Jan. 6 should follow Trump 'to his grave,' Biden says in new memoir

Former President Joseph Biden claims his successor was desperate to hang on to power after losing the 2020 election, saying, "What Trump did on January 6, 2021, should never be forgotten. It should follow him to his grave."

Biden has harsh words for Donald Trump in his new memoir, "Promise Me, America," which goes on sale Nov. 17. He denounces Trump's decision to grant sweeping pardons and clemency to Jan. 6 defendants on his first day back in office and admonishes Trump for not holding a formal ceremony honoring the officers who defended the Capitol.

Early excerpts of the memoir were published Monday by The Atlantic.

Biden also reveals what happened inside the Oval Office during his nearly two-hour meeting with then President-elect Trump in November of 2024, describing a friendly tone from Trump that "bordered on fawning."

Trump defeated Kamala Harris to win the presidency after Biden withdrew from the race in July of 2024.

Oval Office meeting

Biden said he was taken aback by how warmly Trump greeted him just eight days after the bruising 2024 election. 

"Trump was immediately chatty and surprised me by adopting a tone so friendly that I thought he might be putting me on," Biden writes, adding that Trump told him, "You know, Joe, if it weren’t for politics, I believe we’d be good friends."

Biden said he was "too stunned to respond" and that Trump continued "as if intoxicated by the curious conversational path he had chosen."

"Yes, if it weren’t for politics, we’d spend all our time golfing together," Trump said, according to Biden.

Trump called Biden’s record on job creation "extraordinary" and, according to Biden, "relieved he didn’t have to run against me."

Biden said he cut off the compliments to move on to the business at hand, but as he gave a wide-ranging overview of issues that could define the Trump presidency, he noticed Trump was more focused on personalities of world leaders.

"As if we were sharing gossip about people at a dinner party, not discussing issues of global significance," Biden wrote.

Indictment of Trump’s second term

Biden said Trump’s "lies" have "kept coming" since taking office -- starting with the "utterly discredited claim that he had defeated me in 2020.”

"And they gained momentum as Trump took a wrecking ball to our traditions and institutions—at times literally, as when he tore down the East Wing of the White House (after promising that he would not)," Biden writes. The Electoral College certified Biden's victory in December of 2020.

Biden acknowledged that the policies of presidents are vulnerable to politics and can be undone at the whims of their successor, but argued "that feeling was magnified by the dismissive and destructive nature of Donald Trump.”

He said Trump "seemed unable to tolerate the idea that someone else’s accomplishments might be worth building on rather than tearing down."

Biden took issue with Trump’s decision to again withdraw from the Paris climate accords, open public lands to drilling for oil, end support for electric vehicles and cancel wind and solar projects, making it harder for the U.S. to compete with China.

"Trump announced these policies at a rally as, at a five-star hotel across from the White House, oil and gas executives sipped champagne and nibbled on Pop-Tarts emblazoned with his image," he said.

He criticized DOGE as well as Trump’s decision to cut federal funding to Democratic states with no explanation, gut nonprofits and withdraw from the World Health Organization.

"It was clearly going to be a crueler government," Biden said.

"It was also going to be a government that stoked racial tensions instead of calming them," he added. "The new administration would launch a campaign to end the birthright-citizenship protections of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, a proud legacy of the Civil War. ICE officers would comb American cities, using expanded police powers to round up brown and Black people and detain them far from the courts and local police. We would be a less tolerant society, with raging conspiracy theories actively promoted by the White House and Trump’s constant and increasingly unhinged social-media feed."

Presidential immunity and the Supreme Court

Biden opened up about the 2024 Supreme Court decision that ruled presidents have some immunity from prosecution for acts that fall within their official duties.

"There was no precedent for that ruling," he said. "Common sense didn’t support it. There was no constitutional basis for it. It was inexplicable. Indefensible. And a death knell for accountability."

The former president warned that "no nation can survive character-free leadership for long" and that the U.S. is "no exception to that rule."