Biden says he would've beat Trump in 2024 — but doesn't know if he could've finished another term
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- Biden says he thinks he would've defeated Trump in 2024, "based on the polling."
- Polling consistently showed Biden losing handily to Trump before he dropped out in July.
- The president also says he's unsure if he would've been able to complete a second term.
President Joe Biden said in an interview this week that he believes he could have defeated President-elect Donald Trump if he had remained the Democratic nominee, rather than stepping aside for Vice President Kamala Harris.
"It's presumptuous to say that, but I think yes," Biden told USA Today.
The president was less sure, however, that he would've been able to serve out the entirety of a second term, noting that he would have been 86 years old at the end of it.
"When Trump was running again for reelection, I really thought I had the best chance of beating him. But I also wasn't looking to be president when I was 85 years old, 86 years old," Biden said. "Who the hell knows? So far, so good. But who knows what I'm going to be when I'm 86 years old?"
Though Harris came up short in the 2024 election, many prominent Democratic lawmakers have argued that she helped the party stave off an electoral disaster by replacing Biden, who lost the confidence of Democrats after a disastrous debate performance against Trump in June.
"President Trump beat Joe Biden after delivering the greatest debate performance in history, and he beat Kamala Harris in a landslide on Election Day," Trump-Vance Transition Spokesperson Anna Kelly told BI in a statement.
Rep. Angie Craig, a Democratic who represents a swing district in Minnesota, recently told NBC that Trump "would have taken, I believe, if Biden had stayed on the top of the ticket, 30 to 40 House seats with him."
Instead, Democrats actually gained one seat in the House.
Biden said that his belief that he could've done what Harris couldn't is "based on the polling." Polling at the time showed the president losing handily to Trump.