United States President Joe Biden used a much-anticipated interview with ABC News to reiterate that he is the candidate to beat Donald Trump in November’s presidential election and again called his recent disastrous debate against Trump “a bad episode”,
Al Jazeera reports.
Biden, 81, told ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos in a taped interview that “I have a cognitive test every single day”, referring to the tasks he faces daily as president.
“Every day, I’ve had tests. Everything I do,” he said. “I just had a bad night. I don’t know why.”
Stephanopoulos asked whether the debate debacle “was a bad episode or a sign of a more serious condition” and whether Biden was being realistic in his belief that he could beat Trump, 78, given the gap opening in opinion polls between the two candidates and growing concern among Democrats that Biden should step aside.
A Reuters/Ipsos poll found that one in three Democrats want Biden to quit the race.
“I don’t think anyone is more qualified,” Biden said in the interview, blaming his debate performance on exhaustion and a “really bad cold”.
The polls, Biden said, were inaccurate.
Asked whether he was more frail, Biden said, “No”.
Asked also whether he would drop out if fellow Democrats in Congress said he was hurting their re-election chances in November, Biden said: “If the Lord Almighty comes out and tells me that, I might do that.”
