Biden casts doubt on fitness to serve second term

WASHINGTON –

U.S. President Joe Biden, in a new interview days before he leaves office, cast doubt on his fitness to serve another four years even as he maintained that he could have won election to a second term.

The outgoing Democratic president also told USA Today in the interview published Wednesday that he tried during his Oval Office meeting with President-elect Donald Trump to discourage the Republican from going after his political opponents, as he has said he would. And Biden said he had not decided whether to issue sweeping pardons to preemptively protect those individuals from any possible retribution by Trump or the incoming administration.

“I don’t know,” Biden responded when USA Today Washington Bureau Chief Susan Page asked if he would’ve had the vigor to serve another four years in office. Biden and Page sat down at the White House on Sunday for the president’s rare interview with a print publication.

Biden, 82, talks about how he didn’t intend to run for president in 2020, but says that when Trump sought reelection last year, “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.”

“But I don’t know. Who the hell knows?” he added. “So far, so good. But who knows what I’m going to be when I’m 86 years old?”

Did he believe he could have been reelected? “It’s presumptuous to say that, but I think yes,” Biden said. He said his assessment was “based on the polling” he reviewed, but he did not elaborate.

Concerns about Biden’s age and fitness had followed him since he announced his bid for reelection, but he dropped out of the presidential race under pressure last July after faltering in a debate against Trump. He endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris. She lost to the Republican.

In the interview, Biden said he was considering preemptive pardons but had not decided whether to issue any. When he and Trump met in the Oval Office after the election, Biden said, “I tried to make it clear that there was no need, and it was counterintuitive for his interest to go back and try to settle scores.”

Trump didn’t answer one way or the other, Biden said, adding, “He just basically listened.”

Biden said his “greatest fear” is that Trump will eliminate parts of major climate legislation Biden signed in 2022. He also took Trump to task for implying that the driver of the deadly New Year’s Day vehicle attack in New Orleans was an immigrant who had entered the U.S. from Mexico.

The FBI has identified the driver, Shamsud-Din Jabbar, a U.S. citizen from Texas and an Army veteran. Fourteen people were killed and nearly three dozen were injured in the attack. Jabbar was killed by police.

Biden said he bets many people read what Trump said about the attacker and believe it.

“How do you deal with that?” he said, referring to his successor as someone “not known for telling the truth.”