President Biden’s acknowledgment that he was concerned he would be a “distraction” underscores the pressure the 46th president faced from his own party to step aside. 

The admission came in an interview with CBS News, where the president expressed full confidence in Vice President Harris and Governor Walz to lead the party forward. “I was concerned if I stayed in the race, that would be the topic,” Mr. Biden told Robert Costa on Sunday. “I thought it’d be a real distraction.”

Mr. Biden allows that Democrats in Congress were a driving force behind his decision to leave the race. He tells Mr. Costa that too many vulnerable lawmakers up for reelection would have had to answer questions about his age instead of talking about policy. 

The speed with which the decision to step aside came was nothing short of stunning. Just over three weeks after appearing for the first 2024 presidential debate in June, Mr. Biden was stepped aside in favor of Ms. Harris. 

The president explains that “I thought of myself as a transition president … but things got moving so quickly it didn’t happen.” 

Mr. Biden says “maintaining this democracy” is the most important issue for voters to decide this fall — an issue, he often contends, drove him to run for president in the first place after the 2017 riots at Charlottesville, Virginia.

The president said that “we must defeat Trump,” the president said, making clear that he would dedicate the rest of his time in office to keeping his predecessor out of the Oval Office. He predicted that there may not be a peaceful transfer of power should his predecessor lose in November. 

“If Trump loses, no, I’m not confident at all,” Mr. Biden said when asked if there would be an orderly transition. 

The president said his late son’s passing weighs heavily on every decision he makes. Beau Biden, widely seen as a rising star in the Democrat Party until his death in 2015, inspired the president to run in 2020, Mr. Biden says.  He told Mr. Costa that “I literally ask myself: What would Beau do? He should be sitting here getting interviewed, not me.”