Biden defends passing the torch to Harris as he gives first speech since dropping out of race

Days after becoming the first sitting president in decades to forsake a run for a second term, President Joe Biden said he decided to drop out of the 2024 presidential race because it was the best way for him to unite his party and the country in defense of democracy.

“I have decided the best way forward is to pass the torch to a new generation,” Biden said Wednesday in his first official address to the nation since announcing his campaign withdrawal. “That is the best way to unite our nation.”

The president explained he still believes the US is “at an inflection point,” teetering between continuing as a democracy and a rising autocracy represented by former president Donald Trump and his MAGA movement.

Biden said the country will have to choose “between moving forward or backward, between hope and hate, between unity and division” and decide if Americans still believe “in honesty, decency, respect, freedom, justice and democracy.”

He also told the American people that although he believed his record since taking office in January 2021 was enough to earn voters’ support for a second term, his desire to continue serving was less important than the country itself.

“Nothing can come in the way of saving our democracy — that includes personal ambition,” he said.

The president’s emotional Oval Office address came just days after he announced in a letter that he would leave the presidential race andthrow his support behind Harris after weeks of pressure for him to stand down on account of his dismal performance in his debate against Trump.

It was the first time a sitting American president has opted to forgo election to a second four-year term since 1968, when amid the upheaval caused by protests over the Vietnam War,