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Speaker 1: the news from the Australian. From the Australian, here's what's
Speaker 1: on the Front. I'm Claire Harvey. It's Thursday, July fourth.
Speaker 1: An epidemic of diabetes threatens to send Australia's life expectancy
Speaker 1: rate into reverse. That's the finding of a Parliamentary Health
Speaker 1: Committee which has found seventy percent of adults in some
Speaker 1: communities have Type two diabetes. Religious groups, the Coalition and
Speaker 1: the Greens have found something in common. They all want
Speaker 1: to know if Anthony Albanesi will deliver on long promised
Speaker 1: reforms to religious discrimination laws. That story is live now
Speaker 1: at the Australian dot com dot au. Will Joe Biden
Speaker 1: step aside? And could he really hand the presidency to
Speaker 1: Kamala Harris. Today, our chief international correspondent, Cameron Stewart sorts
Speaker 1: the panic from the probabilities. It's the fourth of July
Speaker 1: in the United States, the two hundred and forty eighth
Speaker 1: anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Barda's Americans gather for
Speaker 1: hot dogs and fireworks like Macy's famous New York spectacular.
Speaker 2: Summers, the dancing industry.
Speaker 1: Their glorious democracy looks a little tatty with mounting speculation
Speaker 1: President Joe Biden will step aside to avoid handing the
Speaker 1: country back to Donald Trump.
Speaker 3: More Democrats seem to be getting cold feet over President
Speaker 3: Biden's re election campaign after that disastrous quote.
Speaker 4: A large and increasing group of House Democrats concerned about
Speaker 4: the President's candidacy.
Speaker 1: As Biden's own team digs in.
Speaker 2: He understand that he's not a young man, obviously he
Speaker 2: said this, but his focus is going to continue to
Speaker 2: deliver for the American people.
Speaker 1: Cameron Stewart is the Australian's chief international correspondent. Cameron, for
Speaker 1: a long time in US politics, we've had people engaging
Speaker 1: in wishful thinking. Will this be the end of Donald Trump?
Speaker 1: Is this a turning point for this? All that campaign
Speaker 1: and now we're at a moment where a lot of
Speaker 1: people are talking about Joe Biden potentially pulling out of
Speaker 1: this presidential race after his disastrous debate performance. Is this
Speaker 1: more wishful thinking or is this real?
Speaker 4: I think this is more than wishful thinking. I think
Speaker 4: this is really its spin points in American politics. In
Speaker 4: a way that we haven't seen before. There was such
Speaker 4: alarm within Democrat ranks about Joe Biden's performance that some
Speaker 4: people are now coming out publicly Democrat congressmen and calling
Speaker 4: him on him to step aside. The liberal learning the
Speaker 4: US media, which have been very, very supportive of Joe
Speaker 4: Biden all the way through, calling on him to either
Speaker 4: go in the case of the New York Times, or
Speaker 4: reconsider his position in the case of the Washington Post.
Speaker 4: That is very big stuff from the Democrat side, Who've
Speaker 4: got old campaign strategists like James Carvill who managed Bill
Speaker 4: Clinton's noted only two election campaign, calling on Biden to
Speaker 4: step aside. These are very big voices. Give the people
Speaker 4: what they want.
Speaker 2: Bock popular that they watched something.
Speaker 4: Different, and so it's far more than just a politics
Speaker 4: as usual it was a bad week kind of attitude,
Speaker 4: which is what Joe Biden's camp is really saying. The
Speaker 4: heavy hitters in the Democratic Party, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama
Speaker 4: have come out publicly and backed Joe Biden. Nancy Pelosi
Speaker 4: has been a little less enthusiastic, but nevertheless has still
Speaker 4: backed him.
Speaker 1: He has a bad name now again, I think it's
Speaker 1: a legitimate question to say, is this an episode or
Speaker 1: is this a condition?
Speaker 4: And you'd expect that, And of course the White House
Speaker 4: team is saying, look at which is a bad day.
Speaker 4: He had jet lag, he had a cold. Depending on
Speaker 4: what Dad is, they've got a different excuse. But the
Speaker 4: bottom line, Claire, is that fifty million Americans saw this performance,
Speaker 4: and any Australians who saw it would see with their
Speaker 4: own eyes how much of a decline Joe Biden has
Speaker 4: suffered over the past four years.
Speaker 3: Excuse me with dealing with you have to do with
Speaker 3: what if we finally beat medicare? Thank you President Biden,
Speaker 3: President Trump, Well, he's ready.
Speaker 2: He did beat medicare.
Speaker 4: He beat it to death. And I think this is
Speaker 4: really a very serious issue. I don't think it is
Speaker 4: something that would just come and go. I think the
Speaker 4: Democratic Party are really seriously considering whether Joe Biden will
Speaker 4: step up and be the contender or whether he should
Speaker 4: step aside.
Speaker 2: There was a lot.
Speaker 1: Of criticism that Joe Biden was too old when he
Speaker 1: first ran for the presidency in twenty twenty, cam but
Speaker 1: when you look back at the twenty twenty debates that
Speaker 1: he had with Donald Trump, this is the.
Speaker 3: Guy who's tried to cut Medicare. So I don't I
Speaker 3: mean the idea that Donald Trump is luxuring me on
Speaker 3: Social Security and Medicare. Come on, he tried to get
Speaker 3: rid of he tried to hurt social Security.
Speaker 1: He seemed like a fairly robust, quite normal, chatty seventy
Speaker 1: seven year old, a year younger, incidentally than Donald Trump is. Now,
Speaker 1: what do you think about that? Did that make a
Speaker 1: mistake in choosing him in the first place? Was he
Speaker 1: too old back in twenty twenty.
Speaker 4: No, I definitely don't think he was. He was, as
Speaker 4: you said, much more robust performance. He has declined very
Speaker 4: much in office, as some people simply do it. At
Speaker 4: that age, he was the perfect candidate almost for Donald Trump,
Speaker 4: because Trump, of course, he's famously erratic and volatile, and
Speaker 4: he'd had a very volatile presidency, and Americans were just
Speaker 4: looking for someone calm, experienced and boring, even really, and
Speaker 4: it did beat Donald Trump fairly convincingly. And for Joe
Speaker 4: Biden that's been a massive matter of pride, the fact
Speaker 4: that he was the one who got rid of Donald Trump.
Speaker 4: Is a Democrat hero. But now he faces the very
Speaker 4: galling prospect for him of staying too long and actually
Speaker 4: being the one, potentially, if he miscalculates here, who delivers
Speaker 4: the White House back to Donald Trump.
Speaker 1: There has never been a president who's stood aside or
Speaker 1: resigned because of illness, But there have been presidents who've
Speaker 1: had serious things happened to them and serious disabilities that
Speaker 1: they've lived with while in office. Woodrow Wilson, the Democratic
Speaker 1: president in the nineteen teens, suffered a stroke while in
Speaker 1: office and then didn't stand at the next election. Franklin
Speaker 1: Delano Roosevelt suffered polio and was quite severely disabled, but
Speaker 1: this was concealed from the American public because he wanted
Speaker 1: to project an image of being physically robust. How significant
Speaker 1: would it be if Joe Biden really did admit that
Speaker 1: he is incapacitated now, It would be huge.
Speaker 3: Really.
Speaker 4: Joe Biden understandably is a very proud man. It's not
Speaker 4: really like him to step aside, so I think it
Speaker 4: would be a massive decision on his part to do so. Firstly, Secondly,
Speaker 4: think of the timing here. We've only got four months
Speaker 4: to the presidential election. I don't think any president has
Speaker 4: stood aside so close to an actual election, and it's
Speaker 4: for aging the slash mental health reasons that he would
Speaker 4: be stepping aside again, we haven't seen that again in
Speaker 4: a presidency. I think it would be very, very humbling
Speaker 4: for Joe Biden to fearly had to step aside at
Speaker 4: this minute. But politics changes so quickly here, Claire, at
Speaker 4: the moment, I think you can say it's a very
Speaker 4: finely balanced debate as to whether Joe Biden stays. Certainly
Speaker 4: the mainstream of the Democratic Party are trying to persuade
Speaker 4: people that he will stay. Joe Biden and his family
Speaker 4: seem to want to want him to stay. But politics
Speaker 4: can change so quickly here. I think all we need
Speaker 4: to see is a couple of opinion polls that see
Speaker 4: that Joe Biden has plummeted in the fight against Donald Trump,
Speaker 4: and I think you will see the Democratic Party suddenly
Speaker 4: develop far sharper teeth overnight.
Speaker 1: So what happens if that is the case. Does it
Speaker 1: fall to Kamala Harris?
Speaker 4: That's a great question. The general consensus thinking would be
Speaker 4: that Joe Biden would effectively say I'm not running again,
Speaker 4: and he'd throw the field open. What he would do
Speaker 4: is release the convention candidates who are supposed to vote
Speaker 4: for him at the party's convention in August, and there
Speaker 4: would be an open contest between whoever wanted to contest
Speaker 4: the ballot. But that may not be the case. He may,
Speaker 4: for example, say I'm stepping aside, but I put my
Speaker 4: support behind my vice president Kamala Harris. He could even
Speaker 4: do something radical, as in resign the presidency and give
Speaker 4: the presidency to Kamala Harris.
Speaker 1: What's your take on Kamala Harris. She's widely mocked from
Speaker 1: the right of politics, and here she is rewriting the
Speaker 1: history about this is her being an empowered woman.
Speaker 2: Don't ever carry as a personal burden your capacity to
Speaker 2: do whatever you dream and aspire to do based on
Speaker 2: other people's limited ability to see who can do what.
Speaker 1: She kind of seems to tick quite a lot of
Speaker 1: woke boxes. She is much of a daughter as she's
Speaker 1: made out to be.
Speaker 4: Look, that's a good question. I think she's got some
Speaker 4: really unfair press as vice president because vice presidents don't
Speaker 4: really do much. They never really particularly good or particularly bad. Frankly,
Speaker 4: it's very hard to define their role. However, we should
Speaker 4: remember that Karmala Harris was a very poor campaigner in
Speaker 4: twenty twenty.
Speaker 2: I'm not a billionaire. I can't fund my own campaign,
Speaker 2: and as the campaign has gone on, it has become
Speaker 2: harder and harder to raise the money we need to compete.
Speaker 4: The other thing about Kamala Harris is while she is
Speaker 4: very accomplished, she's not a popular person in the Midwest
Speaker 4: and the key states in the Midwest. The big city
Speaker 4: Democrats in America love Carmelo because she's a woman of color,
Speaker 4: very highly achieved, a prosecutor, et cetera, et cetera. They're
Speaker 4: the reasons that people in the Midwest a lot of
Speaker 4: voters don't particularly like her.
Speaker 1: So if not Karmala, then who.
Speaker 4: There were two standards. Gavin News from the governor of California.
Speaker 4: He's very popular in California. He's a rather, he's straight
Speaker 4: from Central casting with straight white teeth. He's the old
Speaker 4: style candidate. If you like you, don't turn your back.
Speaker 2: You go home with the one that brought you to
Speaker 2: the dance.
Speaker 1: One hundred percent all in.
Speaker 4: I think the Democrats would have a bit of a
Speaker 4: problem given their ethos, to be replacing a woman of
Speaker 4: color with a white male from the same state. I
Speaker 4: think that would be a tricky one for them to argue.
Speaker 4: The other one is Gretchen Whitmer, who is the governor
Speaker 4: of Michigan. She's a really tough cookie.
Speaker 1: None of what she just said is true, and here's
Speaker 1: why you can't trust anything she's saying when it comes
Speaker 1: to reproductive rates.
Speaker 4: She's stood up against a lot of the Trump extremists,
Speaker 4: if you like. In her stage, she's under a kidnap
Speaker 4: plot at one stage. She's very popular in Michigan, which
Speaker 4: of course is a key swing state. She might be
Speaker 4: quite a good contender. The person when I was traveling
Speaker 4: through the Bibs covering the election last time who impressed
Speaker 4: me the most was Pete Bodhajedge, who is the Transport Minister.
Speaker 2: Joe Biden's presidency has been among the most productive and
Speaker 2: successful in American history.
Speaker 4: I think he would be on candidate as well. The
Speaker 4: issue for him might be he is gay and will
Speaker 4: be American electorate, especially African Americans, be okay with that.
Speaker 1: You were in the United States as I correspondent for
Speaker 1: the rise and then the fall, even if it's not
Speaker 1: a permanent fall of Donald Trump in twenty twenty. What's
Speaker 1: your sense in your waters now? Cam do you feel
Speaker 1: like the momentum is on for Trump? He seems like
Speaker 1: a much more disciplined performer. Certainly judging by that last debate.
Speaker 4: Now well, that was one of Trump's best performances because
Speaker 4: he didn't lose his temper, he didn't rant and rave,
Speaker 4: he kept himself quite composed. The question for Donald Trump
Speaker 4: is can he win the middle ground that he lost
Speaker 4: in twenty twenty and again in those midterms as well.
Speaker 4: He lost them there. At this point in time, his
Speaker 4: biggest advantage is simply the disarray within the Democrats over Biden, etc.
Speaker 4: He might be the Steve Bradbury kind of presidential winner
Speaker 4: here for Democrats just fall over amongst themselves because they
Speaker 4: don't know who should actually leave the party to the
Speaker 4: next election. So I think that's Donald Trump's biggest chance.
Speaker 1: Coming up is Donald Trump on a winning streak. There's
Speaker 1: a UK election in the offing too, with voters likely
Speaker 1: to sweep the Tories from power. We'll have all the
Speaker 1: latest live night and day at the Australian dot com
Speaker 1: dot au and we'll be back in just a moment, Cameron.
Speaker 1: Donald Trump's had two significant wins in the past two days.
Speaker 1: One is that He's sentencing over his conviction for hush
Speaker 1: money payments has been delayed until September. The other is
Speaker 1: that the US Supreme Court has found in the broad
Speaker 1: that presidents can't be held accountable for acts that they
Speaker 1: committed while in office. What's your sense of those two
Speaker 1: rulings and what they'll mean for Trump.
Speaker 4: Well, they're both good news for Donald Trump. And the
Speaker 4: sentencing for his hush money trial is good and bad
Speaker 4: in the sense that it's a relief for him that
Speaker 4: he won't potentially be jailed for the actual Republican convention,
Speaker 4: which is only in about two weeks time, and the
Speaker 4: sensing was going to happen about four days before that
Speaker 4: actual convention. That's been late or September. But then, of
Speaker 4: course that does mean that's quite close to the election,
Speaker 4: so there is a potential for that to backfire. The
Speaker 4: other one, of course, is the Supreme Court ruling. Basically,
Speaker 4: it's a fairly mixed ruling, but it says that the
Speaker 4: president is entitled to a presumptive immunity for a prosecution
Speaker 4: for his official acts as opposed to his unofficial acts.
Speaker 4: This does make it more difficult to prosecute a president
Speaker 4: for the acts he took in office, so that definitely
Speaker 4: helps Donald Trump. It's not a blanket ruling. Certainly he
Speaker 4: could still be prosecuted for the so called unofficial acts,
Speaker 4: but you can imagine the sort of legal arguments that
Speaker 4: would go on to determine which is official and which
Speaker 4: is unofficial. The big picture here, Claire, is that with
Speaker 4: every single month of it goes on, Donald Trump's various
Speaker 4: trials that are coming up get delayed or changed, or
Speaker 4: aspects of them get altered, and it is increasingly unlikely
Speaker 4: I think that any of his legal issues will actually
Speaker 4: really be an impediment to him running for president in
Speaker 4: November and potentially winning.
Speaker 1: Karen Stewart is The Australian's chief international correspondent. If Joe
Speaker 1: Biden does throw in the towel, the Australian subscribers will
Speaker 1: be the first to know. Join us at the Australian
Speaker 1: dot com dot a yu