WASHINGTON – President Biden told a black radio station in an interview released Thursday that he understood their struggle for representation — because he didn’t think Catholics could be president before John F. Kennedy was elected more than six decades ago.
Biden, 81, told Pennsylvania radio host Andrea Lawful-Sanders that he knew what his nomination of Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court meant to “a young girl who is in school and having trouble.”
“I looked at John Kennedy and said, ‘Well, he — John — he got elected. Why can’t I get elected?’” the president said. “People need things to look up to.”
Seconds earlier, Biden made the bizarre and nonsensical claim that “I’m the first president that got elected statewide in the state of Delaware, when I was a kid,” a lapse that will do nothing to quell concerns over his advanced age, which have only grown since his embarrassing performance at his debate last week with former President Donald Trump.
“A lot of people are talking about the debate and your performance – do the American people need to be concerned?” Lawful-Sanders asked, to Biden’s apparent chagrin.
“No, I had a bad debate – I had a bad debate” he said with a nervous laugh. “But 90 minutes on stage does not erase what I’ve done for three and a half years.”
The appearance was one of two pre-recorded interviews with black radio stations in swing states that aired Thursday.
In the second interview, with The Earl Ingram Show out Wisconsin, Biden bluntly admitted he “screwed up” the face-off with Trump, during which he regularly lost his train of thought and stumbled over his words.
“I had a bad night, I had a bad night,” he said with a chuckle. “The fact of the matter is that, you know, it was – I screwed up, I made a mistake and, but I learned from my father, when you get knocked down, just get back up. Get back up.”
“And, you know, we’re going to do, we’re going to win this election. We’re going to just beat Donald Trump as, like we did in 2020, we’re going to beat him again,” he added.
Biden also denied any intention of dropping out of the presidential race following his meltdown.
Since the debacle, Democrats have quietly huddled across Washington as rumors swirl of a potential change to the party’s presidential ticket ahead of the Democratic National Convention next month in Chicago.
Throughout both interviews, Biden made long-winded statements jabbing at former President Trump’s recent criminal conviction in New York over falsified documents to cover up evidence of hush money payments to two women in 2016.
“First of all, the guy I’m running against is a convicted felon who has said he wants to be a dictator on day one – not a joke, he means it,” he told Lawful-Sanders. “And he’s appointed the Supreme Court that has had outrageous decisions made, not just on choice but on freedom across the board.”
“They just said that he has immunity, and I have immunity – which I reject – immunity to do things if I, even if I did things that wouldn’t ordinarily be allowed, if I did it in the name of my job I could avoid prosecution,” Biden continued, calling the ruling “outrageous.”
“Anyway, [I went into] too much detail,” the president added, catching himself in his rambling monologue.
He also had trouble comparing himself with Trump, repeatedly stumbling over his words in describing the differences between he and his predecessor.
“He’s going to make the wealthy, large corporations pay their – I’m going to make sure they pay their fair share – he’s going to double down on tax rates for them,” he told Ingram. “And he wants to strengthen, he – I want to strengthen Medicare and Social Security, he wants to cut Social Security and Medicare.”
“Look, I’m sorry to get so worked up, but he is just — he’s done terrible things in the community, and he has about as much interest and concern for black and minority communities as the man in the morning does,” he added.
Biden went on to claim he “led our economy back from the brink – it’s still improving – lowered prescription drug costs. You know, working with Republicans to expand veterans health care, rallied 50 nations to stand against Putin.”
“I’m proud of the record,” he said. “And we just gotta keep moving.”
