Read what Joe Biden said during his exclusive interview with USA TODAY: Transcript

Transcript of President Joe Biden's Oval Office interview with Susan Page, USA TODAY's Washington Bureau Chief, on Jan. 5, 2025:

PAGE: This is the limits of my technological ability.

BIDEN: Believe me...

PAGE: There we go.

BIDEN: I overstand. [Laughter.] Well, sit down.

PAGE: Well, it is such a privilege to talk to you on this, at this historic time.

BIDEN: It is a pretty historic time, isn't it? I mean, who would've − as my brother kids − who would've thunk it? The way we got where. Thank you for coming in.

PAGE: It's a natural time to think about your legacyas you're preparing to leave, and that is of course a very big topic. I wanted to ask you, when history assesses your tenure here, what do you think will most endure?

BIDEN: Well, I hope what most endures is that – I drive my staff crazy, Susan, because I talk about there's certain inflection points in world history where things begin to change worldwide in ways, not because of a single leader. Because the nature of things that are happening, whether it's global warming or inventing the printing press or technological changes. And I think we're in one of those moments where the post-Cold War era is over and the world is... The world's moving, not because of any particular leader, but the nature of things that are happening around the world.

And so I hope that history says that I came in and I had a plan how to restore the economy and reestablish America's leadership in the world. That was my hope. I mean, you know, who knows? And I hope it records that I did it with honesty and integrity, that I said what was on my mind. And I think the only advantage of being an old guy is that I've known every major world leader for a long time. And so I had a perspective on each of them and their interests. And so I think it helped me navigate some of the fundamental changes taking place, whether it's in Europe, in Latin America, in the Middle East, in the Far East. And anyway, that's what I hope anyway, that I'm viewed in that context.

PAGE: When you think about your legacy, is there an element that you think has been overlooked? That's not getting the attention it deserves?

BIDEN: Well, no. I don't kind of view it that way. I think what's happened is the changes taking place are so much bigger than any single man or woman that it's kind of a presumptuous thing [inaudible] overlooked. I think America is desperately needed to lead the world. And let me put it in the context, this context. Who leads the world if we don't? Not a joke. Who leads and tries to put together the kinds of coalitions and policies that are international in scope? I mean, it's all cliché. The world's really getting small, man. Really getting smaller and smaller. And what affects what happens in Japan is profoundly affected what happens in Ukraine. What happens in Zambia is going to affect what the hell happens in the Gulf. I mean, there's just so many connections. I think this is the time. For example, about 10 days before he died, Kissinger contacted me. And he said, "Not since Napoleon has..." I think it's close to an exact quote. "Not since Napoleon has Europe not looked over its shoulder at Moscow with dread until now."

Think about it. Now, I know you're much younger. I know you're only 30, but when you started covering things, there was a thing called the Soviet Union. China was a communist country on the run and in disarray. We had circumstances. Anyway, look what was going on in Iraq and Iran. And so, it's kind of all changed. And so, what I realized was I knew a lot of most of these women and men who had recently held office in their countries and were still in office. And they all had that, they all looked to us. I mean, can I say something off the record? [REDACTED]. And so, I hope that my legacy is one that says I took an economy that was in disarray and set it on track to lead the world, in terms of the new sort of rules of the road.

In foreign policy, I reestablished our alliances because they're our safety. And I diminished the direct conflict with major adversaries. And so the combination of the two is that we've invested in the things we have to invest in, and we are in a position where we look down the road. Put another way, I hope I look at this in terms of our grandkids. What we're doing now, it's got a profound impact, a lasting impact, now on the prospects for our grandkids, what kind of life they're going to live, what kind of country they're going to live in. And so a lot of what I've done, and I know it was viewed initially as the only way to get the economy going. There's no way of a soft landing other than significantly increase unemployment. And even my friends, I mean my own team, the many who were on the team were saying, "You got to do that." Well, we increased employment by 16 million people, brought inflation down to 2.4%, grew the economy larger and greater than any economy in the world.

And that's because, I think, I hope, what I was able to do was it literally changed the way that we looked at our economy. I've never been much of a trickle-down guy, trickle-down on economic growth. And I come from a corporate capital world, Delaware, more corporations there than every other state in the union combined. And I look at this election, not our election alone, but every major election in the world. And almost every government lost power across the world. Almost every democratic government lost power and not through democratic government. And I think it's because certain things have occurred. I think the pandemic has had a profound impact, a profound impact on people's attitudes, their sense of optimism, what they look through. I mean, how many... Over a million people look across the kitchen table and see an empty chair.

And you have everyone from our psychologists and psychiatrists saying it's had a real impact on people's thinking about mental health and life. And so the pandemic had had a profound impact. And that's why I thought it was important that we get major, major legislation off the ground immediately to deal with getting the pandemic under control. And also making sure that people, we could make them as whole as possible in terms of the immediate needs that they had. And so a lot of that's why the first major rescue plan we put out there, it was designed to get it under control. And we did. But I think it also changed, we had to let people know things are going to get better. And we ended up with a circumstance where we kept businesses open, we provided childcare, we did things that are basic things that allow people to continue to say, "Well, my life can get back to where it was. It can get better again." And anyway, I don't know if that answered your question.

PAGE: You talk about your economic successes on jobs and on growth on avoiding a recession which, a lot of people thought that wasn't possible. But one reason that Donald Trump won in November was the support he managed to get from working class voters, voters without a college education, voters who have been part of the Democratic coalition, voters who you as Scranton Joe have long identified with. Why do you think Democrats lost so much of their support in November?

BIDEN: Well, number one, I think that, as I said, if you look around the world, almost every democracy out there "lost" this time, number one. Number two, I think that if you, and it's not a criticism of the press, it's a reality... Turn on the news. Do you ever see any good news? I'm not being facetious. I'm not trying, and I don't say that as a criticism. I say that as an observation. The mindset we're in, it seems like you get no click unless there's something negative. And if you think about it, much of what I had, the hardest thing to do for me in the economy was to think through what were the immediate fixes you could do to make people feel better? But what do we do in the long-term? Put America in a position where you continue to be able to lead the world.

And much of what we did... For example, we passed a $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill. Hooray, hooray. That sounds great, right? Historians will talk about (how) great the impact was, but it didn't (have) any immediate impact on people's lives. But it didn't have any immediate impact on people's lives. But guess what? There's 66,000 projects already signed out there. Some of them are billion dollar bridges. There are things that are going to create enormous wealth and work out there, but it takes time. Or for example, when... I think I made a bad mistake. I think you wrote something about when I went to Korea to try to bring back the computer chip industry back to the United States. And people looked at me like, "What are you doing?" Well, no one...

I never thought, I used to always kid the staff when I started at the beginning, talking about supply chains. Who the hell talked about supply chains in the previous 10, 20, 30, 40 years? Well, guess what? All of a sudden we found out that you need 30 little computer chips [inaudible] to build an automobile. You find you got to do your cell phone, your dishwasher, your washing machine. All of a sudden it was like, we can't get them. We invented the damn things. We modernized them. And so when I went to South Korea and meet with Samsung, I convinced them that it made sense for them to invest in the United States. And we ended up in a circumstance where we had billions of dollars invested over time. But what I said, "Why'd you decide to invest?" I think it was they invested $15 billion outside Columbus, Ohio, to build a fab, which is twice as three times the size of a football field.

And there was this response he gave me. He said, "Because you have those qualified workers in the world, number one. And number two, you're the safest place in the world to invest." And what we did, the big sort of conceptual change I made, was I realized that, and I'm embarrassed, I didn't know, that oh, I've been around here a long time. When Roosevelt tried to protect labor unions from being able to be overrun by Corporate America in the thirties, there was a provision in that law that said, in simple terms, when the Congress gives the president money to spend on a project, he should use an American worker, an American product. That was honored in the exception of Democrats and Republicans for all these years. Well, I changed it. I started saying, "No, no, that's what we're going to do." And what's happened is by this invest in America, we've generated a whole lot of...

And I know people understand we're critical of my being the most pro-labor president in American history. Well, there's a simple reason for it. And that is that they’re the most qualified people in the world to do the job. And so for example, and I had a meeting out here in the South Lawn. We were doing this, we were trying to get the CHIPS and Science Act passed, and I met with the labor guys and I hadn't laid out my environmental plan. Again, which it started all the way back in the eighties. And I said, "Look, when I think environment, I think jobs. And you should think jobs." And I finally got the IBW to endorse me, endorse the plan and say it's jobs. So what happened was, for example, we got in a situation where I asked the Samsung CEO why he was investing? He said, "Because you have the best workers in America, in the world."

It takes five years to become an electrician. The average person you and I grew up with. I, well, I speak for myself. "You think you're going to be an electrician?" "Yeah, I want to be an electrician." You go to school for six months. Five years. And so I guess what I'm saying is that the focus on trying to take and reestablish entire industries, infrastructure, dealing with the cost of how things would, I can get you on Air Force One if you have a prescription from any drug store here in Washington, DC, get in the plane. I'm not taking any capital rule and get it you for 40 to 60% less. Same company, same prescription.

Why is that? Why is the only thing in the world, up until we changed it, only thing that the federal government can't negotiate on is drug prices for Medicare. Do it for the veterans' thing. So we finally got that changed, and we changed things like which I got a profound economic, not just political impact. It used to be that for prescription drug, for insulin, it was 400 bucks a month. Thirty-five. Now no senior in America, no matter what their prescription bills are, can be charged more than $2,000 a year. It's a game changer.

PAGE: There's many things of your legacy been such big successes, but part of the economy that has proved I think to be more troublesome is inflation.

BIDEN: Yep.

PAGE: And I wonder if you think you were paid too little attention early on to warnings about inflation with the American Rescue Plan or failed to recognize soon enough how much this was affecting so many Americans' lives.

BIDEN: I knew how much inflation was affecting their lives, but none of this had passed when inflation was at 9%. I was told if I did it, we'd all have a catastrophe, have a recession. I never believed that. And so what we did in terms of dealing with the issues that we picked was I concluded that you did not have to go in recession. You would not go in a recession... Excuse me, if only way to avoid a recession was to fire and make sure we cut employment significantly, I thought the exact opposite would happen. And for example, most of what we did, whether it's the American Rescue Plan, the Climate Law, the CHIPS and Science Act, all these things... We spent money doing it. But the fact is that we had a soft landing, no recession, and the interest rate was 9% when we came into office in the beginning. It was down to 2.34% now.

So I would argue that inflation was worldwide. It wasn't just the United States, it was worldwide, number one. Number two, we're the only nation that really got it, beginning to get it under control by growing the economy. We didn't diminish the economy. I remember having, I think they've even changed their minds a little bit with guys who were supporters, like Larry Summers and others. Well, guess what? We had a soft landing.

And the other thing is that I think that... There are a couple of things that happened. The economy was frozen. Supply chains were absolutely ripped. Ukraine was causing significant economic consequences for the United States and the world. And corporate greed was on the rise. And so I did everything in terms of dealing with the corporate greed pace, which if we had stayed longer, it would've made a difference. But on the corporate greed front, the idea that you can bounce a check and you have to pay 35 bucks, they made a billion dollars doing that. But can't do that anymore, kind of thing.

But I try to deal with the things, basically taking a view of the economy from the middle out and the bottom up. And I think there's evidence that it's made a profound difference. So what we did, whether it was the dealing with computer chips or infrastructure, prescription drugs or science and technology, or the PACT Act... It all had the effect of generating economic growth without, it didn't have effect on inflation. Matter of fact, wages have exceeded inflation for the last two years. They're up over $4,000 more than the cost of living. And so I guess what I'm saying is that, here's the way I looked at it. How in the hell in a changed world can America lead the world without having the finest infrastructure in the world, without having the best education system in the world, without being in a position where it has the best healthcare system in the world, where without having a position where you deal with the 1% of the population for defense, 99% of its veterans and their needs?

I mean, they're just things that I thought were necessary. And what it's done, it has attracted over 11, excuse me, a trillion dollars in private sector investment. And you haven't seen inflation going up. Matter of fact, it's like I said, it's down to 2.4%. It's still predicted to go down a little more. So I think we dealt with inflation realizing the impact and the cost-of-living interest rates. Very important. Very important. They've been extremely high relative to history. Well, they're coming down, but they're not down as far as they need to be.

So I guess, I don't know. I think that... Look, one of the things that I told my entire team, the cabinet, is that when we started this effort, that we weren't going to get much credit for any of this at the front end. It's going to take time for it to kick in. But imagine what's going to happen when we have, for example, 660,000 now infrastructure projects that are out there beginning, shovels in the ground. And by the way, I invested more in red states than blue states, I would argue because that the red states didn't handle their economy nearly as well, number one. But number two, because it's the way to lock in a changed economic policy that doesn't rest on corporate development.

PAGE: Yes, it's an insurance plan for the-

BIDEN: Well, I hope.

PAGE: Project is. Are you concerned that when Trump's in office, he's going to try to reverse?

BIDEN: I think he's going to have a problem. [Laughs]. Because for example, he already had, I won't mention the names because I can't prove it, I'm told, but you probably know. There's already several very conservative members of his delegation in the United States Senate and House who said, "Don't block the plan in my state. Don't block A, B, C, or D plan. They're going to invest $3 billion to build a factory here. They're going to do..." I mean, so I don't know how he, I don’t know how he comes along and gets rid of these investments. Now I think he could screw them up by insisting on focusing on more tax cuts for the wealthy. He's talking about a $5 trillion new tax cut. By the way, keep in mind, the economy he inherited from Barack was pretty good. Yet he left office with fewer jobs than he entered office. And in addition to that, he left office with one of the highest increases in deficit of any president in American history, with a $2 trillion tax cut.

And so I think if he moves on the tax cuts of $5 trillion, I think if he moves on dealing with increasing tariffs across the board, all they are is increasing cost of consumers in America. And if he decides to do away with some of the major programs, whether it's dealing with the rescue plan or infrastructure or the climate law, I think he's just going to, you know, hurt himself, hurt the economy. And look, like I said, supply chain in America has been reestablished across the board. We took on corporate greed. We have the strongest economy, lowest unemployment rate in 50 years. Wages are up. Twenty million new small business applications, 20 million. I call those each an application of hope. I believe we can, I really mean it. I know it sounds silly. And so the bottom line is Trump's going to have a hard time undoing a lot, I think.

PAGE: Is there a single thing that does your greatest fear about what President-elect Trump will do when he's in office?

BIDEN: On the economy, my single greatest fear is that he will try to, and maybe even succeed, in eliminating the elements of the climate law. That he'll succeed in kicking back the restrictions on drug manufacturers. That he'll cut programs and infrastructure that are... For example, the idea we’re the United States of America, and China's running trains at 40 miles faster than we do. It's the United States, for Christ's sake. We have all the data. If you choose between – that's why I put so much money into rail. First, you can get from point A to point B in a vehicle and get to the same point from A to B in a train. It's an electric train. They take the train. And guess what? It reduces pollution by over 20%. You get thousands of cars off the road.

But I think there's a lot of special interests that aren't really crazy about the kinds of, I don't know, how can I say it? Savings that are going to occur. By the way, they talk about how my legislation relative to the environment. Guess what, man? Oil companies figured it out. Oil companies. Oil companies are now saying, "We got to get out of the business. We got to cut back."

I'll just skip real quickly to Saudi Arabia. They want to work out a deal with recognition of Israel [inaudible]. They said on two things. One, "Can you help us transition from making oil to move to peaceful nuclear reactors? You build the reactor, you occupy them, you show us how you do it. And can you have oil companies disinvesting in oil drilling?" Not just because I'm limiting where they can go, and I have done that, but they're disinvesting because that's not the future. And look at Texas. Texas by the way, has more, at least it did, I don't know where it is now in the last couple months, maybe staff can correct me. Texas has more renewable energy generated in our system from wind, solar and electric than it does than any almost any state in the nation. Texas. So I just think things are, there's reality that's going on, people, around the world that that's not the future.

PAGE: You've talked about these quite significant major pieces of legislation and other things that you've done. I wonder, is there a thing that's been the most disappointing to you, the single thing that's been most disappointing that you've been unable to do?

BIDEN: Well, there's a generic thing and a specific thing. Generically because, and again, this is not a criticism of the press. But because of the way, nature, the nature of the way information is shared now, there are no editors out there to say, "That's simply not true." Like for example, I have spent a lot of my life on the foreign policy, intelligence side of things. I work like hell. Everybody else did too. But just since before Christmas, literally every day, somewhere between four and eight hours a day, working on what was happening in New Orleans, what was happening in Nevada, what's happening.

And we've established beyond a reasonable doubt that they’re both lone actors. We established beyond a reasonable doubt that, we talked to the FBI, that in Louisiana, the guy actually planted those [inaudible] himself. And evidence of that was, I said I wanted them to make it known as quickly as they did. He had a detonator in his vehicle. So when he crashed, he was supposed to hit that and they'd blow up and kill more people. The same way, and this guy's a military veteran, an American citizen, having real troubles both emotionally and anyway... The guy in Las Vegas is a guy, is a veteran, born and raised in America. And yet the president comes along, soon to be president again, come along and says, "It's clear. It's an invasion from the South. All these immigrants are causing all this problem. They did the [inaudible]."

And I'll bet you there's 70% of people out there that read that and believe it. How do you deal with that? I mean, again, it's the nature of the change in the way information is transmitted. And the guy has not known for telling the truth, but to say something in light of this significant investigation by the entire intelligence community and defense establishment, that this would happen and proven. He says, "No, it's not true."

PAGE: You said something generic and something specific. So generically, the inability to combat mistruths.

BIDEN: Yes.

PAGE: Was there something specific that you wanted to mention as well?

BIDEN: The specific that, there's a couple specifics that bother me that I couldn't get done. And one was that we are in a situation where I think that we would've been a hell of a lot better off had we been able to go much harder at getting some of these projects in the ground quicker. And to... I shouldn't admit this, but I will. I don't think that Donald Trump knows as much substantively as I do about these things. But when we came along with the rescue plan, guess what? He signed his name for that check, the first check that went out to those families, all of which he opposes now. But, [inaudible] "Trump gave me $7,500 for my family." So I don't think I've been very good at-

PAGE: Taking credit?

BIDEN: Or not so much me, but establish that the government did this for you. It wasn't... It was... Anyway...

PAGE: You spoke with so much heart about Jimmy Carter when he passed.

BIDEN: Yeah.

PAGE: And you'll deliver his eulogy on Thursday. Now, you and Dr. Biden went to Plains in 2021 and saw the Carters. Can you just give me a sense of what that final meeting was like?

BIDEN: It was really, you've probably seen some photographs of it, but it was meaningful. Carter... First of all, he started thanking me being the first person to endorse him and all that stuff, outside of Georgia.

But Carter was a decent man. I think Carter looked at the world, not from here, but from here. Where everybody else lives. And I think that he really genuinely cared about average people. He reminds me a little bit of my dad. My dad used to talk about, everybody's entitled to be treated with dignity no matter what, just an even chance. And that was Carter, and he was a... Granted, I had some disagreements with him and some of them were published. But think of this. [Laughs]. Here was a born-again Christian from Georgia being the progressive movement of the Democratic Party. And she was sort of his, I don't know, they could almost be together for 70 years, but she'd sit there and look at him. Not to approve or disapprove, but I think she gave him enormous confidence in pursuing what he thought was, instinctively what he thought he should do. And then when I went back and saw him and I bent down, he was in a tough shape, to kiss him goodbye, and he asked me to do his eulogy. It was a...

PAGE: He asked you that?

BIDEN: I believe that's what he said. Well, he implied that if he didn't specifically ask. And would I? And he was just a decent guy.

PAGE: Did he give you any advice? You were pretty new in the presidency then, just a few months after?

BIDEN: Yeah, I was. No, he asked me about generically the kinds of things I wanted to do. We talked about it. And he pretty well knew what I had done as vice president, what my interests were. It was, we were pretty simpatico on what to focus on. And if you are able to focus on providing an environment, whether it's on a farm or in a nursing home, or whether it's in a school that people go, "Well, this works. This helps." That's kind of where he, things were sort of, not basic and simplistic, but basic in terms of his focus. And we talked. He was not a big fan of my predecessor and successor. Well, he was never pointedly mean about it. But he was just very encouraging.

PAGE: Mr. President, your term is not over yet. You're still doing things every day. Some of your supporters have encouraged you to issue preemptive pardons to people like Liz Cheney and Anthony Fauci, who Trump has threatened to target. Will you do that?

BIDEN: Well, a little bit of it depends on who he puts in what positions. If in fact, he... Here's how… I was very straightforward with Trump when he got elected. I invited him immediately to  the White House. I spent two hours with him. He talked about, he was very complimentary about some of the economic things I had done. And he talked about −he thought I was leaving with a good record, kind of thing. I tried to make it clear that there was no need, and it was counterintuitive for his interest to go back and try to settle scores.

PAGE: And did he give you an answer on what he was going to do?

BIDEN: Well, he didn't. But he didn't say, "No, I'm going to..." You know. He didn't reinforce it. He just basically listened. And...

PAGE: So you haven’t decided yet. You're still assessing this issue?

BIDEN: Well, no, I have not. For example, I think there are certain people like, if he were to, I don't want to name their names. I'll tell you off the record. [REDACTED]. But there are other parties that we're following through on to determine that, rectifying some of the, correcting powder-cocaine difference, things like that.

PAGE: More traditional kind of pardons.

BIDEN: Yeah.

PAGE: Yeah. Speaking of pardons, every parent can understand why you would want to protect your son. Do you have any concerns that your pardon of Hunter sets a precedent for future presidents? One that might be open to abuse?

BIDEN: I hope not, because I meant what I said when I was asked whether I was going to pardon my son. But then I found out two factors. Number one, that he had paid all his taxes. He paid them late. He was fighting a drug problem. And he beat it. He's been square and sober for almost six years now. This was back in ’80, I mean excuse me, in 2000 and... What year was it? Anyway, long time ago. And that he paid it all. And that there were hundreds of people with only 3, 4, or $500,000 who were being, moving on civilly. He paid all his taxes. He paid the back taxes. He paid... He was late. He should have paid it on time. And that he was in a court throughout a plea deal that was agreed to.

And then the second thing I found out was that on this purchasing a gun, at the time, you have to sign a form if you're under the influence of anything. Well, I don't even know whether they got straight on the signing of the form. But the point was, no one's ever been tried on that. Nobody. And they potentially put him in jail for X number of years for that. He had it for 10 days. Two days in his possession. No weapon, no bullets, no movement, no leave. And it got returned. And no one's ever been tried for that. So he got former Attorneys General and former leaders in both parties, not office holders saying, "It's not done. It's not been done." And that's why I stepped in, because of the nature of the way... By the way, it was under my administration. And Trump wasn't doing this.

PAGE: Hunter's been open about his struggles. How is he doing now?

BIDEN: He's doing great, God love him. Thank God. He's doing really well. He's been straight and sober. He's involved, he's written a book about it openly. He's been involved, and he's always... The thing that I didn't, he's a very, I was going to say "kid." He's a grown man. He's a very bright guy, very high-IQ. He's very well-educated. Georgetown, Yale, and that kind of thing, smart as hell.

But he always talked about, I said, when he was going to Yale Law School, I said, "Why are you doing that?" He said he wasn't going to go to art school. He said, "What happens when I get to art school and find out I can't paint?" [Laughs].

But he's doing a lot of art now, and he's making a living doing it. He's engaging in, he's engaged in, and getting more engaged in prevention programs. When he was out, he was – a world food program, all the things. That's where he comes from in terms of his instincts. So he's doing really well, and family's doing well. I'm about to be a great-grandfather, Jesus God. But Naomi, his oldest, about to, I'm going out to California. She's due to have a cesarean on the 8th of January.

PAGE: Eighth of January. Congratulations.

BIDEN: Yeah, and God willing, and I have... All his daughters. She works for one of the major law firms, mega firms, same one Dodd's with. She went to Penn, at Columbia Law School. My number two works in the environmental movement. She works for Bloomberg's Environmental Initiative, where she attends all the COP meetings. Finnegan Biden. She's smart as hell.

PAGE: I know you're very proud of your family.

BIDEN: I really am. Anyway...

PAGE: Let me ask you a couple of questions about this.

WHITE HOUSE STAFFER: We're at 45.

BIDEN: We haven't talked about foreign policy at all. Can I just make one comment?

WHITE HOUSE STAFFER: Absolutely.

BIDEN: There are two things we wanted to do. I thought it was critically important to reestablish America's preeminence in foreign policy. I said, "If we don't lead the world, I don't know who does." And that's why I worked so hard to put NATO back together and increase NATO. That's why I worked so damn hard to get Japan and the Quad worked out with India, Japan, Australia, the United States. That's why we worked so hard to deal with infrastructure in Africa. Debt and infrastructure are the keys to growth in almost every sector. And we... Just take a second. We did this, it used to be called a Build Back Better Initiative of Biden, and now it's called the PII. Anyway...

PAGE and WHITE HOUSE STAFFER: PGI.

BIDEN: PGI. Because a lot of these developing nations, I mean, you're going to have 25% of the world's population in Africa by 2050, and they don't have the capacity for you to do the infrastructure. So we're doing that. Well, we changed the relationship with China in a significant way. Remember when I got elected, China was going to eat our lunch. It was going to be over. And there a lot going on.

PAGE: Three quick questions. You could answer them in a single word.

BIDEN: Sure.

PAGE: Do you believe you could have won in November?

BIDEN: It's presumptuous to say that, but I think yes, based on the polling that...

PAGE: Do you think you would've had the vigor to serve another four years in office?

BIDEN: I don't know. That's why I thought when I first announced, talking to Barack about it, I said I thought I was the person. I had no intention of running after Beau died – for real, not a joke. And then when Trump was running again for reelection, I really thought I had the best chance of beating him. But I also wasn't looking to be president when I was 85 years old, 86 years old. And so I did talk about passing the baton. But I don't know. Who the hell knows? So far, so good. But who knows what I'm going to be when I'm 86 years old?

PAGE: And as you know, I represent the Wilmington News Journal, part of the USA TODAY Network. And so on behalf of my colleagues here, I want to ask you. Your presidential library, Delaware or Scranton?

BIDEN: It won't be in Scranton. Hopefully Delaware, but a real big push to-

PAGE: Or I meant Syracuse, actually. I knew it wasn't going to be in Scranton. Delaware or Syracuse is really my question.

BIDEN: Well, the University of Delaware is building, has set up the Biden School of Public Policy.

PAGE: I've been there.

BIDEN: And they're supposed to be building a major new building, $145 million building on the mall. Which is a beautiful, you've seen the campus. It's a beautiful main campus.

PAGE: I've seen the center there.

BIDEN: And so, there's a discussion. They want me to attach to the Biden School of Public Diplomacy, the library. And the city of Wilmington wants me to move the library into the city. And University of Pennsylvania, which has the Biden School of Foreign Policy, wants me to do it up there. And so I just haven't, and I've talked to former presidents. Apparently building the library is a gigantic undertaking. And so I haven't made that decision yet. And to be honest with you, I haven't, because I'm not out of office yet, agreed who will represent me in these endeavors. Whether it's CAA [the Creative Artists Agency] or the other folks. I honest to God haven't decided.

PAGE: Well, Mr. President, it's been a privilege to talk to you. Thank you so much.

BIDEN: You ever get to Wilmington? You don't, do you?

PAGE: Oh, I go through Wilmington on the Acela all the time, and I was actually at the Biden School there to interview your sister when her book came out.

BIDEN: Oh, is that right?

PAGE: Yeah.

BIDEN: Oh, yeah. She told me that. That's right.

PAGE: And actually your brother came and sat through the interview, which made me a little nervous.

BIDEN: Well, my sister is my best friend in the world. I mean, for real. She used to be three years younger than me. Now she's 20 years younger. We went to Delaware two years apart in school, took the same courses. She graduated with honors. I graduated. She managed all my campaigns.

We have an expression in our family attributable to... This is the God's truth. It's attributable to my sister, because of my sister. "If you have to ask, it's too late." After my wife and daughter were killed and the boys were badly injured still in the hospital, I was staying in the hospital. I wasn't in the accident. I was staying there. Well, I came home, she and her husband had given up their home and moved into my house to help me raise my kids. When I got remarried... No man deserves one great love, let alone two. When I got married, five years later, I came home, and they were gone. She's an incredible woman.

PAGE: Yeah, she said the same thing, that you were best friends.

BIDEN: Oh, we really are. She's been in my handlebar since she's been three years old. That's not a joke. It used to be when I was a kid, I was always the guy who was, I don't mean to sound the wrong way, the leader of the pack, the neighbor. And we'd build a fort and I say, "Look, we build this thing, Val gets to come." You think I'm kidding? I'm not. Billy Kotzwinkle, the guy who wrote that famous... Oh, God. The book about... It was a bestseller. [Inaudible] This one. That one. One of these...

PAGE: Oh, that's not mine.

WHITE HOUSE STAFFER: That's ours.

BIDEN: Anyway, when I got elected, he said, he was from Scranton, "I knew you were going to make it. You're the only guy in all our neighborhood ever climbed up the flagpole in Maloney Field and sat on the ball on top."