Joe Biden had all but made the decision to withdraw from the 2024 presidential race by Saturday night—but the vast majority of his staff were not told until the literal last minute, reports said.
The president announced to the world that he was dropping his re-election bid at 1:46 p.m. on Sunday, posting a letter in lieu of a video statement that might have run the risk of immortalizing him as “sick and raspy”—lingering symptoms from a bout of COVID-19, according to The New York Times.
That morning, according to the Times, he’d called three people in his inner circle to let them know what was about to go down: Vice President Kamala Harris, White House chief of staff Jeff Zients, and campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon.
The most senior of his White House and campaign advisors were informed in a 1:45 p.m. video call convened by Zients. Biden was still speaking on the call when the letter went live, The Washington Post reported.
“Come to me with the work, and let’s get it done,” the president said on the call after reading his staff the letter and thanking them for their work, according to the Times.
Zients then hosted two other calls, one with other White House officials and the other with Biden’s cabinet, to confirm that the letter they were seeing on social media was real.
Some staff were in tears, the Times reported. Their reactions ran the gamut from shock to relief.
“There is so much more to do—and as President Biden says, ‘there is nothing America can’t do—when we do it together,’” Zients wrote in a message to the entire White House team at 2:26 p.m., according to the Post.
Some Biden aides expressed hurt and frustration that they’d been kept unawares. Several told the Post that they’d been told on Friday and Saturday to keep working, the implication being that the campaign was still alive and kicking.
One delegate, Nick Koenig, told the Times that a Biden campaign staffer had called him at 1:12 p.m. on Sunday, asking if the president could still count on his support. Other supporters reported getting a fundraising email from the Biden campaign at 1:38 p.m., eight minutes before the letter went up.
“It’s just bonkers,” Koenig said.
“I don’t think a soul in Delaware knew,” a state official told Politico.
In truth, as Biden isolated over the weekend at his vacation home in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, he was joined by a small coterie of trusted family members and advisers, including top aides Steve Ricchetti and Mike Donilon. The huddling was punctuated by “very sobering” discussions of his poll numbers, which took a nosedive following his abysmal debate performance last month.
It was Ricchetti and Donilon who, at an acceptable social distance from the sick president, helped him draft the letter late Saturday, per the Times.
A virtual roll call where Biden would have been formally chosen as the party’s candidate was set to take place early next month, just under two weeks before the Democratic National Convention is set to kick off in Chicago.
An exact date for the roll call has not yet been set, and it was not immediately clear on Sunday if it would go forward.
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