Vice President Joe Biden says that a widely-reported story that his son Beau’s death bed wish was that his father would run for president was not the “Hollywood moment” that it’s been made out to be.
“Some people have written that, you know, Beau on his death bed said, ‘dad, you’ve got to run’ and there was this sort of Hollywood moment that, you know, nothing like that ever, ever happened,” Biden said during a “60 Minutes” interview that aired Sunday.
Beau Biden was 46 when he died in May after losing his battle with brain cancer.
In August, New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd reported that as the younger Biden was nearing death he made it his mission to get his father to run for president. Though Dowd did not report that Beau Biden made the request on his death bed, the story came to be portrayed that way.
But speculation swirled that Biden would heed his son’s wish by jumping into a thin Democratic presidential field. There were also some reports that Biden leaked the story of the death bed request in order to generate support for his candidacy.
When Biden announced on Wednesday that he would not seek office he said that he had run out of time to mount a successful campaign.
“Beau all along thought that I should run and I could win,” Biden told “60 Minutes” Norah O’Donnell.
“But there was not what was sort of made out as kind of this Hollywood-esque thing that at the last minute Beau grabbed my hand and said, ‘dad, you’ve got to run,’ like, win one for the Gipper. It wasn’t anything like that.”
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