"You know, Joe, if it weren't for politics, I believe we'd be good friends," former US President Joe Biden quoted his successor Donald Trump as saying as he recalled a message from him following the 2024 presidential elections. Biden detailed his interaction with Trump in ‘Promise Me, America’, his forthcoming memoir.
While he launched a sharp attack on Trump for denying the results of the 2020 presidential election and his role in the US Capitol riots in 2021, he also mentioned another side of Trump, where the latter stunned Biden with rare warm words.
Biden defended his time in the White House in his 480-page memoir, while describing his decision to run for re-election in 2024, his ultimate decision to drop out of the race to allow Kamala Harris to run for president, and his frustration with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during the Israel-Hamas war that began on October 7, 2023.
The former president, battling stage 4 prostate cancer, also stood by his administration's efforts to battle the Covid-19 pandemic and the controversial military withdrawal from Afghanistan.
'Two Donald Trumps'
{{/usCountry}}'Two Donald Trumps'
{{/usCountry}}Biden, who had long been Trump's bitter political rival, opened the book by launching a scathing attack on the current president's role in the US Capitol riots on January 6, 2021. Biden accused Trump of leading an insurrection, describing it as among the "worst derelictions of duty by any president in our history", according to excerpts of the book seen by the Wall Street Journal.
However, Biden noted that after arriving in the White House, he found a "magnanimous" letter from Trump containing some rare words of appreciation months after fierce attacks during the presidential campaign. "It was almost as if there were two Donald Trumps," Biden wrote in his book.
The letter was written on January 20, 2021, the day Biden took office as the 46th president. Trump departed Washington that morning and became the first outgoing president in more than 150 years to skip his successor’s inauguration.
He also described Trump's "fawning" meeting with him in the Oval Office after the 2024 election. "You know, Joe, if it weren't for politics, I believe we'd be good friends," Biden described Trump as saying, which left him stunned.
"If it weren't for politics, we'd spend all our time golfing together," Biden said Trump told him at the meeting, adding that the private note “sounded like it was coming from an old friend.”
Biden on running for re-election
The former president also stood by his decision to run for a second term, saying no one had objected. "People say I was deluding myself that I could do the job at my age. My answer to that is: I was doing my job," he wrote.
Biden said he did not believe the Democrats had a better candidate than him. Just before the disastrous presidential debate with Trump in June, the 83-year-old Biden said he was not concerned about his ability to debate Trump, but questioned the need to do so due to his pattern of violating the rules.
However, Biden admitted that he "screwed up" during the debate, adding that he had lost his train of thought and blurted out, "We finally beat Medicare" instead of saying, "We finally beat Big Pharma", according to The New York Times. His performance led to a frenzy among Democrats, eventually leading Biden to drop out of the race.
Biden said he held private meetings with House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi and Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer, who urged him to withdraw his campaign, which weighed heavily on him. Biden said Pelosi was “working furiously behind the scenes to get elected officials and Biden delegates to defect” after warning him that all polls pointed to his defeat.
The ex-president said he later repaired his relations with Pelosi over lunch at an Italian restaurant.