President Joe Biden said on “CBS Sunday Morning” that he opted to not to seek reelection because his colleagues in the “House and Senate thought that I was going to hurt them” in  the November election.

Biden said, “Look, polls we had showed that it was a neck-and-neck race, would have been down to the wire. but what happened was a number of my democratic colleagues in the House and Senate thought that I was going to hurt them in the races. And I was concerned if I stayed in the race, that would be the topic.”

He continued, “I thought it would be a real distraction, number one. Number two, when I ran the first time I thought of myself as being a transition president. I can’t even say how old I am. It’s hard for me to get out of my mouth. But things got moving so quickly, it didn’t happen. And the combination was that I thought it was a critical issue for me still, it’s not a joke, maintaining this democracy. But I thought it was important because although it’s a great honor being president, I think I have an obligation to the country to do the most important thing, and that is we must, we must, we must defeat Trump.”