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Former President Joseph R. Biden sharply criticizes his successor in a new memoir, saying the actions surrounding the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol and the effort to cling to power after the 2020 election “should never be forgotten” and “should follow him to his grave,” according to early excerpts published by The Atlantic. The book, Promise Me, America, is scheduled to go on sale Nov. 17.
Oval Office meeting
In the memoir, Biden recounts a nearly two-hour Oval Office meeting with then-President-elect Donald Trump in November 2024 that surprised him with an unexpectedly flattering tone. Biden writes that Trump was “immediately chatty” and told him, “You know, Joe, if it weren’t for politics, I believe we’d be good friends,” a line Biden says “bordered on fawning.”
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Biden says he was “too stunned to respond” as Trump continued, at one point saying, “Yes, if it weren’t for politics, we’d spend all our time golfing together,” and praising Biden’s record on job creation as “extraordinary.” Biden notes he cut off the compliments to move to policy matters but found Trump more interested in “the personalities of world leaders” than in “issues of global significance,” writing that the conversation felt “as if we were sharing gossip about people at a dinner party.”
What Biden calls an “indictment” of a second Trump term
Biden also uses the memoir to catalog what he describes as a pattern of lies and destructive governance after Trump left office, beginning with what Biden calls the “utterly discredited claim that he had defeated me in 2020.” He points to the Electoral College’s certification of his 2020 victory in December of 2020 and says Trump’s rhetoric and actions “gained momentum” as the former president, in Biden’s view, “took a wrecking ball to our traditions and institutions.”
Among the specific criticisms Biden raises are Trump’s decision to grant broad pardons and clemency to some Jan. 6 defendants on his first day back in office and to decline a formal ceremony honoring officers who defended the Capitol. Biden also faults policy moves he says were intended to roll back climate commitments and domestic regulations — including withdrawing from the Paris climate accords, opening public lands to oil drilling, ending certain support for electric vehicles, and canceling wind and solar projects — which he says would make it harder for the United States to compete with China.
He recounts a scene in which Trump announced such policies at a rally while, Biden writes, “oil and gas executives sipped champagne and nibbled on Pop-Tarts emblazoned with his image” at a nearby hotel. Biden adds broader political concerns, writing the new administration “would be a government that stoked racial tensions” and describing plans he attributes to the administration to challenge birthright citizenship, expand immigration enforcement and promote conspiracy theories from the White House.
Presidential immunity and the Supreme Court
Biden addresses a 2024 Supreme Court decision cited in the memoir that, in his account, found presidents have some immunity for acts that fall within official duties. “There was no precedent for that ruling,” he writes. “Common sense didn’t support it. There was no constitutional basis for it. It was inexplicable. Indefensible. And a death knell for accountability,” he adds.
Overall, Biden warns in the book that “no nation can survive character-free leadership for long” and contends the United States would be no exception, framing his critiques as a warning about the political and institutional consequences of the policies and legal shifts he describes. The Atlantic published early excerpts of Promise Me, America on Monday, according to the memoir’s publisher notes included in those excerpts.
