Joe Biden defends last-minute decision to end re-election bid in first interview since leaving White House
Former US President Joe Biden has given a surprisingly candid take on last year’s tumultuous presidential election that saw Donald Trump regain power.
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Former President Joe Biden defended his eleventh-hour decision to end his 2024 re-election bid, telling the BBC Wednesday “I don’t think it would have mattered” to the election outcome if he stepped aside sooner in an interview broadcast Wednesday.
Biden, now 82, bowed out of the race on July 21 following a Democratic Party revolt over his disastrous performance in a June 27 debate against former — and future — President Donald Trump.
That left then-Vice President Kamala Harris 106 days to ramp up her campaign for the White House before she ultimately lost to Trump.
“We left at a time when we had a good candidate,” Biden told BBC Radio 4’s “Today” in his first broadcast interview since leaving office on Jan. 20. “She was fully funded, and what happened was, what we had set out to do, no one thought we could do.
“We had become so successful in our agenda, it was hard to say, ‘I’m gonna stop now.‘”
In the end, Harris became the first Democratic presidential candidate in 20 years to lose the popular vote in addition to the Electoral College — despite raising about $1 billion over a six-week period after becoming the presumptive nominee.
In one of his final interviews before leaving office, Biden told USA Today that he thought he could have beaten Trump again had he remained in the race — despite public polling that indicated he was heading for a landslide loss — but admitted he was not certain if he could have survived another term.
The BBC interview with Biden was recorded Monday in his hometown of Wilmington, Del. to help mark the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II in Europe.
Though the 46th president did not mention Trump by name, Biden attacked his successor’s handling of the 38-month-old invasion of Ukraine by Russia — saying the current administration was practising “modern-day appeasement” of Vladimir Putin.
“Listen to what Putin said when he talked about going from Kyiv into Ukraine, and why,” Biden said. “He believes it’s part of Mother Russia. He believes [he has] a historical right to Ukraine. He can’t stand the fact that the Russian dictatorship that he runs, that the Soviet Union has collapsed. And anybody that thinks he’s gonna stop is just foolish.”
The Trump administration has suggested that Ukraine will have to accept the 2014 annexation of Crimea by Russian forces as part of the price of peace — a concession the Kyiv government regards as a red line directly contrary to their constitution.
“I just don’t understand,” Biden said, “how people think that if we allow a dictator, a thug, to decide he’s going to take significant portions of land that aren’t his, that that’s going to satisfy him. I don’t quite understand.”
In recent weeks, White House officials have urged both countries to speed up progress toward a potential deal — while also threatening to wash its hands of mediating the conflict altogether.
“You’ve got a guy who wants to walk away from it all,” Biden said. “I’m worried that Europe is going to lose confidence in the certainty of America and the leadership of America in the world, to deal with not only NATO, but other matters of consequence.”
The former president also defended his own administration’s level of assistance to Ukraine, telling host Nick Robinson that “we gave them everything they needed to provide for their independence, and we were prepared to respond, more aggressively, if Putin moved again.”
Biden also condemned Trump’s expansionist rhetoric, in which the current president has mused about taking over Canada, Greenland, and the Panama Canal.
“What the hell’s going on here? What president ever talks like that? That’s not who we are,” the former president said. “We’re about freedom, democracy, opportunity, not about confiscation.”
This article originally appeared in the New York Post and was reproduced with permission
Originally published as Joe Biden defends last-minute decision to end re-election bid in first interview since leaving White House
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