Biden questions his ability to serve another four years days before ending his term

US President Joe Biden, in a new interview days before leaving office, expressed doubts about his ability to serve another four years, although he maintained that he could have won election to a second term.

The outgoing president also expressed to USA Today in the interview published Wednesday that he attempted during his Oval Office meeting with the president-elect Donald Trump discourage the Republican from going after his political opponents, as Trump has said he will do.

And he added that he had not decided whether to issue collective pardons to preemptively protect those people from any possible retaliation by Trump or the incoming administration.

“I don’t know,” Biden responded when Susan Page, Washington bureau chief of the USA Todayasked him if he would have the stamina to serve another four years in office. Biden and Page sat down at the White House on Sunday for the president’s rare interview with a print publication.

Biden, 82, recalled that he did not intend to run for president in 2020, but that when Trump ran again “I really thought I had the best chance of beating him. But I also wasn’t looking to be president at 85, 86 years old.”

“But I don’t know. “Who the hell knows?” he added. “So far, so good. But who knows what I’ll be like when I’m 86?”

Did you think you could have been re-elected? “It’s presumptuous to say that, but I think so,” Biden said. He added that his assessment was based “on surveys” but gave no further details.

Concerns about Biden’s age and ability had followed him since he announced his re-election bid, but he withdrew from the presidential race under pressure last July after faltering in a debate against Trump. Vice President Kamala Harris then became the Democratic nominee, but lost to Trump.

In the interview, Biden said he was considering preemptive pardons but had not decided whether to issue any. When he and Trump met in the Oval Office after the election, Biden said, “I tried to make it clear that there was no need, and it was counterintuitive to their interest to go back and try to settle the score.”

Trump didn’t respond one way or another, Biden revealed: “He basically listened,” he said.

Biden said his “biggest fear” is that Trump will eliminate parts of the important climate legislation that Biden signed in 2022. He also criticized Trump for suggesting that the driver of the deadly New Year’s Day vehicle attack in New Orleans was an immigrant who had entered the United States from Mexico.

The FBI has identified the driver, Shamsud-Din Jabbar, as a U.S. citizen from Texas and Army veteran. Fourteen people were killed and nearly three dozen injured in the attack. Jabbar was shot dead by the police.

Biden said he bets many people read what Trump said about the gunman and believe it.

“How do you solve that?” he said, referring to his successor as someone who “is not known for telling the truth.”

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