“I think that that’s the way in which my Dad and his legacy will be remembered as being apart from the other 45 men that came before him, is his deep, deep empathy for everyday people.

“I know at least that where it is most important – with his children, with his sons, with his grandchildren, with his great grandchild now – is that his legacy is 100 percent secure.”

Joe Biden has prostate cancer which has now spread to his bones, but treatment is keeping the cancer at bay, Biden says.

“The radiation and hormone therapy has abated it. He’s hopefully going to live a long time, but he’s going to live with cancer.”

It’s hard to watch his father go through the discomfort of treatment, he says.

“Not hard to watch in the sense I shy away from it, but somebody that you love that much, and like I said again, we all, I think, have experienced this. It’s frightening, it’s frightening because you start to think about the inevitable end, and that can be a really frightening thing.”

His father has not, he insists, been diagnosed with dementia.

“His only diagnosis is the cancer.”

He believes his father’s decision to not run for a second term in 2024 and endorse Vice President Kamala Harris was courageous. It followed a disastrous televised debate and speculation about the President’s ability to carry on in high office.

“It was disastrous in the sense that he was always such a great debater that it really shocked people to see him fall flat the way that he did on that night.”

The President recovered from that performance to handle further interviews and a 90-minute NATO summit press conference with more of his old vigour, but then he contracted Covid, Biden says.

“And I think he made an incredibly courageous decision that no one in his position has ever made before, which was to step aside.

“And then we can debate whether or not 107 days and US$2 billion in the bank was enough for Kamala Harris to complete a campaign – but that’s not for me to decide.”

Joe Biden stepped aside for Vice President Kamala Harris in 2024.KYLE MAZZA

The scrutiny his father faced contrasts with that which 80-year-old President Trump receives, Biden says.

“What people saw was someone that was losing a step, by the way, not losing a step in the way that Donald Trump is falling asleep on a daily basis in the Oval Office in front of our eyes, but losing a step literally in terms of the way that he walked, his gait, the tone of his speech.

“But there’s never a moment in time in which I question whether my dad had the capacity to effectively execute the job of president. And I don’t think that there’s anyone on the record that worked directly with him that has questioned that either”.

In 2020 a laptop belonging to Biden that he left in a repair shop mired him and his father in accusations of corruption and brought to the world’s attention to his addiction problems.

Biden says the laptop story is the exact opposite of the narrative that people have been sold.

“I challenge anyone, it’s all available to you online still to this day, amazingly so, because it’s still the greatest violation of privacy of anyone that I’ve ever known, but 20 years of my digital life, and there is not a single email, they have them all, there’s not a single text message, they have them all, including the ones that were erased.

“Not a single communication including all my voice mails, all erased voicemails that they had going back a decade in which there was an instance in which I communicated to anyone, or anyone communicated to me, that I was going to get my Dad to do something on behalf of someone I was getting paid by – not one.”

His accusers themselves are now incarcerated, he says.

“Alexander Smirnov, the genesis of the whole bribery accusation, was convicted of lying to the FBI and linked to the GRU and Russian intelligence, and he’s serving six years in prison right now – under the Trump administration.

“The people who promulgated those lies have all been convicted of treason inside Ukraine and they all were sanctioned by the Trump administration as being Russian assets.”

Hunter Biden, son of US President Joe Biden listens as his lawyer Abbe Lowell speaks to the press outside a House Oversight Committee meeting on 10 January, 2024 in Washington, DC.Kent Nishimura / GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA / Getty Images via AFP

The laptop story is one “everybody knows, they think they know the story, and in fact, they don’t know any of the story”, Biden says.

Biden’s decision to be an “open book” about his past and his recovery has shown him we have more in common than that which divides us, he says.

“One of the things that connects us all, I have found, is our pain, our pain in the addiction that we face, our pain in the recovery that someone we love is struggling with, our pain in the knowledge that we have someone that we love is experiencing cancer or we just lost someone.

“In that, I have been able to find common ground with people you would not suspect that I would not be able to find common ground with… I hope we can begin to see the humanity in each other again.”

Trump has Americans missing Biden’s economy. No, really. | Opinion

A new Harvard CAPS/Harris survey found more than half of U.S. voters think the economy is worse under Trump than it was under Biden. And 62% blame the current state of the economy on Trump, not Biden.

President Donald Trump has talked endlessly and inaccurately about how his predecessor’s economy was a “disaster” and a “catastrophe.” He even once said, “You could take the five worst presidents in American history, and put them together, and they would not have done the damage Joe Biden has done to our nation in just a few short years. Not even close.”

Well, Mr. President, I have some bad news. You’ve bungled your second term so thoroughly that voters are wishing they could return to the halcyon days of “Sleepy Joe” Biden.

A new Harvard CAPS/Harris survey found that more than half of U.S. voters think the economy is worse under Trump than it was under Biden. And 62% blame the current state of the economy on Trump rather than Biden.

To adopt a bit of Trump’s typical patter: “They’re begging like dogs to go back. They’re saying, ‘Can we please have some more of President Biden’s catastrophe? Pretty please?’”

Trump stinks so bad he has Americans missing the Joe Biden economy

A CNN report on a poll the network released April 1 noted: “The 65% who say Trump’s policies have made the economy worse is the highest of his presidency, higher than the share who said the same about Democrat Joe Biden’s policies at any point during his time in office.”

Trump can shout that the economy is roaring and America is the hottest country in the world until he’s more orange than usual in the face, but it’s clear that, like cheap MAGA merchandise, nobody’s buying it.

Americans disapprove of Trump’s handling of the economy, as they should

CNN’s poll found that 72% of Americans disapprove of how Trump is handling inflation, a higher disapproval rate than Biden (68%) and former President Jimmy Carter (66%) at this point in their presidencies.

Biden’s lowest disapproval rating on gas prices was 72%, but the CNN poll has Trump at 76% disapproval on that subject. And only 31% approve of Trump’s handling of the economy.

Opinion: Forget the war in Iran. We must support Trump’s ballroom.
It’s possible Americans are feeling flimflammed because flimflam artist Trump managed to take high post-COVID inflation rates and use them to slam what was otherwise a strong Biden economy, riding people’s economic fears back to the White House.

He then proceeded to unleash ludicrous tariffs and, among other things, start a war with Iran, spiking oil prices, while also doing away with Affordable Care Act subsidies and failing to lower food costs.

‘Job creation has slowed and the unemployment rate has risen’

Dean Baker, a senior fellow at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, wrote a comparison of the Biden/Trump economies in March and concluded this:

“By pretty much every standard measure, the economy was quite strong at the end of 2024. Inflation was somewhat above the Fed’s 2.0 percent target, but it had been headed downward for the prior two years and nearly all projections showed inflation continuing to decline. The Fed was lowering interest rates, and these rate cuts would almost certainly have continued into the winter, if the election of Donald Trump had not raised the prospect of sharply higher tariffs and inflation. Lower rates would have helped to lower mortgage rates and boost construction, which would hasten the decline in house prices.

“It is far too soon to pronounce a verdict on the Trump administration’s policies, but the impact to date has been the opposite of what has been claimed. Higher tariffs have boosted inflation, even if by somewhat less than many had predicted. Job creation has slowed and the unemployment rate has risen. And there is no evidence of a manufacturing boom, as both manufacturing employment and factory construction have fallen.”

Summarizing that, and taking into account all current polling showing staggering dissatisfaction with the current president, what I surmise many U.S. voters are trying to say right now is: Oops.

Trump can’t pass off his own economy as Biden’s fault

A White House spokesperson recently said in a statement to MS NOW: “President Trump was resoundingly re-elected to the White House precisely because he understood how Americans were left behind by Joe Biden’s economic disaster.”

That line of hooey ain’t workin’ anymore, kiddo. Not when most Americans would take “Joe Biden’s economic disaster” over whatever the heck it is Trump is doing to the country.