Vice President Joe Biden cleared up a few rumors during an interview with
"60 Minutes" that aired Sunday, including the question of whether his 46-year-old son, Beau, urged him on his deathbed in May to run for president.
He didn't, Biden said.
Rather, Biden said, his son had been urging him all along to run.
"But 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,'" Biden said. "It wasn't anything like that."
Biden also said he wasn't referring to Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton when he said during his announcement on Wednesday that Republicans should not be viewed as the enemy.
"That was a reference to Washington – all of Washington," Biden said.
Biden admitted he really wanted to run – and his wife, Jill, told interviewer Norah O'Donnell that she was urging him to do so even in the weeks after Beau's death when he was saying he should just announce he wasn't running.
But by last week he had determined he wouldn't be able to win.
He said he wouldn't have run against Clinton, whom he insists is a friend despite press reports to the contrary, but instead would have run because he believes he has the best chance of winning the general election.
Jill Biden agreed, and said she urged her husband to get into the race so the accomplishments of the Obama administration wouldn't be lost with Republican Supreme Court appointments.
"What about education? What about community colleges?" Jill Biden said. "I felt like we were – everything we has worked so hard for in this administration, you know, could just all change."
Though many felt the announcement that he wasn't running sounded more like he had simply read the edited version of a speech prepared for him to say he was running, Biden insisted that he has no plans to jump in if Clinton falters, and said he won't run for office again.
Instead, he said he will seek to influence the Democratic Party from the outside.
He said he doesn't like GOP front-runner Donald Trump's "attack on all immigrants," calling it "beneath the country."
"I don't think it's where the American people are. And I hope he really doesn't believe it," Biden said.
As for Rep. Paul Ryan's possible future as House speaker, Biden was optimistic, saying the Wisconsin Republican will build bridges.
"This is a decent guy," Biden said. "And he knows you cannot function, this government can’t function, without reaching some consensus, and he wants to do that."
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