US President Joe Biden conceded he performed poorly at last week’s debate against former President Donald Trump in a radio interview that aired Thursday, amid mounting speculation about his future at the top of the Democratic ticket.
In an appearance on The Earl Ingram Show, Biden was determined to stay in the race, arguing that his disastrous 90-minute debate showing was not representative of his nearly four years in office.
“I had a bad night,” Biden said. “I screwed up. I made a mistake but I learned from my father when you get knocked down you just get back up, get back up. We’re going to win this election. We’re going to just beat Donald Trump just like we did in 2020. We’re going to beat him again.”
Voter surveys suggest that’s far from certain. The first post-debate New York Times/Siena College poll showed Trump beating Biden by six percentage points among likely voters nationally.
Biden’s weak showing at the debate, during which he fumbled answers and often looked confused, reignited long-standing concerns about Biden’s age and fitness to serve another four years. Biden would be 86 at the end of a potential second term.
While Biden has blamed his performance on a cold and intense travel schedule, pressure is growing on him to reconsider his candidacy; two House Democrats have so far called for him to drop out.
At least as of now, though, Biden appears to determined to fight this election.
During the interview, the president pointed to the legislative efforts his administration has pushed to improve veterans’ health care, before blasting Trump for calling Americans who died in war “suckers” and “losers.”
“My son died, because of a year in Iraq,” the president told host Earl Ingram, in reference to his late son, Beau Biden, an Iraq War veteran who died of brain cancer in 2015.
Trump cancelled a visit to a cemetery in France in 2018, telling his senior staff members: “Why should I go to that cemetery? It’s filled with losers.”
Biden cited the episode as evidence that the former president “has no respect for anybody.”
During the debate, Trump also attacked Biden’s immigration policies, noting that Biden’s “big kill on the Black people” was allowing “millions” to cross into the country through the US Southern border.
“They’re taking Black jobs now and it could be 18, it could be 19 and even 20 million people,” he added.
Biden said Trump was essentially suggesting that “the only things that Blacks can do are manual labor, being menial labor,” calling his remarks “shameful.”
“This is the guy who questioned George Floyd’s humanity, led to the ‘birther’ movement against Barack Obama,” he added.
Trump for years questioned whether Obama was born in the US, suggesting he was illegitimately elected president.
Biden took credit for building a diverse administration that reflects the country, adding that he is “proud” to serve alongside Kamala Harris, the first Black woman, Asian American, HBCU graduate, daughter of Jamaican and Indian immigrants to be elected vice president in the US.
Harris remains the most likely Democrat to replace Biden in the event that he withdraws his candidacy.
In the meantime, Biden is due to sit for another widely anticipated interview with ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos, which will air in its entirety Friday evening.