President Joe Biden has conceded that he may not have had the stamina to last through a second term in office.
“So far, so good, but who knows what I’m going to be when I’m 86 years old?” he told USA Today in an interview published Wednesday.
Biden’s age took center stage last June after he turned in a halting debate performance against President-elect Donald Trump.
Pressure from Democratic insiders for him to drop out of the election campaign followed, and he acquiesced a month later.
Biden, 82, was replaced on the Democratic ticket by Vice President Kamala Harris, who lost to Trump. He told USA Today he believes he would have won his reelection bid.
“It’s presumptuous to say that, but I think yes,” Biden told the paper, citing polling he had seen.
However, when asked if, at his advanced age, he would have the stamina to last another four-year term in office, Biden demurred. He replied “I don’t know,” and “Who the hell knows?”
Biden, who was 78 on his Inauguration Day in 2021, and Trump, who was 70 when he first took office in 2017, are the two oldest presidents to be sworn in.
When Trump reenters the Oval Office on January 20, he will be 78 and will leapfrog Biden as the oldest person ever inaugurated.
Trump’s mental acuity was also called into question during the campaign, as he frequently cursed and blathered on incoherently during marathon campaign rallies.
Democrats have been accused of running cover for Biden, who multiple reports allege showed signs of declining sharpness well in advance of his disastrous debate performance.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) denied those claims in an interview with NBC News Monday—Van Jones, a onetime adviser to former President Barack Obama, called Schumer’s claim “foolish.”
Biden also told USA Today that he’s considering preemptive pardons for Former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) and Anthony Fauci, the former head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
Cheney, who broke ranks with Republicans and campaigned for the Democratic ticket after leading a House investigation into the January 6 insurrection, and Fauci, who served as an adviser to Biden on medical policy, have both earned the ire of Trump and his MAGA fanbase.
That has led to concerns that the two could be subject to reprisals from the president-elect, who pledged “revenge” against his enemies during the campaign and last month said he wouldn’t rule out prosecutions of those who he believed had wronged him.
Biden, however, hinted that Trump’s public bluster may be something of a political act. He told USA Today that, while the president-elect has assailed him in public, Trump has actually been complimentary in the private meetings they have held during the transition period.
“He was very complimentary about some of the economic things I had done,” Biden said. “And he talked about—he thought I was leaving with a good record.”
