President Joe Biden has pulled out of the 2024 presidential race.
“It has been the greatest honor of my life to serve as your President. And while it has been my intention to seek reelection, 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," Biden wrote in a letter posted to his X account.
The White House confirmed the authenticity of the letter.
The decision comes after escalating pressure from Biden’s Democratic allies to step aside following the June 27 debate, in which the 81-year-old president trailed off, often gave nonsensical answers and failed to call out the former president’s many falsehoods.
Biden plans to serve out the remainder of his term in office, which ends at noon on Jan. 20, 2025.
Shortly after the letter was posted, Biden made another post endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris as the Democratic nominee.
A party’s presumptive presidential nominee has never stepped out of the race so close to the election. The closest parallel would be President Lyndon Johnson who, besieged by the Vietnam War, announced in March 1968 that he would not seek another term.
Now, Democrats have to urgently try to bring coherence to the nominating process in a matter of weeks and persuade voters in a stunningly short amount of time that their nominee can handle the job and beat Trump. And for his part, Trump must shift his focus to a new opponent after years of training his attention on Biden.
The decision marks a swift and stunning end to Biden’s 52 years in electoral politics, as donors, lawmakers and even aides expressed to him their doubts that he could convince voters that he could plausibly handle the job for another four years.
Biden won the vast majority of delegates and every nominating contest but one, which would have made his nomination a formality. Now that he has dropped out, those delegates will be free to support another candidate.
The Democratic National Convention is scheduled to be held Aug. 19-22 in Chicago, but the party had announced that it would hold a virtual roll call to formally nominate Biden before in-person proceedings begin.
Earlier this month, Biden wrote a letter to congressional Democrats, in which he declined to step down from the candidacy race and called for an end to the intraparty drama.
After the presidential debate last month, many lawmakers began calling for a new Democratic candidate.
Biden was set to run against former president Donald Trump in the November election.
The Associated Press has contributed to this report.
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