President Joe Biden revealed his biggest regret, what he fears most and boasted about his most accurate prediction in what is expected to be his final Oval Office interview.
Biden spoke with MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell for an interview airing Thursday night.
The 82-year-old will leave office on Monday with low approval numbers and after abandoning his reelection bid – only for his successor, Vice President Kamala Harris, to lose to his former political rival, President-elect Donald Trump.
‘Ironically, I almost spent too much time on the policy and not enough time on the politics,’ the Democrat admitted during the sit-down.
He rehashed his regret about putting his name on the stimulus checks that were sent out to Americans during the early months of his tenure as the country still suffered economically from the COVID-19 pandemic.
Trump had put his name on the checks – but Biden didn’t.
‘It did cross my mind,’ he said.
‘I’m not a very good huckster,’ he continued. ‘I mean, and that – it wasn’t a stupid thing for him to do. It helped him a lot.’
President Joe Biden revealed his biggest regret, what he fears most and boasted about his most accurate prediction in what is expected to be his final Oval Office interview
‘And it undermined our ability to convince people that we were the ones that were getting this to them,’ Biden added.
During the course of the interview, Biden also talked about how he expected things to ‘change drastically,’ adding that it wasn’t tied to a particular leader. ‘And it occurs every five or six generations. And it usually is generated by technology.’
On Wednesday night during his address to the nation, the president sounded the alarm about the ‘tech-industrial complex’ and warned that America was getting its own set of oligarchs.
He repeated that point saying that he was concerned about ‘this concentration of enormous wealth and power in a circumstance where everything’s changing.’
On Thursday he said that he was worried that the ‘guardrails’ that prevented that concentration of power were coming off.
‘The reason for all the safeguards out there is, in a very trite way to say it, is to keep the bullies from taking advantage of everybody else, the basic guardrails,’ he explained.
‘So I guess what I’m worried about is that the thing that keeps it on track are the guardrails, that there’s a Supreme Court that’s independent, but not – but accountable,’ he said. ‘There is a Congress that you speak your mind, but you’re held accountable to basic standards.’
‘There’s a presidency that says you have really limited powers. I mean, you’re the top dog, but you’re not – you can’t dictate everything,’ he continued.
‘And I don’t know. They seem to just be – just seem to be chipping away at all those elements,’ Biden added.
He also told O’Donnell he was worried about the freedom of the press, revealing that four other MSNBC hosts had told him that they were ‘worried about whether or not they’re going to be held accountable for telling the truth.’
‘When has that ever happened in America, I mean, in a long time?’ the president mused.
He also boasted that he had been right all along about Russian President Vladimir Putin’s intentions to invade Ukraine.
‘I knew he was going to go in about three weeks before he amassed those extra troops along the border,’ Biden said.
