(WASHINGTON) — President Joe Biden said in an interview airing on Wednesday that, should his doctors tell him he had a “medical condition,” he would consider leaving office and turning over power to Vice President Kamala Harris in a second term.
It is his latest explanation of what might cause him to step aside as a growing number of Democrats pressured him to do so.
“If there had [muffled] some medical condition that emerged, if somebody, if the doctors, came to me, said, ‘you got this problem and that problem.’ But I made a serious mistake in the whole debate, ” he told BET’s Ed Gordon n a preview clip of the interview set to air at 10 p.m. ET
The interview was done before the White House announced late Wednesday that Biden had tested positive for COVID-19, saying that his symptoms were mild.
Biden has now given several shifting reasons about what might make him decide to step aside.
He told ABC News in a July 5 interview after his poor debate performance debate that only the “Lord Almighty” might get him to drop out of the presidential race.
When ABC’s George Stephanopoulos asked, “If you can be convinced that you cannot defeat Donald Trump, will you stand down?” Biden answered, “Well, it depends on .. on if the Lord Almighty comes down and tells me that, I might do that.”
In a news conference a week ago, he said he would stay in the race unless his aides told him he had no chance to win a second term.
“No, unless they came back and said, ‘There’s no way you can win.’ “No one is saying that. No poll says that,” Biden told reporters.
Also in the BET interview, Biden said, “When I originally ran, I said I was gonna be a transitional candidate, and I thought that I’d be able to move from this just pass it on to someone else. But I didn’t anticipate things getting so, so, so divided and quite frankly, and I think the only thing age brings a little bit of wisdom,” he said. “And I think I’ve demonstrated that I know how to get things done for the country, in spite of the fact that we [were] told we couldn’t get it done. But there’s more to do, and I’m reluctant to walk away from that.”
On Tuesday, he wholeheartedly endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris as not only a “great vice president” but so great that “she could be president of the United States,” he said while addressing the NAACP national convention in Las Vegas.
Editor’s note: This story has been updated, after the full interview aired, to reflect that Biden said he would consider stepping aside from a second term if he had a “medical condition.”
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