Former President Joe Biden indicated that he doesn’t regret the timing of his withdrawal from the 2024 presidential race, stating in a recent interview that he doesn’t believe an earlier exit would have changed the election’s outcome.
Biden, who ended his campaign in July 2024, responded to criticism suggesting he should have stepped down sooner to give a replacement candidate more time to establish their campaign. “I don’t think it would have mattered,” he told the BBC. “We left at a time when we had a strong candidate. She was fully funded,” Biden said, referring to former Vice President Kamala Harris, who took over the top spot on the ticket after Biden’s departure and inherited the extensive Biden-Harris campaign fund.
Biden also reflected on his difficult decision to run for a second term before ultimately choosing to step down. “What happened was… what we set out to do, no one thought we could, and we’d become so successful in our agenda, it was hard to say, ‘Now, I’m going to stop,'” he shared. “I meant what I said when I started, that I was preparing to hand this over to the next generation, to a transition government, but things moved so quickly that it became hard to walk away,” he continued. “It was a hard decision.” When asked if he had any regrets, Biden replied, “No, I think it was the right decision. It was just a difficult one.”
