President Joe Biden, 82, still thinks he would have beaten Donald Trump in the 2024 election. He said as much toward the end of a rambling and semi-coherent interview with Susan Page of USA Today. The conversation touched on the president's so-called accomplishments over the past four years as well as his legacy. Biden clearly disagrees with the 54 percent of Americans who, according to a recent Gallup survey, expect him to be remembered as a "poor" or "below average" president.
We read the whole transcript of the interview, published Wednesday, so our readers wouldn't have to waste their precious time sifting through Biden's barely intelligible nonsense. Here are the highlights:
• Biden thinks he would have won
Asked if he believed he could have beaten Trump in November, Biden replied: "It's presumptuous to say that, but I think yes, based on the polling that..." Context: Days after the election, former Obama speechwriter Jon Favreau revealed that the Biden campaign's internal polling showed Donald Trump winning 400 electoral votes.
• Biden isn't sure he could have served another full term
Asked if he possessed the vigor to serve another four years as president, Biden gave a jumbled response that suggests he still doesn't understand why so many people have criticized his decision to run for reelection as a cognitively impaired 81-year-old.
"I really thought I had the best chance of beating [Trump in 2020]," Biden said. "But I also wasn't looking to be president when I was 85 years old, 86 years old. And so I did talk about passing the baton. But I don't know. Who the hell knows? So far, so good. But who knows what I'm going to be when I'm 86 years old?" (Answer: Resident of a managed care facility, or dead.)
• Biden is giving Jimmy Carter's eulogy on Thursday, but it's not entirely clear that's what Carter wanted
Biden claimed Carter "asked me to do his eulogy" during their last meeting in 2021, as Biden was bending down to "kiss him goodbye." Page followed up to find out what Carter actually said, and Biden's response did not inspire much confidence. "I believe that's what he said. Well, he implied that if he didn't specifically ask. And would I? And he was just a decent guy."
• Biden repeatedly refers to the Inflation Reduction Act as the "Climate Law"
He's not wrong. Many have denounced the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 as a wildly misnamed law that did little to rein in inflation while spending almost $1 trillion on climate change initiatives. Biden defended his (poor) economic record throughout the interview, and congratulated himself for reducing inflation by spending lots of money, even though most experts advised against it.
"Most of what we did, whether it's the American Rescue Plan, the Climate Law, the CHIPS and Science Act, all these things ... We spent money doing it," Biden said. "But the fact is that we had a soft landing, no recession, and the interest rate was 9% when we came into office in the beginning. It was down to 2.34% now." (Fact check: Biden meant to say "inflation rate," but the 9 percent figure is a blatant lie Biden keeps repeating. As CNN's truth expert Daniel Dale has explained, the U.S. inflation rate was 1.4 percent when Biden took office in 2021, and increased steadily to 9.1 percent in July of 2022.)
• Biden's memory is not fine
The president, once described (accurately) by Special Counsel Robert Hur as an "elderly man with a poor memory," defended his decision to pardon his crackhead son, Hunter Biden, and insisted he wasn't lying when he claimed he wouldn't issue a pardon. Biden said he changed his mind after learning the details of Hunter's tax fraud case, then attempted (rather unsuccessfully) to recount those details from memory.
"He had paid all his taxes," Biden said. "He paid them late. He was fighting a drug problem. And he beat it. He's been square and sober for almost six years now. This was back in ’80, I mean excuse me, in 2000 and... What year was it? Anyway, long time ago."
• Biden once again refuses to acknowledge his inconvenient granddaughter
The president went on to express his admiration for "all" of Hunter's daughters, but declined to mention Hunter's fourth daughter, Navy Joan Roberts, the 6-year-old girl whose existence he refused to acknowledge until July 2023.
• Biden has no idea why Democrats are losing working-class voters
Page asked why the party of "Scranton Joe" has fared so poorly in recent elections among working-class voters and voters without a college degree. Biden started by blaming the media for being too "negative" and never reporting "any good news." Then he bragged about passing a $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill that historians would one day describe as "great" but which didn't have an "immediate impact on people's lives." Then he started rambling incoherently (and at times inaudibly) about supply chains.
"I never thought, I used to always kid the staff when I started at the beginning, talking about supply chains," Biden said. "Who the hell talked about supply chains in the previous 10, 20, 30, 40 years? Well, guess what? All of a sudden we found out that you need 30 little computer chips [inaudible] to build an automobile. You find you got to do your cell phone, your dishwasher, your washing machine. All of a sudden it was like, we can't get them. We invented the damn things."
Biden's answer—to a question about why Democrats were struggling with working-class voters—went on like that for several minutes, and concluded with a bonkers rant about electricians, Air Force One, and prescription drug prices.
"It takes five years to become an electrician," Biden said. "The average person you and I grew up with. I, well, I speak for myself. 'You think you're going to be an electrician?' 'Yeah, I want to be an electrician.' You go to school for six months. Five years. And so I guess what I'm saying is that the focus on trying to take and reestablish entire industries, infrastructure, dealing with the cost of how things would, I can get you on Air Force One if you have a prescription from any drug store here in Washington, DC, get in the plane. I'm not taking any capital rule and get it you for 40 to 60% less. Same company, same prescription."
• Biden's biggest regret is that people don't fully appreciate how great a president he was
Asked about his biggest disappointment, Biden gave a rambling answer about the New Orleans terrorist attack, which Page helpfully translated: He regretted his "inability to combat mistruths." Asked to provide a more specific answer, Biden continued to ramble about infrastructure projects and the fact that Trump, as president, had signed his name on COVID-19 relief checks. Once again, Page was forced to provide a clear answer to her own question. Biden wished he was better at "taking credit" for his accomplishments. "Or not so much me," the president clarified, "but establish that the government did this for you. It wasn't... It was... Anyway."
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