(Daily360.com) On Sunday July 21, President Joe Biden issued a letter to the public announcing that he is retiring at the end of this presidential term and will relinquish the Democratic party nomination for the 2024 election.
The announcement comes after weeks of encouragement and pressure from members of the party to step aside and speculation regarding the president’s mental health. Later on the platform X, Biden posted an endorsement for Vice President Kamala Harris to be the Democratic party nominee.
Following the disastrous debate performance in June, members of his party suggested that Biden is not the best candidate to defeat Donald Trump in November. Despite the calls to step down, President Biden did a media tour claiming that he was going to stay in the race. He said in an interview with George Stephanopoulos that he is the best candidate to make sure Trump doesn’t get back into office.
Polling numbers had not looked good for the president’s re-election effort because he was trailing Trump in all seven swing states. Questions of his mental stamina and ability to serve another term had also increased in recent weeks. Now that Biden has announced that he is not seeking a second term, Republicans have called for the president to resign.
In Biden’s letter, he said that he would stop his campaign to focus on finishing his term. The announcement did not mention anything about his health or ability to serve another term. Speaker Mike Johnson said if he is not mentally well to run for a second term, then he is not fit to fulfill his current duties as president.
It was announced earlier in the week that Biden had contracted COVID-19. He hasn’t been seen in public for many days and briefly spoke over the phone as Kamala Harris was holding a conference on July 22. Harris raised $81 million in the day after the announcement although it is not yet official that she will be the party’s nominee until the Democratic National Convention in August.
Copyright 2024, Daily360.com
