The final Biden interview: His biggest regret, what he fears most, his most accurate prediction (with a few stumbles)

President Joe Biden revealed his biggest regret, what he fears most and boasted about his most accurate prediction in what is expected to be his final Oval Office interview. 

Biden spoke with MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell for an interview airing Thursday night. 

The 82-year-old will leave office on Monday with low approval numbers and after abandoning his reelection bid – only for his successor, Vice President Kamala Harris, to lose to his former political rival, President-elect Donald Trump. 

‘Ironically, I almost spent too much time on the policy and not enough time on the politics,’ the Democrat admitted during the sit-down. 

He rehashed his regret about not putting his name on the stimulus checks that were sent out to Americans during the early months of his tenure as the country still suffered economically from the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Trump had put his name on the checks – but Biden didn’t. 

‘It did cross my mind,’ he said. 

‘I’m not a very good huckster,’ he continued. ‘I mean, and that – it wasn’t a stupid thing for him to do. It helped him a lot,’ he said of Trump.

‘And it undermined our ability to convince people that we were the ones that were getting this to them,’ Biden added. 

During the course of the interview, Biden also talked about how he expected things to ‘change drastically,’ adding that it wasn’t tied to a particular leader. ‘And it occurs every five or six generations. And it usually is generated by technology.’

On Wednesday night during his address to the nation, the president sounded the alarm about the ‘tech-industrial complex’ and warned that America was getting its own set of oligarchs. 

He repeated that point saying that he was concerned about ‘this concentration of enormous wealth and power in a circumstance where everything’s changing.’ 

‘Look, if the decision is made that the multibillionaires, the super, super wealthy, the wealthiest people in the world, begin to control all the apparatuses, from the media to the economy, then who do I get to fight back for me?’ he asked.  

On Thursday he said that he was worried that the ‘guardrails’ that prevented that concentration of power were coming off. 

‘The reason for all the safeguards out there is, in a very trite way to say it, is to keep the bullies from taking advantage of everybody else, the basic guardrails,’ he explained. 

‘So I guess what I’m worried about is that the thing that keeps it on track are the guardrails, that there’s a Supreme Court that’s independent, but not – but accountable,’ he said. ‘There is a Congress that you speak your mind, but you’re held accountable to basic standards.’ 

‘There’s a presidency that says you have really limited powers. I mean, you’re the top dog, but you’re not – you can’t dictate everything,’ he continued. 

‘And I don’t know. They seem to just be – just seem to be chipping away at all those elements,’ Biden added. 

He also told O’Donnell he was worried about the freedom of the press, revealing that four other MSNBC hosts had told him that they were ‘worried about whether or not they’re going to be held accountable for telling the truth.’  

‘When has that ever happened in America, I mean, in a long time?’ the president mused. 

He also boasted that he had been right all along about Russian President Vladimir Putin’s intentions to invade Ukraine. 

‘I knew he was going to go in about three weeks before he amassed those extra troops along the border,’ Biden said. 

Biden said Putin was broadcasting his intentions to take Ukraine because ‘he talks about Kyiv as the – as the birthplace of Mother Russia.’ 

‘That is – all he wants to do is reestablish the old Warsaw Pact. He wants to establish control over it. I can’t let that happen,’ the Democrat said. 

The Warsaw Pact was between the Soviet Union and a number of Eastern European countries – including some that now are members of NATO like Poland. 

‘This guy is not a good guy. He has – I mean, anyway,’ Biden said, not letting himself get too carried away.

The 82-year-old made several stumbles throughout the sit-down. 

At one point, when talking about North Koreans being sent to fight for Russia in Ukraine he referred to them first as Chinese. 

At another he began to say Sweden, when he the identified Switzerland as the locale of where he met with Putin in June of 2021, eight months before Russia invaded Ukraine.

When talking about the October 7 Hamas terror attack, Biden at one point referred to it as 9/11 – though he’s also compared those two bloody days. 

When talking about this week’s ceasefire agreement, Biden was pressed on when he first pushed that concept to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. 

Those to Biden’s political left criticized his administration for being too pro-Israel, when scores of Palestinian civilians were being killed. 

Biden said he warned Bibi against Palestinian civilian deaths almost immediately after the Israel Defense Forces started to retaliate. 

‘Put it this way. You know, I will just say, when I went to Israel immediately after their attack on the – by Hamas, eight days later, whatever it was, and I told them we were going to help, I said: “But, Bibi, I said, you can’t be a carpet-bombing in these communities,”‘ Biden said. 

The president revealed what Netanyahu replied. 

‘And he said to me: “Well, you did it. You carpet-bombed” – not his exact words, “But you carpet-bombed Berlin. You dropped a nuclear weapon. You killed thousands of innocent people, because you had to in order to win a war,”‘ the president said. 

Biden said he responded by saying, ‘but that’s why we came up with the U.N.’  

O’Donnell seemed miffed. 

‘So, he was comparing 21st century war tactics, battle tactics, with World War II?’ the MSNBC host asked. 

Biden said Netanyahu was making a ‘legitimate argument’ because the Hamas fighters who were killing Israelis were hiding out in tunnels under buildings. 

‘Only way to get to them is to take out the places where they were under,’ the president pointed out.  

‘And so that’s the first time I had –first time I had the discussion about bombing civilian areas was when I went over after the 9/11 – after the massacre that occurred,’ he said, subbing in September 11 for October 7.