Joe Biden explains why he dropped out of the race for the White House

US President Joe Biden says he has abandoned his bid for re-election because he fears that the election battle will be a “real distraction” for the Democrats and that his priority is to defeat Donald Trump in November.

In his first interview since leaving the race, Mr. Biden, 81, said he has “no major problem” with his health. He blamed his lack of debate success on illness at the time, and dismissed concerns about his age and sanity.

The US president has pledged to campaign for Kamala Harris saying she will do whatever her vice president “thinks I can do to help the most”.

“We must, we must, we must defeat Trump,” he told American broadcaster CBS News.

Mr Biden said that if he had continued his campaign, the presidential race would have “come down to the wire”.

“A number of my Democratic colleagues in the House and Senate thought I was going to hurt them in the races,” he said.

“And I was worried if I stayed in the race, that would be the topic. You could interview me about, Why did Nancy Pelosi say that, why did she do that — and I thought it would be a real distraction.”

The president said he aims to be a bridge to the next generation when he runs for the White House in 2020.

“When I ran for office for the first time, I told myself that I was a reformist president. I can’t even say how old I am. It’s hard for me to get it out of my mouth.”

Politicians and pundits have long wondered whether Mr. Biden will last another four years in the White House, worries that were underscored by his erratic, sometimes halting performance during the June 27 debate.

During a pre-recorded interview that aired on Sunday, Mr. Biden slurred several times but generally seemed more coherent than during a live televised debate. He attributed his lack of performance in the interview to illness – he has previously cited jet lag and lack of rest as the main factors.

As pressure continued to mount, he announced his withdrawal from the race on July 21.

A potential battle to replace him at the top of the Democratic ticket never materialized and the party’s support quickly rallied around Vice President Harris, who has already outperformed Mr Biden in opinion polls.

In other US election news:

• Republican vice presidential nominee and Ohio senator JD Vance has defended a tough plan to deport undocumented immigrants if he and Donald Trump are elected.
• Mr. Vance told American broadcaster ABC News that Trump’s second term would begin with 1 million people in the United States illegally. Government statistics indicate that there are approximately 11 million undocumented immigrants in the country, a number that has remained stable since 2005.
• The Ohio senator said his previous comments suggesting parents should get more votes were a “thought experiment” made in response to Democratic Party proposals to lower the voting age.
• He said his comments on 2021 were not a policy proposal and he was not in favor of more votes for people with children. “I want us to be family supporters,” he said.
• On the Democratic side, Vice President Kamala Harris told a crowd in Las Vegas that she supports eliminating the tip tax, a proposal that Trump also supports. Nevada’s battleground state is home to a large number of voters who work in the travel and tourism industry.

In the CBS interview, Mr Biden returned to when he decided to run against Trump – when a rally of far-right activists in Charlottesville, Virginia in 2017 turned deadly. He accused Trump of emboldening racists and the far right.

“Every time the Ku Klux Klan was involved, they wore hoods so they wouldn’t be exposed,” he said. “Under his leadership, they came out of those forests without strings, knowing that they have a partner.”

He reiterated his concerns about what might happen after the November election, saying he had “no confidence whatsoever” that there would be a peaceful transition of power if Ms. Harris defeated Trump.

He went on to say that he is worried that it will be violent if Trump loses the election.

“He means what he says,” Mr. Biden said. “We don’t take him seriously. He says that. All the stuff about, ‘If we lose, it’s going to be a bloodbath’.”

“He is a real threat to American security,” Mr Biden said.

Trump remarked at a rally in March that “it would be a bloodbath in the country” if he lost, yet his campaign has repeatedly said he was talking about the economy and the auto industry and that Democrats took the quote out of context.

At the same time, the former president insisted repeatedly, without evidence, that he was cheated to win in 2020 and warned that there would be attempts to “fraud” the vote this year. He promised to pardon some or all of the people convicted of treason at the US Capitol in January 2021.

Mr. Biden said he would campaign on behalf of Ms. Harris and that he had spoken to Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro about visiting the state. Mr. Biden was born in the working-class town of Scranton, about 120 miles (190km) northwest of New York City.

“I will also campaign in other states. And I will do whatever Kamala thinks I can do to help more,” she said.