Biden is leaving the campaign because he believes it is good for the country.

After three weeks of mounting pressure from Democrats following a disastrous debate performance, President Joe Biden announced he will no longer seek re-election.

“It has been the greatest honor of my life to serve as your President,” Biden wrote in a letter posted to X, formerly known as Twitter. “And while my intention was to seek re-election, I believe it is in the best interests of my party and the country that I step down and focus solely on fulfilling the duties of my President for the remainder of my term.”

The letter did not elaborate on next steps, but Biden noted that he would “speak to the nation more fully about my decision later this week.”

The wheels of Biden’s re-election campaign began to come loose during the presidential debate in late June. Biden’s campaign had pushed for the timing and format, without a live audience, in the expectation that the debate would boost the president’s flagging campaign. Even the Trump campaign seemed worried that Biden would put in a great debate performance; they spent the run-up alleging that Biden was using performance-enhancing drugs.

But Biden was meandering and stunted, visibly weak and seemingly unable to counter Trump’s attacks or articulate his own or the Democratic Party’s positions.

Immediately afterward, Democrats went from uneasy to outright panic. And yet the seven days following the debate produced almost nothing from Biden: no reassuring statements and no major public appearances, save for a previously scheduled campaign stop in North Carolina. Public calls for Biden to withdraw began to mount. Among elected Democrats, it came first from a handful of backbench House representatives; then from a junior senator. There were many reports of Democrats in disarray, fighting with each other and the president’s camp over the future. To make matters worse, with each successive wave of calls for Biden to withdraw from the campaign came a new wave of support. for Biden from powerful groups like the Black and Progressive caucuses. House Speaker Jerry Nadler from Manhattan even retracted a statement saying Biden should step aside.

When Biden finally resurfaced to make his case, the public appearances and media hits didn’t help. He spoke to George Stephanopoulos for 22 minutes on ABC eight days after the debate, and he seemed a bit more polished, but his speech was still unclear. He refused to entertain the hypothesis that he might face calls from party leaders to leave the race. “That’s not going to happen!” he replied emphatically at one point.

That media appearance was followed by a stormy phone call to MSNBC’s Good morning Joe; Biden angrily shuffled papers and sounded strange without his video on. Two scripted radio interviews followed that required editorial intervention from the campaign, both of which caused controversy. An appearance on Philadelphia’s WURD radio station resulted in the firing of a station employee for agreeing to the campaign’s pre-recorded questioning; the Biden campaign pressured a Wisconsin radio station that scheduled a subsequent interview to edit out portions in which the president made questionable or inane comments, and they complied. The station later admitted to failing to uphold journalistic ethics.

Meanwhile, public polls continued to trickle in, trending worse, with Biden losing in swing states and barely holding on to blue states. His presence at the top of the ticket seemed more of a drag than ever on the must-win races in the House and Senate. But Biden insisted he’d only seen polls that showed him neck and neck.

Then came George Clooney’s op-ed in the New York Times, a statement from a top fundraiser for the president that Biden had in real life looked incredibly weak at a recent event and had to step aside. Trump, buoyed by the polls, then survived an assassination attempt, and was greeted by a jubilant crowd at a jubilant Republican National Convention.

Before Biden announced his decision on Sunday, the ongoing meetings with the various Democratic primary contenders became more combative. Eventually, reports emerged that Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer had encouraged Biden to his face to withdraw, and that House Democratic leaders, including a particularly determined leader emeritus, Nancy Pelosi, were also working feverishly in the background to So.