Biden settles scores, defends his 2024 run in new memoir
Biden settles scores, defends his 2024 run in new memoir
Susan Page and Joey Garrison, USA TODAYFri, November 13, 2026 at 9:21 PM UTC
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Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. is not a man given to regrets.
In his massive new memoir, "Promise Me America," set for publication Nov. 17 by Hachette, the 46th president of the United States tries to defend his record, rebut his critics, settle a few scores and explain his most controversial actions.
Those would include his decision to seek a second term, even though he was then 80 years old. That disastrous campaign debate with Donald Trump. Questions about whether his mental acuity was failing while he was still in the Oval Office.
What emerges over more than 400 pages is his view of history, written with the clear hope that history's judgment will someday come closer to agreeing with him.
The book is being published as Democrats celebrate decisive midterm elections Nov. 3 that gave them control of the House and the Senate during President Donald Trump's last two years in office. Those returns have fueled the party's hopes of regaining the White House, too, in the 2028 elections.
Biden, who is battling Stage 4 prostate cancer, offered a look back at the last Democratic president and his turbulent tenure.
Regrets? Not really. Nor is he inclined to take responsibility for his travails in an account that includes only a few revelations.
Here are some takeaways.
'I felt an obligation to run'
Two years after the 2024 election, Biden still hears criticism from fellow Democrats for initially deciding to run for reelection before eventually dropping out. His late July decision left Kamala Harris less than four months to mount a campaign against Trump. Harris, of course, lost.
Biden, however, says he does not regret his plans to seek a second term.
"Today there is no shortage of people who think I blindly raced to run again," Biden writes. "Driven by ambition. Selfishness. Unaware of the concerns about my age. I knew better than anyone how old I was. I knew what I was— and wasn’t— capable of doing. I carefully monitored how I was meeting the demands of the job. And there is not a single example of me failing to handle my responsibilities."
Biden adds that "he didn't need" another four years of sitting behind the Resolute Desk, living in the White House and having access to Camp David.
"But I felt an obligation to run," Biden writes, adding that he "had set the country on the right path" and believed he was the best person to beat Trump.
"People say I was deluding myself that I could do the job at my age," he writes. "My answer to that is: I was doing the job."
Disastrous debate 'didn't feel right from the start'
Biden defends his mental acutiy in the book and addresses his disastrous June 2024 debate performance against Trump.
His poor showing at the debate − the then-81-year-old president stumbled over words and struggled to complete coherent sentences − led to calls among Democrats to end his reelection bid. He dropped out 28 days later.
"The difference in 2024 was not that I had a bad debate. Lots of presidents had bad debates," Biden writes. "The difference was that every other president was given the chance to redeem themselves in a second debate. As it turned out, that chance would not be available to me."
Biden recalls preparing for the debate at the Camp David presidential retreat after crisscrossing the Atlantic Ocean in Air Force One to attend a D-Day anniversary in France, then returning to Washington, only to go back to Europe for a G7 summit in Italy, before heading off to a Los Angeles fundraiser.
"Something else was weighing on me beyond the exhaustion," Biden writes, pointing to his son Hunter Biden's conviction that same month of three felonies related to possessing a gun as a drug offender.
When the June 27, 2024 debate got underway, Biden writes, "It didn’t feel right from the start."
One moment was "particularly damaging," Biden recounts in the book: When he finished an answer by saying, "We finally beat Medicare," when he meat to say, “We finally beat Big Pharma.” Throughout the debate, Biden says, he was reminded what it was like to be onstage with Trump, who he previously debated twice in 2020 − "the rapid-fire cascade of lies" and "the refusal to accept responsibility for anything."
"I knew the debate had gone badly," Biden writes. "But I knew that debates had gone badly for lots of incumbent presidents. Especially their first ones. I left the stage thinking I would be debating Trump once more before the election was over."
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With Obama, friendship with some friction
Biden and President Barack Obama have been friends and allies, forever linked in history.
But there has also been an edge to their friendship. That was in part because of Obama's efforts to back Hillary Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016, when Biden was grieving the death of his son but still had White House aspirations of his own.
In his book, Biden says Obama benefitted from breaks that he didn't.
“Barack had a terrible first debate against Mitt Romney," he writes. "We needed to stop the bleeding. Which I did" with a strong performance in the vice presidential debate. "Barack called me that night before I took off on Air Force Two to say, ‘Thanks, you saved me.’”
But after his disastrous first debate against Donald Trump in 2024, Biden says, he never got a chance to recover with a second one.
And on the day he decided to withdraw from the race, he called a stream of allies to let them know about his decision.
Obama wasn't on the list.
The letter he left Trump
There's a tradition of presidents leaving their successors a letter in the Oval Office, generally one with good wishes whatever the history between them.
In his letter to President Donald Trump on Jan. 20, 2025, wrote three straightforward sentences.
"The American people — and people around the world — look to this house for steadiness in the inevitable storms of history," he said in the longest one, "and my prayer is that the coming years will be a time of prosperity, peace, and grace for our nation."
The letter Trump left him
Four years earlier, Trump had left his own letter for Biden.
After denouncing Biden, his leadership and his character during the campaign, Trump was full of warmth and praise in a long and florid letter.
"Many presidents have come and gone who simply governed as republicans or democrats," Trump wrote. "Largely, they did not change history, they were just swept along in its relentless tide. this will not happen to you, because I know how much you love the American people."
Biden acknowledges he wasn't quite sure what to make of it.
"It was almost as if there were two Donald Trumps," he said. After fierce attacks, even questioning the legitimacy of Biden's election, he was using "warm language that sounded like it was coming from an old friend."
More: Trump wished Biden well in warm 2021 letter left inside White House desk
The good thing about being an ex-president
"Yes, I miss Air Force One — who wouldn’t?" Biden acknowledges. "The best part of it was that it wouldn’t take off until I was aboard. Now I have to make the plane on time, and endure the delays and missed connections."
On the other hand, he says, he can once again return to his past as "Amtrak Joe," a moniker from his days as a senator who rode the train back to Delaware every night.
"For the duration of my presidency, I was prevented from riding on Amtrak. Now I can walk the aisle of the train, reconnect with passengers and conductors I used to know, and meet new ones. Many people have written about how the presidency puts you in a bubble. I am happy to be outside that bubble."
Final words: 'I'll keep getting up'
The final words of the Epilogue loop back to his childhood in Scranton, Pennsylvania.
"When I was a kid, whenever something bad would happen, I could count on my dad to say, 'When you get knocked down, get up,'" he wrote. "Until I’m counted out for the last time, I’ll keep getting up. And America will too."
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Biden settles scores, defends his 2024 run in new memoir
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