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Former President Joe Biden said he "wasn't surprised" that President Donald Trump defeated former Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election during an appearance on The View Thursday (May 8).
“I wasn’t surprised, not because I didn’t think the vice president wasn't the most qualified person to be president. She is,” Biden said.
“A lot of people didn’t show up,” Biden said, referencing the "7 million fewer votes" nationwide than in the 2020 election.
The View Co-host Joy Behar then asked Biden why Trump remains "so fixated on you," to which the former president replied, "I beat him."
Trump defeated Harris in all of the projected battleground states, which included flipping the "blue wall" of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, as well as reclaiming Arizona, Nevada and Georgia, all three of which he lost to Biden in the 2020 election. Harris also became the first Democratic candidate to lose the popular vote since John Kerry lost to former President George W. Bush during the latter's re-election campaign in 2004.
The View co-host Sunny Hostin referenced Harris' October 2024 appearance on the show in which she claimed she wouldn't have changed "a thing" about how Biden handled his lone term as president, despite the administration's dropping poll numbers at the time.
“I did not advise her to say that,” Biden said.
“I think she was talking about — she wouldn’t have changed the successes we had … as opposed to that we wouldn’t change anything at all.”
“She has to be her own person — and she was,” he said before adding: “We’d argue like hell by the way.”