Donald Trump Latest News: Biden Memoir Rips Jan. 6
The most pointed donald trump latest news of the week arrived in print rather than on a stage, when The Atlantic published the first excerpt from former President Joe Biden’s memoir on Monday morning and the sharpest passage in it was aimed directly at the man who succeeded him. In the excerpt from “Promise Me, America,” Biden writes about the attack on the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021, in language that leaves no room for softening, and he ties the day to a broader argument that American democracy is durable but only if Americans defend it. The book is due in stores on November 17, and the excerpt landed one day after Biden told the public that his fight with prostate cancer will keep him from promoting it the way he had hoped.
The excerpt, published at 5 a.m. Eastern on Monday, is the first extended passage the public has seen from a book Biden announced in July and wrote while his health was changing. In it, Biden mainly criticizes some of the earliest actions of President Donald Trump’s second term, according to CNN’s account of the piece, and he expresses confidence that American democracy can withstand the era of his successor.
The January 6 Passage: Should Follow Him to His Grave
The passage that drew the most attention is short, direct, and aimed at Trump’s claim to stand with law enforcement. “You don’t get to turn a blind eye to cops being punched, speared, sprayed, and brutalized and call yourself a friend of law enforcement,” Biden writes. “What Trump did on January 6, 2021, should never be forgotten. It should follow him to his grave.” The words were quoted widely within hours of the excerpt’s publication, and they set the tone for a book that treats the Capitol attack not as a closed chapter but as the defining test of Trump’s record.
Biden’s framing matters because of how Trump himself has talked about the day. Trump has described the people convicted over the riot as hostages, a characterization Biden highlighted as far back as the 2024 campaign. The former president’s argument is that the attack cannot be separated from the man who was president when it happened, and that forgetting it would be a choice with consequences.
The passage also fits the larger case the excerpt makes about democracy. The publisher’s description of the piece says that in it, the former president calls on Americans to defend their democracy, and CNN’s account notes that Biden pairs his criticism of Trump’s early second-term actions with confidence that the country’s institutions can outlast the moment. That is a familiar Biden formulation, one he used throughout his presidency: that the threat is real, that the stakes are high, and that the American system is strong enough to survive if citizens act.
A Fawning White House Meeting
The excerpt also contains a surprising account of the meeting between the two men after the 2024 election, when Biden invited Trump to the White House for the traditional post-election conversation between the outgoing and incoming presidents. According to CNN’s account of the excerpt, Biden writes that Trump’s tone toward him during that meeting “bordered on fawning,” that Trump told him they would be “good friends” if not for politics, and that Trump praised his job creation record as “extraordinary.” Biden writes that he did not understand the flattery. “I didn’t really understand why he was buttering me up, so I cut off his compliments to move on to the business at hand,” he writes, pivoting to the foreign policy issues he wanted to raise with Trump before leaving office.
The account is striking because it captures a side of Trump that his public persona rarely shows, and because it sits beside the excerpt’s harshest judgments of him. Biden presents a president-elect who was warm and complimentary in private while the two men discussed the handover of power, and then measures that private warmth against the public record that followed.
What Biden raised in the meeting is described only in general terms in the accounts published so far, as foreign policy issues he wanted to put before his successor. The two men came into that room from opposite ends of the deepest divide in American politics. Biden had defeated Trump in 2020, dropped out of the 2024 race after a disastrous debate performance in June of that year, and watched his vice president, Kamala Harris, lose the election to Trump.
Cancer Limits the Book Tour
The excerpt arrived one day after Biden gave the public a candid update on his health. On Sunday, November 8, he announced on social media that he “won’t be able to do as many conversations” about his upcoming memoir because of his fight with prostate cancer. “Some days are better than others. It hasn’t stopped me. But sometimes it slows me down,” he wrote. “What that means is, unfortunately, I won’t be able to do as many conversations about my book as I’d hoped. However, I’m hopeful the words on the page speak for themselves.”
Biden, who turns 84 on November 20, is the oldest living former president, and his health has been a matter of public concern since he revealed his cancer diagnosis in May 2025, less than four months after he left the White House. His office said at the time that he appeared to have a “more aggressive” form of the disease but that it “appears to be hormone-sensitive which allows for effective management.”
The toll of the disease has become clearer in the months since the diagnosis. His son Hunter Biden told the BBC in August that his father’s cancer had “metastasized into his bones and further,” adding, “It’s really sad to watch. The only thing that I’d say about my dad, about his health right now, is I wish he would complain more, because it’s not good.” Biden completed treatment for stage four cancer in October 2025, and his doctors remain encouraged by his response to treatment, with radiation having worked as intended.
What Promise Me, America Covers
“Promise Me, America” is Biden’s personal account of his four years in the White House, published by Little, Brown and Company, and it is scheduled for release on November 17, two weeks after Election Day. Biden announced the book in a video on July 15, saying, “It’s about the challenges we faced as a nation, about the decisions I made and why I made them. Leading the country through Covid, rebuilding our economy and restoring our democracy after the attack on Jan. 6th. Ending our nation’s longest war in Afghanistan, strengthening NATO, and supporting Ukraine. It’s about why I chose to run for reelection, and why I chose to step aside. Most of all, it’s about my faith in the promise of America.”
The book covers the defining episodes of a presidency that began in the middle of a pandemic and ended with a handover to the man Biden had defeated four years earlier. It takes up the Covid-19 pandemic, the January 6 attack, the withdrawal of American forces from Afghanistan, the economy and the infrastructure and healthcare legislation Biden signed, and the war in Ukraine. It also gives his account of the decision that shaped the end of his presidency: his choice to seek a second term, and then, under pressure from fellow Democrats after the June debate, to step aside and hand the campaign to Harris.
The title echoes Biden’s 2017 memoir, “Promise Me, Dad,” which focused on the death of his son Beau, and it is his third book after “Promises to Keep.” The new volume is framed, in Biden’s own description, as a statement about the country as much as about himself. “It covers my years as President. The challenges we faced, the decisions I made, and why I made them,” he wrote on Sunday. “It’s about who we are as a nation. What we stand for. And America’s role in the world.”
Donald Trump Latest News: Why the Timing Matters
The release date was always going to make the book a political event. November 17 falls two weeks after the midterm elections, in which Democrats won control of both the House of Representatives and the Senate, ending two years of Republican majorities. When the memoir was announced in July, its timing drew discussion inside the Democratic Party, where some worried that a Biden book tour would pull attention away from the party’s effort to focus voters on Trump’s record during the campaign.
Biden’s reemergence has divided Democrats before. In May 2025, after he gave an interview on “The View,” some in the party criticized his return to the spotlight, arguing that the party needed to move on from the 2024 defeat. Anthony Coley, a Democratic strategist who worked in the Biden administration, put it bluntly at the time: “Elections are about the future. Every time Joe Biden emerges, we fight an old war.” Biden, for his part, spoke in that period about Trump’s second term and took responsibility for the Democratic losses in 2024.
What Happens Next
The book reaches stores on November 17, and the days between now and then will be shaped by the limits Biden set himself on Sunday. With a full tour off the table, the words on the page will have to carry the book, and the excerpt strategy suggests the publisher knows it. The Atlantic’s piece is the first excerpt, and more are likely to follow in the coming days, each one chosen to keep the memoir in the news without requiring the author to travel for it.
The reaction will also be watched closely. Trump has not yet responded publicly to the excerpt, and his allies will have to decide whether to engage with a former president’s memoir or dismiss it. Democrats, meanwhile, will weigh whether to embrace the book’s argument or keep their distance from its author. And readers will judge the book itself, a 480-page account of four of the most consequential years in recent American history, written by a man who is now fighting for his health while asking the country to remember what he believes it must never forget.
*Source: The Atlantic*