Inside the ‘Roller Coaster’ Leading Up to Biden’s Decision to Drop His 2024 Reelection Bid (2024)

It was mid-July, and Joe Biden was in the midst of one of the most difficult stretches of his tenure as America’s 46th president.

Ever since his halting debate performance on June 27 against former President Donald Trump, whom Biden was determined to beat a second time in November, the 81-year-old political veteran had been facing mounting pressure to step back from his presidential bid.

As the opening scene of the new documentary Biden’s Decision explores, then came a new blow: a positive COVID test on July 17 that would take Biden off the campaign trail at a critical time.

“It’s been this roller coaster of days,” New York Times chief White House correspondent Peter Baker says in the scene, which is embedded above. Baker goes on to describe a sick Biden’s “halting, unsteady, uncertain” exit from Air Force One on the 17th in his home state of Delaware — his last public appearance for days — as “the lowest point, in some ways, of his presidency.”

Biden would spend the coming days isolated in more ways than one.

“He was getting the message from the lawmakers on Capitol Hill who were saying, ‘If you don’t make a decision this weekend, we are going to come out en masse and say that we have lost confidence in you,” Toluse Olorunnipa, White House bureau chief at The Washington Post, tells FRONTLINE in the excerpt.

As Biden’s Decision explores, Biden had previously been counted out many times over the course of his long political career. So this time, the question was, in Baker’s words: “Was there one more comeback there for him to mount?”

In the two-hour documentary special, premiering August 6, FRONTLINE’s acclaimed political team chronicles Biden’s life and his legacy across five decades in U.S. politics — the challenges, controversies, triumphs and tragedies; Biden’s rise to the presidency; and the personal and political forces that shaped him and led to his fateful July 21 decision to step aside instead of trying for one more improbable rebound.

“You cannot understand Joe Biden without understanding everything that came before, which is an entire lifetime spent proving to people that he can do the things that they believe he cannot,” New Yorker journalist and Biden biographer Evan Osnos says in the excerpt.

The documentary draws on revealing new interviews with those who know Biden well — including former chief of staff Ron Klain, former press secretary Jen Psaki, and former campaign manager Jen O’Malley Dillon — as well as prior FRONTLINE interviews conducted over the years with his wife, Jill Biden; his sister and former campaign manager, Valerie Biden Owens; his Secretary of State Antony Blinken; and other influential figures.

From Biden’s childhood battle with stuttering and then the death of his first wife and young child, through his career as a U.S. senator, his failed presidential bids, his eight years as vice president in the Obama administration, and then finally taking office as president himself in a time of cascading national crises, Biden was always one to pick himself back up after challenging moments, those who know him told FRONTLINE.

It’s a modus operandi that dates back to his childhood: “Failure would happen in everyone’s life, but giving up was unforgivable. My dad would say, ‘It’s not how often you get knocked down. It’s how quickly you get back up,’” Valerie Biden Owens, who managed Biden’s seven senatorial campaigns, says in the film.

The documentary explores the fraught days after Biden’s debate performance, examining why, this time, he made the choice to stand down and, in his words, “pass the torch to a new generation.”

“He was not going to be getting younger,” Olorunnipa of The Washington Post says in the documentary. “His skills were not going to magically return. He made this decision and he ultimately came to understand that he was going to be a one-term president.”

For the full story, watch Biden’s Decision. Offering a probing look at Biden’s life and legacy, the documentary is a powerful examination of a dramatic and difficult decision in what has been a lifetime of them.

Biden’s Decision will be available to watch at pbs.org/frontline and in the PBS App starting August 6, 2024, at 7/6c. It will premiere on PBS stations (check local listings) and on FRONTLINE’s YouTube channel at 9/8c and will also be available on the PBS Documentaries Prime Video Channel. Biden’s Decision is a FRONTLINE Production with Kirk Documentary Group, Ltd. The director is Michael Kirk. The producers are Michael Kirk, Mike Wiser, Vanessa Fica and Philip Bennett. The writers are Michael Kirk and Mike Wiser. The reporters are Vanessa Fica and Brooke Nelson Alexander. The editor-in-chief and executive producer of FRONTLINE is Raney Aronson-Rath.