Biden fielded questions on the 2024 election, including addressing allegations that he was in cognitive decline during his final year in office.
Former President Joe Biden on May 8 gave his first interview since leaving office, defending his administration and denying reports that he told former Vice President Kamala Harris to mirror his priorities in her 2024 campaign.
Biden and his wife, former First Lady Jill Biden, sat down with ABC’s “The View” on Thursday morning, fielding questions about the 2024 election, Harris’s loss to then-presidential candidate Donald Trump, allegations that he was in mental decline last year, and his reaction to the Republican president’s first 100 days in office.
Biden said he was not surprised that Harris lost to Trump, not because of any lack of qualifications for the presidency, but because he believes her campaign was hit with claims that a “woman of mixed race” couldn’t lead the country.
“I think we underestimate the phenomenal negative impact that COVID and the pandemic had on people, on attitudes, on optimism, on a whole range of things,” Biden added. “So I was very disappointed, but I wasn’t surprised.”
The former president said that he has stayed in touch with Harris and that she recently sought his opinion on an important topic, but he declined to share what it was.
Despite Trump being the first Republican president to win the popular vote in 20 years, Biden suggested that his former opponent’s victory last year was not a “slam dunk.”
The hosts mentioned how when Harris spoke with them before last year’s election, the former vice president said nothing “comes to mind” when asked what she would have done differently than Biden in the previous four years.
Biden said he didn’t encourage Harris to make that claim, which Trump and the Republican Party used as ammunition against her.
“I did not advise her to say that,” he said. “She was part of every success we had. We’d argue like hell, by the way.”
Biden dropped out of the presidential race in July 2024 and endorsed Harris as his successor after growing criticisms of his performance in a debate with Trump the previous month.
When asked what he would say to critics who suggest that stepping aside a little more than 100 days before the election hampered the former vice president’s campaign, Biden touted his administration’s accomplishments.
“We got more major legislation passed to fundamentally change the direction of the country than any president has in a long, long time—decades,” Biden said. “My point is that we had a very successful effort to change the direction of the country, and we did, and [Harris] was every single part of that.”
Biden said he waited until this interview to speak out on Trump’s first 100 days in office due to a longstanding tradition of allowing one’s successor some time to “get off the ground without going after him.”
But enough time has now elapsed, the former president suggested.
“I think he has done, quite frankly, a very poor job in the interest of the United States of America,” Biden said. “I think, you know, the greatest Alliance in the history of the world is NATO, not a joke, and he’s blown it up. I was able to expand it.”
The hosts noted how Trump has mentioned Biden, his family, or his administration hundreds of times since Inauguration Day on Jan. 20 and asked Biden why he believes the president is fixated on him.
“I beat him,” Biden said with a smile, referring to the 2020 election.
However, the former president said he took partial responsibility for Trump prevailing in the 2024 election.
“Look, I was in charge, and he won. So, you know, I take responsibility,” he said.
When asked about allegations that he was in a “dramatic decline” of his cognitive abilities during the final year of his presidency, Biden said the anonymous sources cited in various media reports were wrong.
“There’s nothing to sustain that,” he said.
Instead, Biden said he dropped out of the race because he didn’t want to divide the Democratic Party further.
“That’s why I got out of the race. And I thought it was better to put the country ahead of my interest, my personal interest. I’m not being facetious. I’m being deadly earnest about that,” Biden said.
He acknowledged the concerns many had about his age, since he would have been 86 years old by the end of a potential second term.
“I get it. I understand the concern. I really do. But the point of the matter is that I would offer specific evidence, if we had time, exactly what I got done when I supposedly lost my cognitive capability,” Biden said.
“When I got out of the race, I was still going to be president. I think I did a pretty damn good job the last six months.”