Former President Joe Biden claimed in an interview broadcast Wednesday that it was difficult for him to drop out of the 2024 presidential election because his single term in office was a great success.
Biden told BBC in his first broadcast interview since exiting the White House that his administration was “so successful on our agenda,” adding that it was a “hard decision” for him to step down from the presidential race. He added that he does not think “it would have mattered” if he had abandoned his reelection bid at an earlier time.
“Things moved so quickly that it made it difficult to walk away,” Biden said. “And it was a hard decision. I think it was the right decision. I think that… it was just a difficult decision.”
Biden claimed that the Democrats had a “good candidate” in the 2024 presidential election, in reference to his Vice President Kamala Harris, who replaced him on the Democratic ticket after he dropped out of the race in July 2024 following a disastrous presidential debate performance.
President Donald Trump soundly defeated Harris in the general election, winning the popular vote and sweeping all seven battleground states.
“She [Harris] was fully funded,” Biden told the outlet. “Um, and what happened was, I had become what we set out to do, no one thought we could do and become so successful. Our agenda was hard to say, now I’m going to stop now. I meant what I said when I started, that I think it’s, I’m prepared to hand this to the next generation, the transition government.”
In reference to Trump’s time in the White House, Biden told BBC, “I’ll let history judge that… I don’t see anything that was triumphant.”
The former president also defended his economy during the interview, saying it was “growing … the stock market was way up … we were expanding our influence around the world.”
Biden notably oversaw a spate of economic hurdles during his sole term, including skyrocketing inflation, which peakedat 9.1% in June 2022 and left Americans grappling with high prices. Relatedly, energy prices rose significantly during Biden’s term as the administration prioritized reducing domestic oil and gas extraction while leading a massive push to subsidize a variety of green energy projects.
The economy was viewed as one of the most important issues for voters ahead of the 2024 presidential election.
The Biden administration withdrew U.S. military forces from Afghanistan in August 2021, in what was broadly viewed as a disastrous operation. On Aug. 26, 2021, days after the U.S. military began to withdraw from the country, an ISIS-K member detonated a suicide bomb at the Kabul International Airport in Afghanistan, killing 13 U.S. military service members and 160 civilians.
Biden also led a massive push to embed diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs in the federal government during his sole term, despite many of these efforts being viewed as unpopular. A The Economist/YouGov poll published in January found that 45% of voters approved of ending DEI programs in schools and the government, while just 40% disapproved.
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