President Joe Biden sat down for what could be his final interview while in office. During an interview with USA Today’s Susan Page, the president discussed his biggest regrets, potential final actions during his last two weeks, and even a compliment President-elect Donald Trump gave him.
Biden has already issued a slew of pardons during his final days in office, but he is considering more, according to USA Today. He is looking at potential preemptive pardons for former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY), a prominent Trump critic who played an integral role in the impeachment efforts against the president-elect and the House Select Jan. 6 committee.
Dr. Anthony Fauci could also be on the pardon list as Trump has intimated that he will order an investigation into his approach to the COVID-19 pandemic.
President Biden told Page he tried to talk Trump out of settling scores after taking office. He said Trump listened but did not necessarily agree.
Biden said his decision would be based "a little bit" on whom Trump names to top administration roles. The president-elect has chosen former Florida attorney general Pam Bondi as his nominee to head the Justice Department and firebrand loyalist Kash Patel to head the FBI.
The president also indicated that while he believes he could have defeated Trump if he had remained in the race, he had doubts as to whether he could have served out a whole second term.
Could he have won?
"It's presumptuous to say that, but I think yes," Biden said, adding he based that view on polling he had reviewed. He expressed no such confidence when asked whether he had the vigor to serve another four years in office, though. "I don't know," he replied.
To be sure, many analysts doubt Biden could have won another term from voters who were gloomy about inflation and eager for change. What's more, his shuffling gait and verbal miscues had raised questions about his fitness for office.
The president also discussed his biggest regrets about his time in the White House. One was his failure to address supposed misinformation from the president-elect and others. He expressed frustration with how digital media has allowed for the spread of false information and deceptive narratives.
As an example, he referenced Trump’s suggestion that the terrorist attack in New Orleans and the detonation of a Cybertruck at the Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas were caused by illegal immigration.
"Because of the way, nature, the nature of the way information is shared now, there are no editors out there to say 'That's simply not true,'" Biden said. He mentioned Trump's rhetoric about the threat from migrants, though in doing so he apparently conflated two recent attacks by Army veterans involving trucks, one in New Orleans and the other in Las Vegas.
"The guy in Las Vegas is a guy, is a veteran, born and raised in America," Biden said. "And yet the president comes along, soon to be president again, come along and says: 'It's clear. It's an invasion from the south. All these immigrants are causing all this problem.' ... And I'll bet you there's 70% of people out there that read that and believe it. How do you deal with that?"
The president also regrets delays in implementing infrastructure projects, noting that “Historians will talk about (how) great the impact was, but it didn’t (have) any immediate impact on people’s lives.”
Biden suggested it would have been better “had we been able to go much harder at getting some of these projects in the ground quicker.”