Biden says he underestimated how many people would believe Trump’s big lie

‘He didn’t have any social redeeming value, as far as I can see’, says Democrat of 2020 opponent

US president Joe Biden (REUTERS)

Joe Biden said he underestimated how many people would believe in Donald Trump’s “big lie” about the 2020 election.

The US president, in an interview with The Atlantic’s Edward-Isaac Dovere in January, admitted that he underestimated the “big lie” of election fraud and how many Americans would actually vote for Mr Trump before 3 November 2020.

"I underestimated his ability to take the big lie and turn it into something that was saleable," Mr Biden told Mr Dovere, whose book Battle for the Soul: Inside the Democrats’ Campaigns to Defeat Trump was released on Tuesday.

“His transparent selfishness, his willingness to say anything, his overwhelming appeal to prejudice and division,” Mr Biden said of his 2020 opponent. “He didn’t have any social redeeming value, as far as I can see.”

The Democrat, who won with 81 million votes in November, also told Mr Dovere that in the end, his campaign for the presidency was right, even though "everybody in the press thought … that I was from another era”.

Mr Biden added that“back then, what I saw with Trump was he didn't understand anything about who we are as a people”, in a nod to his campaign for the “soul of America”.

The interview was released to coincide with the publication of Mr Dovere’s book.

It reportedly took place two weeks into the Biden presidency in January.

Belief in the “big lie” remains strong among supporters of Mr Trump, months after the former president’s departure from the White House — and no evidence of election fraud.

On Friday, a poll revealed that 56 per cent of Republicans continued to believe the 2020 election was rigged or the result of illegal voting, and 53 per cent thought Mr Trump was US president, according to Ipsos, who carried out the poll.