President Joe Biden addressed concerns over his age while interviewing with CNN’s Fareed Zakaria on Sunday, saying that he has the wisdom to lead the U.S. through its current “inflection point” and he wants to “finish the job.”
Capping a wide-ranging, 20-minute conversation covering foreign policy ahead the 2023 NATO Summit, Zakaria put aside previous topics like the Ukraine War and U.S. relations with China to ask the president to address Democratic constituents’ concerns that, at 80 years old, he may not be up to serving a second four-year term in the Oval Office.
“You’ve often said when people asked you about your age, ‘Just watch me.’ And I think a lot of people do watch you and are impressed, and they think you’ve been a great president,” Zakaria began. “You’ve brought the economy back, you’ve restored relations with the world. But many of these people do say, and these are ardent supporters of yours, ‘The next thing he should do is step aside and let another generation of Democrats take the baton.’ Why are they wrong?”
Biden responded, saying that it wasn’t a matter of right and wrong, but that he believed his age gave him the wisdom necessary to bring unity to the U.S. and democracies the world over.
“I think we’re at an inflection point. I think the world is changing, and I think there is one thing that comes with age if you’re being honest about it your whole life, and that is some wisdom,” Biden said. “I think we’re on the cusp of being able to make significant positive changes in the world. I really honest to God do.”
He then cited some of the efforts his administration has made overseas.
“You see what we’ve done in Europe. Europe’s more united than it’s ever been since the end of World War 2,” Biden said. “You see what we’ve been able to do in the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea — we’ve united that part of the world… I think we’re putting the world together in a way that is going to make things significantly — how can I say it? — more secure for people.
“We’re uniting democracies — have the possibility of uniting democracies — in a way that hadn’t happened ever,” he continued. “And so I think that whether it’s the Far East, whether it’s NATO, whether it’s Europe, whether it’s what’s going on in Africa, I think we have enormous opportunities. And I think I just want to finish the job, and I think we can do that in the next six years.”
Watch Biden’s CNN interview, which aired Sunday at 10 a.m. PT, in the video above.
