'Really screwed up': Biden hammers red states over pandemic response in exit interview

President Joe Biden will leave office on Monday, after President-elect Donald Trump is inaugurated at 12 PM Eastern Time. But the 46th president of the United States is using one of his final public appearances to take swings at Republican-led states' economic management.

NBC News recently reported that Biden didn't hold back when blasting how his political opponents in state governments across the country handled the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic – particularly when it came to rebuilding their economies after millions were put out of work due to the virus. Biden's remarks came in response to a question from MSNBC host Lawrence O'Donnell, who asked the outgoing president why his administration "invested more in red states than blue states."

"Red states really screwed up in terms of the way they handled their economy and the way they handled manufacturing and the way they handled access to supply chains," Biden said. He also admitted that, despite getting the U.S. economy back on track in the wake of the pandemic, he made a "mistake" in "not getting our allies to acknowledge that the Democrats did this."

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Biden said he overlooked the need to "let people know that this was something the Democrats did, that it was done by the party," when it came to passing critical legislation like the American Rescue Plan. That legislation — which passed largely on party lines — injected roughly $2 trillion into the economy that provided relief for renters, workers, homeowners, student borrowers, small businesses and state governments to aid in pandemic recovery.

"Ironically, I almost spent too much time on the policy and not enough time on the politics," the president told O'Donnell.

The outgoing president observed that Trump's decision to sign the first wave of Covid-19 stimulus checks was smart politics. Even though it didn't result in him winning the 2020 election, Biden said voters' hazy memories going into the 2024 election led to a lot of confusion about who was ultimately responsible for getting the U.S. through the pandemic.

"It helped [Trump] a lot, and it undermined our ability to convince people that we were the ones that were getting this to them," Biden said.

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Click here to read NBC News' full article.