In a surprise interview amid the 2024 presidential campaign, United States President Joe Biden shared on Friday that he considered committing suicide after his first wife, Neilia, and baby, Naomi, died in a car accident in 1972.
In an interview with radio shock jock Howard Stern, he also confirmed for the first time that he would be willing to hold a debate with his opponent, former US president Donald Trump.
“Somewhere, I don’t know when, but I’m happy to debate him,” Biden said.
The president has previously been vague about whether he would debate Trump, saying last month that “it depends on his behavior.”
Sharing tough times from his personal life, Biden likened his mental state at the time of his wife and child’s death in 1972 to knowing that he had already “been at the top of the mountain” and feeling as though he would never be there again.
“You don’t have to be crazy to commit suicide,” he said. “Just for a brief moment, I thought, ‘Well maybe I’ll just go to the top of the Delaware Memorial Bridge and jump.'”
He added that ultimately, he didn’t follow through because he knew he had two other children at home who needed him.
This was not the first time Biden has talked about his mental state following the deaths of Neilia and Naomi. While running for office in 2020, the then-presidential hopeful was open about his suicidal thoughts in a CNN documentary.
Later in the interview, Biden told Stern that Beau and his younger son, Hunter, had told him that they thought “we should marry Jill” while he was dating his second wife and now first lady.
Biden also talked about losing his older son Beau, who served in the National Guard in Iraq for a year, saying he should have been in the Oval Office instead because he “was more capable than me.”
“The problem was he lived next to one of those burn pits. He came back with a bronze star, he came back with a service medal, but he also came back with stage 4 glioblastoma. The brain injuries out of Iraq were extreme,” the president said.
The cancer kept getting worse when Beau came back, Biden said, and he ultimately died in May 2015.
Biden also shared some lighter personal details with Stern, including how he saved people “half a dozen times” while he was a lifeguard in his youth and how he met Neilia after winning a coin toss with his friend over which of them would get to go and talk to her.
The conversation then turned to Biden’s political career, with Stern thanking the president for his work in the Oval Office and for “being a good father to the country.”
“I want to thank you for providing a calm influence and an organized administration post-COVID,” he said.
He also praised the president for “standing up to Putin,” growth in jobs, the lowest uninsured rate in US history, “knocking off a few ISIS leaders,” getting CO2 emissions down, and the Respect for Marriage Act, which requires all US states and territories to recognize same-sex and interracial marriages.
Stern, who for years regularly hosted Trump on his show, also praised Biden for one of his most recent achievements — his bill forcing airlines to give passengers cash refunds for canceled flights, which was passed into law on Thursday.
As to future plans, Biden pledged that if he wins the election in November, he will work to make Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court case that ruled women had a right to abortions, “the law of the land again.”
The interview came the day after The New York Times released a statement on Thursday criticizing Biden for avoiding interviews with the media, saying that “it should be troubling” to anyone “who understands the role of free press in a democracy.”
While Biden has not given many interviews to the press, Friday’s sit down with Stern was his second interview in the entertainment industry in as many months after he appeared on Late Night With Seth Meyers in March.