President Joe Biden said Thursday in his second TV interview since leaving office that he wasn’t surprised Vice President Kamala Harris lost to President Donald Trump in November.
“I wasn’t surprised, not because I didn’t think the vice president wasn’t the most qualified person to be president. She is,” Biden said during his appearance on ABC’s “The View.”
Biden, who was ousted as the Democratic Party’s nominee following his disastrous debate performance against Trump in June 2024, maintained he did bow out of the race and that he could have won, given that Trump got “7 million fewer votes” than him nationwide in their 2020 matchup.
“A lot of people didn’t show up,” Biden said of the 2024 election.
Trump did gain more than 3 million votes than in 2020, when Biden finished with more than 81 million, a record for a presidential election that Trump claims was rife with voter fraud that favored the Democrat nominee.
Biden didn’t acknowledge any of the negative public polling when answering questions about his former running mate, instead claiming the Trump campaign made “sexist” attacks on Harris.
“I wasn’t surprised because they went the route of a, the sexist route, whole route, this is a woman, she’s this, she’s that,” he said. “I’ve never seen quite, uh, as successful and consistent campaign undercutting the notion that a woman couldn’t lead the country — and a woman of mixed race.
“They played that … fairly well,” Biden said, his speech trailing off before joking that one of the hosts begged him not to talk at length as he’s been prone to do.