Biden reportedly regrets ending re-election campaign, says he would have defeated Trump | Joe Biden

Joe Biden regrets dropping out of this year’s presidential race and believes he would have defeated Donald Trump in last month’s election – despite negative poll results, White House sources said.

The US president has also reportedly said he made a mistake in choosing Merrick Garland as attorney general – suggesting that Garland, a former US appeals court judge, is suing Donald Trump for his role in the January 6, 2021 insurrection was slow to prosecute while also presiding over a justice department that aggressively prosecuted Biden’s son, Hunter.

With just more than three weeks left in his presidential term, Biden’s alleged remorseful thoughts are revealed in a Washington Post profile that contains the clearest signs yet that he believes it was a mistake to announce his candidacy in July after a miserable debate against his rival for the White House, Trump, the previous month.

The president resigned – and was replaced by US Vice President Kamala Harris as his party’s nominee – after increasing pressure from fellow Democrats, citing poll results that suggested he was almost certainly headed for a narrow defeat by Trump Republican candidate announces a historic return to the White House.

Harris’ rise to the top of the list led to a surge in enthusiasm and improved poll numbers, but ultimately resulted in decisive defeat at the Electoral College and the popular vote.

While Biden and his aides were careful not to blame Harris, they apparently believe the outcome would have been different if he had stood his ground, according to Washington Post reporting.

That view is disputed by many Harris supporters, who accuse the president of waiting too long to withdraw, leaving the vice president little time to mount an effective campaign.

They also point out that Biden’s determination to seek a second term violated his 2020 campaign promise of being a “transitional figure” who would pass the torch after one term after steering the country away from Trump’s presidency.

“Biden has promised to be an interim president and actually serve one term before passing it on to another generation,” Richard Blumenthal, a Democratic senator for Connecticut, told the Post.

“I think his re-candidacy has broken that concept — the conceptual underpinnings of the theory that he would end the Trump appeal, defeat Trumpism and usher in a new era.”

The outgoing president’s concerns about Garland are poignant, considering that he announced him as his nominee for attorney general a day after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by a Trump-incited mob, which ultimately did not led to Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election being reversed.

At the time, Biden said Garland would “restore the honor, the integrity, the independence” of the Justice Department after years of perceived politicization under Trump.

“Your loyalty is not to me. This is about the law, the Constitution and the people of this nation,” Biden told Garland at his official unveiling.

However, according to the Post, Biden had to be persuaded by his chief of staff Ron Klain to choose Garland – then best known as Barack Obama’s failed pick to replace conservative Justice Antonin Scalia on the US Supreme Court before he was nominated by a Republican-led Senate derailed.

Biden’s political allies had championed Doug Jones, then the Democratic senator for Alabama, arguing that he was better equipped to deal with the bitterly partisan atmosphere in Washington. Klain instead argued that Garland, known for his fairness, would send a more reassuring message of Justice Department independence after Trump.

As it turns out, Biden was still facing false accusations from Trump that he had “armed” the department while it was conducting criminal investigations into its role on Jan. 6 and over its hoarding of classified White House documents — even though he was simultaneously violating Hunter Biden and the president himself were investigated, the latter also illegally storing secret documents.

Biden now believes he should have chosen someone else, the Post reported, a view consistent with many Democrats who believe Garland was too slow to investigate Trump over Jan. 6 and related activities and ultimately prosecute him to make amends for his defeat.

The deliberate pace of the investigation, which ultimately led to the appointment of a special counsel, Jack Smith, meant that Trump was ultimately able to avoid the spectacle of a politically damaging trial before this year’s election.

Last month, in light of his election victory, Smith formally requested the dismissal of his two criminal cases against Trump, thereby ending them.