President Joe Biden has said he regrets stepping down. It’s a lack of self-awareness. He doesn’t even know that he hasn’t been making decisions for the last four years. So he doesn’t even realize for four years he hasn’t even been in charge, but he regrets that he didn’t make another run at it.
Transcript:
*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.
Mike Papantonio: Biden regrets stepping down. Okay. I don’t even know where to begin. It’s a lack of self-awareness.
Farron Cousins: I think so.
Mike Papantonio: And I get that. He’s so old and he’s senile. The guy’s struggling. He doesn’t even know that he hasn’t been making decisions for the last four years. He literally does not understand that. At this point, people are putting papers in front of him, sign this document. And I don’t know how long they’ve been taking advantage of that, but staff is saying, yeah, people would walk in, put a document in front of him, sign the document. And so he doesn’t even realize for four years he hasn’t even been in charge. But he regrets that he didn’t make another run at it. So, I guess we could see his final demise as president. I don’t know.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. This was a really, really weird thing that happened. For anybody who’s not familiar, Washington Post talked to a bunch of insiders in the Biden administration, and they said that basically since the election, he has been expressing his, ah, I shouldn’t have dropped out. I had have beaten this guy. That is still what he maintains today, which is shocking, because when you dropped out, you weren’t beating him. He had just been convicted of 34 felonies.
Mike Papantonio: And he still wasn’t winning.
Farron Cousins: And a month later he’s beating you in the polls before the debate. Trump had already, the polls that morning, Trump was back ahead, because again, public has a short attention span. They’re not gonna stay outraged forever. And that debate destroyed you, and you’ve been a different person since that debate because he was off and on. Because you could still see moments where Biden could come out, like last year’s State of the Union. Remember, Republicans were furious.
Mike Papantonio: Yes.
Farron Cousins: He has energy, what’s going on? And then there were times where you could see it a little bit, but ever since that debate, he has not been on again.
Mike Papantonio: They had him so juiced up, I swear to you, they did. They were injecting juice in his butt 30 minutes before he went on. And so we saw that and said, well, maybe he’s okay. No, the guy was juiced up. And so the media then takes it, and I think this is agonizing to you because you’re a good journalist. You look at the story, you say, this is accurate. This is not accurate. Let me fact check this. I love that you do that. But you have the mainstream media or corporate media. It’s not mainstream anymore. We used to say mainstream, hell, it’s anything but mainstream. What it’s a 65 to 70% decrease in people following the corporate media. But they embrace it and they say he’s fine. They buy into the lie. And before we came in here, I wish I would’ve had it, but maybe we’ll do another story on it next week where we have the numbers of the journalists. We have the actual journalist who said, yeah, he’s fine. There’s no problem here. I really want to talk about that. Because I think sometimes these people, they just scurry away. It’s like the guy that, who was the guy that called, said Biden’s gonna win and he’s called the last four presidents.
Farron Cousins: Oh, Lichtman.
Mike Papantonio: Lichtman. Okay. So, Lichtman or even, well, there’s several. I wanna go back and I want to revisit that because I don’t want it to happen again. And I want to do a couple of stories to where we say, this journalist said, yeah, oh, he’s fine. I don’t have any problems. This person said, oh yeah, this is the way it’s going to go. I don’t think you just let them scurry away, like a bunch of rats jumping off a ship. And so I wanna do story on that next week. How about that?
Farron Cousins: Okay.
Mike Papantonio: And we’ll talk about it in a little bit of detail. But I think Biden unfortunately doesn’t realize that he probably is in the same class as Warren Harding or Herbert Hoover or Richard, I mean, Richard Nixon doesn’t even have the problems he’s got. But he doesn’t understand that he’s gonna be regarded as the worst president in history. I don’t think you come back from that, especially with what he’s doing in these last days and I feel like dragon lady Jill is kind of behind him. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Do these things. What is your take on it? That’s my overall impression. It’s like, I don’t know what the hell the guy’s up to. Day to day, I don’t know what he’s gonna do next.
Farron Cousins: Well, I think, and this again is based on what we’ve seen from every ex-president, their approval rating goes up within two months of leaving office. And people always fondly look back. George W. Bush is the greatest example.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. That is a good example.
Farron Cousins: He was the worst of the worst of the worst. And then two years later, his approval rating’s in the seventies, I mean, he never got that during his administration.
Mike Papantonio: But you know why? Because he’s the one that came out against Trump.
Farron Cousins: No, no, no, no. I’m talking about in 2010.
Mike Papantonio: Oh, really?
Farron Cousins: His approval rating was into the seventies.
Mike Papantonio: I didn’t know that. I knew it jumped up in when he started saying, I hate Trump.
Farron Cousins: But before Trump was even a politician.
Mike Papantonio: Okay. Okay.
Farron Cousins: And so the same thing will happen with Biden as it typically does. The bad ends up getting overlooked. The person themselves, Jimmy Carter I think is a perfect example of that, we’re seeing that right now. Was he a great president? Not necessarily. Was he a good person after he left office? Hell yeah. He is probably the best ex-president we’ve ever had.
Mike Papantonio: Yes. I would have to agree with you on that.
Farron Cousins: And so I don’t know that Biden obviously is gonna spend the next 50 years building Habitat for Humanity houses, but people will look back more fondly maybe than they should, depending on your views of it. But that’s what happens. It happened to Trump. His approval rating went up after he left office.
Mike Papantonio: My point is, I guess my point, the only distinction that I feel comfortable making with what you just said is there’s some different things happening with this president. People, they’re kind of things you remember longer, even though it’s kind of hard to forget that Bush killed a million people in Iraq, based on a lie, he and Cheney did that. Maybe the American public’s forgotten that. And maybe they will forget these crazy moves that Biden is making in this last little part of his presidency because he looks like a crazy man. And maybe they’ll forget that. He won’t be, but we still call Warren Harding or Herbert Hoover, the worst presidents. He’s gonna be somewhere in that list, is what I’m trying to say.
Farron Cousins: And I do think, obviously, with the way he is, with what we saw in the debate, him saying that he regrets dropping out, it wasn’t the person, it was not the personality that lost the election. It was the issues. The issues would not have changed if it were Biden or if it were Harris, or if it were Gavin Newsom. The issues remain the same. The talking points remain the same. Harris kept all of his campaign people, they were dead on arrival because they lost all the issues.
Mike Papantonio: Farron, I know this is probably overkill, but we talk honestly on this show. I’m not kidding, in the last two months, I have been freaked out that this guy’s in the White House. I really have been, because I don’t know what’s being put in front of him. I don’t know what kind of decision making he’s involved with. I don’t know what would happen if he really has to man up and be a president. The best I can hope is somebody else would step in. He’s not a president anymore. But it’s kind of freaked me out to think that this demented, senile old man is staying in the White House making decisions. I don’t think I’m alone in that. And I’ve been concerned about it. So maybe we’re close enough to where now we have a new precedent that I don’t feel that much better about. But at least he’s walking around and he is not bumping into things at this point. That’s the best I can put on it.
