US President Joe Biden will give what could be his final Oval Office address on Wednesday, explaining why he pulled out of the November election and denying he will spend six months as a lame duck.
With the world's eyes already focused on a looming showdown between Vice President Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, Biden will insist in his address to the nation that he still has work to do despite his historic decision to withdraw.
The 81-year-old Democrat said on X that he would discuss “what lies ahead and how I will finish the job for the American people” at the prime-time televised event at 8:00 p.m. (0000GMT Thursday).
The speech, expected to last between eight and 10 minutes, will be Biden's first since he dropped out of the race on Sunday after weeks of pressure following a disastrous debate performance against Trump.
He had promised in his withdrawal announcement — made while he was in COVID isolation at his Delaware beach house — that he would give Americans more details about his shocking decision.
This comes just over a week after his final Oval Office address following an assassination attempt on Trump on July 13, but it is only the fourth of his presidency in total — and it could well be his last.
With Harris, who has effectively secured the Democratic presidential nomination, and Trump back on the campaign trail, Biden will fight an uphill battle to show Americans he is not the man of yesterday.
Republicans have called for Biden to resign altogether, saying that if he is unfit to run for re-election, then he is unfit to serve as president.
The veteran Democrat insists he still has much to offer, with a focus on the economy and the task of achieving an elusive ceasefire in Israel's war with Hamas in Gaza.
'Does not go anywhere'
“I'm not going anywhere,” Biden said hoarsely as he called Harris at a campaign rally in Delaware on Monday, adding that he was going to “work like hell” both as president and on the campaign trail.
Biden, who will meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House on Thursday, added that “we are on the verge” of agreeing to a ceasefire.
He would not be the first US president to try to broker a legacy-defining Middle East peace deal, following Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and even Donald Trump before him.
But in a sign of how things are moving, Netanyahu will sit separately with Harris, while Trump said in a post on his social media platform Truth Social that he will meet with the Israeli leader on Friday at the Republican-controlled Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.
With the clock ticking on his presidency, Biden said on Channel X on Tuesday night that it was “great to be back in the White House” after returning from Delaware and that he had met with his national security team for a briefing.
But Biden's decision to step down has injected a huge dose of enthusiasm into a Democratic Party that had been thrown into chaos by the debate over his age.
On Tuesday, an elated Harris was cheered to the rafters as she held a campaign rally in the battleground state of Wisconsin, her first since saying she had secured the delegates needed for the nomination.
She could be nominated as early as August in a virtual vote by Democratic delegates before the party's convention in Chicago just over two weeks later.
For Harris, the challenge now will be to maintain the initial enthusiasm in her party and then translate it into success at the polls in November.
Harris edged slightly ahead of Trump in a poll this week after Biden dropped out, but remains particularly vulnerable to attacks over her lackluster first two years in the White House.
