President Joe Biden said he was “not confident at all” that there would be a peaceful transition of power if former President Donald Trump were to lose the presidential election in November.
Biden gave the startling warning during a promotional clip following his first sit-down interview since suspending his reelection campaign on July 21. The full interview with veteran political correspondent Robert Costa will air on CBS News Sunday Morning on August 11.
“If Trump wins, no I’m not confident at all,” Biden told Costa, before quickly correcting himself. “I mean, if Trump loses I’m not confident at all. He means what he says, we don’t take him seriously. He means it—all that stuff about ‘if we lose, it will be a bloodbath.’”
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Biden was referring to comments Trump first made while talking about trade policy at a campaign rally in Ohio in March. “Now, if I don’t get elected, it’s going to be a bloodbath for the whole—that’s going to be the least of it. It’s gonna be a bloodbath for the country,” he said while discussing the domestic auto industry competing with China.
Although Democrats were incensed by the comments, Trump doubled down—insisting he was only talking about the economy.
“The Fake News Media, and their Democrat Partners in the destruction of our Nation, pretended to be shocked at my use of the word BLOODBATH, even though they fully understood that I was simply referring to imports allowed by Crooked Joe Biden, which are killing the automobile industry,” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social.
Biden has not sat down for an in-depth interview since he suspended his campaign. In the past, his administration has faced criticism for failing to make him available for television spots, including at major events like the Super Bowl.
In his four years in office, Biden only appeared for 164 press conferences or interviews with journalists—the lowest number of media appearances of any president’s first four years in recent history, according to data compiled by Axios.
