Biden recalls heated confrontation with Schumer over 2024 election exit: ‘A lot of gumption’
WASHINGTON, DC: Former US President Joe Biden has recalled a tense confrontation with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer during the final weeks of his 2024 presidential campaign, describing the senator's visit to his Delaware home as an attempt to persuade him to withdraw from the race.
In excerpts from his upcoming memoir, 'Promise Me, America', Biden said he took Schumer's intervention personally because of their decades-long political relationship. His account offers details of the internal Democratic Party pressure that intensified following Biden's June 2024 debate performance against then-Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump.
Biden recalls heated confrontation with Schumer over 2024 presidential campaign
Biden wrote that Schumer visited his Delaware beach house as senior Democrats increasingly questioned whether the president could defeat Trump in the November election. The meeting came amid growing concerns about Biden's debate performance, which intensified calls within the party for him to step aside.
Recalling the confrontation, Biden said he was angered by Schumer's decision to personally urge him to end his candidacy. The former president also referred to a disagreement between the two over polling figures.
"I told Schumer he had a lot of gumption (I may have said it differently at the time), coming to my home and telling me to get out of the race," Biden wrote.
Biden also highlighted the long political relationship he had shared with Schumer, which extended across their decades in the Senate and continued during the Obama administration and Biden's own presidency. Schumer had helped advance several of Biden's legislative priorities, including the American Rescue Plan, a $1.9 trillion pandemic relief package passed in 2021.
Biden said loyalty was an important part of how he approached personal and political relationships.
"Loyalty matters to me," Biden wrote. "If I give you my word, I stick with you. If I say I'm with you, I'm with you to the end."
Despite the pressure from senior Democrats, Biden maintained that he had been the strongest candidate to challenge Trump and remained convinced he could secure another term in the White House.
"I believed I was the best person to do it. I was the only person who had ever beaten Donald Trump. And I felt I was the best person to do it again," he wrote.
Biden details Pelosi's intervention and withdrawal from 2024 race
In his memoir, Biden also accused Rep. Nancy Pelosi of publicly maintaining that the decision was his while privately working to persuade elected officials and Democratic delegates to abandon his candidacy.
"Publicly she was still saying it was my decision to make. But privately she was working furiously behind the scenes to get elected officials and Biden delegates to defect," he wrote.
Biden described feeling increasingly isolated as prominent allies questioned his ability to remain the party's nominee. However, he pointed to his decisive victory in the Democratic primaries as evidence that he had a mandate to continue his campaign.
"I wasn't living in a dream world. Here's where I was living: I had won the Democratic nomination for president. And I had won it decisively," he wrote.
In July 2024, Biden announced that he was ending his re-election campaign and subsequently endorsed then-Vice President Kamala Harris as his replacement. However, Harris ultimately lost the November 2024 presidential election to Trump.
