, shortly before the convention begins in Chicago.
The party’s Rules Committee indicated it wants Biden’s nomination finalized by August 7 to avoid legal action against him to get him on the Ohio ballot.
A letter from the co-chairs of the party’s rules committee, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and longtime Democratic Party official Leah Daughtry, said there will be no virtual voting before Aug. 1.
“Whatever is reported, our goal is not to expedite,” they wrote in the letter, according to the New York Times. “Our goals are to uphold our tradition of transparency, our commitment to an effective nomination process that puts a nominee on every state ballot, and ultimately to put our nominees on a path to victory in November.”
The two leaders sought to reassure the party after House Democrats launched a new coup against the president.
Democrats were concerned after Joe Biden’s performance in the first debate against Donald Trump
Lawmakers challenged the original timeline for Biden’s virtual nomination, which would have cemented him as the nominee within weeks.
Under party rules, the vast majority of the more than 4,600 delegates attending the party convention must vote for Biden on the first ballot, regardless of when that vote takes place.
Biden cannot be forced to resign and must choose to resign voluntarily.
There are no signs that he will leave.
“Look, 14 million people voted for me to be the nominee of the Democratic Party, okay?” the president told NBC News. “I listen to them.