Responding almost point by point to his many critics over the last two-and-a-half years, Joe Biden devotes a full chapter of his new memoir to rebutting questions about his mental acuity, his decision to seek reelection, and how he thinks he was treated unfairly in the response to his infamous tanking of his debate with Donald Trump.
“The difference in 2024 was not that I had a bad debate. Lots of presidents had bad debates. The difference was that every other president was given the chance to redeem themselves in a second debate. As it turned out, that chance would not be available to me,” the former president writes in “Promise Me, America,” according to the text of a chapter obtained by CNN.
A few pages later, Biden adds that he was aware of the political trouble he was in during that three-week period when the calls for him to drop out mounted and he remained largely out of sight.
“The widely held assumption that I wasn’t following what was happening could not have been more at odds with reality. I followed it. Hell, I was living it. I knew exactly how many Democratic members of Congress and governors had pulled their support of me. I did phone calls with sitting members of Congress where no one held back,” Biden writes. “I wasn’t living in a dream world. Here’s where I was living: I had won the Democratic nomination for president. And I had won it decisively. I had a real record of achievement as president. I had a vision for the future that I thought was right for the nation.
“I believed I was the best person to lead the world. Was I old? Yes. Was I able to do the job? Yes. Were voters angry about inflation? Yes. Were they angry about immigration? Yes. All tough problems. But not insurmountable ones.”
“I knew better than anyone how old I was,” he added. “I knew what I was — and wasn’t — capable of doing. I carefully monitored how I was meeting the demands of the job. And there is not a single example of me failing to handle my responsibilities.”
The former president, deep in treatment for stage IV prostate cancer that has spread to his bones, has not spoken much publicly since leaving office, and announced on Sunday that he was curtailing in-person promotion for “Promise Me, America.”
But he uses the book to mount a lengthy, personal defense of himself, pointing to statistics from his record in office and details from his meetings with Democratic leaders – including former Vice President Kamala Harris and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi – in his deliberations throughout the chapter obtained by CNN.
Biden starts by detailing the conversations with his top advisers who he says all supported his decision, made in April 2023, to launch his reelection campaign — including at a final meeting in the White House which included Harris: “We went around the room. Everyone offered their thoughts on the race. Everyone was in. There was no demurral or dissent. I was in.”
If you got something out of this, please chip in to keep this site running, or subscribe to go ad-free.
1 view