Earlier this morning, former President Joe Biden did a sit-down appearance with The View — his first live television interview since leaving office. During the interview, one of the hosts asked him why he thinks Vice President Kamala Harris lost and whether he was surprised by the election results. Here’s my best transcription of his response, though it was difficult to understand some of his answer because of his mumbling:

I wasn’t surprised — not because I didn’t think the Vice President was the most qualified person to be president, she is, she’s qualified to be president of the United States of America — but I was surprised. I wasn’t surprised because they went the route of, the sexist route, the whole route. I mean, this is a woman. She’s this, she’s that. I mean, it really, I’ve never seen quite as successful and a consistent campaign undercutting the notion that a woman couldn’t lead the country and a woman of mixed race and uh — and they, they, they played that to a [garbled audio].

In addition to that, one of the things happened, if you noticed, and I’m gonna be shorter, okay, I promise. She said, “Don’t be Joe Biden” . . .  Anyway, make a long story short, all kidding aside, think about it, liberal democracies all across America, all across the world, lost [garbled audio] — all across [garbled]— I think we underestimate the phenomenal negative impact Covid had and the pandemic had on people, on attitudes, on optimism, on a whole range of things. So I, I was very disappointed and — but I wasn’t surprised. Not only surprised because of the extent to which they’ve gone and some of the attacks they’ve made.

Watch that snippet of Biden’s interview with The View here:

Notable: This interview comes as Biden has reportedly hired veteran political operative Chris Meagher — who previously worked in Biden’s comms shop and as a spokesman for the Department of Defense, among other high-profile gigs — to defend his post-presidency reputation.

That new hire coincides with the Trump administration’s forthcoming plans to release the audio of Biden’s interview with Robert Hur, the special counsel tasked with investigating the former president’s mishandling of classified documents. Recall that Hur declined to bring criminal charges against Biden while concluding that he was a “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.” The Biden Justice Department blocked the public release of the audio, meaning the president and his team are no doubt bracing for the public relations nightmare that will ensue once it hits the airwaves.