U.S. President Joe Biden said one reason he would consider not running for re-election on the Democratic ticket would be a not-yet-diagnosed “medical condition.”
Biden brought up that scenario during an interview with BET News on Wednesday.
“If I had some medical condition that emerged, if somebody — if doctors came to me and said you got this problem, that problem,” Biden said in response to a question from journalist Ed Gordon.
At a news conference last week, Biden told reporters that he is not suffering from any medical issues, apart from what is already known following the public release of his annual physicals.
In recent weeks, Biden has also listed numbers that would show no feasible way to re-election, divine intervention — “if the Lord Almighty comes down and tells me that” — or possibly a significant accident — “unless I get hit by a train” — as reasons to drop out of the race against Republican nominee Donald Trump.
On Wednesday, Biden’s campaign said the President was diagnosed with COVID-19 while he campaigned in Las Vegas earlier this week but he is “feeling fine.”
Following his disastrous debate performance late last month, Biden has been inundated by growing numbers of the Democratic Party and celebrity supporters for him to step aside and allow another candidate go up against Trump.
The latest calls from within the party include California Rep. Adam Schiff, who said Wednesday that he believes it’s time to “pass the torch.”
And according to an AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll, nearly two-thirds of Democrat supporters say Biden should step aside and let his party nominate a different candidate.
The survey, conducted July 11-15, revealed Trump “is more likely to be seen as capable of winning in November and better able to handle a crisis,” despite Biden being viewed as more honest than his rival.
“Younger Democrats are more likely to want Biden to withdraw from the race,” the pollster said. “Three-quarters of Democrats under the age of 45 want Biden to drop out, compared to 57% of those over the age of 45.”