President Biden, in his first interview with an American outlet since leaving the White House, is insisting that he would’ve beaten President Trump last year had he stayed in the race. For more than an hour on “The View” on Thursday, Mr. Biden defended his record and his decision to run for re-election despite his abysmal approval rating. 

Mr. Biden’s first interview as a former president was with the BBC, where he mostly discussed foreign affairs. On “The View,” he and his wife, Jill Biden, were pressed about Mr. Biden’s cognitive decline and his record. He asserts that he would have won another term, and only left the race in order to unite the party behind Vice President Harris. 

When asked if he thought he could’ve beaten Mr. Trump a second time, Mr. Biden responded, “Yeah, he still got seven million fewer votes,” referring to his own 2020 victory. 

Mr. Biden also claimed that he “wasn’t surprised” Ms. Harris lost last year, because of two different factors. One, he said, was the global revolt against incumbents in most major democracies, and the second was the “sexist” campaign being run by Mr. Trump and Vice President Vance. 

“I wasn’t surprised,” Mr. Biden said of his vice president’s loss. “It wasn’t a surprise because they went … the sexist route.”

“I’ve never seen quite a successful and a consistent campaign undercutting the notion that a woman could lead the country,” he added. 

Mr. Biden blamed post-Covid inflation not only for his party’s loss, but for the losses of both liberal and conservative parties leading their respective countries through the pandemic, only to be thrown out by voters at the first opportunity.

“I think we underestimate the phenomenal negative impact that Covid had — and the pandemic had — on people, on attitudes, on optimism,” Mr. Biden said. “I was very disappointed, but I was not surprised.”

He did confirm that he and his former vice president speak “frequently.” Mr. Biden says Ms. Harris called him as recently as Wednesday, and asked for his advice about her political future, including a potential run for governor of California next year. 

“She’s sought my opinion. I’m not gonna tell you what it is,” Mr. Biden said. “I hope she stays fully engaged.”

About halfway through the interview, Mr. Biden was joined on set by his wife, who was described as a “Lady Macbeth” figure in the White House by some of the first family’s detractors. Mrs. Biden herself pushed back forcefully against the reporting that she was putting her husband in a “cocoon” or that she was trying to keep him from the public eye as he was losing his physical and mental acuity. 

“I woke up with him. I went to bed at night with him, so I saw him all throughout the day, and I did not create a cocoon around him. I mean, you saw him in the Oval Office! You saw him making speeches,” the former first lady said. “He wasn’t hiding somewhere. I didn’t have him, you know, sequestered in some place. I mean, that’s ridiculous.”

Mrs. Biden also seemed to take a shot at some of her past friends for their criticisms of her husband. Most famously, in her exit interview with the Washington Post shortly before she left the White House, she described a deep sense of betrayal after Speaker Pelosi — a friend of the Biden family for five decades — pushed her husband from the 2024 race. 

“It was very hurtful, especially from some of our so-called friends,” Mrs. Biden said of the “Lady Macbeth” comparisons and criticisms of her husband. 

Mr. Biden himself responded to the new reporting that he was shielded from the public by his staff. A number of books about his time in the White House have recently been published, with even more due to be released in the coming weeks. The former president said there is no truth to any reporting that he suffered mental or physical decline. 

“They are wrong. There is nothing to sustain that” reporting, Mr. Biden said when asked about the new reports. 

Mrs. Biden again cut in to defend her husband. 

“One of the things I think is that the people who wrote those books were not in the White House with us, and they didn’t see how hard Joe worked every single day,” Mrs. Biden said. “It was non-stop.”