Staffers are reporting a “depressing” mood around the White House in the final weeks of Joe Biden’s term as the president works to cement his legacy and reflects on the 2024 election.
With less than one month until President-elect Donald Trump takes office on January 20, White House aides told The Wall Street Journal the mood at work is “draining” and “depressing.” Biden has also expressed that he could have defeated Trump in November, the Journal reports.
Entrepreneur Joe Kiani, a major Democratic donor and friend to Biden, told the Journal, “if he ran, he really thought he was going to win.”
“By not running, he was worried Trump would win,” Kiani said. “He just didn’t want to win at any cost.”
Biden’s belief, however, is not a critique of Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign, the Journal reports. Rather, Biden believes that because he beat Trump once, he could have done it again.
Harris’s allies, meanwhile, told the Journal a few extra weeks on the campaign trail could’ve made the difference on Election Day.
It took Biden nearly one month to drop out of the 2024 race after his poor debate performance against Trump on June 27. When he exited the race on July 21 following mounting calls from his party to do so, he left Harris just over three months to build and execute a campaign to rival Trump.
Trump dominated Harris in battleground states, and the vice president ultimately lost the popular vote by more than 2 million.
Biden is also working to cement his legacy after a political career that spans more than 50 years, the Journal reports. The president has infused even banal White House events with retrospectives on his time in office and started sketching out the plans for his presidential library in Delaware, according to the outlet.
White House Spokesperson Andrew Bates told the Journal the president isn’t “spending his time litigating the election or engaging in counterfactuals.” Instead, Biden and Harris “are focused on delivering as many additional results for hardworking families as they can while finalizing the most groundbreaking record of any modern administration.”
Bates added that Biden admired his vice president’s campaign, while a spokesperson for Harris told the Journal the two still have a close working relationship.
The Independent has contacted the White House for comment.
This isn’t the first time reports have indicated Biden regrets how the 2024 presidential election played out. Last week, sources told The Washington Post Biden recently said he is confident he could have defeated Trump in November.
Despite this, he has also admitted to making mistakes throughout his presidency.
The president has privately expressed regret over appointing Merrick Garland as attorney general, saying he was too slow to prosecute Trump over the January 6, 2021 Capitol riots, the Post reported.
Biden has also admitted to “screwing up” the debate with Trump, though noted he does not regret participating, according to the Post.
