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Speaker 2: Hey guys, for my podcast with Kyle recorded a great
Speaker 2: interview with Matt Brunnig from the People's Policy Project. Got
Speaker 2: into a lot about healthcare and some of the lives
Speaker 2: that have been spread recently, but also got his reaction
Speaker 2: to this New Wall Street Journal reporting about how Biden's
Speaker 2: aids hit him and lied to the public about the
Speaker 2: state of his decline. Enjoy this interview, and if you
Speaker 2: do like it and want the full thing and to
Speaker 2: get our interviews every single week, you can subscribe on substack.
Speaker 2: We'll have the link down below for you in any case, enjoy. Matt,
Speaker 2: I want zoomount a little bit to talk to you
Speaker 2: about the Biden administration, the legacy. I saw you tweeting
Speaker 2: about this Wall Street Journal article that just came out
Speaker 2: where I don't know if you've seen it yet, babe,
Speaker 2: but they've got all these details of the links that
Speaker 2: his aides went to, Oh I did see this yet
Speaker 2: to cover up his incredible decline. They begin with this
Speaker 2: anecdote of Michael Lo Rosa out there touting the first lady,
Speaker 2: Jill Biden, like her campaign schedule and how she'd been
Speaker 2: to so many places in Iowa, and the staff was
Speaker 2: pissed at him because they're like, well, in contrast, this
Speaker 2: makes Joe Biden look terrible because you can't really do anything.
Speaker 2: So obviously there's the age and declined part. But I also, yeah,
Speaker 2: and I'd love to get your reaction just to that piece, Matt,
Speaker 2: because you were saying, and it is incredible they knew
Speaker 2: all this, and yet they still decided to go forward
Speaker 2: with him. They still decided, Hey, it's a good idea
Speaker 2: for you to get out there and debate Donald Trump.
Speaker 2: Like none of us can really know what was going
Speaker 2: on in their minds. But did they just they just
Speaker 2: didn't think there was any choice but to sort of
Speaker 2: march go forward on this death march? Were they send
Speaker 2: it a failure?
Speaker 1: They did the debate early in case something like this happens,
Speaker 1: they could try to pull the plug, right, Yeah, I
Speaker 1: don't have the theory.
Speaker 2: I don't know what do you what do you read
Speaker 2: into all about mat Yeah?
Speaker 4: I mean it's hard to figure out the mixture of things, right,
Speaker 4: because Biden is making decisions, and so maybe on some level,
Speaker 4: you know, if Biden wants a debate, he's going to debate.
Speaker 4: There's nothing you can do to make him not debate.
Speaker 4: But the individual staffers also make decisions, right, So that's
Speaker 4: the part I don't If I'm an individual staffer and
Speaker 4: I see the situation as it is as we all
Speaker 4: now understand it, why wouldn't I do something, say something.
Speaker 4: I mean, you could resign, you could do whatever, right
Speaker 4: to make a big fuss about it, especially if you think,
Speaker 4: as so many seem to, that Trump was this sort
Speaker 4: of existentially, you know, horrible figure that we needed to avoid,
Speaker 4: and you're going to play this game where somehow we're
Speaker 4: going to hide Biden. But then he's also going to
Speaker 4: win an election without what because it's not even just
Speaker 4: the debate, right, that was a singular moment, but debate
Speaker 4: elections involved a tremendous amount of public appearances and interviews
Speaker 4: and whatever, and you're not going to be able to
Speaker 4: hide him away from that. So I don't I don't know.
Speaker 4: I find that that whatever the thought process involved in
Speaker 4: all that very very strange. And to say even okay,
Speaker 4: well so we had the debate early, Well you need
Speaker 4: to be thinking about this before the primary, right because oh, well,
Speaker 4: he can bow out after the debate. And then what
Speaker 4: we're left with Harris, who at that point had been
Speaker 4: a very unsuccessful politician. I mean, you know, she's a senator,
Speaker 4: but presidentially she'd done very very poorly. So yeah, I
Speaker 4: don't know, a lot of bad decision making in that.
Speaker 1: And then yeah, they ka cooned Biden's closest aids, coconed
Speaker 1: him to hide him and to protect him from public scoreol.
Speaker 1: And then the other people who were in contact with
Speaker 1: him was probably limited. And then if you think about
Speaker 1: all the incentive structures, it makes it so that it's
Speaker 1: just like, hey, shut up, don't say anything. If you
Speaker 1: resign and you try to virtue signal about how this
Speaker 1: is a problem, you're immediately going to be castigated as
Speaker 1: you're like a you know, a right wing op. You
Speaker 1: don't have a future in any democratic politics anymore. So,
Speaker 1: like all of the incentive structures are there to just
Speaker 1: kind of force everybody to don't ask, don't tell. Right,
Speaker 1: It's like it don't ask, don't tell policies.
Speaker 2: I mean, his circle of advisors has been the same
Speaker 2: since like nineteens.
Speaker 1: Right, And they're willing to lie for him. They're willing
Speaker 1: to lie for him.
Speaker 2: As family members, right, and yeah, and you know there's
Speaker 2: lots of reporting about how he didn't want to hear
Speaker 2: any negative news and so they didn't bring him.
Speaker 1: And by the way, Trump was the same way, right,
Speaker 1: Like it's funny that the ego there are.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there are some Trumpian characters er.
Speaker 1: Hear anything negative to show me Trump famously, so that
Speaker 1: would say, show me the good things and have it
Speaker 1: like on one page and big font. They have to
Speaker 1: have his name in the briefing in order for him
Speaker 1: to be like that's right, Trump, I like this.
Speaker 2: And since you already have this very narrow circle of
Speaker 2: longtime advisors established with very few you know, people who
Speaker 2: have been able to penetrate that in the past couple
Speaker 2: of years. If you're someone who has any kind of
Speaker 2: an inn, you know that the minute you tell him
Speaker 2: something he doesn't want to hear, you're out. And so
Speaker 2: he surrounds himself with yes men and women, and then
Speaker 2: you know, creates self, creates this bubble, and then that's
Speaker 2: reinforced by the aid's desire to hide from the public
Speaker 2: and even from like cabinet secretaries and members of Congress
Speaker 2: what's going on. And it's in everybody's self interest to
Speaker 2: perpetuate this thing right up into the point where it's
Speaker 2: it's not possible. There's an anecdote in here. They say,
Speaker 2: if the president was having an off day, meetings could
Speaker 2: be scrapped altogether. On one such occasion the spring of
Speaker 2: twenty twenty one, twenty twenty one, people were talking about
Speaker 2: Here a national security official explain to another AID why
Speaker 2: a meeting needed to be rescheduled. Quote, he has good
Speaker 2: days and bad days, and today was a bad day,
Speaker 2: so we're going to address this tomorrow. Like so, it
Speaker 2: does raise a lot of questions about how many people
Speaker 2: around him knew the state of this decline, and as
Speaker 2: you said, Matt, like some of them I guess maybe
Speaker 2: earnestly believed what they were saying about Trump being this
Speaker 2: genuine threat, and yet they're so terrified I think of
Speaker 2: any kind of an actual democratic process that they just
Speaker 2: like push forward anyway in spite of really knowing what's
Speaker 2: going on.
Speaker 1: I feel like a bigger problem is the media, right,
Speaker 1: because it really was on the media to sort of
Speaker 1: be like, Okay, we got issues here and take the
Speaker 1: candidate seriously. You know, the people who ran Mary Williamson, ran,
Speaker 1: Dean Phillips ran like there were the door was opened
Speaker 1: a little bit, right, but the media shut them all out,
Speaker 1: didn't talk about them, made them seem ridiculous. And obviously
Speaker 1: all the governors who had a chance, like Gavin Newsoon
Speaker 1: and all of them, they sort of found and mid
Speaker 1: terms were decent. Yeah, but like, don't I'm curious what
Speaker 1: you think, Matt, was it was a bigger problem the
Speaker 1: media and this whole thing for not taking challengers to
Speaker 1: Biden seriously or reporting.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's the that's the media failure. I'd focus on
Speaker 4: more than anything. I remember Olivia Newsy had a piece
Speaker 4: shortly after kind of this all went down with the debate,
Speaker 4: where I mean, she basically is indicating that, you know,
Speaker 4: she's known that he's had trouble for a while, she's
Speaker 4: been covering him, and and she kind of then lays
Speaker 4: it all out and that's all well and good. But
Speaker 4: then you know, you kind of look at it and
Speaker 4: you think, well, Olivia, maybe you should have written about
Speaker 4: this a year ago when you seem to have indicated
Speaker 4: you had knowledge of it, and there had to be
Speaker 4: a number of media people who had some kind of
Speaker 4: information about it. It seemed like partially what happened among
Speaker 4: liberal media is they just decided that this was like a.
Speaker 5: Fox News lie. I remember there was a what was it?
Speaker 5: It was? They had a special counsel to investigate.
Speaker 4: Uh oh that's right, Yeah, they classified doc Robert Hurt.
Speaker 1: Oh yes, yes, and this dude was like, yeah, he's
Speaker 1: an old man who means well, but damn his brain
Speaker 1: is not working. Everybody was like sir, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4: He specifically was saying, look, I don't know if we
Speaker 4: should bring charges against him for the mishandling of these documents,
Speaker 4: because like he's he's really not there. And I remember
Speaker 4: I actually remember Atglesias was so incensed by this, and
Speaker 4: I thought it was a decent point at the time.
Speaker 4: I mean, I thought, you know, to get my cards
Speaker 4: on the table. I wrote something in Political in twenty
Speaker 4: twenty during the or twenty nineteen, during the dim primary
Speaker 4: then that that Biden was his mind was gone. But
Speaker 4: you know, it was sort of like, oh, what a
Speaker 4: clever thing this. They couldn't find enough evidence to charge him,
Speaker 4: so instead they're going to spear him and say that
Speaker 4: he's just completely gone. And you know, I don't know,
Speaker 4: just this sort of desire to think, well, that's a
Speaker 4: right wing smear, that's a right wing smear, that's a
Speaker 4: right wing smear, I think kept people from looking at
Speaker 4: the reality and reporting it correctly.
Speaker 1: That happened with Julian He was like, did you just
Speaker 1: forget the thing you said five seconds ago? And it
Speaker 1: was something that us Bernie people at the time were
Speaker 1: kind of pointing out, like, hey man, he lost his
Speaker 1: fastball at the very least. But it was just maybe
Speaker 1: that's part of the problem is that everybody dismissed it
Speaker 1: then and he won the election, so it sort of
Speaker 1: felt like, well, I guess they were being hyperball, like
Speaker 1: if the guy could win, obviously his brain's working good enough, right,
Speaker 1: and so then but then everybody like time continues.
Speaker 5: Yeah, well, and there's also there's also a question.
Speaker 4: I mean, it seems pretty clear that you don't have
Speaker 4: to be fully there cognitively to be president, you know,
Speaker 4: so in a way, you could kind of I could
Speaker 4: see someone reasoning like, well, who cares, Like we had
Speaker 4: Trump and we had Biden, Reagan had Alzheimer's or something
Speaker 4: like that.
Speaker 5: You know, one, really it's not really that necessary.
Speaker 4: But the problem is that even though it seems like
Speaker 4: it doesn't, really it's not strictly necessary, when voters realize
Speaker 4: that you're that way, that turns them off, So it
Speaker 4: becomes necessary.
Speaker 2: Don't look like a yeah, you're having like a bowl
Speaker 2: of mush shit?
Speaker 1: What does that say about us as a country? That
Speaker 1: he's right like that? People were like, yeah, maybe his
Speaker 1: brain doesn't work, but like whatever.
Speaker 2: His strongest defenders at the end were like Bernie and AOC.
Speaker 1: You remember that political calculation is what that was. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I think it was that.
Speaker 2: But I think also ideologically, like on an idea, like
Speaker 2: we got Lena Khan and this transition I do want
Speaker 2: to hear your your thoughts, matt On. Kind of like
Speaker 2: the Biden economic legacy. We got Lena Khan, We got
Speaker 2: Jennifer Bruzzo at the NLRB, who was fantastic. You know,
Speaker 2: we got some industrial policy and a few things that
Speaker 2: are like a legitimate, minor but legitimate break with the
Speaker 2: neoliberal era. And with Kamala you were less likely to
Speaker 2: get those things. So I do think that was part
Speaker 2: of the calculus with them too, is like, I don't
Speaker 2: really care that his brain is cooked. At least who
Speaker 2: got Lena.
Speaker 1: We also got Gaza, and that is enough of an
Speaker 1: excuse for them to tell the truth, right.
Speaker 2: Sure, I'm not man, Yes, I'm just trying to explain
Speaker 2: the thinking because it's Kamalaly also gave no indication that
Speaker 2: she was cool.
Speaker 1: Well, they going to break with Biden Onza, He's not
Speaker 1: stepping down. I've heard him say it a thousand times.
Speaker 1: He's not going to step down, So everybody just shut
Speaker 1: the fuck up and accept it. I think that was
Speaker 1: their thinking. If Biden wins, then will have his ear
Speaker 1: because we're the ones who defended him.
Speaker 4: Yeah, No, I think the I think the because I
Speaker 4: remember for a while, it wasn't even clear it was
Speaker 4: going to be Harris that would take over. There was
Speaker 4: a lot of you know, when they were saying all that,
Speaker 4: no one knew what would happen. But I think the
Speaker 4: assumption there from Bernie world, you know Bernie specifically, not
Speaker 4: like you know, his fans, but was Look, Biden very
Speaker 4: very clearly is not going to step down. He has
Speaker 4: made this so clear. So here's a little moment where
Speaker 4: kind of the center is abandoning him and they're calling
Speaker 4: on him to step down. We know he's not going to,
Speaker 4: so what if we kind of, you know, suck up
Speaker 4: get close to him? And he did actually adopt some
Speaker 4: of their policies. I remember in that innert brief period
Speaker 4: after the debate before he dropped out, they got him
Speaker 4: to endorse national rank control.
Speaker 1: So you know, I I forgot about that. You remember that,
Speaker 1: I totally forgot about it. By the way, to your point, guys,
Speaker 1: it's kind of weird that Iglesias was such a big
Speaker 1: defender of Biden, given that Iglesias has made crystal clear
Speaker 1: that his politics economically are much more like a Bill
Speaker 1: Clinton or Barack Obama than a Joe Biden. So why
Speaker 1: was he such we shouldn't he have been arguing that
Speaker 1: Biden has gone too far left on economic issues? You
Speaker 1: know what I'm saying, Like it's not even ideologically they're
Speaker 1: actually not lined up. Yeah, but he still was like
Speaker 1: one of his biggest defenders. What do you make of that?
Speaker 5: You know, I don't know. Glaciers has a complicated views.
Speaker 5: You know, at some level.
Speaker 4: He wrote the One Billion Americans book, you know some Yeah,
Speaker 4: and then and.
Speaker 2: Now it's like you people like immigration too much? Hold
Speaker 2: the phone here, buddy.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, he just pretended like he didn't write the book.
Speaker 2: But that is not How do you see uh in
Speaker 2: terms of the economic legacy? You know, it's always difficult
Speaker 2: to just be like put aside the genocide, but you know,
Speaker 2: on some of the economic pieces, do you see Biden
Speaker 2: as sort of transitional figure that the parallel that often
Speaker 2: comes to mind is like a Jimmy Carter, who was
Speaker 2: this transitional figure between like the New Deal era and
Speaker 2: the neoliberal era, And I do think Joe Biden in
Speaker 2: some ways occupies that same sort of space. How significant
Speaker 2: do you see some of the breaks being, you know,
Speaker 2: from neoliberalism? Do you think where did that come from like,
Speaker 2: was that just like ron Klain? Was it Bernie Sanders influence?
Speaker 2: Was it just that's where the center of the party
Speaker 2: was now and sort of where the world is moving?
Speaker 2: What do you make of some of those pieces?
Speaker 4: Yeah, so what happened there? I think on the administrative
Speaker 4: agency front, what seems to have happened with someone like
Speaker 4: Lena Kahan or Canter is that if you recall in
Speaker 4: the twenty twenty primary, Warren kind of didn't really endorse
Speaker 4: Bernie when she dropped out, which was a little bit
Speaker 4: of a blow because now it was sort of like
Speaker 4: the left block. It seemed like she was given essentially,
Speaker 4: I don't know if a literal dispensation for that or what,
Speaker 4: but she seemed to have been allowed to select the
Speaker 4: FTC chair and some of these other administrative cabinet level officials.
Speaker 4: So that seems to be what happened there, right in
Speaker 4: the same way that buddhach Edge became Department of Transportation secretary,
Speaker 4: Warren's dispensation for her behavior in the election was that
Speaker 4: she got to pick those nominees, So you know what
Speaker 4: have we So it was always very funny like are
Speaker 4: we talking about Biden administration?
Speaker 5: Are we talking about Biden himself.
Speaker 4: Biden Himself's mind is so gone, what do we even
Speaker 4: You know, it's always just sort of like which puppet
Speaker 4: is is or which puppeteer is running which piece of
Speaker 4: this puzzle. The other thing he did would have been
Speaker 4: kind of run the economy hot, this sort of like
Speaker 4: macro economic stimulus stuff that seemed to be coming out
Speaker 4: of what was just kind of the consensus liberals to
Speaker 4: progressive opinion on what happened after two thousand and eight,
Speaker 4: which is that Obama did not pass a big enough
Speaker 4: stimulus and that kept the economy depressed for a decade,
Speaker 4: and so they're trying to learn the lessons from that
Speaker 4: and that, I mean, you could find that pretty much
Speaker 4: anyway in any of the kind of center left to
Speaker 4: left policy world, and that's where he would have staffed
Speaker 4: his agency, staffed his administration with those same kind of people,
Speaker 4: whether it's Center for American Progress, Roosevelt people like that.
Speaker 4: So that there's that part of it industrial policy and then.
Speaker 5: And then climate right.
Speaker 4: So I don't know, these just sort of these strands
Speaker 4: that he picked up, and it's kind of hard in
Speaker 4: retrospect to know how much he was hip to it
Speaker 4: or what exactly was going on, but it seemed to
Speaker 4: be he managed to get the people who managed to
Speaker 4: control him were people who were, you know, of those
Speaker 4: various policy sort of persuasions.
Speaker 1: One of the things I fear is that the Infrastructure
Speaker 1: Bill and the IRA and the Chips Act, and like
Speaker 1: the lasting positive implications of that, that that's all going
Speaker 1: to happen under the Trump presidency and Trump will just
Speaker 1: hop in front of that parade and pretend like it
Speaker 1: was his tax cuts for the rich that did it
Speaker 1: or something, you know. So it makes me fear like,
Speaker 1: you know, a backslide, a potential backslide.
Speaker 5: It.
Speaker 1: We have this debate like long ago about whether or
Speaker 1: not the neoliberal era was actually coming to an end,
Speaker 1: and my case was that because of the deleterious impact
Speaker 1: of money and politics, it basically locks in a sort
Speaker 1: of neoliberal era because the politicians are always going to
Speaker 1: default doing what their donors want them to do, which
Speaker 1: is always neoliberal. And it makes me wonder, like, let's
Speaker 1: assume for a second, a Democrat wins in twenty twenty eight,
Speaker 1: which is very possible considering how batchit crazy, this administration
Speaker 1: is going to be a let's say you get a
Speaker 1: Gavinusomer pe Buddha Jedge, just to play it safe at
Speaker 1: the moment, because probably one of the more likely things happen.
Speaker 1: Are they going to be more inclined to just revert
Speaker 1: back to Obama style economics, or are they going to
Speaker 1: be more inclined to either copy a Biden's style or
Speaker 1: potentially even go further than a Biden side. I don't
Speaker 1: know the answer to that, and I'm curious what you guys.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it No, the primary is going to be very
Speaker 4: interesting in this respect. Obviously, I'm on the hunt for
Speaker 4: who's going to carry the left torch as it's not
Speaker 4: going to be burning this this go around. But that
Speaker 4: seems like it's, you know, it's gonna it's really unclear
Speaker 4: where things are going to go, especially because you had Biden,
Speaker 4: which did who did one thing, and then as Crystal
Speaker 4: was pointing out, the the Harris in her campaign did
Speaker 4: something quite different. So even his successor who was the VP,
Speaker 4: went a whole other route with it.
Speaker 5: There seemed to be this.
Speaker 4: Blip that for a while in kind of election world
Speaker 4: that you know, we need to run it a certain way,
Speaker 4: focus on a few specific popular issues, like abortion access whatever,
Speaker 4: and keep everything, you know, everything else kind of under
Speaker 4: wraps and tacked to the right, be more conservative, say
Speaker 4: some negative things about immigration, go on TV and pretend
Speaker 4: like you have a gun.
Speaker 5: And like stuff like that.
Speaker 1: Like that was.
Speaker 4: Like that was a little moment, but it failed. So
Speaker 4: but you know, is it Why did it fail?
Speaker 5: I don't.
Speaker 4: I don't know, Like it's very unco like we don't
Speaker 4: have a success. Biden is gone, Harris did something completely
Speaker 4: different Obama's way in the rear view mirror. Bernie didn't
Speaker 4: succeed in the primary. He had a kind of an
Speaker 4: exciting moment like so, who I have no idea.
Speaker 5: I don't think.
Speaker 4: Anyone maybe and maybe that's why we're having there's so
Speaker 4: many debates now about is the problem the groups or
Speaker 4: was the problem David.
Speaker 5: Shore, like what's the what's the issue?
Speaker 4: You know?
Speaker 1: I just hope that they don't take the worst possible lesson,
Speaker 1: which is like how could you run on that six
Speaker 1: thousand dollars child tax credit? That was a bad idea.
Speaker 1: That's way too much money.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's a little bit of that out there.
Speaker 2: I mean there is like crazy. I'm sort of I
Speaker 2: hate to keep it bringing out Matt Iglacias. But one
Speaker 2: of the points that he and others in his lane
Speaker 2: are sort of raising is, look, Biden did all this
Speaker 2: stuff you people wanted them to do, and the economy
Speaker 2: was like, people didn't love it. It was unpopular. So
Speaker 2: I guess you were wrong about like supporting labor rights
Speaker 2: and anti trust policy and like these more left wing
Speaker 2: type policy ideas. I mean, that is one argument that's
Speaker 2: being made. Another argument that's being made right, like immigrants
Speaker 2: you should, yeah, I just like throw trans people under
Speaker 2: the bus, adopt Trump's like you know, hawkish border cruelty
Speaker 2: she did, which she did, and that's what she did.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, the moderation on what you might think of
Speaker 4: more cultural type issues if you include immigration, and then
Speaker 4: paired down her she was not economically and but she
Speaker 4: did all those things.
Speaker 5: But then I think some people.
Speaker 2: You know what what back in twenty twenty she said
Speaker 2: a thing on a questionnaire in an interview and people
Speaker 2: still remember that, and so that's why she lost, which
Speaker 2: I mean, like, obviously I think this argument is incorrect
Speaker 2: because also at the same time, when you are at
Speaker 2: sort of like peak wokeness, Biden wins. So wouldn't you
Speaker 2: think that the wokeness destroying the Democratic Party would have
Speaker 2: been a factor at the time when it was that
Speaker 2: like peak woke wokeness on the the
Speaker 1: Whateverstometer, the peak wokeness on the wilmeter,