Biden seems to admit Dems forced him out in CBS interview
Makes claim he thought of himself as a "transition president."
President Joe Biden sat down for his first interview after he dropped out of his reelection bid and handed the reins to Vice President Kamala Harris. The interview aired on CBS on August 11, 2024.
CBS published this video (below) of Biden's interview with CBS News chief election & campaign correspondent Robert Costa.
To call this a scripted, friendly softball interview would be an understatement.
This was a difficult interview to watch for a number of reasons; Biden seeming out of it, Costa's wooden kid-gloves handling of him, and the cut-away voice-over commentary by Costa, which makes one question just how many clips were cut from the published interview video.
Also, what's the deal with the booklet Biden was holding during the interview?
More To The Story
Biden’s address telling the nation to "cool it down..." was short-lived.
"You know, the political rhetoric in this country has gotten very heated. It’s time to cool it down. And we all have a responsibility to do that,” Biden said in his July 14 address from the White House after the attempted assassination of Trump.
Yet, less than a month later, Biden was back to calling Trump and his supporters a threat to democracy and the nation. Here’s the video CBS posted to YouTube:
Biden seemed to admit he was pushed out
“A number of my Democratic colleagues in the House and Senate thought that I was going to hurt them in the races. And I was concerned if I stayed in the race, that would be the topic — you’d be interviewing me about why did Nancy Pelosi say [something] … and I thought it’d be a real distraction.
Biden then goes on to make the claim, for the first time that I’ve seen, that he considered himself a “transition President.”
"Number two, when I ran the first time, I thought of myself as being a transition President. I can't even say how old I am; it's hard for me to get it outta my mouth. But things got moving so quickly, it didn't happen,” Biden said.
He then went on to say, "the critical issue for me still – it's not a joke – maintaining this democracy. I thought it was important.”
Because, although it's a great honor being president, I think I have an obligation to the country to do what [is] the most important thing you can do, and that is, we must, we must, we must defeat Trump,” said Biden.
Former House Speaker Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) was reported as being the driver behind getting Biden to step aside, with Politico reporting she essentially told him it could happen the “easy way” or the “hard way.”
Pelosi later told media outlets she had little to do with it, stating "Now I was really asking for a better campaign. We did not have a campaign that was on the path to victory. Members knew that in their districts.”
Here’s the clip of that exchange:
"If Trump wins... I mean, if Trump loses, I'm not confident at all,” Biden said when asked if he thought there would be a peaceful transfer of power in 2026.
Biden went on to make an odd claim about counting votes and repeated the “bloodbath” falsehood.
“He means what he says. We don't take him seriously. He means it. All the stuff about, 'If we lose, it'll be a bloodbath …' Look what they're trying to do now in the local election districts where people count the votes. They're putting people in place in states that they're gonna 'count the votes,' right?"
Biden keeps retelling the "bloodbath" hoax, which was started by MSNBC's Joe Scarborough in a tweet he has since deleted after being called out by Elon Musk. Scarborough's lie had already been recirculated by multiple mainstream media outlets by the time Musk called him out. Trump's remarks at a campaign rally were about a "bloodbath" but it was in relation to the auto industry being decimated by China and Mexico.
Later in the interview, he attacked the Supreme Court and called Trump a "genuine danger to American security."
"Mark my words: If he wins this nomination, I mean, excuse me, this election, watch what happens,” Biden said. “It's a danger. He's a genuine danger to American security.”
"Look, we're at an inflection point in world history, we really are. The decisions we make in the last three, four years, and the next three or four years are going to determine what the next six decades look like. And democracy is the key,” said Biden. “And that's why I went down and made that speech in Johnson Center about the Supreme Court. Supreme Court is so out of whack, so out of whack. And so, I proposed that we limit terms to 18 years."
Biden also told Costa in the same stretch of the interview attacking the Supreme Court that, "There's little regard by the MAGA Republicans for the political institutions.”
Falsehoods repeated
The president also repeated the "very fine people on both sides" lie, which even Snopes has debunked. The Snopes debunk of this claim includes the transcript of the press conference where the "very fine people" remark was made, which makes clear he was not including neo-nazi's in that regard.
Another falsehood Biden repeated is that he created "16 million new jobs." He did not, there was a large job rebound due to pandemic closures which was already underway under Trump before Biden took office and continued after Biden took over in January 2021.
"The increase in jobs is explained by the reopening of businesses and government and schools following shutdowns in 2020 due to the pandemic," Sophia Koropeckyj of Moody’s said back in 2021 when Biden was making his job creation claims, adding "Favorable fiscal policies" like the Biden- Harris American Rescue Plan helped somewhat.”
As of the end of July 2024, 15.7M jobs had been added. Job numbers last month stalled out, coming in well short of the 175,000 estimate. While unemployment is down right now to about 4.1%; that's nothing to crow over as Americans' average weekly earnings when adjusting for inflation have dropped 2.3%.
Wages are not keeping pace with soaring inflation, which has hit a record 40-year high under Biden-Harris.
The rate of inflation has been 3% or higher for 39 months straight; that rate was 1.4% when Biden took office.
The Consumer Price Index shows prices increased more than 19% overall and basics like groceries have soared to a high not seen since the Carter administration.
Additionally, gas prices have remained over $3 nationwide and went over $5 a few years ago. Gas has seen a 46% overall increase since Trump left office when gas prices stood at an average of $2.39 a gallon.
What would Beau do?
Biden said a number of other interesting things in the interview, one of which was set up by Costa with a segue on Biden stepping aside that rolled into asking Beau Biden, the president’s deceased son.
“When I saw you with your family in the oval, I wondered, is he thinking of Beau, too?” Costa had asked.
Biden’s response included Beau making him promise not to quit and “stay engaged:
“We uh, we had a conversation um, toward the end when he was... we... everybody we knew he wasn't going to live and he said, "Dad I know...we know what going to happen." He said, "I'm going to be okay, Dad, I'm alright. I'm not afraid, but Dad you got to make me a promise." I said, "what's that Beau?" He said, "I know when it happens you're going to want to quit, you're not going to stay engaged. My dad.. look at me...look at me dad, give me your word as a Biden when I go you'll stay engaged, give me your word... give me your word," and I did and then that's why I had not planned on running after he died and then Charlottesville happened.”
That portion of the interview then gave CBS the opening to tie Biden’s decision to run to the Charlottesville protests with yet another inserted voice-over segment:
"In 2017, white supremacist demonstrations in Charlottesville, Virginia, turned deadly, when on August 12th Heather Heyer, a civil rights activist, was murdered in what the justice department called a hate inspired act of domestic terrorism. Biden has long traced his decision to run in 2020 to that moment."
A full transcript of the Biden CBS interview can be viewed here. Bear in mind, this transcript is not perfect grammatically, but it reflects what was said and the manner in which it was said.