President Joe Biden was surprisingly candid when asked if he believed he could have served another four-year term in the White House.
In an interview with USA Today published on Wednesday, Biden appeared confident that he could have defeated President-elect Donald Trump in November had he stayed on as the Democratic Party’s nominee, citing polling he said he went over.
“It’s presumptuous to say that, but I think yes,” Biden said.
But when asked whether he would have been in a position to serve as president for another four years, Biden conceded he wasn’t sure.
“I don’t know,” he told USA Today’s Susan Page. “Who the hell knows?”
Biden noted that he had no further political aspirations following the death of his son Beau Biden to brain cancer in May 2015. But that all changed when Trump announced he was running for reelection in 2020. Biden said he thought he “had the best chance of beating” Trump.
“But I also wasn’t looking to be president when I was 85 years old, 86 years old,” he said. “And so I did talk about passing the baton.”
Instead, however, Biden, who would have been 86 at the end of a potential second term, announced in April that he was running for reelection.
But his poor performance at a CNN debate in June, during which he struggled to complete sentences, fueled concerns about his age and mental acuity, prompting prominent Democrats, including former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (Calif.), to nudge him to step aside. Biden withdrew from the race about a month later, endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris to take over his bid.
Page said that while Biden was “engaged” during their about an hourlong discussion — one of the few interviews he’s done as president — “at times he spoke so softly that it was difficult to hear him.”
Despite Biden’s deep-held belief that he could have defeated Trump, voter surveys suggest otherwise.
Biden recorded his lowest approval rating since taking office in 2021, according to a survey conducted by the Marquette Law School Poll last month.
Meanwhile, he consistently trailed Trump in a three-way race, including then-independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., according to FiveThirtyEight. Harris’ ascension to the top of the Democratic ticket appeared to slightly improve the party’s prospects.
In the end, Trump went on to win both the Electoral College and the popular vote in November.
