President Joe Biden said he will decide whether to seek a second term after November’s midterm elections in a wide-ranging interview with CBS’s 60 Minutes, in which he also recommitted to defending Taiwan and declared the coronavirus pandemic to be over.
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“Look, my intention, as I said to begin with, is that I would run again. But it’s just an intention,” Biden said in the sit-down that aired Sunday. “Is it a firm decision that I run again? That remains to be seen.”
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Biden, who turns 80 in November, quipped to longtime 60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley for the show’s 55th season premiere that he is “in good shape.” He went on to mention election laws that would be prompted by a campaign announcement.
“I’m a great respecter of fate,” he said. “What I’m doing is my job. I’m going to do that job.”
Biden’s 60 Minutes appearance is his first sit-down TV interview since a conversation with NBC News’s Lester Holt for the Super Bowl in February. He last sat down for an interview with the Associated Press in June.
Foreign policy dominated Biden’s discussion with Pelley. The president reiterated that U.S. forces would defend Taiwan if China invaded the self-governing island it considers to be part of its territory, at odds with the White House’s policy of “strategic ambiguity.”
“Yes, if in fact there was an unprecedented attack,” he said about the United States defending the island. He added earlier: “We agree with what we signed on to a long time ago and that there’s ‘One China’ policy and Taiwan makes their own judgments about their independence.”
Biden, who described the FBI’s discovery of classified documents in former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort as irresponsible, said the country would soon regain “control” of inflation, as it has with the coronavirus pandemic.
“We still have a problem with COVID. We’re still doing a lot of work on it. It’s — but the pandemic is over,” he said. “If you notice, no one’s wearing masks. Everybody seems to be in pretty good shape. And so I think it’s changing.”
The 60 Minutes segment was taped at the White House last week on the same day Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping met in Uzbekistan during the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit. Pelley asked Biden what his message to Putin would be if the strongman deployed tactical nuclear or chemical weapons in Ukraine.
“Don’t. Don’t. Don’t. You will change the face of war unlike anything since World War II,” Biden said in a clip publicized before the full interview was broadcast.
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Biden additionally warned Xi it would be a “gigantic mistake” if China armed Russia in the conflict and that doing so could jeopardize foreign investment in China.
CBS News, too, teased Biden’s responses to railway companies and workers reaching a tentative agreement last week that avoided a strike and more supply chain problems for the economy.
