He deployed phrases that dated him. When he wanted to refer to someone in a generic way, he used a made-up name, as in “Charlie Schmedlap” or “Senator Schmedlap.” When he was describing how to learn more about what was happening, he invoked an old nursery rhyme, saying he was trying to find out “who killed Cock Robin.”
Among those who made cameo appearances in his circuitous discourse were Strom Thurmond, Cory Booker and Benjamin Netanyahu. Shown a photo of himself with an arm around Senator Lindsey Graham, a Republican from South Carolina and an estranged friend, he said, “They’re the old days.” From the cold type of a transcript, it was not clear — was he wistful or bitter?
But he held out hope that he would one day get help of a more eternal nature from another acquaintance. “I still communicate with the pope, you know what I mean,” he said. “But is it constant? No. Anyway.” He went on: “He’s my ticket.” The lawyers laughed. “That was a joke,” he made clear in case it was not. (At the same time, as he often does in public, he wanted to make sure his interlocutors did not think he was kidding when he was not. “I’m not being facetious,” he said eight times during the interviews.)
He told well-worn stories of deciding to run for president in 2020 — how a dying Beau Biden, his eldest son, insisted that he not withdraw from public life out of grief, how he bristled when President Donald J. Trump equated white supremacists in Charlottesville, Va., with the protesters against them and how his grandchildren called a family meeting to urge him to get into the race.
Some of the more interesting stories, though, were of his early adulthood, now more than half a century ago. He “didn’t take law school very seriously,” he admitted, but once gave a 10-minute talk in class without reading the material and “the whole class stood up, started clapping.” He wanted to move to Idaho after law school but went to a job interview at a law firm in Delaware where he was told, “I assume you’re expecting to be hired on your looks.”
