Joe Biden has said he is not confident there will be a peaceful transfer of power after the November presidential election.
“If Trump wins, no, I’m not confident at all. I mean, if Trump loses, I’m not confident at all,” the president said in an interview with CBS News that is due to air in full this Sunday.
It is the US president’s first media interview since he dropped out of his re-election campaign last month and endorsed his vice-president, Kamala Harris, to replace him at the top of the Democratic ticket. Harris is now the presumptive party nominee for president, with Tim Walz, the governor of Minnesota, as her running mate. They will face Donald Trump, the Republicans’ nominee, and his running mate, JD Vance, the Ohio Senator, in November.
Biden added, of Trump: “He means what he says, we don’t take him seriously. He means it, all this stuff about ‘if we lose it will be a bloodbath’ … [and] ‘stolen election’, you can’t love your country only when you win.”
The TV network posted the excerpt from the interview on Twitter/X.
In his first TV interview since exiting the 2024 race, President Biden tells CBS News' @costareports he's "not confident at all" that a peaceful transfer of power will happen in January 2025 if former President Donald Trump loses.
— CBS Sunday Morning 🌞 (@CBSSunday) August 7, 2024
"He means what he says. We don't take him… pic.twitter.com/uE4dj5Vzrs
Donald Trump, who is the Republican nominee for president, said in March: “Now, if I don’t get elected, it’s gonna be a bloodbath. That’s going to be the least of it. It’s going to be a bloodbath for the country.” His comments were later said to be in reference to economics of the US.
In the CBS interview, Biden further said of Trump and the Republicans: “Look what they’re trying to do now, in the local election districts where people count the votes.” It was unclear from the brief clip whether Biden meant that Republicans send operatives to challenge the counting of votes or that they intimidate election workers, or both.
At a rally in Ohio in March, Trump also said: “I don’t think you’re going to have another election in this country, if we don’t win this election … certainly not an election that’s meaningful.” At the time his comments prompted a statement from Biden’s re-election campaign that said “this is who Donald Trump is”.
Before withdrawing, Biden focused heavily in his re-election campaign on Trump as a threat to US democracy. Harris and Walz have taken up several other themes but have also criticized Trump and Vance for, among other things, being close to Project 2025, the hard-right framework drawn up by a team at the Heritage Foundation as a playbook for a second Trump presidency.
The blueprint recommends dismantling features of the government it believes conflict with conservative ideology, while installing extreme, conservative policies.
Harris said: “Can you believe they put that thing in writing?”
Reuters contributed reporting
• This article was amended on 8 August 2024 to clarify that Trump’s “bloodbath” comment was later said to be in reference to US economics.
