The brutal revelation that forced Joe Biden to quit the presidential race

Details are emerging of the private deliberations that finally convinced Joe Biden to leave the presidential race.

Details are emerging of the behind-the-scenes deliberations that finally convinced Joe Biden to withdraw from America’s presidential race.

Mr Biden’s candidacy seemed terminal within minutes of him walking on stage for a televised debate against Donald Trump on June 27. The 81-year-old President’s halting only reinforced existing concerns about his age and mental acuity.

But for more than three weeks Mr Biden, reputedly a rather stubborn man, resisted pressure from within his own party to drop out. Only on Sunday, local time, did he at last bow to the inevitable, ending his re-election campaign and endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris.

Politico now reports that, as recently as Saturday morning, Mr Biden had told his senior staffers it was “full steam ahead”.

Joe Biden. Picture: Kent Nishimura/AFP

Later that day, however, in a meeting with top, longtime aides Steve Ricchetti and Mike Donilon, Mr Biden was forced to confront evidence showing just how low his chances of victory against Mr Trump were.

“In addition to presenting new concerns from lawmakers and updates on a fundraising operation that had slowed considerably, they carried the campaign’s own polls, which came back this week and showed his path to victory in November was gone,” reported Politico.

Critically, the Biden campaign’s internal polling didn’t just show him losing in the handful of key swing states that will decide the election. He was also suffering a collapse in some states that would normally lean comfortably Democratic, like Virginia and New Mexico.

He made the decision to drop out on Saturday night, announced it to a small circle of top staffers the next morning, and then released his public statement.

“It wasn’t that the President had grown tired of the drip of defections from within his own party, although he had,” wrote Politico.

“Rather, it was that Biden himself was finally convinced of what so many other Democrats had come to believe since his poor debate performance last month: he couldn’t win.”

Mr Biden boarding Air Force One last week. Picture: Kent Nishimura/AFP

A key figure in convincing him to step aside was, reportedly, the former House speaker Nancy Pelosi, who at 84 is actually older than the President.

Having tried to persuade Mr Biden to quit in private, Ms Pelosi was prepared to go public with a more drastic strategy.

“Nancy made clear that they could do this the easy way or the hard way,” one Democratic source familiar with the relevant conversations said.

“She gave them three weeks of the easy way. It was about to be the hard way.”

Politico’s story was based on conversations with 22 Democratic sources, all of whom were granted anonymity.

Bowing to pressure

In his statement, released on Sunday, Mr Biden endorsed Ms Harris to replace him as the Democratic nominee, though he left the door open for another candidate to challenge her.

That seems increasingly unlikely, given most of Ms Harris’s potential rivals have already thrown their support behind her.

Mr Biden will remain President until his term ends in January.

“While it has been my intention to seek re-election, I believe it is in the best interest of my party and the country for me to stand down and to focus solely on fulfilling my duties as President for the remainder of my term,” he said.

Mr Biden and Ms Harris together on July 4. Picture: Mandel Ngan/AFP

Mr Trump, for his part, reacted furiously to the news of Mr Biden’s demise in a series of posts on his social media platform, Truth Social, voicing his frustration at having campaigned for years against someone who is no longer his opponent.

“So, we are forced to spend time and money on fighting Crooked Joe Biden, he polls badly after having a terrible debate, and quits the race. Now we have to start all over again,” the former president wrote, reviving his old nickname for Hillary Clinton.

“Shouldn’t the Republican Party be reimbursed for fraud in that everybody around Joe, including his doctors and the Fake News Media, knew he was not capable of running for, or being, President? Just askin’?”

In another post, he suggested that Mr Biden’s Covid diagnosis last week was faked.

“Does anybody really believe that Crooked Joe had Covid? No, he wanted to get out ever since June 27th, the night of The Debate, where he was completely obliterated,” he said.

“That was the point in time when Joe was revealed for what he is, an incompetent man who should never have been president.”

Mr Trump demanded that the second of two scheduled presidential debates be shifted from ABC News, which is currently slated to host it in September, to Fox News. He referred to the former network’s senior political anchor, George Stephanopoulos, as “Slopadopolus”.

“Crooked Joe Biden was not fit to run for president, and is certainly not fit to serve – and never was! He only attained the position of president by lies,” said Mr Trump.

“All those around him, including his Doctor and the Media, knew that he wasn’t capable of being president, and he wasn’t.

“We will suffer greatly because of his presidency, but we will remedy the damage he has done very quickly.”