Former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. defended his mental acuity during an interview on Thursday and blamed sexism, the coronavirus pandemic and his struggle to provide Americans with short-term results for President Trump’s return to power.
Mr. Biden’s interview on ABC’s “The View” was his first on American television since his presidential term ended in January. His public re-emergence — he also sat for a BBC interview that aired Wednesday — comes before the imminent release of books expected to be critical of his sharpness and his ability to have sought re-election last year.
“They are wrong,” Mr. Biden said of reports that he had declined in his final year in office. “There’s nothing to sustain that.” He later added: “The only reason I got out of the race is because I didn’t want to have a divided Democratic Party.”
Mr. Biden said that while Democratic leaders and donors wanted him to drop out after his poor debate performance in June, the party’s rank and file did not — an assertion that runs counter to polling both before and after the debate.
“The Democratic Party at large didn’t buy into it,” he said of the push for him to quit the race. “But the Democratic leadership and some of the very significant contributors did.”
As Mr. Biden sits for interviews, his party is not exactly longing for his presence as it tries to fight Mr. Trump’s attempts to dismantle large parts of the federal government and the international alliances of which Mr. Biden remains proud. A host of ambitious Democrats vying for influence ahead of the 2028 presidential primary race have been discussing ways to cast the party in a new light.
None of them have been particularly eager to revisit Mr. Biden’s decision to seek re-election or to explore why former Vice President Kamala Harris was unable to defeat Mr. Trump. Mr. Biden, however, offered thoughts on both subjects.
He said that he “wasn’t surprised” that Ms. Harris had lost and that she had fallen victim to sexist attacks.
“They went the route of the sexist route,” Mr. Biden said of the Trump campaign and other Republicans. “I’ve never seen quite as successful and a consistent campaign undercutting the notion that a woman couldn’t lead the country, and a woman of mixed race.”
Mr. Biden also said a pandemic hangover had altered Americans’ relationship with their government in a way that was not fully appreciated during the presidential campaign.
“I think we underestimate the phenomenal negative impact that Covid had and the pandemic had on people, on attitudes, on optimism, on a whole range of things,” he said.
He acknowledged that his White House had not done an adequate job of delivering immediate results and had instead focused on longer-term projects like his infrastructure and computer chip legislation.
“Well, we made a lot of commitments and we — you know, billion-dollar tunnels going through for Amtrak, bridges, so on, but we weren’t quite as good as he was about advertising it,” Mr. Biden said, referring to Mr. Trump’s constant sales pitch. “It doesn’t say, ‘Biden brought you this.’ There’s nothing saying, ‘The Democrats brought you this.’ And we knew none of this would occur for another six months to two years. It takes time to do all that.”
Mr. Biden dodged a question about whether he would have defeated Mr. Trump had the former president not abandoned his campaign last July. But he did accept some responsibility for Ms. Harris’s loss.
“Yes. I do, because, look, I was in charge and he won,” Mr. Biden said. “So, you know, I take responsibility.”
While Mr. Biden offered a somewhat familiar defense of his legacy and his ability to serve as president, his wife, Dr. Jill Biden, offered more aggressive pushback. Joining him in the interview, she attacked journalists who have written books about Mr. Biden and others who have said he was a diminished figure as his White House term concluded. She also denied reporting suggesting that she had been overprotective of him.
“The people who wrote those books were not in the White House with us,” she said. “I was with Joe day and night. I saw him more than any other person. I went — 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.”
Reid J. Epstein covers campaigns and elections from Washington. Before joining The Times in 2019, he worked at The Wall Street Journal, Politico, Newsday and The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
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