Speaker 1: This whole story is just so tragic, and it really is.
Speaker 1: I mean, I know everybody thinks their stories, what they
Speaker 1: write about is Shakespearean, but there is just an element
Speaker 1: of centuries old drama to this. The man who rises
Speaker 1: to the top to save the nation from Donald Trump
Speaker 1: and guarantees the reelection of Donald Trump by denying his
Speaker 1: own fallibility.
Speaker 2: And his own hubris.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Hi everyone, I'm Kitty Kuric and this is next question.
Speaker 2: On May fourteenth, I headed down to Washington, d C.
Speaker 2: On the seven to twenty five am Regional Amtrak. Huh
Speaker 2: nice sound effect. I was on my way to the
Speaker 2: nation's capital to participate in a health conference that had
Speaker 2: been organized by Axios, and since I was going to
Speaker 2: be in the neighborhood, my producers reached out to Jake
Speaker 2: Tapper of c and Alex Thompson of Axios to see
Speaker 2: if we could sit down and discuss their explosive new book,
Speaker 2: Original Sin. It's a deep dive into the decision made
Speaker 2: by President Joe Biden to run for reelection and about
Speaker 2: the people in the Biden inner circle who were behind it.
Speaker 2: Alex Thompson, Jake Tapper, authors of Original Sin. Hi, guys,
Speaker 2: how are you good?
Speaker 1: How are you doing good?
Speaker 2: To say him, It's great to see you both. After
Speaker 2: the interview, when we jumped on the Essella heading home
Speaker 2: later that afternoon, there was someone in my assigned seat.
Speaker 2: That's someone was Joe Biden, mister Amtrak himself. How crazy
Speaker 2: is that he had about five Secret Service agents with
Speaker 2: him and was heading back to Wilmington, Delaware after meetings
Speaker 2: in Washington. I've known Joe Biden for decades, and so
Speaker 2: in between other passengers asking if they could take their
Speaker 2: photos with him, he was incredibly gracious by the way.
Speaker 2: I sat down next to him at it for a bit.
Speaker 2: I can't share our conversation because someone in his detail
Speaker 2: said this is all off the record, right, and I agreed.
Speaker 2: But I did find him his usual affable self and
Speaker 2: wrote to Jake that he was cogent and conversant. Jake responded,
Speaker 2: not surprised. In fact, his assessment echoed what he and
Speaker 2: Alex had reported in the early pages of their book.
Speaker 2: As of early twenty twenty five. They wrote, Biden can, still,
Speaker 2: of course, engage in a coherent conversation if he is
Speaker 2: prepared and rested. He didn't need preparation to have mostly
Speaker 2: small talk with me, but he was for sure coherent
Speaker 2: and he didn't think I was Diane Sawyer. That following Sunday,
Speaker 2: it was announced that Joe Biden has been diagnosed with
Speaker 2: aggressive prostate cancer that has spread to his bones. The
Speaker 2: speculation about some kind of cover up about his health
Speaker 2: issues began again. But according to to experts I spoke to,
Speaker 2: this is an unfair conclusion. We simply don't have enough information.
Speaker 2: But original Sin may do nothing to allay those concerns. Now,
Speaker 2: if you peruse social media regularly, you'll see a lot
Speaker 2: of people raging about this book. Why now, and in
Speaker 2: the view of some critics, why write it at all.
Speaker 2: So that's what I started our conversation with when I
Speaker 2: sat down to talk to Jake and Alex last Wednesday
Speaker 2: in Washington. Reading the comments on social media this morning,
Speaker 2: I was like.
Speaker 1: Never read the comments. Don't you know that you never
Speaker 1: read the.
Speaker 2: I actually do. I don't know why, because I do
Speaker 2: like to take the temperature of some people, and given
Speaker 2: some of them are taken with a grain of salt,
Speaker 2: but I like to see what people are saying, and
Speaker 2: a lot of folks are really taking you to to tasks.
Speaker 2: I want to read some of the comments from a
Speaker 2: post on the New Yorkers Instagram about your book, not
Speaker 2: look Back. Let's get working on fixing the future, get
Speaker 2: a grip, Let's talk about the real issues and get
Speaker 2: over Biden. What the hell? Slow news day, Jake? And yeah,
Speaker 2: once again, let's not blame the Republicans at all. Maybe
Speaker 2: Jake Tapper could get away from behind the desk and
Speaker 2: investigate how journalists like himself don't hold Trump to account
Speaker 2: and ask crappy questions. Okay, so you get the drift,
Speaker 2: you guys, and good morning.
Speaker 1: By good to see you morning, Nice to see you.
Speaker 2: So you know, what would you say to those people
Speaker 2: who are really giving you a hard time about looking
Speaker 2: at this issue and Joe Biden's kind of cognitive ability
Speaker 2: at this point?
Speaker 1: Yeah, So I have many thoughts. One of them is
Speaker 1: I do cover President Trump with aggressive analysis every day,
Speaker 1: two hours a day, and then every other Sunday. So
Speaker 1: I mean I would suggest that that writer might want
Speaker 1: to turn on CNN at five o'clock Eastern and see
Speaker 1: because we do do that coverage. But beyond that is
Speaker 1: what George Clooney said to me, said to me, and
Speaker 1: Alex the other day when I talked to him at
Speaker 1: the end of his play on Broadway, good Night and
Speaker 1: Good Luck. Have you seen it?
Speaker 2: Yes? It has great right, Yeah, I thought it was
Speaker 2: really good.
Speaker 1: So it's entirely said in nineteen fifty four except the
Speaker 1: very end where he shows this montage of what television
Speaker 1: has become since then. And in addition to I mean,
Speaker 1: there's lots in that montage, but one of the you
Speaker 1: see lies about the twenty twenty election from Republicans, and
Speaker 1: then you see lies about Biden's acuity from Democrats. And
Speaker 1: I asked him about the importance why he felt that
Speaker 1: was important to include, and he said, it's about speaking
Speaker 1: truth to power, no matter who's in power. But also,
Speaker 1: how do you think we got Trump? That was Clooney's answer.
Speaker 1: And I think Democrats need to reckon with this fact
Speaker 1: that one of the reasons why even as Trump's pull
Speaker 1: numbers go down, democrats pull numbers are not going up.
Speaker 1: And I think the lies, the gas lighting that the
Speaker 1: Biden White House and President Biden himself told the country
Speaker 1: about his aque are and albatross not unlike what the
Speaker 1: Iraq War was for Republicans, you know, more than a
Speaker 1: decade ago.
Speaker 2: Do you think, Alex that the lack of transparency shown
Speaker 2: by the Biden administration and about his health or mental condition,
Speaker 2: do you think that is contributing to the low approval
Speaker 2: ratings for Democrats. As Jake points out.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think some voters feel gaslet by the Democratic
Speaker 3: Party by saying that this guy could serve his name
Speaker 3: in that he was. They were saying he was on
Speaker 3: top of it, running circles around his aides at the time,
Speaker 3: but also like this guy could serve another four years
Speaker 3: till he was eighty six.
Speaker 4: I do think the.
Speaker 3: Democrats, according to voters I've talked to, like Democrats have
Speaker 3: a credibility problem because they were insisting. And I'd say,
Speaker 3: you know, also in response to those comments, I mean,
Speaker 3: those are the same comments I got whenever I reported
Speaker 3: on Biden's age going back to twenty twenty one and
Speaker 3: especially starting in twenty twenty three, and you know, focus
Speaker 3: on Trump and it's like, well, you know, first of all,
Speaker 3: our job is not to necessarily meet vote like readers expectations.
Speaker 4: Our job is just to say, like, well, this is
Speaker 4: what's happening.
Speaker 3: And if people don't like to read the truth, then
Speaker 3: that's on them.
Speaker 2: The George Clooney fundraiser he did with Jeffrey Katzenberg and
Speaker 2: Julia Roberts came. You described it in the summer of
Speaker 2: twenty twenty four, write in Los Angeles. That seemed to
Speaker 2: be a real aha moment obviously for George Clooney. Why
Speaker 2: did you focus so much attention or why was that
Speaker 2: anecdote Jake so important to include?
Speaker 1: Well, it was important to include because the op ed
Speaker 1: that George Clooney wrote in The New York Times between
Speaker 1: the debate and on June twenty seventh and Biden dropping
Speaker 1: out in July twenty first, that op ed by George
Speaker 1: Clooney was incredibly important and impactful. It just was here,
Speaker 1: you have a very respected, very beloved Hollywood star and director,
Speaker 1: big democratic donor.
Speaker 2: And serious personious person.
Speaker 1: His activism when it comes to Darthorn Sudan is incredibly respected.
Speaker 1: And he comes forward and says, I love Joe Biden.
Speaker 1: It's time for him to drop out and notes in
Speaker 1: a line that Jeffrey Katzenberg wanted him to remove. The
Speaker 1: Joe Biden that we all saw at the debate is
Speaker 1: the Joe Biden I saw backstage at the fundraiser. I'm
Speaker 1: paraphrasing when Joe Biden walks over to George Clooney and
Speaker 1: doesn't recognize him, somebody that he's known for more than
Speaker 1: fifteen years, somebody who is the co host of this
Speaker 1: incredibly lucrative fundraiser, record breaking Democratic fundraiser, and somebody who's
Speaker 1: one of the most recognizable faces in the world. That
Speaker 1: was really really disturbing to everybody in that little clotch
Speaker 1: who saw it happen, and Biden's behavior in general that
Speaker 1: night behind the scenes was disturbing to President Obama. It
Speaker 1: wasn't as bad on stage, but even people in the
Speaker 1: audience there, Democratic congressman and Any Custer of New Hampshire,
Speaker 1: a lot of Obama people like John Favreau, former director
Speaker 1: of Speech Running, they were all very disturbed by what
Speaker 1: they saw, and they all left that fundraiser thinking, oh
Speaker 1: my god, this is not going to work.
Speaker 2: A lot of people were making excuses for Joe Biden's
Speaker 2: sort of lack of being with it that day by
Speaker 2: saying he had a grueling travel schedule.
Speaker 1: Good, he did have a grueling travel schedule. Presidents have
Speaker 1: grueling travel schedules. That's part of the job.
Speaker 2: You write in the book Alex and your author's note
Speaker 2: that you spoke to around two hundred people lawmakers, white
Speaker 2: house staff, campaign insiders, but many of them opened up
Speaker 2: to you only after the election. I think the word
Speaker 2: after is pivotal here. How do you explain the fact
Speaker 2: that so many people remained silent when it really mattered
Speaker 2: and could have made a differ friends.
Speaker 3: I think it was a sincere in the case of
Speaker 3: most of them. I think some people were just looking
Speaker 3: out after their own self interest in keeping their jobs.
Speaker 3: But I think for a decent number of people, it
Speaker 3: was a sincere fear of Donald Trump winning and a
Speaker 3: belief that going public with their concerns was only going
Speaker 3: to have the effect of helping Trump. And if you
Speaker 3: believe that he's an essential threat to democracy, you can
Speaker 3: rationalize a lot. And I think it was a combination
Speaker 3: of those two factors, and I.
Speaker 4: But not to let them completely off the hook.
Speaker 3: I think some people just were like, if he wins,
Speaker 3: I get to keep my job, and we're doing the
Speaker 3: right thing for the country. So I think it was
Speaker 3: a combination of those things.
Speaker 2: Even now, very few people spoke on the record to
Speaker 2: you all well, there were a lot of There were
Speaker 2: a lot of anonymous sources.
Speaker 1: There are a lot of anonymous sources, but there are
Speaker 1: a lot of is that it's very clear that we
Speaker 1: spoke with you know, when you're reading certain stories, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean, we wrote it as a narrative. We didn't
Speaker 1: like as Bob Woodward does. We didn't write it as
Speaker 1: according to three sources, according to two sources. But it's
Speaker 1: pretty clear. I mean, almost everybody in the book we
Speaker 1: spoke with. Anybody named, almost all of them we spoke with.
Speaker 1: But yes, you're right, there are still people who are.
Speaker 2: Afraid why why do you think that is, Jake.
Speaker 1: They don't want to be seen as disloyal, they don't
Speaker 1: want to be seen as helping Trump, which I mean,
Speaker 1: it's still so part of the DNA. I mean my thesis,
Speaker 1: and I can't speak for Alex, but I think you
Speaker 1: agree that the Democrats really need to reckon with this.
Speaker 1: In terms of twenty twenty eight, At some point some
Speaker 1: Democratic presidential candidate is going to acknowledge that President Biden
Speaker 1: his family in the inner circle were lying to people
Speaker 1: about what was going on. But they haven't. They haven't
Speaker 1: done that yet. And I'm guessing by the time this
Speaker 1: podcast drops it, they will not have done it by then.
Speaker 2: Either, but they think they'll do it ever.
Speaker 1: Jase, Yes, I think they'll have to, and I think
Speaker 1: because this is a really I mean, it's going to
Speaker 1: be a progress. Politicians love to wait for the parade
Speaker 1: and then run in front of it, but at some
Speaker 1: point people are going to I mean, most people right
Speaker 1: now don't know the George Clooney story, that Joe Biden
Speaker 1: didn't recognize George Clooney, but I do think at some
Speaker 1: point there's going to be some saturation of that, and
Speaker 1: that's going to be shocking for people.
Speaker 2: For Democrats, Alex, I know that you made a speech
Speaker 2: at this year's White House Correspondent Stinner because obviously the
Speaker 2: role of the press in all this is going to
Speaker 2: be paramount as people are really evaluating what happened and
Speaker 2: why you said. Quote. President Biden's decline and its cover
Speaker 2: up by the people around him is a reminder that
Speaker 2: every White House, regardless of party, is capable of deception.
Speaker 2: But being truth tellers also means telling the truth about ourselves.
Speaker 2: We myself included mist a lot of this story, and
Speaker 2: some people trust us less because of it. We bear
Speaker 2: some responsibility for faith in the media being at such lows.
Speaker 2: Can you talk about the forces that were at work
Speaker 2: for members of either the White House Press Corps or
Speaker 2: the press in general that prevented the story from getting
Speaker 2: out there and getting in front of the American people,
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: I think it depends on every reporter. And the reason
Speaker 3: I even said the comments was it just to me
Speaker 3: just internally, it felt odd to especially after Jake and
Speaker 3: I reported the book, I realized even though I had
Speaker 3: been aggressive in reporting it, I realized how much I
Speaker 3: didn't know, and it just felt weird winning an award
Speaker 3: for something that I thought was something we fell short on.
Speaker 3: So I just felt like I had to say something.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 3: As for the forces you're talking about, I mean, I
Speaker 3: think it depends, you know. I think some reporters carried
Speaker 3: the White House's water right. They wanted access, they wanted
Speaker 3: like the people to reach turn their calls, you know.
Speaker 4: I think there is some of that.
Speaker 3: I think some people let probably their own like you know,
Speaker 3: internal political biases like affect them. And I think some
Speaker 3: people just believed their sources. I have like empathy and
Speaker 3: sympathy where you know, people were not telling the truth.
Speaker 3: And sometimes even like the press flags didn't even know
Speaker 3: what the truth was because they didn't really have access
Speaker 3: to the president and they were just being told they
Speaker 3: were trusting their own bosses, and then they were telling
Speaker 3: reporters what their bosses had told them, and the reporters
Speaker 3: trusted them because a lot of reporting is based on trusts,
Speaker 3: and so I think it was a combination of of
Speaker 3: all of those things.
Speaker 4: But Washington journalism, you.
Speaker 3: Know, does have a tendency to have instances of groupthink,
Speaker 3: and I think this was one instance of that.
Speaker 2: I'd like to that there were some psychological factors going
Speaker 2: on to as reporters are actual human beings, and it's
Speaker 2: very uncomfortable, I think, to talk about age or aging
Speaker 2: and talk about sort of cognitive decline. I think we
Speaker 2: have all experienced it, perhaps with older people in our lives,
Speaker 2: our parents. It's like taking the car keys away from
Speaker 2: your father. You'd like, don't want to deal with it
Speaker 2: on some level. And every time people would mention it,
Speaker 2: you know, like David Axelrod or rom Emmanuel, you know,
Speaker 2: there was this backlash of sort of shame and trying
Speaker 2: to make the people feel embarrassed for even bringing it up.
Speaker 2: So I almost saw it as a microcosm of a larger,
Speaker 2: just plain uncomfortable conversation. Do you see that at all?
Speaker 1: First of all, it's impossible for me, and I did
Speaker 1: cover this a bit, his cognitive decline or his age,
Speaker 1: but it's impossible, knowing then what I know now, to
Speaker 1: not feel humility when I look back at my coverage.
Speaker 1: And even though Alex broke a ton of great stories
Speaker 1: about this, we knew a fraction a fraction of what
Speaker 1: we know now and what readers will learn. There is
Speaker 1: group think. I mean, I look back at my coverage
Speaker 1: of the Iraq War, and I was skeptical of the
Speaker 1: WMD claim, the weapons of mass destruction claim, but in
Speaker 1: retrospect not skeptical enough. But then, yeah, there is this discomfort.
Speaker 1: And there is also this legacy in this town where
Speaker 1: age is treated differently than in any other business.
Speaker 2: You mean, in politics and politics in you.
Speaker 1: Know, there are very few. There are no eighty five
Speaker 1: year old or eighty year old anchors on teav right
Speaker 1: are no, well no, I'm sure I'll be put on
Speaker 1: the ice flow long before that, but but there are
Speaker 1: usually there is usually in any other institution sports, uh,
Speaker 1: at corporate America. For sure, there's a board of trustees
Speaker 1: that they have to uh or that they have to
Speaker 1: deal with, and on and on, Hollywood. I mean, there
Speaker 1: is somebody else making the decision in politics. In politics,
Speaker 1: really it's just the voters. There's nobody, especially if you're
Speaker 1: very powerful, like the President of the United States, there's
Speaker 1: no one that can say it's really time for you
Speaker 1: to hang it up. I mean, we see this day
Speaker 1: in day out in this town.
Speaker 2: Well, look at Strom theremy strom Thurman.
Speaker 1: Look at kayuh what was it named Kid Granger? Kid Granger,
Speaker 1: who was the chair of the House Appropriations Committee, Diane
Speaker 1: and Feinstein, there's the longlist, Thad Cochrane, John Conyers, and
Speaker 1: and there is and it's it's obviously worse with President Biden,
Speaker 1: but there is an an infrastructure, a family staff, people
Speaker 1: making money off of that politician that are doing.
Speaker 2: It ane empowering as that politician.
Speaker 1: And all you have to do is snooker the voters.
Speaker 1: That's all you have to do. There are people in
Speaker 1: Congress right now who are too old to be in Congress.
Speaker 1: But even raising that issue is still in this town
Speaker 1: seen as rude or partisan. If you're depending on the
Speaker 1: party of the person you're saying it about.
Speaker 2: You know, you mentioned that you did try to cover
Speaker 2: the story and concede you could have done more.
Speaker 1: But it's been a lot more. To be clear, I
Speaker 1: could have done a ton.
Speaker 2: More, and we'll talk about that in a second. But
Speaker 2: in September of twenty twenty, Jake, you interviewed Joe Biden.
Speaker 2: You asked him point blank about his health. You said,
Speaker 2: if you're elected, you would be the oldest president ever.
Speaker 2: The American people have been lied to before by presidents
Speaker 2: about the president's health. Fdr jfk Ronald Reagan. We don't
Speaker 2: know still what happened with Donald Trump and his visit
Speaker 2: to Walter Reid last year. Will you pledge that if
Speaker 2: you're elected, you will be transparent about your health? What
Speaker 2: did he say to you? Shake back?
Speaker 1: Then he interrupted, He interrupted the question to say yes
Speaker 1: that he would. And that's actually the very end of
Speaker 1: the book is that scene is him promising that he
Speaker 1: would be fully transparent and to be honest. Like obviously
Speaker 1: we had all seen him older in the twenty nineteen
Speaker 1: twenty two en campaign. He seemed fine in that interview.
Speaker 1: I only had one more interview with him in twenty twenty,
Speaker 1: where he seemed like twenty years older but still functioning.
Speaker 1: But what we learned in our reporting was that starting
Speaker 1: in about twenty nineteen, twenty twenty, if not before after
Speaker 1: the death of Bo, there were basically two Bidens. There
Speaker 1: was Fine Salvagable, Fine on the stomp Joe Biden, and
Speaker 1: then there was non functioning Biden. The non functioning Biden
Speaker 1: is the one who couldn't remember the names of top aides,
Speaker 1: who lost his train of thought in a way that
Speaker 1: was disturbing. We all lose our train of thought, but
Speaker 1: beyond just normal losing her train of thought, and a
Speaker 1: Joe Biden who was adult, and that non functioning Biden,
Speaker 1: who I did not see really in twenty nineteen twenty twenty,
Speaker 1: started showing up more and more behind the scenes, really
Speaker 1: in a pronounced way in twenty twenty three, twenty twenty four,
Speaker 1: and that's what Alex and I learned. He was not
Speaker 1: transparent about it. He violated that pledge to the American people,
Speaker 1: and in fact, there was an infrastructure around him that
Speaker 1: worked to hide it.
Speaker 2: I want to talk about that infrastructure in a moment,
Speaker 2: but first, preparing for this interview, some people are pointing
Speaker 2: to a conversation interview you had with Laura Trump in
Speaker 2: twenty twenty, and she talked about Biden's mental acuity, and
Speaker 2: I'm sure you remember this. You believed and said you
Speaker 2: felt she was mocking his stutter. She said she didn't
Speaker 2: even know he had a stutter, but was really talking
Speaker 2: about his cognitive struggles. You dismissed her, Jake, I think
Speaker 2: in a rather taciturn way, with all due respect, having
Speaker 2: watched the interview looking back, would you have handled it differently?
Speaker 1: Of course, of course. I mean on a conversation about aging,
Speaker 1: what Laura Trump said aged well and what I said
Speaker 1: aged poorly one hundred percent. Now, she obviously saw the
Speaker 1: non functioning Biden in a way that I had not
Speaker 1: really seen at that point. She was right, I was wrong,
Speaker 1: one hundred percent.
Speaker 3: I would also just want to add, like, the Joe
Speaker 3: Biden of twenty twenty three is different than the Joe
Speaker 3: Biden of twenty twenty and that clip is from twenty twenty, right,
Speaker 3: I know it is, so I just wanted to add that, like,
Speaker 3: there there was a much more pronounced decline beginning late
Speaker 3: in the presidency.
Speaker 2: Hi, everyone, it's Katie couric. You know I'm always on
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Speaker 2: Visit goodfeet dot com to learn more, find the nearest store,
Speaker 2: or book your own free personalized fitting. I'm curious in
Speaker 2: this bifurcated media environment that we all live in now
Speaker 2: if you think, if you think about it, I don't
Speaker 2: know why I'm psycho you guys, but I wonder if
Speaker 2: the coverage on Fox, which was particularly cruel I think
Speaker 2: towards Joe Biden, mocking his falling, making snarky comments about
Speaker 2: when he seemed to be confused. I wondered if that
Speaker 2: might have influenced you a bit, make you on a
Speaker 2: human level not want to cover his decline because Fox
Speaker 2: was doing it so mercilessly.
Speaker 3: I think there were definitely some people that didn't want
Speaker 3: to give oxygen to people that were acting in bad faith.
Speaker 3: I'd also say that there was there's a difference between
Speaker 3: making a meme of him stumbling up the stairs of
Speaker 3: Air Force one and reporting actually what people inside the
Speaker 3: White House were feeling about his limitations, which is what
Speaker 3: I was trying to do, Jake was trying to do,
Speaker 3: and what we eventually were able to find the breakthrough
Speaker 3: with this book. But yeah, I agree that, you know, Fox,
Speaker 3: you know, some people in Fox are taking a big
Speaker 3: victory lap now, But I do think and there are
Speaker 3: some good reporters there and people that I like, but
Speaker 3: you know, the fact is that they were not reporting
Speaker 3: stuff inside the room about how people in the Biden
Speaker 3: White House were feeling. And I just I think they
Speaker 3: were aggressive on this issue. But I do think there
Speaker 3: is a difference in those two things.
Speaker 2: The kind of reporting they were doing. And I'm curious
Speaker 2: Jake to get your take on that.
Speaker 1: I actually don't look at Fox coverage that way. I
Speaker 1: actually look at Fox coverage. I mean, I follow progressive
Speaker 1: and I follow conservative media to see where the holes
Speaker 1: are in my coverage. And Fox would report things and
Speaker 1: I would say behind the scenes, I'd be like, is
Speaker 1: that did that happen? Is that true? Why aren't we
Speaker 1: reporting that? That's I don't look at Fox the way
Speaker 1: that that it's being suggested. I did cover I know
Speaker 1: this now because of all the challenges. I did cover
Speaker 1: Biden's stumbling at the Air Force Academy commencement. I did
Speaker 1: cover biden falling off. No, I didn't. I was off
Speaker 1: the day for that he fell off his bike. But
Speaker 1: the other one, there was another fall. What was the
Speaker 1: other fall?
Speaker 4: Up the Air Force one?
Speaker 1: I've covered his falls, and I will say that, as
Speaker 1: Alex said, there's a tremendous difference between looking at an image,
Speaker 1: however important it was at the time, and however more
Speaker 1: important it is in retrospect of Joe Biden falling and
Speaker 1: saying something's going on here, right. There is a difference
Speaker 1: between that and Alex and I talking to more than
Speaker 1: two hundred mostly Democratic sources, almost all after the election
Speaker 1: and saying, listen to what these Democrats are telling us
Speaker 1: about how much worse it is behind the scenes.
Speaker 2: Right. But at the time, that could have signaled, hey,
Speaker 2: I think something might be wrong here. I need to
Speaker 2: dig more. And that's something that you have acknowledged.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but I yes, one hundred percent. I will say also, though,
Speaker 1: one of the things that we have learned in our
Speaker 1: reporting is that the Biden white House, led by the president,
Speaker 1: first Lady and Hunter and also top aids, they were
Speaker 1: lying not just to the media, they were lying not
Speaker 1: just to the public. They were lying to other Democrats.
Speaker 1: They were lying to donors, they were lying to cabinet secretaries,
Speaker 1: they were lying to democratic lawmakers. We talked to one
Speaker 1: Democrat and this is in the book, who said he
Speaker 1: would call and he would be told he's fine, he's fine,
Speaker 1: he's fine. And then after Biden dropped out, this Democrat
Speaker 1: sat down with the President and the first Lady is
Speaker 1: a very high ranking person but didn't want to be named,
Speaker 1: and said he's not fucking fine. Jill had to pop
Speaker 1: in and finish his sentences. As we saw in the
Speaker 1: view not long ago, he's not fucking fine. So the
Speaker 1: deceit was the main issue. But yes, journalists should have
Speaker 1: been poking and priding most especially believe me, there's no
Speaker 1: one that flagellates me more than me. And yes, of
Speaker 1: course I could have done more, and I should have.
Speaker 3: I just want to just add one last point, which is,
Speaker 3: you know, the media loves talking about itself.
Speaker 2: Oh yes, I know, and reading about it and.
Speaker 4: Reading about itself.
Speaker 3: But I just think it's important to say, like, yep,
Speaker 3: media can't even organize a happy hour if you've ever
Speaker 3: been in a newsroom, right, Like, they have trouble organizing that.
Speaker 3: Like the people that did the cover up with the
Speaker 3: people close to the president.
Speaker 2: Well let's talk about them, the enablers or the infrastructure
Speaker 2: what you refer it as the polup bureau.
Speaker 1: Well, it's not our term. That's other people in the
Speaker 1: administration came up with that term. But it's a good term.
Speaker 2: Yes, okay, Well whoever came up with it, It includes
Speaker 2: Mike Donaldan, Steve Rochetti, and Bruce.
Speaker 1: Reid, mainly Donaldin and Rochette.
Speaker 2: Okay, tell us about why it's so important to understand
Speaker 2: the role they played and the dynamics of that politbureau,
Speaker 2: if you will.
Speaker 3: You had a group of true believers of that had
Speaker 3: been with Biden for decades, that believed he had been
Speaker 3: you know, I think we call him the book and
Speaker 3: this was Jake's idea was sort of the theology of
Speaker 3: Biden or the Biden theology, and they were the most
Speaker 3: reverential followers of that theology, that he could always come back,
Speaker 3: that he would, that everyone always counts him out, and.
Speaker 4: When you're surrounded by people.
Speaker 3: In some ways, they loved him too much and as
Speaker 3: a result, they didn't like bringing him bad news. They
Speaker 3: didn't like, you know, telling truth to power, but not
Speaker 3: sometimes out of fear, because Biden did have like some
Speaker 3: temperament temper and had some term of issues, but also
Speaker 3: I think just like out of love for him. And
Speaker 3: in some ways it's their representative of you know, like
Speaker 3: any the representative of the.
Speaker 4: Darks of how loyal there's a dark side of loyalty.
Speaker 2: Do you think that they were afraid of losing their jobs?
Speaker 2: I mean, how much it was affection for Biden and
Speaker 2: how much was just job security?
Speaker 3: Yeah, putting a percentage on it is difficult, but it
Speaker 3: was definitely both. And we report in the book that
Speaker 3: Mike Donalan made several million dollars off this campaign, and
Speaker 3: you know, ste Verschetti also deeply wanted to become chief
Speaker 3: of staff. I don't think you can separate out their
Speaker 3: self interests from those emotional feelings.
Speaker 1: But they were zealots, as Alex notes in this Theology
Speaker 1: of Joe Biden, just like you can't count him out,
Speaker 1: he can beat anything. The stuff about Biden the public likes,
Speaker 1: you know, like the kid with the stutter, the guy
Speaker 1: who had the horrible tragedy in his family when he
Speaker 1: was newly elected, the the you know, the guy that
Speaker 1: had two brain aneurysms and was told he might never
Speaker 1: talk again, et cetera, et cetera. I mean, the stuff,
Speaker 1: the get he calls it. Get up. That's what Biden
Speaker 1: calls it. Get up. His dad always told him get up.
Speaker 1: That part of him is a charming part of him,
Speaker 1: It's an American part of him. But it also led
Speaker 1: to the fact that he thought that at the end
Speaker 1: of the day he was indispensable. Only he could beat Trump,
Speaker 1: only he was the right man for the time to
Speaker 1: face down Putin, And it led to a hubris. I mean,
Speaker 1: this whole story is just so tragic, and it really is.
Speaker 1: I mean, I know everybody thinks their stories, what they
Speaker 1: write about is Shakespearean, but there is just an element
Speaker 1: of centuries old drama to this. The man who rises
Speaker 1: to the top to save the nation from Donald Trump
Speaker 1: and guarantees the reelection of Donald Trump by denying his
Speaker 1: own fallibility.
Speaker 2: And his own hubris, right, or doesn't recognize his own hubris,
Speaker 2: I think, and I think that was part of Joe
Speaker 2: Biden's appeal, is he seemed like a you know, a
Speaker 2: regular Joe, right. But in some quarters it's also viewed
Speaker 2: as he had a real chip on his shoulder too,
Speaker 2: you know, he never quite felt embraced by sort of
Speaker 2: the elite, the hyper intellectual sort of people within the
Speaker 2: Democratic Party, at least that's what I've read.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean that chip had grown to the size
Speaker 3: of a boulder by the time that he's he's older,
Speaker 3: and you know, in some ways, and people around him
Speaker 3: have told us, you know, the you know, Obama basically
Speaker 3: choosing Hillary over him as his Busney successor in twenty
Speaker 3: sixteen just made it even bigger, right, like he just
Speaker 3: what he wanted credit.
Speaker 4: And you know, you talk to the.
Speaker 3: Biden people and you ask about like the age stuff,
Speaker 3: you know, back in twenty twenty three, twenty twenty four,
Speaker 3: and they would just be like all presidents get two terms,
Speaker 3: you know, like as if it's like just it was
Speaker 3: to him, he deserved it.
Speaker 2: And yet he did make that statement, flanked by Corey
Speaker 2: Booker and Gretchen Whitmer.
Speaker 4: The bridge.
Speaker 2: You know who else was Kamala Harris, Yes, Kamala Harris.
Speaker 2: How could I forget? And said I will be a
Speaker 2: bridge to a new generation Now implicitly and explicitly, I
Speaker 2: think that meant he was going to be a one
Speaker 2: term president. But understandably, Jake, I'm sure he didn't want
Speaker 2: to say that because he didn't want to be a
Speaker 2: lame duck at the beginning of his presidency.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but everybody had the impression that he was going
Speaker 1: to be a one termer. And one of the reasons
Speaker 1: was even before the bridge was in December twenty nineteen,
Speaker 1: before the primaries began, four different senior staffers to Biden,
Speaker 1: to the Biden campaign did a what Ryan Lizza, the
Speaker 1: reporter for Politico who reported this he thought was a
Speaker 1: strategic leak, which was they called him and said he's
Speaker 1: only going to be a one term president. It was
Speaker 1: basically part of the selling point because they knew people
Speaker 1: were concerned about Biden's age, so the idea was, Hey,
Speaker 1: he's only going to be a one term president. He's
Speaker 1: only going to be a one.
Speaker 2: Term president, which sounds very craven, doesn't it.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, it just sounds like they were making
Speaker 1: a promise that they weren't going to honor. But it
Speaker 1: wasn't just like an impression. It was created by the
Speaker 1: Biden campaign and by Biden himself. People thought that that
Speaker 1: was going to happen, and then enough things happened, including
Speaker 1: a less than horrible although still not good midterm election
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty two, that he thought that's it, I'm
Speaker 1: going to run again. And there was no process. There
Speaker 1: were people behind the scenes, we haven't needed done in
Speaker 1: the book of White House senior advisor saying like, what
Speaker 1: are we doing here? There was a polster, John Anzelone saying,
Speaker 1: I assume we're going to pull for this. We're going
Speaker 1: to see, like what the vulnerabilities are, see if this
Speaker 1: is actually a good idea running a second running a
Speaker 1: second term. At the end of the second term, he
Speaker 1: would be eighty six, right closer to ninety than eighty.
Speaker 1: That's literally what they were proposing. They still argue to
Speaker 1: this day he could have done It's crazy, but in
Speaker 1: any case, and Anita told Angeloni, no, no, we're not
Speaker 1: pulling for this. The decision has been made.
Speaker 2: So was Anita done part of the problem and her husband,
Speaker 2: I know, yeah, Bob Bauer.
Speaker 3: I don't think anyone in that in our circle was
Speaker 3: not part of the problem, right, And the fact is
Speaker 3: that Nia Dune, even if she had private concerns, no
Speaker 3: one got in the president's face and said this is
Speaker 3: a bad idea.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 3: I think some of that is on the president for
Speaker 3: not creating a culture in which dissent was welcomed or embraced.
Speaker 3: But also I think it's on the people in their circle,
Speaker 3: who also, to your point earlier, had like a vested
Speaker 3: self interest in keeping this going. So you know, they're
Speaker 3: the true believers that believe he could have been president
Speaker 3: eighty six. And there are people that had concerns and
Speaker 3: they also never you know, as Jack was referring to
Speaker 3: this other Democrat earlier who also told us, there's a
Speaker 3: point when you have to Yes, it's the president's decision,
Speaker 3: but there there's a point when you have to sit
Speaker 3: your principal down and say you're not up for this,
Speaker 3: and no one did that.
Speaker 2: I wonder, Jake, if you experienced what I did. I
Speaker 2: saw him at an event and he seemed to be
Speaker 2: very happy to see me. I've known him for probably
Speaker 2: even longer than you have, Jake, because I'm older than
Speaker 2: you are. But you know, I had long conversations with
Speaker 2: him after Tim Russert's funeral. You know, I've just covered
Speaker 2: him for a long time too. And he said I
Speaker 2: miss you, And I said, if you miss me, let's
Speaker 2: do let's sit down and do an interview. You can
Speaker 2: spend more time with me, and he said great. And
Speaker 2: then after he spoke, he came back to me and said,
Speaker 2: I really want to do an interview with you. Well,
Speaker 2: I thought, great, you know, and then I talked to
Speaker 2: his press team Kareem Yeah, and then I talked to
Speaker 2: some other people who were there. I wrote to Anita
Speaker 2: Dunn the run around I got sending me to some
Speaker 2: twenty six year old kid who runs digital for them.
Speaker 2: It was borderline insulting first off, but secondly, it was
Speaker 2: so clear that they had absolute zero intention of allowing
Speaker 2: him to sit down to have a conversation with me.
Speaker 2: Did you face similar frustrations?
Speaker 1: Look, the last time I had an interview with him
Speaker 1: was in October twenty twenty two. He seemed super old.
Speaker 1: It was only fifteen minutes they.
Speaker 2: Did fifteen minutes. I mean, how much can you talk
Speaker 2: about him? Fifteen minutes?
Speaker 1: Not a lot. And it was obviously in the middle
Speaker 1: of the day. It wasn't it wasn't in the evening,
Speaker 1: and you know, you can't really that's not a good
Speaker 1: You can't really do a good interview in fifteen minutes,
Speaker 1: especially because he's rather long winded. And then it became clear.
Speaker 1: I mean, look, this is the thing. We talked to
Speaker 1: people in the White House, communications people in the White House,
Speaker 1: and somebody told me that the interview he did with
Speaker 1: me in twenty twenty two he could not have done
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty three. A senior White House person told
Speaker 1: me he was not capable of doing it in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty three. Again, I wish I could tell you who
Speaker 1: that was. It told me that it's a name, you know.
Speaker 1: But I mean, there was just a behind the scenes
Speaker 1: and acknowledgment of this, And that's part of that's why
Speaker 1: we say it's a cover up, because if it wasn't
Speaker 1: to cover up, what do you call that decision to
Speaker 1: not let you do an interview with him, even though
Speaker 1: he says he wants to or not forget me, I mean,
Speaker 1: or not do a serious sit down with anyone other
Speaker 1: than I mean, what interviews did he do in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty three, twenty twenty four. Very few. In twenty twenty four,
Speaker 1: it was only after he was fighting for his job
Speaker 1: that he sat down with Sephanopoulos and Lester.
Speaker 2: And they did a lot of podcasts that were kind
Speaker 2: of very friendly Shafy to talk about things like his
Speaker 2: Irish herited sure, things like that, not about public policy.
Speaker 1: He did do a couple interviews that I have to
Speaker 1: say were good. I mean, it wasn't like he was
Speaker 1: not capable of ever doing it. His interview on John
Speaker 1: Stewart in the spring of twenty twenty four was fine.
Speaker 1: His interview with Howard Stern was interesting, although you know,
Speaker 1: it wasn't like policy probing. It was like get to
Speaker 1: know Joe Biden.
Speaker 2: What about the interviews he did with George and Lester,
Speaker 2: those weren't exactly there.
Speaker 1: Were disasters, to be honest. I mean, and you know,
Speaker 1: George asked him, have you seen the debate and his
Speaker 1: answer was I don't think so.
Speaker 2: We'll talk about the debate in a moment, because you know,
Speaker 2: you were moderating that well, I remember, yeah, yeah, I'm
Speaker 2: sure you remember it well, but I want to ask
Speaker 2: you about sort of the inner circle a little more.
Speaker 2: What about Jill Biden's role in all this?
Speaker 4: I think it was.
Speaker 3: I think other people within the White House have called
Speaker 3: her one of the most powerful first ladies in American history.
Speaker 3: And it's remarkable also because she used to be a
Speaker 3: reluctant political spouse. She has this anecdote in her memoir
Speaker 3: where when Biden was considering running in two thousand and four,
Speaker 3: she went through the sort of meeting with the consultants
Speaker 3: wearing a bikini and a sharpie written no on her
Speaker 3: stomach because she was like, we are not running for as.
Speaker 2: One does, so well, good on her right.
Speaker 3: She made her views clear, and you know, but that changes.
Speaker 3: By twenty seventeen, twenty eighteen, twenty nineteen, she is an
Speaker 3: enthusiastic political spouse, and she sort of replaces Joe Biden's
Speaker 3: sister of Val Biden, who had been the campaign manager
Speaker 3: for some many of his campaigns. You know, Val Biden
Speaker 3: is skeptical of him running for president because of the
Speaker 3: toll it was going to take on the family, given
Speaker 3: all of Hunter's problems and Ashley's problems, and what they've
Speaker 3: been through with Bo's death, but Jill becomes sort of
Speaker 3: a much more enthusiastic uh and pushing force. Her top aid,
Speaker 3: who is mentioned along the book, you know, becomes a
Speaker 3: deputy campaign manager on the twenty twenty campaign, eventually becomes
Speaker 3: one of they, by the accounts of people inside the
Speaker 3: White House, becomes one of the most powerful people in
Speaker 3: the entire Biden administration. Is Jill Biden's top aid that
Speaker 3: he had control over personnel. He is vetting people constantly
Speaker 3: for loyalty. People referred to him as the loyalty Police.
Speaker 4: And you know, Joe and.
Speaker 3: Jill, I think they have this very like authentic love
Speaker 3: for each other. But so if you have people whispering
Speaker 3: in their ear this person's loyal, this person's not loyal,
Speaker 3: it creates this culture of paranoia.
Speaker 2: Yes, you know, a lot of conversations I had with people,
Speaker 2: both in the political world and outside it about Jill Biden.
Speaker 2: And there's so much obvious speculation involved here and projection.
Speaker 2: But so many people were like, how can she not
Speaker 2: protect her husband?
Speaker 1: She thought she was She thought she was protecting her husband.
Speaker 1: She thought she was protecting Hunter from a Republican president
Speaker 1: who was going to prosecute him. She thought she was
Speaker 1: protecting the country from Donald Trump.
Speaker 2: How big a factor was the Hunter stuff?
Speaker 1: I think it was considerable. I think Hunter was driving
Speaker 1: the decision making for the family in a way that
Speaker 1: people he was almost like a chief of staff of
Speaker 1: the family.
Speaker 2: Does that strike you as pretty bizarre?
Speaker 1: It's bizarre because I think he is provably, demonstrably unethical, sleazy,
Speaker 1: and prone to horrible decisions.
Speaker 2: I mean, tell me how you really feel well, I mean.
Speaker 1: I just look at the record. I mean he after
Speaker 1: his brother died, he cheated on his wife with his
Speaker 1: brother's widow and then got her addicted to crack. That's
Speaker 1: just one thing I could say. I mean it there.
Speaker 1: I don't have a lot of personal regard for him,
Speaker 1: and just based on having nothing to do with I
Speaker 1: barely have ever met him. I've met him like once
Speaker 1: or twice. But I knew Bo Bo was a great,
Speaker 1: upstanding guy.
Speaker 2: I knew him too.
Speaker 1: Really a real loss for the country too, not just
Speaker 1: for his family, for the country. But Hunter is not
Speaker 1: that And the idea of him drive the family car
Speaker 1: as it were, is just really really questionable. But one
Speaker 1: of the things we heard from somebody who is close
Speaker 1: to the family. Shall we say is that denial is
Speaker 1: a big part of the family ethos. There is a
Speaker 1: you know, there's all of these my word. I'll give
Speaker 1: you my word. As a Biden that's a thing that
Speaker 1: President Biden likes to say. A less well known family
Speaker 1: maxim is don't call fat people fat, which means don't
Speaker 1: acknowledge ugly truths. I didn't make it up. It's not
Speaker 1: a nice maxim. I don't use it. But that's don't
Speaker 1: call fat people fat, and it means it means don't
Speaker 1: acknowledge ugly truths. It means that's why they hid bo
Speaker 1: Biden's illness. It's why they didn't really acknowledge Hunter's problems
Speaker 1: until it was too late. And it's why they didn't,
Speaker 1: in my view and Alex's view, acknowledged Joe Biden's problems
Speaker 1: until the country saw them and said, oh my god.
Speaker 3: Well, and I'd say that, and there's still denile. One
Speaker 3: thing I would just want to add about the Hunter
Speaker 3: piece of it is, I don't think you can understand
Speaker 3: why Hunter was so important if you don't understand that
Speaker 3: Hunter is the only living person from the accident in
Speaker 3: nineteen seventy two. Right, Bo, his wife, his daughter, they're
Speaker 3: all dead. Hunters the last thing of this cataclysmic, searingtic,
Speaker 3: traumatic part of Joe Biden's life, and he almost lost them,
Speaker 3: right like a Hunter. He almost lost Hunter too, because
Speaker 3: he was off the rails. And you know Hunter, I
Speaker 3: think at times abuse that relationship, relationship, and there was
Speaker 3: this feeling among Biden's aids that you know, if Biden
Speaker 3: doesn't keep like Hunter would say something and say and
Speaker 3: Joe was scared Hunter would commit suicide if he didn't
Speaker 3: do what Hunter wanted.
Speaker 1: Or overdose accidentally. But yeah, that he would be driven
Speaker 1: to I mean by Hunter. Biden has said this publicly
Speaker 1: that he thought that the prosecutions of him were too
Speaker 1: him to suicide or overdose to destroy his dad. And
Speaker 1: that is our reporting suggests that that was one of
Speaker 1: the main reasons for his deterioration.
Speaker 2: I was going to ask you about that, the stress
Speaker 2: of Hunter situation, the tremendous grief over the loss of
Speaker 2: Bo from glioblastoma. Do you think that those two huge
Speaker 2: life events did contribute to his decline.
Speaker 3: That's what everyone around him has told us, is that
Speaker 3: the Joe Biden of twenty fourteen is different than the
Speaker 3: Joe Biden of twenty nineteen. In between Bo obviously died,
Speaker 3: and then the Joe Biden twenty nineteen is not the
Speaker 3: same as Joe Biden of late twenty twenty three. And
Speaker 3: in that time Hunter was under prosecution from his dad's
Speaker 3: own justice department and had a plea deal unravel and
Speaker 3: then was headed towards a trial which was ended up
Speaker 3: and being in the same month as that debate, a
Speaker 3: trial that exposed the family started laundry to the entire world.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the three moments that people close to President Biden
Speaker 1: have said just were utterly destroying of his psyche. Was
Speaker 1: Bo dying in twenty fifteen. One aid to him described
Speaker 1: it like pouring water on sand, just to watch psychically
Speaker 1: what happened to Joe Biden. And then, as Alex just said,
Speaker 1: the plea deal and then the guilty verdict, two of
Speaker 1: the moments that were just like he in twenty twenty
Speaker 1: three and twenty twenty four where he just seemed to
Speaker 1: melt and lose it and we look, we're not unsympathetic
Speaker 1: to that. It must have been horrible. You've lost a
Speaker 1: wife and you've lost two children, and you think you're
Speaker 1: going to lose a third. I can't imagine going through that.
Speaker 1: It's absolutely devastating. But that is what happened to him
Speaker 1: and why when he stepped on that stage, his attlement
Speaker 1: was there for everybody to see because it had been
Speaker 1: happening for at that point at least a couple of years.
Speaker 3: And I think, are you know, I think we both
Speaker 3: have sympathy, and the people around him have sympathy, and
Speaker 3: I think that also contributed to why people weren't willing
Speaker 3: to get in his face and say tell him hard truth,
Speaker 3: tell him hard truth, because like he's been through so
Speaker 3: much and everything, which is true. But also it's I
Speaker 3: think what some people in the arcycle laws side of
Speaker 3: is it wasn't just about him.
Speaker 4: He was president.
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Speaker 2: Did anybody at any point you guys say anything to
Speaker 2: him like mister President or Joe or honey aka chill,
Speaker 2: you know, are you really up up to this?
Speaker 1: That?
Speaker 2: Was there ever even a conversation about I.
Speaker 3: Mean, the closest is blinken second favorite say Tony blink
Speaker 3: and ask them in twenty twenty three, are you sure? Basically,
Speaker 3: basically you're going to be eighty six by the end
Speaker 3: of the next term. You should you want to run?
Speaker 1: But it wasn't. I don't think you can.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's gentle.
Speaker 1: I mean there were questions, you know, there were conversations
Speaker 1: like that, but nothing never serious. Yeah, nothing like nothing
Speaker 1: like what frankly, my wife would say if I were
Speaker 1: losing it and it was time for me to retire
Speaker 1: from reporting or TV or whatever. Like. I have a
Speaker 1: very direct wife. It's one of the things that's great
Speaker 1: about her. It's I recommend it. When you find a spouse,
Speaker 1: Alex get one who's going to tell you the truth.
Speaker 1: It's not always fun, but it's incredibly valuable. And yeah,
Speaker 1: nothing like that.
Speaker 2: That's why I think everybody wonders about Jill Biden, like
Speaker 2: did she was she enjoying the job too? I mean,
Speaker 2: was it something beyond hunter? Was it something beyond protecting
Speaker 2: her husband? Was there something that understandably? And I think
Speaker 2: you can appreciate someone feeling this way, like I'm enjoying
Speaker 2: this gig. I don't really want to give it up.
Speaker 1: It's a good gig.
Speaker 3: Some people referred to as she got Jackie oed that
Speaker 3: she fell in love with the life of being first Lady.
Speaker 3: They noted that she had three Vogue covers in four years,
Speaker 3: which was as many as Michelle Obama had in eight years,
Speaker 3: and that she did and Bernal her top aid. They
Speaker 3: would they were planning in twenty twenty two, all the
Speaker 3: things they were going to do, all the trips she
Speaker 3: was going to do in the second term. They would
Speaker 3: frequently say, we'll do that in the second term. So yeah,
Speaker 3: I think there's also like she fell in love a
Speaker 3: little bit with the life. According to people around her.
Speaker 3: It's not like our opinion where it's the people that
Speaker 3: we talked to That's what they said.
Speaker 1: Can I just say one other thing that does touch
Speaker 1: on this, which is one of the reasons Barack Obama
Speaker 1: President Obama did not support Joe Biden running for president
Speaker 1: in twenty sixteen, is because he saw what happened to
Speaker 1: him after bo died, and he saw that he wasn't
Speaker 1: emotional only ready to do that. And so Biden Biden's
Speaker 1: resentment towards Obama and David Pluff and David Axelron and
Speaker 1: David Seamus, who was Obama's polster. These are three Davids
Speaker 1: that Obama basically dispatched to say bad idea under president
Speaker 1: in sixteen twenty sixteen. And you know there are other
Speaker 1: reasons too. Of course, Hillary and Bernie had a lot
Speaker 1: of the support sewed up already for various reasons. But
Speaker 1: the anger and the resentment that Biden felt about that,
Speaker 1: which he still feels to this day, that he wrote
Speaker 1: about in his memoir. I think he says something like
Speaker 1: the president was not supportive, not encouraging, and not encouraging,
Speaker 1: which is it's a big thing to put in your
Speaker 1: in your in your memoir that is so animating that
Speaker 1: you're not on my team. I'm not going to listen
Speaker 1: to you, And people would say, when people would say
Speaker 1: to Barack Obama in twenty twenty three and twenty twenty four,
Speaker 1: can't you say something to him, he's too old, he
Speaker 1: would say, he's still mad at me about Hillary. That's
Speaker 1: what Obama would say, He's still mad at me about Hillary.
Speaker 1: He won't listen to me. So when you cross Joe
Speaker 1: Biden in any way, even if it's calling a fat
Speaker 1: person fat like it is.
Speaker 2: The penalty is a palty. Yeah, but you know that's
Speaker 2: so funny, Jake. You must have read my mind because
Speaker 2: that was going to be my next question about why
Speaker 2: Barack Obama didn't step in And okay, he was mad
Speaker 2: at him in twenty sixteen, but like somebody should have
Speaker 2: put their big boy pants on and had a real
Speaker 2: conversation with this guy. There was nobody in the Democratic Party. Nobody,
Speaker 2: I mean, finally, Nancy Pelosi, I understand, you know, had
Speaker 2: to come to Mamma commers conversation.
Speaker 1: Chesh Schemer was really the one who ultimately said you
Speaker 1: shouldn't run.
Speaker 2: But I mean, doesn't it strike you as not exactly
Speaker 2: profiles and courage that nobody could actually call a gathering
Speaker 2: and you know, deal with the consequences of telling Joe
Speaker 2: Biden that this was not good for the country or
Speaker 2: his party.
Speaker 1: You started this interview reading these nasty notes on Instagrams.
Speaker 1: It's no, no, no, I'm not I'm fine. But like,
Speaker 1: imagine that times a million, because I mean, this is
Speaker 1: just anonymous people on Instagram for a story that is
Speaker 1: true that we just shared. You know, we're just sharing
Speaker 1: an ugly fact of a story that at least as
Speaker 1: of now, nobody has disputed. And that's nothing, but it's notable.
Speaker 1: It's notable that there is that blowback. I don't question
Speaker 1: your citing it, but imagine that coming from Democratic members
Speaker 1: of Congress, Democratic senators, members of the administration cabinet secretaries
Speaker 1: to the one person trying to say he shouldn't run
Speaker 1: for reelection. David Ashrod says something in twenty twenty two
Speaker 1: by it needs to think about whether or not he
Speaker 1: should run. He gets an anvil dropped on his head.
Speaker 1: Joe Biden calls him a prick. Dean Phillips runs against him,
Speaker 1: says the President is a wonderful president, but he's too old.
Speaker 1: Let's have a debate. Let's let's show the country like that.
Speaker 1: I mean, his plan was to get Biden on a
Speaker 1: debate stage, so what happened in June would happen in January.
Speaker 1: But he has an anvil dropped on his head. He's
Speaker 1: out of politics, he's a persona non grata, and on
Speaker 1: and on and on. Chevn Hughes and Andy Laski from
Speaker 1: The Wall Street Journal write a story in June bringing
Speaker 1: some of these some of these issues to light, and
Speaker 1: an anvil drops on them. They get destroyed on social media.
Speaker 1: Senators come out and dispute them and attack them. Some
Speaker 1: of the same senators who weeks later behind the scenes
Speaker 1: would be like saying, Joe Biden, you should not run
Speaker 1: for reelection, are on the record attacking those reporters. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's not a small thing.
Speaker 3: I would say, your question to think is a really
Speaker 3: good one. That's the reason we wrote the book was
Speaker 3: because in our minds, the most important moment of the
Speaker 3: entire election was Joe Biden decided to run for election
Speaker 3: and the fact that no one stood up and they
Speaker 3: sort of SlutWalk the party supwalk their way to there.
Speaker 3: Even though I think we I think our reporting pretty
Speaker 3: conclusively proves there were a lot of people that knew better.
Speaker 2: There seems to be, or seemed to be, a prevailing
Speaker 2: sentiment within the Biden's circle that while he struggled with
Speaker 2: some of the more performative tasks of the presidency like
Speaker 2: press conferences, speeches, debates and I'm going to talk about
Speaker 2: the debate, that he was still fully capable of doing
Speaker 2: his job, that he was capable of running the country.
Speaker 2: Does that narrative hold true? After all your reporting? Was
Speaker 2: he capable of running the country And if he wasn't,
Speaker 2: who was?
Speaker 3: I mean, members of his were worried told us anonymously
Speaker 3: that they were worried if there was a crisis at
Speaker 3: two am and how he'd be able to respond. And also,
Speaker 3: you know, I do find this interesting. You know, as
Speaker 3: we reported the book, a lot of people would concede, Okay, yes,
Speaker 3: like he had to have meetings in the middle of
Speaker 3: the day ten to four, Yes, like could he speak
Speaker 3: not really? Yes, he was not, you know, as quick
Speaker 3: on the stump as he was. Yes, he had trouble
Speaker 3: moving and walking. But then at the end of the day,
Speaker 3: But they said, like, but they're they're the hill they're
Speaker 3: dying on is but his decision making was still the
Speaker 3: same as it was twenty years ago.
Speaker 1: That's that's their argument today. That's the rebuttal to this book.
Speaker 2: And in fact, Chris Meeger, Joe Biden spokesperson, I'll just
Speaker 2: read this while we're on the topic, said the former
Speaker 2: president's team had not yet seen a copy of the
Speaker 2: book and had not been consulted, and it's fact checking quote.
Speaker 2: We are not going to respond to every bit of
Speaker 2: this book, mister Meagher said. We continue to await anything
Speaker 2: that shows where Joe Biden had to make a presidential decision,
Speaker 2: or where national security was threatened, or where he was
Speaker 2: unable to do his job. In fact, the evidence points
Speaker 2: to the opposite. He was a very effective president.
Speaker 1: So whether or not he was an effective president's up
Speaker 1: to the historians, and it's up to the American people.
Speaker 1: They the American people, according to Poling, did not think
Speaker 1: he was an effective president, but that's subjective. We have
Speaker 1: two senators in the book, and their stories are significant
Speaker 1: Democratic senators pro Biden senators. One of them is Senator
Speaker 1: Mark Warner, who was at the time the chairman of
Speaker 1: the Senate Intelligence Committee. Biden calls him shortly after October seventh,
Speaker 1: twenty twenty three after the attack of Bi Famas on Israel,
Speaker 1: because Warner is on a separate issue. Upset because it's
Speaker 1: not just Warner, actually many members of the Senate very
Speaker 1: upset because the Biden team is about to release eleven
Speaker 1: Yemenis from Gitmo and send them to I think Oman
Speaker 1: and there are a lot of Senators, Mark Warner among
Speaker 1: them who think they're just going to go and join
Speaker 1: the fight, whether with Hamas or Hazbola or the houthis Like,
Speaker 1: this is a bad idea. Do not do this. So
Speaker 1: he reaches out to Jake Sullivan, and the National Security Advisor,
Speaker 1: Jake Sullivan has Biden call him. Mark Warner is shaken
Speaker 1: by the conversation. He thinks that Biden doesn't really have
Speaker 1: a grasp on what's what's going on and why he's concerned.
Speaker 1: So that's one story. Another story takes place in June
Speaker 1: twenty twenty four when Senator Michael Bennett of Colorado, a
Speaker 1: Democrat pro Biden, goes to the White House for a
Speaker 1: immigration event and Biden has a really weird moment in
Speaker 1: that immigration event where neurologists told us it looked neurological
Speaker 1: in nature. It's like a kind of like freezes and
Speaker 1: then whispers into the microphone in a way that like
Speaker 1: it's it's very off putting. I'll send you the I'll
Speaker 1: send you the clip, but it's it's off putting, and
Speaker 1: Bennett thinks to himself, this is why our immigration policy
Speaker 1: is such a mess. Our president, I'm paraphrasing, but our
Speaker 1: president is not capable of managing this issue. And in fact,
Speaker 1: the Department of Phone Land Security thought that there was
Speaker 1: going to be an order at the beginning of the
Speaker 1: Biden administration to help with border security. It never comes,
Speaker 1: and the border policy is something of a mess, like
Speaker 1: millions of people across the border illegally. It's not clear
Speaker 1: like what exactly the policy is. There really isn't anything
Speaker 1: done to try to do to crack down on the
Speaker 1: border until it becomes an obvious political liability in the
Speaker 1: fall of twenty twenty three. So the assertion by the
Speaker 1: Biden team that you can't point to any like effect
Speaker 1: that his deterioration has had, which is interesting by the
Speaker 1: way that they're not challenging the notion that a lot
Speaker 1: of people have stories of deterioration is one that I
Speaker 1: think those two senators that the very least would take
Speaker 1: issue with and that's just what we know about, Like
Speaker 1: we don't have subpoena power, you know. I'm sure there's
Speaker 1: much more, but that's what we're able to find out.
Speaker 2: And that is a hard thing to gauge, right, especially
Speaker 2: from the outside. He had several falls during his term,
Speaker 2: and you report that his physician, doctor Kevin O'Connor, privately
Speaker 2: said that if he had another batfall, a wheelchair might
Speaker 2: be necessary, which has gotten a lot of attention. I'm
Speaker 2: wondering if you could shed some light on what some
Speaker 2: of the physical ailments were, because it's unclear. We sort
Speaker 2: of wondered if he had neuropathy, you know, in his feet.
Speaker 2: I know that. I think you mentioned he had some
Speaker 2: spine issues. What was going on with Joe Biden physically?
Speaker 2: What did your report find.
Speaker 3: There was significant degeneration of his mind, which may have
Speaker 3: made it not just uh, you know, advise, but necessary
Speaker 3: for him to use a wheelchair in a second term. Now,
Speaker 3: the White House throughout twenty twenty four tried to uh
Speaker 3: say that, you know, his halting walk was because when
Speaker 3: he fractured his foot in twenty twenty, you know, he
Speaker 3: didn't want to wear the walking boot that much and
Speaker 3: as a result, so he was undone by his own vigor. Essentially,
Speaker 3: it's like the is the spin and that just wasn't candid.
Speaker 3: The doctor O'Connor at the time said that his foot
Speaker 3: had heels as expected after ten weeks and when they
Speaker 3: took the boot off, and if you look at the
Speaker 3: it was there to see. If you wanted to read
Speaker 3: between the lines on his medical evaluations that his you
Speaker 3: know that he had significant spinal arthritis that would have
Speaker 3: required him not to be in a wheelchair in order
Speaker 3: to do the job.
Speaker 2: Just months before his fateful debate with the Trump, O'Connor
Speaker 2: released a physical exam and wrote in a public memo
Speaker 2: that the president quote continues to be fit for duty
Speaker 2: and fully executes all of his responsibilities without any exemptions
Speaker 2: or accommodations. Yet he never gave him a cognitive test.
Speaker 2: And you note that these tests were pretty much standard
Speaker 2: procedure for any one sixty five or over. In fact,
Speaker 2: I think I need to call my doctor for you guys.
Speaker 2: But why not? Why didn't he give him a cognitive test?
Speaker 1: Well, the official answer was that the president passes a
Speaker 1: cognitive test every day with the job he does. That's
Speaker 1: their official explanation, But there were people closer to the
Speaker 1: White House or in the White who's the thought the
Speaker 1: only reason to not give a test like that is
Speaker 1: because you don't want to know the answer, you don't
Speaker 1: want to have to release it. And in fact, at
Speaker 1: the end of the book, doctor John Nathan Reiner, who
Speaker 1: has been an advisor to the White House Physician's Board
Speaker 1: for many many terms of various presidents, he had some
Speaker 1: harsh words for vaguely phrased but harsh words for doctor O'Connor,
Speaker 1: and also thinks that the White House Physician Letter, which
Speaker 1: basically is not required by law and can be as
Speaker 1: detailed as any White House wants it to be or not.
Speaker 1: As you noted in my question about it in twenty twenty,
Speaker 1: we still don't know why Trump went to Walter to
Speaker 1: read back in twenty nineteen.
Speaker 2: Right, And also his medical reports back during his administration
Speaker 2: was done by some doctor who said he weighed like
Speaker 2: fifty pounds less than he actually does. I mean that
Speaker 2: kind of thing, although I think he might be on
Speaker 2: a GLP one right now, but some reports then is
Speaker 2: that I mean.
Speaker 4: I wrote a story in the fall of twenty twenty three.
Speaker 3: Because I was on the politician age beat and like,
Speaker 3: we know nothing. I mean, Donald Trump is the oldest
Speaker 3: president ever inaugurated, older than Joe Biden was on Joe
Speaker 3: Biden's day one, and we know nothing about his health.
Speaker 1: By the way, this is another argument for the people
Speaker 1: who are like, well, why aren't you covering Trump? Why
Speaker 1: aren't covering Trump? Like everything that Biden did sets a
Speaker 1: precedent for future presidents to hide whatever they want to
Speaker 1: hide and just say you didn't say anything to Joe
Speaker 1: Biden about this, you know. Jonathan Ryner. Doctor Reiner thinks
Speaker 1: that the White House physician should have to submit his
Speaker 1: report under penalty of perjury. That's not the requirement now,
Speaker 1: I mean honestly, right now, like a doctor could write
Speaker 1: he is great and just hand the paper in and like,
Speaker 1: there's no requirement for this.
Speaker 2: So interesting given how much transparency there seems to be
Speaker 2: compared to past administrations. I remember doing a piece for
Speaker 2: CNN back in the day, like in nineteen eighty. Believe
Speaker 2: it or not, the Skyning physician named Ken Chris Bell,
Speaker 2: who was at the University of Virginia where I went
Speaker 2: to school, did a whole book on presidential health and
Speaker 2: how it was covered up. Obviously the FDR wheelchair, but
Speaker 2: the JFK and Addison's disease and the kind of steroids
Speaker 2: he was taking. We know that Woodrow Wilson was being
Speaker 2: propped up and basically his wife Edith was running the country.
Speaker 2: I mean, you would think by now there would be
Speaker 2: much more transparency about this, but still there's so much
Speaker 2: that can be hidden.
Speaker 3: Right well, and that era, you know, in the eighties, nineties,
Speaker 3: early two thousands, we had more information about presidential health.
Speaker 4: Than probably ever before.
Speaker 3: But to your point, you've seen a huge treat We
Speaker 3: know less and less and less and less.
Speaker 2: It seems like you saw with Reagan and his Alzheimer's
Speaker 2: disease for example, right, But it's just surprising to me.
Speaker 1: It's crazy, and I mean one of the reasons is
Speaker 1: because everybody wants it. The people who make the laws
Speaker 1: are partisans, and they want those laws to apply to
Speaker 1: the other guy. They don't want it to apply to them.
Speaker 1: I mean, right now, somebody could pass a law requiring
Speaker 1: more forthrightness and transparency on health, it would go nowhere.
Speaker 1: By the way, just like the efforts to band insider
Speaker 1: trading by members of Congress, it would go nowhere. But
Speaker 1: even if it went somewhere, the only way you could
Speaker 1: get that passed, if it is if it was for
Speaker 1: a one president from now. You could never have it
Speaker 1: passed to apply to Donald Trump, you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: just like in the world of Washington. That's how it is. Oh,
Speaker 1: this law applies to me. No, no, no, we'll do it
Speaker 1: for the next person. We'll do it for the next person.
Speaker 1: But even then it won't pass.
Speaker 2: Right, And then I wonder to how you both reconcile
Speaker 2: the fact that Democrats introduced resolutions in legislation pushing Trump
Speaker 2: to undergo a psychiatric evaluation in the first term. We
Speaker 2: have to, But those same Democrats were conspicuously silent. Yes,
Speaker 2: I quotes because it is from your book about Biden
Speaker 2: not taking a cognitive exam.
Speaker 3: I feeled Democrats the ones that have to reconcile that,
Speaker 3: not us. I mean, I think the obvious answer, and
Speaker 3: maybe they'll have a different answer. I think the obvious
Speaker 3: answer is just partisanship.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 3: They introduced those bills because they want to hurt Donald Trump,
Speaker 3: and if they had sincere fears about presidential health, they
Speaker 3: would have reintroduced them during the Biden pretancy, but they didn't.
Speaker 1: It's so odd. But I mean, this is something that
Speaker 1: I think everybody in this room probably feels. It's just
Speaker 1: the oddness of partisanship, like because I just I've you know,
Speaker 1: even when I was in a party, like when I
Speaker 1: was a kid, Like, it's not something I am now
Speaker 1: I'm independent, and I just don't even understand it. It's
Speaker 1: just you. In order to be a partisan, you have
Speaker 1: to be intellectually dishonest. You just have to be, like,
Speaker 1: there's no other way to do it, it seems. And
Speaker 1: the idea that somebody would talk about Donald Trump's fitness
Speaker 1: and not say anything about Joe Biden's and vice versa,
Speaker 1: seems just strange to me. There should be one set
Speaker 1: of rules and everybody should follow them, and we should
Speaker 1: know everything about the health of any president.
Speaker 2: If you want to get smarter every morning with a
Speaker 2: breakdown of the news and fascinating takes on health and
Speaker 2: wellness and pop culture, sign up for our daily newsletter
Speaker 2: Wake Up Call by going to Katiecuric dot com. I
Speaker 2: did want to ask you quickly about Robert Herr. You
Speaker 2: mentioned David Axelroder, you know, being called a prick by
Speaker 2: Joe Biden. You mentioned everybody who had the whole democratic
Speaker 2: infrastructure come down on them, and the White House when
Speaker 2: they said even suggested that he was not completely there.
Speaker 2: And Special Counsel Robert her in twenty twenty three, as
Speaker 2: you all write about, was appointed to investigate Joe Biden's
Speaker 2: handling of classified documents. He found no grounds for criminal charges,
Speaker 2: but his report included the damning conclusion that Biden was,
Speaker 2: in hers word, a sympathetic, well meaning elderly man with
Speaker 2: a poor memory. That just sent biden Land into a
Speaker 2: complete panic, didn't it.
Speaker 3: I think even people inside the White House think that
Speaker 3: that was because they intuitively knew it was true, like
Speaker 3: they would make a political argument, this is like it's
Speaker 3: obviously obviously it's biggest political liability. But I think their
Speaker 3: reaction to it suggested an extra defensiveness that came from
Speaker 3: they knew. As someone put it to me from the
Speaker 3: White House, he said the thing.
Speaker 2: We were all he said the thing.
Speaker 3: He said the thing, and everyone was not allowed to
Speaker 3: say the thing, and he said it, and that was
Speaker 3: not allowed in that world. And I think as a result,
Speaker 3: I mean, this is the point when I think, if
Speaker 3: you want to give them sort of grace for being
Speaker 3: you know, he has a few bend moments to be
Speaker 3: sole great president.
Speaker 4: You know, innocence.
Speaker 3: This is the moment when you have your own Justice
Speaker 3: Department come in and say come on. And their response
Speaker 3: was to try to ruin him.
Speaker 1: Not just her. They painted Robert her as a you know,
Speaker 1: partisan hack, which he was not. But they went after
Speaker 1: Merrick Garland. They leaked to again to Politico that Garland
Speaker 1: would not be invited back after Biden's reelection. They basically
Speaker 1: fired him and date to come and Garland. By the
Speaker 1: end of the Biden presidency comes to the conclusion that
Speaker 1: even though he came on board to be an independent
Speaker 1: attorney general with fear of favor for no one and
Speaker 1: tried to do that job by appointing special counsel's independent
Speaker 1: councils to investigate Trump and Hunter and the President himself,
Speaker 1: that Biden didn't actually want that, he actually wanted protection
Speaker 1: and Robert her we should not like it took him
Speaker 1: months to find a job. The word got out, do
Speaker 1: not hire Robert Herr and law firms and you know,
Speaker 1: people looking for a corporate council. They got the hint.
Speaker 2: Kind of sounds Trump downright Trump esque.
Speaker 1: One percent. Yeah, although Trump obviously does it at a
Speaker 1: much grander scale because everything with him is bigger. But yeah,
Speaker 1: one hundred percent. The Robert Hurr who's he now has
Speaker 1: a job, but he is, you know, like even if
Speaker 1: you disagree with what he did, and he basically concluded
Speaker 1: that Biden broke the law, but he was unprosecutable because
Speaker 1: he seemed behind the scenes in that interview like a
Speaker 1: very adult old man, except he put it much nicer.
Speaker 1: And if you read the transcript of that interview, it's shocking.
Speaker 1: It is interviewing a It's like interviewing some guy at
Speaker 1: the bus station. It's just a guy who just is
Speaker 1: talking and talking and talking. At one point, Robert Hurst
Speaker 1: is he's trying to find out when this classified information
Speaker 1: was shared with people who didn't have access to it,
Speaker 1: shouldn't have had access to it, and when Biden was
Speaker 1: no longer in office, this is in twenty seventeen, twenty eighteen.
Speaker 1: Biden is unable to understand when that is He says
Speaker 1: something like you have to understand during this period, Bo
Speaker 1: is either deployed or dying. That wasn't true. Bo was
Speaker 1: deployed I think in like two thousand and seven, two
Speaker 1: thousand and eight, something like that, and Bo died in
Speaker 1: twenty fifteen. Obviously no one thinks that Joe Biden, you
Speaker 1: know that that's not an incredibly important date to him.
Speaker 1: But to not know the twenty seventeen, twenty eighteen was
Speaker 1: not when Bo died, that's very concerning. And when it
Speaker 1: came out in the Her report, Biden portrayed it. And
Speaker 1: I don't know if this is ignorance or lying, as
Speaker 1: if Robert hurt had brought up Bo Bo's death, he hadn't,
Speaker 1: he'd asked about this year twenty seventeen, two an eighteen.
Speaker 1: It's really shocking. So Robert Hurr had this window into
Speaker 1: what Joe Biden is like behind closed doors in a
Speaker 1: way that nobody had gotten in years except for like
Speaker 1: his inner circle, and he was shocked at what he saw,
Speaker 1: and they tried to destroy him for it.
Speaker 2: Did you interview Robert Hurr during this time? Did you try?
Speaker 2: Was he?
Speaker 1: Oh? At the time, he wouldn't talk to anybody. At
Speaker 1: the time, Robert her wouldn't talk and in fact, he
Speaker 1: wouldn't even rebutt it when Joe Biden said that in
Speaker 1: February twenty twenty four. He wouldn't even allow anybody at
Speaker 1: the Justice Department to say, that's not what happened. Robert
Speaker 1: Hurr did not bring up bo dying because that's just
Speaker 1: not what the DOJ does. And so he kind of
Speaker 1: had to just sit there in self imposed misery, watching
Speaker 1: his name be dragged through the mud, and people were
Speaker 1: mad at him. People in his life were mad at him.
Speaker 1: Why would you bring that up? That's so horrible. I
Speaker 1: know a gold star mom, very conservative Republican, furious at
Speaker 1: Robert Hurr. Why would he bring that up? He didn't, didn't.
Speaker 1: But this is what this is what most white houses do.
Speaker 1: This is certainly what the Biden Whitehouse does.
Speaker 2: A shame he couldn't defend himself and set the record straight.
Speaker 2: But now this book is Let me ask you about
Speaker 2: the not so great debate for Joe Biden. Anyway, Jake,
Speaker 2: you're the moderator along with your colleague Dana Bash. You're
Speaker 2: getting ready. I'm sure you're nervous. That's very stressful. I've
Speaker 2: never moderated a debate.
Speaker 1: Huge oversun by the commission.
Speaker 2: But I can only imagine, like, so, you're ready to go.
Speaker 2: What was your reaction and when did you know? I
Speaker 2: watch it with a group of a very interesting group
Speaker 2: of people, by the way, which I'll tell you later.
Speaker 2: What was your reaction when you or when did you
Speaker 2: realize that, oh my god, this is a disaster.
Speaker 1: The first that really there were two. The whole debate
Speaker 1: was horrible for him, and I don't think it's hyperbole
Speaker 1: to say it's the worst presidential debate performance ever by anyone.
Speaker 1: In that first block, he starts out shaky but fine,
Speaker 1: and then he has that answer where he just completely
Speaker 1: loses his train of thought. He can't come up with
Speaker 1: words for things, and he says, we finally beat medicare
Speaker 1: I think he meant we finally beat COVID. I think
Speaker 1: that's what he was saying, but who knows. And I said,
Speaker 1: thank you, mister President, because as time was up, we
Speaker 1: had these iPads so we could communicate with the control room.
Speaker 1: And I wrote, holy smokes, I just because I didn't
Speaker 1: know who was going to be back there reading it,
Speaker 1: I would have said something else. You and I have
Speaker 1: similar predilections for salty language, so but I couldn't believe it.
Speaker 1: I couldn't. I I knew that this was going to
Speaker 1: be a much bigger story than a bad debate. This was,
Speaker 1: this was everything that the Republicans had been saying about him.
Speaker 2: And Dana passed you a note.
Speaker 1: Dana passed me a note saying he just lost the
Speaker 1: He just lost the election. Yeah.
Speaker 2: But what was even weirder, Jake, was his reaction to
Speaker 2: his performance afterwards.
Speaker 1: He didn't I don't think he had any idea.
Speaker 2: Right tell me about that. He came up to you guys, said, hi.
Speaker 1: Jill Biden. So Donald Trump just kind of storms off,
Speaker 1: By the way, I have to say, considering how historically
Speaker 1: awful Biden was, Donald Trump actually was very restrained on
Speaker 1: that topic. Not on Biden himself after the fact, you mean, well, no,
Speaker 1: during the debate. He wasn't restrained during the debate, but
Speaker 1: on the topic of this man. Like you could imagine Joe,
Speaker 1: you could imagine Donald Trump saying, can you believe that
Speaker 1: this guy is running the country? He can't even he
Speaker 1: can't even get out of sense.
Speaker 2: I think you're right about that. During the debate.
Speaker 1: During the debate, the only thing he said was I'm
Speaker 1: not sure what he just said in that answer, And
Speaker 1: I'm not sure that he knows either. That's it. That's
Speaker 1: the only thing he said. I'm not saying it was
Speaker 1: a restrained performance. But on that topic. So Donald Trump
Speaker 1: leaves Joe Biden and Jill comes up, helped him down
Speaker 1: from it, says to him, and well, she says, they
Speaker 1: just come over and makes make small talk.
Speaker 2: But first she says to him, you did a great
Speaker 2: job show. You answered all of their questions.
Speaker 1: She says, that's later, that's later that that's later that
Speaker 1: night they go to a rally. After the debate, Jill
Speaker 1: and Joe go to a rally and she, I think,
Speaker 1: in retrospect regretted it, but she says, you did a
Speaker 1: great job, Joe. You answered every question like he was
Speaker 1: in third grade. I mean, it was so infanalizing.
Speaker 2: But this was later that. It was later that it
Speaker 2: was talk about what he said to you and Dana.
Speaker 1: He comes over and he says something along the lines
Speaker 1: of he's just kind of like trying to get us
Speaker 1: to comment about how many lies Trump told and I, no,
Speaker 1: you can't talk about it. I guess we'll go see.
Speaker 2: Was this was this on air?
Speaker 1: I don't. I don't think so. Yeah, I don't think so.
Speaker 1: And if it was, it wasn't Mike, and if it was,
Speaker 1: CNN didn't give it to me because I asked them.
Speaker 1: I said, I'd love to know exactly what he said.
Speaker 1: But and then by from memory, I didn't know what
Speaker 1: to say. It was just so colossally horrible, and the
Speaker 1: way that Joe Biden had to help him down from
Speaker 1: the one foot or not even one step stage because
Speaker 1: there was like some weird lighting and it might be
Speaker 1: disorienting for a eighty one year old man. I didn't
Speaker 1: know what to say. I was wearing Phillies cufflinks. It
Speaker 1: was a middle of baseball season, and Joe is from
Speaker 1: Willow Grove, Pennsylvania, outside Philly, so I showed him, you know,
Speaker 1: one of these awkward moments. I'm just like, I got
Speaker 1: Philly cufflinks.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you're a cousband other than that, missus Lincoln.
Speaker 1: Your husband, you know, just shat the bed in front
Speaker 1: of the whole world. Did you like my Phillies cuflinks?
Speaker 1: I didn't know what to say. I didn't say the
Speaker 1: shit the bed stuff, but it was just it was
Speaker 1: And then they wandered off, but.
Speaker 4: They didn't seem to know how.
Speaker 1: They didn't seem to have any idea or if or
Speaker 1: they're just very practiced politicians and they knew not to
Speaker 1: reveal it. But I kind of believe the former.
Speaker 2: And even his inner circle initially or ever, did not
Speaker 2: say that it was a disaster, right. I mean, they
Speaker 2: said he had a cold, right, And I think he
Speaker 2: told you he had a cold to Jake according to
Speaker 2: your book, and he.
Speaker 1: Said, sorry, sorry about my voice, I have a cold.
Speaker 2: Right, right. But they didn't seem to kind of level
Speaker 2: with him after that. They were still spinning the polls
Speaker 2: and acting like he was still in the in the game.
Speaker 3: They're very dismissive of all of the and they felt
Speaker 3: that it was a complete overreaction, and I think part
Speaker 3: of that, honestly, is revealing that the person they saw
Speaker 3: on the debate stage was not that different than the
Speaker 3: person they often saw behind the scenes. And you know,
Speaker 3: there's been some discussion of like why we use the
Speaker 3: word cover up, Well, it wasn't a cover up, then
Speaker 3: why was it so shocking to so many people? And
Speaker 3: it's because like that in a circle was and I
Speaker 3: don't even know how conscious it was versus is just
Speaker 3: they were like protecting their guy, but they were shielding
Speaker 3: him from that part of Biden being the world seeing
Speaker 3: seeing that.
Speaker 2: How long was it before he dropped out between the
Speaker 2: debate and when he finally announced he wasn't running, It.
Speaker 1: Was a little over three weeks. It was June twenty
Speaker 1: seventh of July twenty first, a little over three weeks.
Speaker 2: What did your reporting tell you about how Kamala Harris
Speaker 2: walked that tight rope.
Speaker 1: She kept her head down. She kept her head down.
Speaker 1: She did not want anyone to think that she was
Speaker 1: in any way trying to push him out. She was very,
Speaker 1: very mindful of that. And in fact, when there were
Speaker 1: democratic you know, when there was an effort to shore
Speaker 1: up support among Democratic senators and they and the White
Speaker 1: House asked her to call some Democratic senators, the ones
Speaker 1: that she did not have a good relationship with or
Speaker 1: a strong relationship with. She declined because she didn't want
Speaker 1: anybody to think, hey, guess who it is. You know
Speaker 1: that she was in any way campaigning for it. We
Speaker 1: use the term in the book that she was loyal
Speaker 1: to a fault, and I think we mean it literally.
Speaker 1: She was so loyal to him that she was part
Speaker 1: of this problem.
Speaker 2: Well, it also cost her dearly when she said on
Speaker 2: the view that I wouldn't do anything differently at a
Speaker 2: time when people were looking for change. That wasn't an
Speaker 2: answer that served her well.
Speaker 1: I think actually that yes, one hundred percent, and that
Speaker 1: was probably her worst moment as a presidential candidate, and
Speaker 1: by the way, not a horrible run, given she only
Speaker 1: had a one hundred and seven days, right.
Speaker 2: I mean, I think she did a lot of things
Speaker 2: really well West.
Speaker 1: She probably saved three or four Democratic Senate seats, probably
Speaker 1: ten or twenty House seats. She brought things back to
Speaker 1: you know, losing but within respectability, although she did lose
Speaker 1: every battleground state. But I actually think, and this is
Speaker 1: just my personal point of view, I actually think the
Speaker 1: worst answer she gave to any question was at the
Speaker 1: very end of the campaign, she didn an interview with
Speaker 1: Halle Jackson of NBC News, and Hallie was pressing her
Speaker 1: on like, basically, weren't you part of the cover up?
Speaker 1: You know, do you regret it telling, you know.
Speaker 2: Part of the cover up of Joe Biden?
Speaker 1: Yeah, do you regret testifying on behalf of him? And
Speaker 1: Vice President Harris said it was a bad debate, That's
Speaker 1: what she said. It was a bad debate. If it
Speaker 1: was just a bad debate. With all due respect, Vice
Speaker 1: President Harris, you wouldn't have been the nominee. Like people
Speaker 1: have bad debates, this was not that. I mean, it
Speaker 1: was horrible, but this was a bad debate, was not
Speaker 1: the problem.
Speaker 2: I'm cureous how you feel about this assertion, this belief
Speaker 2: that Joe Biden still holds onto that he could have won.
Speaker 2: He said recently, yes, I could have won in essence paraphrasing,
Speaker 2: and he said he still got seven million fewer votes
Speaker 2: in twenty twenty. A lot of people didn't show up
Speaker 2: number one, number two. They're very close in those toss
Speaker 2: ups dates. It wasn't a slam dunk.
Speaker 3: So what I mean, I think Joe Biden moll probably
Speaker 3: to the end of his life, will believe that. And
Speaker 3: I think that's part of sort of his resiliency and
Speaker 3: belief in himself. And I also think acknowledging otherwise would
Speaker 3: be too big of a thing to tell yourself.
Speaker 2: It's something you call what Biden. There's a phrase you
Speaker 2: use in the book.
Speaker 1: We refer to the bidens, which is just the stuff
Speaker 1: at all. That's the stuff that you and I saw
Speaker 1: when we covered him, like in the nineties and the
Speaker 1: aughts and stuff, just like long winded always made gaffes,
Speaker 1: told a lot of FIBs, like all that stuff. That
Speaker 1: made it difficult, by the way, for his staff to
Speaker 1: see when that was actually symptomatic of something else aging,
Speaker 1: if not something else more diagnosable. But yeah, that was
Speaker 1: that was a real issue. One other thing on the
Speaker 1: on the polling, his pollsters, his outside pollsters, Jeffrey Pollock,
Speaker 1: Jeff Garon, Molly Murphy, never met with him, never talked
Speaker 1: to him, wanted to never talk to him.
Speaker 2: And they fake polls.
Speaker 1: No, they were giving real polls to the campaign. And
Speaker 1: then Mike Donaldin, who started his career as a polster
Speaker 1: and ended up being a guy who went by his gut,
Speaker 1: not data, would interpret them for President Biden. And this
Speaker 1: was one of the things that when we talk about
Speaker 1: Obama and Pelosi and Schumer and Hackeen, Jefferies wanting to
Speaker 1: get through to Joe Biden what's going on out there,
Speaker 1: they are constantly frustrated by the fact that Mike Donaldin
Speaker 1: is in their view, not being straight with the president.
Speaker 1: And to this day they say, oh, you know, it's
Speaker 1: only a couple of points. There's only you know, no,
Speaker 1: I mean, they're pollsters. And at the end, finally when
Speaker 1: Schumer has the conversation with President Biden and Rehoboth and
Speaker 1: he says, you're polsters think you have a five percent chance.
Speaker 1: And I talked to one of the pollsters after I
Speaker 1: found that out. It was reported by the New York
Speaker 1: Times first, but it's also in this book, and one
Speaker 1: of the posters said to me, it's probably more like
Speaker 1: a one percent chance. I mean, like his numbers were awful,
Speaker 1: they were getting worse, and there were two reasons they
Speaker 1: were bad to begin with, inflation and concerns about his age.
Speaker 1: And he had just put the age issue. There was
Speaker 1: no improving it. Everybody saw the debate. Everybody knows what
Speaker 1: that is. People might not understand tariff policy, but as
Speaker 1: you noted, we all have parents, we all have grandparents,
Speaker 1: we all are aging ourselves. We know what that is.
Speaker 1: Everybody and so many people in the book, member of
Speaker 1: Congress after member of Congress would see Joe Biden behind
Speaker 1: the scenes and say, telling us privately after the fact,
Speaker 1: he reminded of me of my dad, who died of
Speaker 1: Parkinson's And as my husband often tells me, when I
Speaker 1: complained about my age.
Speaker 2: You're never going to be any younger, you know. I mean,
Speaker 2: it's it's not reversible, right.
Speaker 1: Right, And there was still one hundred and seven days
Speaker 1: left and another debate. It wasn't going to get better.
Speaker 2: Fully understanding this falls into the category of kulda would
Speaker 2: have should have? What might have happened if Joe Biden
Speaker 2: had stepped down or announced he was only going to
Speaker 2: be a one term president at a certain point in
Speaker 2: time that the primary, some kind of primary process took place.
Speaker 2: What do you think we would have seen in the
Speaker 2: twenty twenty four election campaign and election.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think you would have seen a ton of
Speaker 3: people get in yeah, Pee Putaja. I mean I also
Speaker 3: say that increasingly Democrats are actually acknowledging Hey, we would
Speaker 3: have been better off. Amy Klobuchar said it to meet
Speaker 3: the press law Sunday, Pee Pudajad said it, and a
Speaker 3: ball places Iowa this week. Primelogia Paul has also said this.
Speaker 3: You would have had a very robust primary. I mean,
Speaker 3: so on the Biden people. You it would have been
Speaker 3: divisive and the party would have been divided. I think
Speaker 3: there is a little bit of overlearning the lessons from
Speaker 3: twenty sixteen, where the divisive Hillary Bernie primary they feel,
Speaker 3: you know, cost her the election. But you know, and
Speaker 3: Jacob's mentioned this before, you know, one of the most
Speaker 3: divisive primaries ever was two thousand and eight with Hillary
Speaker 3: and Obama, and it actually ended up making Obama a
Speaker 3: better candidate and it helped the party. So I think
Speaker 3: there are a lot of people in the party. I
Speaker 3: know there are all of people in the party that
Speaker 3: believe it would have even Kamala Harris, who if you
Speaker 3: look at the Electoral College margin two hundred and fifteen
Speaker 3: thousand votes something like that.
Speaker 1: Like she would have been a better candidate if she won.
Speaker 3: You if she had gone through that primary process, if
Speaker 3: she if she won to if.
Speaker 1: She spent her vice presidency, she wasn't doing the reps,
Speaker 1: she wasn't doing interviews, she wasn't out.
Speaker 2: I think because he wasn't. She didn't want to overshadow him.
Speaker 2: They didn't want him.
Speaker 1: There's a ton of reasons. It's not meant as an
Speaker 1: accusatory statement, but she was she wasn't ready. I mean,
Speaker 1: the theory of the case from a guy like David
Speaker 1: Pluffu's quoted extensively in our book, you Obama's two thousand
Speaker 1: and eight campaign manager and worked on the Harris campaign.
Speaker 1: At the very end, was a robust primary system would
Speaker 1: have produced a Democrat that could have beaten Donald Trump.
Speaker 1: Poll suggested that Trump was beatable.
Speaker 2: It would have put the Democratic Party, in my view,
Speaker 2: in better stead too, because it would have given exposure
Speaker 2: to their bench. Right, people would have seen these future
Speaker 2: Democratic leaders and they would have become more well known,
Speaker 2: perhaps impressed some voters, and they just didn't have an opportunity.
Speaker 2: So now people are like, who who for twenty twenty eight? Right,
Speaker 2: I think that some names might have surfaced and some
Speaker 2: real possibilities.
Speaker 1: So if the Democrats actually let a primary system happen,
Speaker 1: if you think about it, they really haven't had a
Speaker 1: competitive primary since Barack Obama ran in two thousand and eight,
Speaker 1: which produced a stronger Barack Obama and a win campaign.
Speaker 1: Twenty twelve, obviously he was the incumbent. In twenty sixteen,
Speaker 1: the party leaned on the scales for Hillary and was
Speaker 1: unfair to Bernie. Twenty twenty, the party came in and
Speaker 1: made Joe Biden the nominee because they were so scared
Speaker 1: of Bernie winning, and then twenty twenty four, we had
Speaker 1: the fiasco that we write about. So they haven't really
Speaker 1: had a competitive democratic party process, primary process where they've
Speaker 1: actually let the voters make up their minds since two
Speaker 1: thousand and eight. And I mean, it's one of the
Speaker 1: reasons why I think some of the arguments about Donald
Speaker 1: Trump being undemocratic or anti democratic and January sixth and
Speaker 1: all that perfectly legitimate arguments. I'm not disputing them, but
Speaker 1: I think it's one of the reasons why a lot
Speaker 1: of voters don't find them particularly compelling because they've seen
Speaker 1: what Democrats did to Bernie in sixteen and twenty and
Speaker 1: what they did with Biden in twenty twenty four. It's
Speaker 1: it's not exactly you know, small deed democracy.
Speaker 2: Final question, how will Joe Biden be remembered?
Speaker 3: I think I think is part of the problem with
Speaker 3: that question, or I guess sort of honestly, it sort
Speaker 3: of pains me to say, because the thing is, he
Speaker 3: was the one that framed his presidency as a success
Speaker 3: or failure based on whether or not Donald Trump came
Speaker 3: back and he failed, and even people very close to
Speaker 3: him see his presidency now, as you know, basically just
Speaker 3: a presidency in between two Trump terums. I think that
Speaker 3: doesn't mean that a lot of things he did, a
Speaker 3: lot of people in administration he did, won't be remembered fondly,
Speaker 3: you know, especially as like things get built and.
Speaker 2: So much of it is being undone.
Speaker 3: That's true too, And because Donald Trump won and you know, honestly,
Speaker 3: it's that's why we sort of frame it as a
Speaker 3: tragic story because I think his greatest virtue his resiliency
Speaker 3: and not giving up, and at the end it became
Speaker 3: a tragic flaw.
Speaker 1: It's tough to say from the perspective of six months
Speaker 1: after the election what history will record. I will say,
Speaker 1: if you look at the what we remember of presidencies
Speaker 1: in the past, I mean, what are like the three
Speaker 1: data points we know about Woodrow Wilson. One of them
Speaker 1: is that he had a stroke and his wife kept
Speaker 1: it from the country.
Speaker 2: And the League of Nations. I'm resegregating the comfrom right.
Speaker 1: It was a horrible racist and the League of Nations
Speaker 1: and World War One. Yes, there are other things, but
Speaker 1: it's one of the Maybe, like if you say there
Speaker 1: are five points for each president, and that's a lot,
Speaker 1: because you know, I don't think a lot of Americans
Speaker 1: could tell me much about Calvin Coolidge or Warren G. Harding,
Speaker 1: But I mean, I just think it's part of his legacy.
Speaker 1: And it was unprecedented, dramatic, hideous, ugly, tragic, heartbreaking. Stephanopolis
Speaker 1: called it after he interviewed Joe Biden heartbreaking. That's, you know,
Speaker 1: just to put some pathos on it. The humanity we
Speaker 1: all age father times undefeated, and here we had it
Speaker 1: happen to this guy in front of all of us,
Speaker 1: in enraging. I mean, I don't think that this gets
Speaker 1: separated from his legacy. It is possible that some of
Speaker 1: his legislative achievements are what he fought for when it
Speaker 1: came to NATO also are part of it. But there's
Speaker 1: no erasing this, however much they want to try.
Speaker 2: And this may put a stain on his legacy, I think,
Speaker 2: and unquestionably, Alex Thompson and Jake Tapper so fun talking
Speaker 2: to you all, I mean, obviously an incredibly serious topic
Speaker 2: and an important book. Thank you both so much.
Speaker 1: Thank you Kay, so good to see you.
Speaker 2: So how do you all feel about Jake and Alex's
Speaker 2: book Original Sin and covering the issues presented in this book.
Speaker 2: We'd love to hear from you. Head to my YouTube
Speaker 2: channel where you can watch the interview and leave a comment.
Speaker 2: I'd love to know what you think. Thanks for listening everyone.
Speaker 2: If you have a question for me, a subject you
Speaker 2: want us to cover, or you want to share your
Speaker 2: thoughts about how you navigate this crazy world, reach out
Speaker 2: send me a DM on Instagram. I would love to
Speaker 2: hear from you. Next Question is a production of iHeartMedia
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