President Joe Biden survived his interview with Lester Holt of NBC News on Monday. That might be the best thing that can be said about the 20-minute back-and-forth, which saw Biden forcefully push back on the idea that he is too old to see a second term.
There were no ready-made-memes, of which there had been plenty during Biden’s performance at the June 27 debate against Donald Trump.
Instead, there was only a feisty Biden who refused to back away from harsh attacks on Donald Trump, insisting it was the GOP nominee who was stoking political divisiveness.
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“I am not the guy that said I want to be a dictator on day one, I am not the guy that refused to accept the outcome of the election,” Biden told Holt in the interview, which was taped earlier on Monday and broadcast at 9 p.m. ET.
Though he was clearly not the same guy he was just two or three years ago, Biden flashed his old pugnacity—and his longstanding antipathy for a press that he believes has never given him sufficient respect.
“My mental acuity is pretty damn good,” Biden said as Holt pressed him on the June debate. Later, asked by Holt to comment on the selection of hardline Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance as Trump’s vice-presidential pick, Biden complained that the media were not doing enough to scrutinize Vance’s record, which contains a litany of anti-Trump comments.
“What’s with you guys? Come on, man,” Biden said. Since the weekend’s assassination attempt, the push to force Biden from the presidential ticket has all but evaporated. Biden has been resistant to leaving in the first place. Now, he seems to be putting the internecine Democratic fight behind him, for better or worse.
“Is there a sense,” Holt wondered, “of wanting to get back on the horse?”
Biden laughed in response.
“I’m on the horse. Where have you been?
He also apologized for a recent phone conversation during which he said it was time to “put Trump in a bullseye.”
“It was a mistake to use the word,” Biden said.
On the whole, the interview was smoother than the halting damage-control conversation Biden held with George Stephanopoulos of ABC News in Wisconsin shortly after the debate. Some sentences broke apart. Others went nowhere.
But in a sense, his debate debacle so dramatically lowered the bar for the president that he may not need to do all that much to meet it.
“I don’t know that it changes,” former White House press secretary Jen Psaki said on NBC News of the dynamics of the race, which was jolted by the June debate—and then again by last weekend’s attempt on Trump’s life at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.
