Biden says he underestimated Trump's ability to spread 'the big lie'


In an interview with The Atlantic's Edward-Isaac Dovere less than two weeks into his presidency, President Biden acknowledged he misjudged how many Americans would vote for former President Donald Trump and believe his false post-election claims of widespread voter fraud.
"I underestimated his ability to take the big lie and turn it into something that was salable," Biden told Dovere, whose book Battle for the Soul: Inside the Democrats' Campaigns to Defeat Trump was released Tuesday.
Still, Biden seems convinced that he made the right call with his campaign strategy (he did win after all). "Everybody in the press thought … that I was from another era, that it wasn't relevant," he told Dovere. "'What the hell are you talking about, "the soul of America"? For Christ's sake, Joe, talk about global warming,' or whatever the hell they wanted me to talk about. But back then, what I saw with Trump was he didn't understand anything about who we are as a people." Read more at The Atlantic.
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Tim is a staff writer at The Week and has contributed to Bedford and Bowery and The New York Transatlantic. He is a graduate of Occidental College and NYU's journalism school. Tim enjoys writing about baseball, Europe, and extinct megafauna. He lives in New York City.
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