Biden to deliver Oval Office speech on his decision to exit 2024 race on Wednesday

By Michael Williams, MJ Lee and Kayla Tausche, CNN

Washington (CNN) — President Joe Biden will deliver a speech on his decision to drop out of the 2024 race on Wednesday.

“Tomorrow evening at 8 PM ET, I will address the nation from the Oval Office on what lies ahead, and how I will finish the job for the American people,” the president posted on X Tuesday morning.

It will be the first time the country hears from the president extensively since his abrupt decision to exit the race on Sunday after he spent weeks defiantly insisting he had no intention of doing so.

Biden, who had been isolating at his home in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, since testing positive for Covid-19 nearly a week ago, tested negative on Tuesday, according to his physician, and is expected to return to the White House later in the day. He briefly called into his former campaign headquarters on Monday to praise Harris, and he vowed to be “fully engaged” in the campaign and seeing out the closing six months of his administration.

“I’m going to be on the road and I’m not going anywhere,” Biden said over the phone, his voice still hoarse from Covid. “I won’t be on the ticket, but I am still going to be fully, fully engaged. I’ve got six months left in my presidency. I’m determined to get as much done as I possibly can both foreign policy and domestic policy.”

The president also acknowledged his decision was “surprising,” but he added that “it was the right thing to do.” He directed his former campaign staff to “embrace” Harris, who on Monday evening picked up enough delegate support to clinch the party’s nomination next month.

Prime-time Oval Office addresses from the president are rare. But Wednesday’s address will be the second time Biden has addressed the nation from that setting this month; he spoke from the Oval Office on July 14 about the assassination attempt against former President Donald Trump a day earlier.

Biden is the first president in more than a generation to decide not to seek a second term. His speech will inspire parallels to President Lyndon B. Johnson’s 1968 Oval Office address in which he stunned the nation by announcing he wouldn’t run at the end of a speech about his plans to limit US military operations in Vietnam.

This is story and headline have been updated.

The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2024 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.