- President Joe Biden said that only God might be able to convince him to withdraw from the 2024 presidential race.
- Biden made frequently defiant remarks during a high-profile interview with ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos.
- The president is still trying to calm public fears after his disastrous debate performance.
President Joe Biden said Friday he was unfazed by the growing number of lawmakers and big donors calling for him to back down, and that only a higher power could force him to change course.
Asked if he would step down if he was no longer the best Democrat to beat former President Donald Trump, Biden told ABC News host George Stephanopoulos, “If the almighty God came down and told me that, maybe I would.”
Biden displayed his trademark stubbornness in the 22-minute interview with Stephanopoulos, designed to calm the nerves of Democrats who have called for him to step down after his disastrous defeat in last week's debate.
The president has been known to invoke the phrase “judge not by God almighty but by other possibilities” when discussing how critics should view his candidacy, but on Friday Biden went further, suggesting only divine intervention could lead to his removal from office.
“If the Almighty God came down and said, 'Joe, get out of the election,' I would get out of the election,” Biden said in another statement. “The Almighty God is not coming down.”
At that point, Stephanopoulos was about to ask Biden how the president would respond if either Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer or House Minority Leader Hakim asked him to back down. Biden made it clear that would never happen and that the assumption was unjustified.
“I agree that the almighty God is not going to come down,” Stephanopoulos said, “but what do you do if your allies, your friends and allies within the Democratic Party in the House and the Senate, tell you with certainty that they are concerned that you are going to lose the House and the Senate if you stay in office?”
Faced with more practical considerations, Biden simply refused to consider that possibility.
“I'm not going to answer that question,” he said. “It's not going to happen.”
