Speaker 1: From the Australian. Here's what's on the front. I'm Claire Harvey.
Speaker 1: It's Thursday May twenty twenty five. One of Australia's most
Speaker 1: experienced Indigenous leaders says people who self identify as Aboriginal
Speaker 1: are undermining First Nations leaders who work with established land councils.
Speaker 1: Roy RC, a Morajuri man from New South Wales, says
Speaker 1: some activists are determined to block resources and development projects
Speaker 1: and are willing to displace genuine elders. High end family
Speaker 1: cars could get cheaper as part of the Albanese government's
Speaker 1: efforts to negotiate a trade deal with the European Union,
Speaker 1: the government is examining lowering the luxury car tax, which
Speaker 1: kicks in on new cars worth over about eighty thousand
Speaker 1: dollars and raises more than a billion dollars a year.
Speaker 1: Those stories alive now at the Australian dot com dot au.
Speaker 1: Joe Biden has advanced prostate cancer, a diagnosis only revealed
Speaker 1: after he unsuccessfully sought another four years as US president.
Speaker 1: As revelations pour out about Biden's rapid cognitive decline while
Speaker 1: in office, We're joined today by Foreign editor Greg Sheridan,
Speaker 1: to ask, why are we only hearing the truth now?
Speaker 1: Greg Sheridan is The Australian's Foreign editor and we're talking
Speaker 1: today about Joe Biden's diagnosis of cancer. Of Course, as
Speaker 1: is always the case in American politics, what seems at
Speaker 1: first like a fairly simple story an old man is
Speaker 1: diagnosed with cancer has sprouted all sorts of theories, from
Speaker 1: conspiracies to blame shifting.
Speaker 2: I'm surprised that the public wasn't notified a long time ago.
Speaker 2: I think that if you take a look, it's the
Speaker 2: same doctor that said that Joe was cognitively fine, there
Speaker 2: was nothing wrong with him. Somebody is not telling the facts.
Speaker 2: That's a big problem.
Speaker 1: Greg, what was your reaction when you heard that Joe
Speaker 1: Biden had been diagnosed with prostate cancer.
Speaker 3: Well, of course, at the personal level, you would wish
Speaker 3: mister Biden, well, you know, he's been a distinguished servant
Speaker 3: of his nation. However, the American president is a human
Speaker 3: being who has to be medically fit to serve, and
Speaker 3: we're seeing now a whole plethora of books revealing the
Speaker 3: fact that Biden was plainly unfit to serve. I mean
Speaker 3: that was obvious to everyone who saw his debate with
Speaker 3: Donald Trump. He was unfit across a whole range of
Speaker 3: physical capabilities. There are stories that his doctors told him
Speaker 3: his crippling arthritis of the spine would mean he'd spend
Speaker 3: his second term in a wheelchair. He refused to take
Speaker 3: any kind of cognitive test, but his cognitive decline was obvious.
Speaker 3: There were stories he wouldn't have a cabinet meeting for
Speaker 3: twelve months because he couldn't bear to face the cabinet secretaries.
Speaker 3: And of course the special prosecutor found that you couldn't
Speaker 3: prosecute him for mishandling government documents, which he did after
Speaker 3: he was vice president, because he would present in the
Speaker 3: court as an old man with a very feeble memory.
Speaker 3: So now you have an advanced cancer diagnosis. On its face,
Speaker 3: it looks as though this couldn't have just developed five
Speaker 3: minutes ago, that there must have been some knowledge about
Speaker 3: it earlier than the election. And by insisting on remaining
Speaker 3: the candidate, he destroyed the Democrats chances in the presidential
Speaker 3: election that was held last November.
Speaker 1: Presidents have regular physical examinations and they always come out
Speaker 1: with hilariously glowing reports. Greg, you know, Donald Trump is
Speaker 1: the fittest seventy eight year old man in the world,
Speaker 1: apparently according to his doctors. But Joe Biden, as you say,
Speaker 1: wouldn't have a cognitive test, and his pre secretary at
Speaker 1: the time said that every day was a cognitive test
Speaker 1: when you are the president of the United States, looking
Speaker 1: back and knowing that it is difficult to tell when
Speaker 1: you are close to someone whether what you're seeing is
Speaker 1: just aging or whether it might actually be dementia. How
Speaker 1: critical do you think we can be of the Biden
Speaker 1: team and of the Democrats in general, for failing to
Speaker 1: see the signs of advancing decline.
Speaker 3: Claire, I think it's actually much worse than that. I
Speaker 3: think they were absolutely aware of the decline but wanted to,
Speaker 3: as it were, fraudulently I don't mean that in the
Speaker 3: legal sense, but in a moral and political sense, fraudulently
Speaker 3: hang on to the presidency and all the perks and
Speaker 3: patronage that go with it. We've had this before in
Speaker 3: American politics, you know. Woodrow Wilson had a stroke, and
Speaker 3: really the White House was run by his wife and
Speaker 3: his chief of staff for a long time, and his
Speaker 3: condition was kept from the public. Franklin Roosevelt's physical condition
Speaker 3: was kept from the public for a long time, but
Speaker 3: he certainly was mentally acute and well and capable of
Speaker 3: being president. Even in distant Australia, it was abundantly obvious
Speaker 3: that the man was just not fit to be president,
Speaker 3: even the articles that I wrote, because they bore on orcus.
Speaker 3: I had a phone call from a friend in the
Speaker 3: Biden administration saying, don't you dare write those articles. The
Speaker 3: president is fit well. Now, that just shows how paranoid
Speaker 3: they were about this. Now, Donald Trump looks extremely unhealthy,
Speaker 3: so overweight, and so forth, But no one could doubt
Speaker 3: that Donald Trump is on top of the job. I mean,
Speaker 3: he may be doing a terrible job, but he's certainly
Speaker 3: on top of the job. He knows who he is,
Speaker 3: where he is, what he's doing, and can reason things
Speaker 3: and so forth, Whereas it was abundantly obvious that Biden
Speaker 3: was incapable of the job, I think for probably twelve
Speaker 3: or eighteen months before the election.
Speaker 1: It's a lot to expect that any of us in
Speaker 1: our ninth decade would be capable of the kind of
Speaker 1: high level decision making that's required of a president. But
Speaker 1: there's a real difficulty in letting go of something that's
Speaker 1: been your lifelong dream, isn't there An example of that
Speaker 1: is Ruth Bade Ginsburg, the Supreme Court justice who stayed
Speaker 1: in the job until her death at the age of
Speaker 1: eighty seven, despite her supporters begging her to step down
Speaker 1: so that ben President Barack Obama could appoint another liberal judge.
Speaker 1: Is it understandable that Biden himself, as a human being
Speaker 1: didn't want to let go.
Speaker 3: It's understandable, but it's not forgivable. There are some jobs
Speaker 3: where you're meant to just carry on until you die. Basically,
Speaker 3: in particular the papacy. Benedict was the big exception, the
Speaker 3: first pope in hundreds and hundreds of years to actually
Speaker 3: resign because he felt he was too frail. A lot
Speaker 3: of people in their eighties, even before modern medicine, have
Speaker 3: been perfectly good prime minister's national leaders doctor mahatire In,
Speaker 3: Conrad Adenauer, Winston Churchill. There have been a lot of
Speaker 3: effective national leaders in their eighties. But sure, you can
Speaker 3: understand Biden's insane ambition. Almost anybody who becomes president or
Speaker 3: who runs for president is defined by insane ambition and
Speaker 3: a kind of crazy narcissism. You know, Biden has not
Speaker 3: been a politician who has stood steadfastly for any particular
Speaker 3: set of policies. Biden, many decades ago, was against bussing
Speaker 3: to end desegregation, and he cooperated closely with segregationists. And
Speaker 3: he was an orthodox handy abortion Catholic until he became
Speaker 3: a pro abortion Catholic, and so on. He is the
Speaker 3: very definition of the machine politician. His life has certainly
Speaker 3: had tragedy in it, the death of his first wife
Speaker 3: and daughter many years ago in a car accident, the
Speaker 3: death of his son from brain cancer, and his whole
Speaker 3: existence has been towards political office. He's a very young senator,
Speaker 3: a very old president, but none of that really counts
Speaker 3: for a hill of beans. What he did was to
Speaker 3: deprive the American people of a proper choice for the presidency.
Speaker 3: If he had said, two years into his term, guess what,
Speaker 3: I'm thrilled to be your president for one term, but
Speaker 3: it's plain to me that I wouldn't be fit for
Speaker 3: a second term. So I'm going to have this fantastic
Speaker 3: first term, and I'm going to open the doors wide
Speaker 3: open for my successor. On the Democratic side, the Democrats
Speaker 3: would have had a proper primary process. They had some
Speaker 3: terrific candidates on offer, Gretchen Whitmer, Josh Shapiro. They could
Speaker 3: have had a proper primary, worked out the best candidate,
Speaker 3: and they would have been in a good possession to
Speaker 3: confront Donald Trump. Instead of which by indulging himself in
Speaker 3: this self indulgent fantasy that he could hang on, Biden
Speaker 3: was brutally exposed in that presidential bait that he had
Speaker 3: with the Trump When I'm in to.
Speaker 4: Fix the taxis, for example, we had one thousand billionaires
Speaker 4: in America, I mean billionaires in America. If they just
Speaker 4: paid twenty four twenty five percent, either one of those
Speaker 4: numbers in need raised five hundred million dollars, billion dollars.
Speaker 3: It was a humiliating, desperate and terrible event. It was
Speaker 3: almost painful to watch it. You felt sick and sorry
Speaker 3: for the guy. But this is no way for anybody
Speaker 3: to feel about an American president that even then Biden
Speaker 3: wouldn't give UPI hung on and hang on and hang
Speaker 3: on until virtually all the Democratic congressional leadership told him
Speaker 3: he had to leave, and then he left. Kamala Harris
Speaker 3: with a very short period of time no chance for
Speaker 3: a proper Democratic primary and a really dysfunctional American election,
Speaker 3: and the American people were deprived of a proper choice.
Speaker 3: So I had to kind of even here in Australia
Speaker 3: to beat up on the guy when he's just had
Speaker 3: a terr diagnosis of cancer. You feel very sorry for
Speaker 3: him at the personal level. But this was a story
Speaker 3: of hubris, vanity and ego quite as bad as anything
Speaker 3: which Donald Trump has shown us.
Speaker 1: Coming up. Why do the Democrats keep getting it wrong?
Speaker 1: And what happens at the next election? Greg? Why do
Speaker 1: the Democrats keep getting it so wrong? If Biden was
Speaker 1: the wrong choice to begin with, and if they looked
Speaker 1: at him more clearly when he first stood for the presidency,
Speaker 1: it would have been obvious that he was not going
Speaker 1: to last the eight years that they would have hoped.
Speaker 1: They then chose the wrong candidate in Kamala Harris. They
Speaker 1: had previously chosen the wrong candidate in Hillary Clinton.
Speaker 5: You could put half of Trump' supporters into what I
Speaker 5: call the basket of deplorables right, the racist, sexies, homophobic x.
Speaker 1: Do you have any hope that the Democrats might actually
Speaker 1: put up someone next time around who will make it
Speaker 1: a proper contest.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Claire, that's a fascinating question, really complex one. So
Speaker 3: I think Hillary Clinton was quite a good candidate. Remember
Speaker 3: that she won the popular vote by three million against
Speaker 3: Trump and just lost by a sliver a couple of
Speaker 3: those battleground stage which meant that she lost the electoral College.
Speaker 3: And until she got in the ring with Trump, she
Speaker 3: was the most admired woman in America. Trump, even if
Speaker 3: people don't like him, he has a tremendous distractive capacity,
Speaker 3: and he beats up on someone and they bear a
Speaker 3: lot of scars at the end of that process. Then
Speaker 3: the primary process which selected Biden to beat Trump was
Speaker 3: itself very flaw Do you remember that Pete Bootajige won
Speaker 3: the first primary and the Democrats miscounted the votes or something,
Speaker 3: and Bootajidge didn't get that momentum. Then the primary process
Speaker 3: was interrupted by COVID, and the establishment became very worried
Speaker 3: that Bernie Sanders was going to win the primary.
Speaker 6: Thank you, no, hamsure, and let me say tonight that
Speaker 6: this victory here is the beginning of the end for
Speaker 6: Donald Trump.
Speaker 3: So they threw all their weight behind Biden. Now, remember
Speaker 3: Biden had failed dismally at two previous presidential attempts. But
Speaker 3: then Biden was successful against Trump, and he won the
Speaker 3: popular vote I think by eight million. If at that
Speaker 3: time he had committed to one term, then the Democrats
Speaker 3: would have had a good primary season and would have
Speaker 3: chosen their best candidate. I think they probably would have
Speaker 3: chosen Gretchen Whitmer, and she would have been a much
Speaker 3: stronger candidate than Kamala Harris was. But Kamala Harris I
Speaker 3: think she was a poor candidate, but she also came close.
Speaker 3: She only lost to Trump by about I think one
Speaker 3: percent or maybe one and a half percent in the
Speaker 3: popular vote, and she lost all seven swing states, but
Speaker 3: by quite narrow margin, certainly one hundred and fifty thousand
Speaker 3: votes in the right states, and she would have been president. Now,
Speaker 3: the Democrats next time will have a proper contested primary.
Speaker 3: They'll have strong candidates from the left, maybe from the
Speaker 3: so called squad I think Bernie Sanders is now too old.
Speaker 3: They'll have strong candidates from the center, state governors like
Speaker 3: Josh Shapiro and Gretchen Whitmer, Gavin Newsom in California, and
Speaker 3: the Republicans will also have a primary process, probably dominated
Speaker 3: by Trump but Trump picked candidates when he's not on
Speaker 3: the ballot himself. Don't have a history of doing that. Well. Oh,
Speaker 3: I think the next presidential election, it's a long way away,
Speaker 3: but it's absolutely wide open. Trump is doing poorly in
Speaker 3: the polls at the moment, so he's likely to lose
Speaker 3: the House of Representatives next November. The American system is
Speaker 3: full of checks and balances and normally works things out.
Speaker 3: I think the Biden episode in particular was a very
Speaker 3: rare example of a president who became manifestly unfit while
Speaker 3: in office. Barack Obahama and George W. Bush were both
Speaker 3: as fit as fleas, and Trump seems to have an
Speaker 3: unbelievable life force. Gosh, I've never known anyone with his
Speaker 3: body shape and his sort of agitated emotional intensity and
Speaker 3: such a high stress job who just seems to thrive
Speaker 3: on it. Big Max, no sleep, tweeting at three.
Speaker 1: Am, rening bid.
Speaker 3: Yeah, all of that, getting mad with everybody all the time.
Speaker 3: It seems to keep him alive. So, you know, different
Speaker 3: strokes for different folks, I guess.
Speaker 1: Greg Sheridan is The Australian's foreign editor. You can read
Speaker 1: Greg's reporting on everything from Ukraine to Taiwan anytime at
Speaker 1: the Australian dot com dot au