Biden: No interest in serving in Clinton’s Cabinet

by Jordan Fabian - 10/28/16 4:30 PM ET

Vice President Biden says he is not interested in serving as secretary of State under Hillary Clinton if she wins the White House.

“I’ll do anything I can if Hillary’s elected to help her, but I don’t want to remain in the administration,” Biden told Minnesota television station KBJR on Friday. “I have no intention of staying involved.”

{mosads}Reports emerged late Thursday that Biden was on Clinton’s shortlist as potential secretary of State if she wins the presidency.

Biden said that no one from the Clinton campaign has approached him about the position.

The vice president’s presence on Clinton’s shortlist, first reported by Politico, sent shockwaves throughout Washington.

In some ways, the vice president seems like a natural fit as Clinton’s top diplomat. He served in the Senate for 36 years, including a long stretch as chairman the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, before then-Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.) selected him as his running mate in 2008.

As vice president, Biden has been Obama’s point man on some of his administration’s thorniest foreign policy issues, including the conflicts in Ukraine and Iraq.

Biden has repeatedly slammed Donald Trump over the Republican presidential nominee’s praise of Russian President Vladimir Putin, with the vice president citing his world travels as evidence that foreign leaders are concerned about the GOP nominee.

His presence in a Clinton administration would serve as a bridge from Obama’s White House at a time when Clinton is campaigning on upholding his legacy.

“I think it should be no surprise that Vice President Biden would surface as a possibility for this role,” White House spokesman Eric Schultz told reporters aboard Air Force One.

He described Biden as someone with “deep foreign policy credentials” who would bring “star power” to the job, while having “the integrity and character to represent the United States’ interests around the globe.”

But Biden reportedly did not see eye to eye with Clinton on a number of foreign policy issues when she served in the Obama administration, which could pose problems if he was to serve as her top diplomat.

Topics they disagreed on included the troop surge in Afghanistan, the intervention in Libya and the raid that killed Osama bin Laden.

One day before he announced he would not run for president, Biden contradicted the public record and said he was not opposed to the bin Laden raid. He said he privately advised Obama to go ahead with it.

Clinton allies grew frustrated with Biden as he spent much of last year considering his own presidential bid.

“It’s time that he make that decision,” Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta said on MSNBC last October, weeks after Biden began mulling a run.

Biden has also spoken frequently about how he’s committed to continuing his cancer moonshot initiative after he leaves the White House, something that would be difficult if he were to serve in a Clinton administration.

During a campaign stop this week for Clinton in Ohio, Biden said he was talking to “a couple of major universities” about starting projects related to domestic and foreign policy after January 2017.

“I may write a book,” he added. “This might disappoint you; it won’t be a tell-all book.”

Updated at 5:15 p.m.

Tags Barack Obama Donald Trump Hillary Clinton