President Joe Biden displayed his compassion and vulnerability—something Donald Trump has proven incapable of showing—in a surprise interview on “The Howard Stern Show” on Sirius XM.
And it turns out that Biden was right to snub a gotcha interview with The New York Times, which arrogantly claims the right to determine whether he’s fit to be president.
The one-time shock jock proved a very skilled interviewer who showed that Biden is the right choice to lead the country at this time. Biden spoke with Stern on Friday about tragedies and triumphs in his career, love, and loss.
In perhaps the most emotional segment of the interview, Biden laughed as he recalled how he met his first wife, Neilia Hunter, as a college student on vacation in the Bahamas. And then he described the despair he felt as a senator-elect when his wife and 13-month-old daughter, Naomi, were killed in a car crash in 1972. His two sons, Beau and Hunter, were injured in the accident.
Biden said he had thought about getting drunk, and even contemplated suicide.
“I don’t drink … I never drank. I used to sit there and think to myself, ‘I’m just going to take out a bottle of scotch,'” Biden said. “’I was just going to drink it and get drunk. I could never bring myself to do it.'”
“I actually thought about it; you don’t have to be crazy to commit suicide. If you’ve been to the top of the mountain, you think it’s never going to be there again. Just a brief moment I thought, maybe I’d just go to the Delaware Memorial Bridge and jump. But I had two kids, my boys.”
Biden said he initially turned down Barack Obama’s offer to be his running mate. He said his family convinced him to accept the vice presidential nomination.
And Biden spoke about dealing with the loss of his son Beau, saying he should have been the Biden sitting in the White House.
“My son Beau should have been sitting here instead of me, He’s more capable than I am,” the president said. He described how his son had resigned his post as Delaware’s attorney general to join the National Guard. While serving in Iraq, Beau Biden lived next to a burn pit, and his father believes that the toxic fumes caused the brain cancer that killed him in 2015.
Biden recalled that his son made him promise that he’d “not leave public life” after his death. Biden said his son’s last words were “I’m not scared, Dad. It’s OK.”
Biden also spoke about how “the most conservative court in modern history “ had struck down Roe v. Wade; he promised to make it the law of the land if reelected with a Democratic Congress.
In the most publicized remark by the mainstream media, Biden said he would be “happy” to debate Trump. And he called out Trump for sitting in a White House office for three hours, saying nothing as the mob stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
“It was almost criminal. He did nothing. He just sat there and watched what was happening. Now he calls them `patriots ’ and `victims’ and says he’s going to pardon them all if he’s reelected.”
Biden had this to say about Trump: “Here’s what bothers me most: We have a fundamentally different value set.”
Biden said Trump had refused to visit the graves of American soldiers killed in World War I during a trip to France in 2018, describing the fallen as “losers” and “suckers.” Biden also cited Trump’s disparaging comments about Arizona Sen. John McCain, who was a POW during the Vietnam War. Biden mentioned that McCain worked with him as a Senate liaison officer when he returned to the U.S.
“I can’t fathom a president of the United States of America saying that the folks that died defending this country were suckers and losers.”
Appearing on Stern’s show might help Biden’s campaign more than doing a New York Times interview. Stern’s audience is mostly white, mostly male, and middle class, according to the show’s advertising website.
This is the message Stern had for his listeners at the end of the Biden interview which lasted more than an hour:
“I want to thank you for doing this today. I want to thank you for your compassion. You know the reason I’m so excited to talk to you is because I wanted to understand the tragedy in your life and how you dealt with it. And you’re the kind of leader I love because we’re lucky to have you in the Oval Office and serving as the father of the country. Because if you’re a good father to your family, which you are, I know you’d be a good father for the country. I want to thank you for providing a calming influence and an organized administration.”
While this interview was being conducted, Trump was sitting in a courtroom in lower Manhattan and complaining that it was too chilly.
Of course, Trump used to make frequent appearances on Stern’s radio show before he was elected president. Here are some of the lowlights.