Without evidence, claims Kamala Harris was a ‘good candidate’
Former president Joe Biden, 82, offered a semi-coherent defense of his decision to seek reelection in his first sit-down interview since leaving office in disgrace. “What happened was, I had become what we set out to do, no one thought we could do, and become so successful,” he told the BBC on Wednesday. “Our agenda was hard to say, ‘Now I’m going to stop now.’ I meant what I said when I started, that I think it’s—I’m prepared to hand this to the next generation, the transition government. But it—things moved so quickly that it made it difficult to walk away.”
Democrats (and the journalists who support them) effusively praised Biden for his “selfless” decision to withdraw from the race in July 2024, nearly a month after claiming to have beaten Medicare during the now infamous CNN debate. Many have revised their opinions in the aftermath of Donald Trump’s victory over Biden’s chosen successor, Kamala Harris. They now view his decision to seek a second term—despite widespread voter concerns about his age and cognitive health—as a catastrophic blunder that crippled the Democratic Party and helped to ensure Trump’s return to the White House.
Few of these Democrats and journalists have been willing to acknowledge their own enabling roles in the debacle. A series of books about the 2024 election have revealed new details about the extent to which leading Democrats plotted to conceal Biden’s cognitive decline from American voters who were already skeptical of his ability to serve another four years as president. More damning revelations are expected to drop this month with the release of Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again, by Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson. The book’s impending May 20 release presumably explains why Biden is doing interviews again. On Thursday, he is scheduled to appear on The View with his wife, Dr. Jill Biden, who is widely viewed to have been the driving force behind his refusal to relinquish power.
THEY KNEW: 30 Times Democrats Worried (Privately) About Biden’s Decline Before the Debate Fiasco
There’s no doubt Biden believes his claim that he was “so successful” as president, but most Americans do not agree. According to a Gallup survey released in February, just 39 percent of Americans said they had a favorable view of Biden, which was by far the lowest result among living presidents. Biden told the BBC it wouldn’t have mattered if he had dropped out earlier, and described Kamala Harris as a “good candidate”—another claim not supported by the evidence. “I think that, uh, the, uh, well, it was just a difficult decision,” he said.
BBC host Nick Robinson served up a series of softball questions during the interview, which lasted just under six minutes. He asked Biden if he thought democracy was under threat. (He did.) He asked Biden if he thought NATO was good. (He did.) He asked Biden if a peace agreement that allowed Russia to keep parts of Ukrainian territory would be akin to “modern day appeasement.” (He did.) “I can hear your passion,” Robinson gushed after Biden gave a rambling response to a question about Trump’s confrontational Oval Office meeting with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky in February.
“I found it, uh, [long pause] sort of beneath America, the way that took place,” Biden said. “And the way we talk about now that, uh, well, it’s just the Gulf of America. Uh, maybe we’re going to have to take back Panama. Maybe we need to acquire Greenland. Maybe Canada should be—what the hell is going on here?”
