Former Vice President Joe Biden believes the current rhetoric ushered in with Donald Trump’s presidency is “eating at the fabric of this country,”and he’s remorseful that he’s not in the OvalOffice.
Biden, Delaware’s longest-serving senator, sat down with Oprah Winfrey for an interview scheduled to air Sunday on the Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN). “Good Morning America” aired a clip onThursday.
“I have a regret that I am not president because I think there is so much opportunity,” he said. “I think America is so incredibly well-positioned.”
He explained why he didn’t run for president in 2016.
“Oprah, no woman or man should announce they are running for president unless they can answer two questions. One, do they truly believe they are the most qualified person for that moment I believed I was. But, was I prepared to be able to give my whole heart, my whole soul and all my intention to the endeavor And, I know I wasn’t.”
On Oct. 21, 2015, Biden ended months of speculation by announcing in the White House Rose Garden with then President Barack Obama and his wife, Jill, at his side, he would not run for president. There was no time left to run a successful campaign, he said, noting his family’s grief over the death of his son 46-year-old son Beau in May.
Days following his announcement,in an interviewthat aired on “60 Minutes,” Biden described the moment he decided he wouldn’t run.
“I came home and Hunter, our son, was upstairs with mom, with Jill,” he said. “And I walked in and I said, ‘You know, I just don’t think there’s time. I’ve just decided, I don’t think we can run the kind of campaign we have to run to be able to win.’ And I remember Jill just got up off the couch, gave me a big hug and said,’I think you’re right.'”
According to the Daily Mail, in another clip of Winfrey’s interview with Biden, he said that he knew a month out that Hillary Clinton’s candidacy would not be successful.
“A month out, I came back and said, ‘We’re going to lose this election,'” he said.
In Biden’s new memoir, “In Promise Me Dad: A Year of Hope, Hardship and Purpose,” to be released next week, he discusses Clinton’s campaign. The Daily Mail obtained an excerpt.
“My numbers on trustworthiness, honesty, and empathy were as high as they had ever been. And I was strongest where the most formidable candidate, Hillary Clinton, was weakest: the key swing states like Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Florida,” he writes.
But after the death of his son, he feared that if he were to run against Clinton in the primary, “opposition research” would “stop at nothing.”
Speculation is now being made as to whether or not Biden will make a 2020 presidential run against Trump. At an Axios event in Philadelphia on Wednesday, Biden slammed Trump’s response to thedeadly white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Va., in August, refuted “phony nationalism” and saidpolitical discussion has “gotten so coarse, so vile, so, so demeaning, and our children are listening.”
“Did any one of you ever think that you would see, in one of the historic cities in America, folks coming out from under rocks and out of fields with torches carrying swastikas literally reciting the same, the same exact anti-Semitic bile that you heard and we heard in the ’30s”Biden said.
“And then have those who were protesting compared as a more equivalent to those people. Folks, this is eating at the fabric of this country. It is wrong.”
Biden then referred to the elections that took place across the country Tuesday.
“I think what happened last night, all across the country, including with Republicans, is ‘I’m tired of this.’ It’s undermining the fabric of our nation.”
