Joe Biden regrets having pulled out of this year’s presidential race and believes he would have defeated Donald Trump in last month’s election – despite negative poll indications, White House sources have said.

The US president has reportedly also said he made a mistake in choosing Merrick Garland as attorney general – reflecting that Garland, a former US appeals court judge, was slow to prosecute Donald Trump for his role in the 6 January 2021 insurrection while presiding over a justice department that aggressively prosecuted Biden’s son Hunter.

With just more than three weeks of his single-term presidency remaining, Biden’s reported rueful reflections are revealed in a Washington Post profile that contains the clearest signs yet that he thinks he erred in withdrawing his candidacy in July after a woeful debate performance against his rival for the White House, Trump, the previous month.

  • mctoasterson@reddthat.com
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    2 hours ago

    For an ancient venal egotist like Joe, the fact that Kamala lost is close to a best case scenario. He would’ve gotten completely waxed if he had stayed in… but now he gets to say he was forced aside by the party leaders (Pelosi, the Obamas etc.) and that is completely verifiably true, but he also gets to claim he totally would’ve won, which is very likely not true, but now we will never know.

  • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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    8 hours ago

    I’m reading the WaPo article it’s based on and guys this is some pure grade bullshit. They start with 5d Chess; then they say people were unable to hear about his victories because of the media, they were unable to appreciate the best Covid recovery in the world; and yes, he claims he could have beaten Trump.

    It’s an incredibly flattering article for a man who was so far out of touch he called outrage over inflation the best recovery in the world. Yeah they managed a soft landing, but that shit didn’t trickle down. We’re on our second year of record breaking increases in homeless people. We don’t give a goddamn shit about the stock market when we’re shopping for used Recreational Vehicles to use as our primary housing. If families are choosing between utilities, rent, and food, then your Bidenomics message is going to do worse than fall flat, it’s going to blow up in your face.

    And the whole style over substance thing. Just holy shit batman, he broke the strike of workers who were (and are still) massively abused. He did that on prime time television. And then he negotiated for the office worker parts of the unions to get improvements and it’s a complete submarine. Not only did he do the bad, he did no PR damage control, not even to show what little he gave the workers after he shut down their strike. At one point in the WaPo article someone mentions that Biden tried to run the country like it was 1972, and I agree with that statement.

    Which brings us to the crux of his sins as a leader. He was unwilling to listen to the people he was supposed to be leading. At every turn he decided that he and his high paid advisors from the corporate world knew better then the people actually struggling. He might have thought he was playing 5d chess but he was losing at checkers… badly.

  • kreskin@lemmy.world
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    9 hours ago

    He could have defeated medicare too.

    Seems like this is his way of arrogantly throwing Harris under the bus for his own historically low ratings, starting back in 2022 after Roe was lost. Theres no way he could have done better than Harris. With him running it would have been an even bigger blowout. He seems to think he could run a genocide against his parties wishes and then go on to win an election. Its idiotic.

  • xenomor@lemmy.world
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    10 hours ago

    That’s okay Joe, there is a lot of regret about your entire administration, and career, on all sides.

  • FinishingDutch@lemmy.world
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    12 hours ago

    So… I take it he’s completely forgotten that disastrous debate by now huh? It was pretty clear to even the most fervent Biden supporters that he wasn’t going to win. When even those folks were telling him to resign, it as done by that point.

    If anything, staying in would’ve driven more people to Trump or caused them to stay home due to disillusionment.

    • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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      8 hours ago

      He certainly seemed like a patient who had escaped the memory care unit. I still remember my wife came in to see how it was going, she saw my face and turned right around. There just wasn’t any recovery to that. I would not have been surprised if Adult Protective Services had showed up on that stage.

    • xor@lemm.ee
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      9 hours ago

      of course he forgot… he forgets all sorts of things….

    • normalexit@lemmy.world
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      11 hours ago

      It was painful to watch. It’s even more painful that he put us in this position. Now he is rubbing salt in the wound.

  • finitebanjo@lemmy.world
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    9 hours ago

    The statistics and composite polls predicted the Trump victory, and they predicted it even before Biden dropped out by a larger margin, so he is incorrect.

    But, given how people chose Trump over Kamala, I can’t blame him for thinking that way. Clearly the USA does have reservations about electing a women and a minority.

    • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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      8 hours ago

      Oh no he doesn’t get to say anything about it. He shit the bed, and his team shit the bed. Then when they were staring at polls showing Trump would take 400 electoral college votes they doubled down. They didn’t start a hand off in the background like everyone assumed. No they wasted nearly a month and then called up Kamala Harris one day and told her she was the candidate now, with no warning.

      If anyone is responsible for Trump winning it is Biden and his team. They hid how bad Biden was aging instead of getting a ton of grown-up points by having him retire or get removed by the 25th amendment. That would have given Kamala Harris a year or two of time in office to get the incumbent advantage and set up a real campaign. No they played this like little boys who don’t want to come home because then the party ends.

  • hark@lemmy.world
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    14 hours ago

    This ghoul was propped up in 2020 with the full force of the party and then won thanks to covid, but he thinks he’s some hero. Democrats lost in 2024 in large part thanks to him. Fuck you biden, you racist, genocidal, and power-hungry piece of shit.

    • TonyOstrich@lemmy.world
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      9 hours ago

      Things would have likely gone a lot better if the Ds would have had an actual primary. It’s so frustrating.

  • Snapz@lemmy.world
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    15 hours ago

    “Benedict Arnold” developed a clear connotation over time. The same needs to become true for “Merrick Garland”. History will remember him as a coward beyond measure and a key to enabling trump’s final push to end American democracy.

    Fuck Merrick Garland, without exception.

      • Snapz@lemmy.world
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        10 hours ago

        Garland made a lot of sense in theory. Obama had picked him first and he had been denied his likely singular life’s goal by obstructionist gop with trump egging it on. He should have sought justice for this country, while feeling the cathartic release of righting his personal wrongs.

        But he didn’t, because he’s feckless and an absolute waste of that historical moment.

    • SulaymanF@lemmy.world
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      15 hours ago

      He spent so much time trying to make a good legacy that he forgot to actually do the right thing in the moment.

      Garland knew he’d be accused of bias and selective prosecution, so Garland took slow and deliberate steps to make an ironclad case… only to be accused of bias anyway, and doing it so slowly that the charges expired.

      • Snapz@lemmy.world
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        12 hours ago

        What would have made him a good Supreme Court Justice made him a HORRIBLE attorney general.

        His tenure was so horribly handled though, that I can’t help but suspect some actual intent… Otherwise, Im I’m left to conclude that he was just that impotent and cowardly. There’s no way he was that lost on what this moment was - He had an unquestionable historical mandate to act against an insurrection at the US Capitol, with police officers being beaten and stabbed with US flags on sharpened poles, all broadcast live across every channel, in full HD. He is a failure on an unimaginable scale that spans all recorded time and space. He’s a fucking dunce.

  • Steal Wool@lemm.ee
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    11 hours ago

    I guess when you’re president t of the US you get access to the really cood crack

    • pachrist@lemmy.world
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      17 hours ago

      Hey, hey. Rude of you to call the guy who was supposed to save us from another 4 years of Trump but then delivered it anyways a failure. All he did was tread water for 4 years and then hang on to power way too long, simultaneously tanking his own campaign, and making it much more difficult for someone to follow him.