Politics

Joe Biden: ‘I Have A Regret That I’m Not President’

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Former Vice President Joe Biden regrets that he is not president right now, but believes he made the right decision to not run in 2016 in an interview with Oprah Winfrey on OWN.

“I have a regret that I am not president because I think there is so much opportunity,” Biden told Winfrey in an interview clip that aired on “Good Morning America” Thursday. “I think America is so incredibly well-positioned,” Biden said.

Biden indicated that one of his reasons for choosing not to seek the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination was due to the grief of losing his son, Beau Biden, to cancer in May of 2015. Even though he was qualified to run, perhaps the most qualified, he knew he wouldn’t be able to give a presidential race his complete attention.

“No woman or man should announce they are running for president unless they can answer two questions. One: Do they truly believe they are the most qualified person for that moment? I believed I was,” Biden said. “But, was I prepared to be able to give my whole heart, my whole soul and all my attention to the endeavor? I knew I wasn’t.”

Biden recently teased a presidential run, telling Vanity Fair in October that “I haven’t decided to run, but I’ve decided I’m not going to decide not run.” He has also opposed President Donald Trump on Wednesday, saying that his presidency and encouragement of “phony nationalism” is “undermining the social fabric of the nation.”

“Did anyone of you ever think that you would see, in one of the historic cities of America, folks coming out from under rocks, and out of the fields with torches, carrying swastikas, literally reciting the same exact anti-Semitic bile we heard in the ’30s?” Biden told Axios’s Mike Allen Wednesday.

“And then have those who were protesting compared as a moral equivalent to those people? Folks, this is eating at the fabric of this country,” Biden said in an apparent reference to Trump saying there was violence on both sides of the riotous rally and counter protest in Charlottesville, N.C. in September.

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The full interview will air Sunday on Oprah’s OWN network, as Biden promotes his upcoming book “Promise Me, Dad,” available Tuesday Nov. 14.

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