Biden Reveals His Thoughts on the 2024 Election
The Political Scene | The New Yorker
The New Yorker
4.3 • 3.9K Ratings
🗓️ 4 March 2024
⏱️ 24 minutes
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Summary
Despite hand-wringing among Democrats about Joe Biden’s age and his discouraging poll numbers, the President’s campaign for reëlection displays an “ostentatious level of serenity,” Evan Osnos says about the election. “This is a matter of great personal importance to Joe Biden. He feels almost, viscerally, this contempt for Trump and for what Trump did to the country,” Osnos tells David Remnick, after a rare private interview at the White House. “And let’s remember, he didn’t just try to steal this election—from Biden’s perspective—he tried to steal it from him.” Although Biden once referred to himself as a “bridge” President, he told Osnos that he had never considered stepping aside after one term. His gait has slowed, but Osnos found the President quick to jab at his questions and at “you guys” in the media, whom he blames for naysaying his campaign. But alongside complacent media coverage, threats to the President’s reëlection are many. The war in Gaza has alienated many voters from Biden, especially in Arab American communities, and it resonates even more widely. “When Houthi rebels started firing rockets at ships in the Red Sea,” Osnos points out, “it had an immediate effect on global shipping, to the point that it could have, and could yet still, push inflation back up. . . . I know this is the worst cliché in journalism, but this election has an element that is beyond anything we’ve ever really dealt with before.”
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| 0:49.4 | This is the political scene, and I'm David Remnick. |
| 0:54.8 | And I'm here with my colleague, staff writer Evan Osnios, who's been reporting for many years on Joe Biden. |
| 1:01.9 | We've got a big piece coming out in the New Yorker this week, a profile of Biden. |
| 1:06.1 | How are you doing, Evan? |
| 1:07.3 | I'm doing okay. Thanks, David. |
| 1:09.1 | Now, Evan, I've got a little trip down memory lane for you here from |
| 1:11.5 | almost four years ago. You went to see Biden during the 2020 campaign. It was the height of the |
| 1:17.4 | pandemic and you were at his home in Delaware, masked and socially distant. And he spoke about |
| 1:23.3 | his motivation to run against Donald Trump. Here's a bit from that interview. |
| 1:27.5 | Where Trump not running, I probably wouldn't be running. But he's so contrary to everything |
| 1:36.8 | that I believe about government and that's sort of the antithesis of what I think we should be |
| 1:42.7 | doing. |
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