Joe Biden: One of the most persistent rumors about my potential 2016 run wasn't true
Biden told CBS' Norah O'Donnell in the interview that his late son, Beau, who died this May at the age of 46, did not urge his father to run from his death bed.
Biden said his two sons, Beau and Hunter, have always been his closest advisers.
"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. "Beau from the time he was in his 30s - or actually his late 20s - he and Hunter were one of my two most reliable advisors. And, Beau all along thought that I should run and I could win."
"But," Biden added, "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."
Reports of that "Hollywood" moment first prominently surfaced in an early-August column from The New York Times' Maureen Dowd. Dowd reported that when Beau Biden "realized he wasn't going to make it," he asked his father to chat.