Biden Says He Could Have Beaten Trump If He Had Stayed in the Race

In a wide-ranging interview with just weeks to go in his term, President Biden is insisting that he would have beaten President-elect Trump in November but conceded that he isn’t sure whether he has the stamina to serve another four years in the White House.The President sat down with USA Today’s Susan Page for an exit interview covering topics ranging from policy, politics, and family.“It’s presumptuous to say that, but I think yes,” he said when asked if he thought he could have won if he stayed in the race. In a follow-up question, he was asked if he had the “vigor” for another term; Mr. Biden replied, “I don’t know.”During the hour-long interview in the Oval Office published Wednesday, Mr. Biden spoke on how he initially had no plans to run for President after the death of his oldest son Beau, who succumbed to brain cancer in 2015.“I had no intention of running after Beau died — for real, not a joke,” he said. “When Trump was running again for reelection, I really thought I had the best chance of beating him. 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.”He then circled back to the original question of his fitness for a second term. “I don’t know,” he said. “Who the hell knows?”Mr. Biden said that he was hopeful that history remembers him as a leader who had a plan to bolster the economy and reestablish “America’s leadership in the world.”“That was my hope. I mean, you know, who knows? And I hope it records that I did it with honesty and integrity, that I said what was on my mind.”The President also claimed that Trump complimented him in a manner contrary to the former president’s public statements regarding his economic policies during a private meeting after the election.“He was very complimentary about some of the economic things I had done. And he talked about − he thought I was leaving with a good record.”The comments come as a new Gallup poll suggests that Americans think Mr. Biden will go down in history as being as bad a president as Richard Nixon.Some 54 percent of respondents told the pollster that Mr. Biden will be remembered as a “below average” or “poor” president. About 19 percent said Mr. Biden would be remembered as an “outstanding” or “above average president.” About one-in-four, or 26 percent, said Mr. Biden will be remembered as an “average” president.“Americans do not expect history to be kind when it judges Biden’s presidency,” the pollster said. “Biden’s fellow Democrats are less enthusiastic about his presidency than they are about other recent Democratic presidents, and Biden is the only recent Democratic president who currently has a net-negative evaluation among independents.”

Biden Says He Could Have Beaten Trump If He Had Stayed in the Race

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