A shock announcement coming less than four months before the election and after weeks of questioning his physical and mental condition.
:quality(50)/2023/07/06/64a68815cd1a7_placeholder-36b69ec8.png)
Published
Update
Reading time: 1 min
:quality(50)/2024/07/21/000-364d2pj-669d4e0f89222232130994.jpg)
US President Joe Biden is withdrawing from the 2024 election, he wrote in a statement on Sunday, July 21. “It has been the greatest honor of my life to serve you as your president,” can be read in the text published on X. “I believe it is in the interest of my party and the country that I step down and focus solely on carrying out my duties as president until the end of my term.”he adds.
“Today I want to give my full support and backing to Kamala [Harris] For be our party’s nominee this year. Democrats, it’s time to come together and defeat Trump.”he added on X. It would be a natural choice, but not automatic: the last word goes to the delegates of the Democratic Party, 3,900 people with very varied profiles and for the most part completely unknown to the general public.
The shock announcement comes less than four months before the election and after weeks of questioning his physical and mental condition. In recent weeks, more than 30 Democratic elected officials have asked the outgoing president to make way for a younger candidate. A hemorrhage that intensified after the debate on June 27, where he appeared very physically diminished in front of Donald Trump, searching for words, not finishing his sentences and sometimes displaying a haggard face.
The 81-year-old Democrat thus joins the very select club of outgoing American presidents who have thrown in the towel while running for a second term. But he is the first to do so so late in the campaign, plunging it into the unknown. The only one, too, to have to drop out due to questions about his mental acuity.
