WEBVTT - Democrats Face the Aftermath of Biden’s Debate Performance 0:00:03.120 --> 0:00:16.200 Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio News. Welcome to voter Nomics, 0:00:16.200 --> 0:00:20.440 where politics and markets collide, and we're doing an emergency 0:00:20.480 --> 0:00:24.560 episode today, not just talking about all the elections around 0:00:24.600 --> 0:00:28.880 the world, but talking specifically about the debate between Donald 0:00:28.920 --> 0:00:33.800 Trump and Joe Biden more or less universally agreed to 0:00:33.880 --> 0:00:38.280 have been a bad night, shall we say, for Joe Biden, 0:00:38.560 --> 0:00:41.040 and we're going to be talking about this with two 0:00:41.080 --> 0:00:46.000 people well positioned to have not just instant instant considered reaction, 0:00:46.120 --> 0:00:48.800 if that isn't a contradiction in terms with us. In 0:00:48.800 --> 0:00:52.480 the London studio, Tim O'Brien, senior executive editor of Bloomberg 0:00:52.560 --> 0:00:55.680 Opinion and author of Trump Nation, The Art of Being 0:00:55.760 --> 0:00:59.200 the Donald, and joining us from Atlanta, where the debate 0:00:59.320 --> 0:01:02.440 was running on Sure Knowsley and Coffee, and he says 0:01:02.560 --> 0:01:06.280 some fumes Bloomberg reporter and the host of Bloomberg's Big 0:01:06.319 --> 0:01:09.759 Take podcast, David go. David, thank you in particularly because 0:01:09.760 --> 0:01:12.119 I know that you've had a long night. You were 0:01:12.120 --> 0:01:14.640 doing lots on Bloomberg Television for us, and you've already 0:01:14.680 --> 0:01:19.119 put out an episode of the Big Take podcast on this, 0:01:19.959 --> 0:01:22.760 I guess for many Democrats rather unhappy toppic. 0:01:23.280 --> 0:01:24.000 Great to be here. 0:01:25.000 --> 0:01:28.360 So I know CNN, who were hosting the debate and 0:01:28.400 --> 0:01:31.800 broadcasting it, had a lot of constraints. So not only 0:01:31.880 --> 0:01:34.920 was it sort of unusual in having no audience, but 0:01:35.000 --> 0:01:38.560 I believe basically there were other reporters were not allowed 0:01:38.560 --> 0:01:40.920 in the room. So what was your experience in Atlanta? 0:01:41.520 --> 0:01:44.399 Yes, the debate took place in a CNN studio in 0:01:44.480 --> 0:01:48.440 downtown Atlanta, and we the reporters, were in the basketball 0:01:48.480 --> 0:01:51.240 arena at Georgia Tech, so not too far geographically from 0:01:51.280 --> 0:01:52.640 the site of the debate, but we weren't in the 0:01:52.680 --> 0:01:56.160 room itself, and so we sat around the concourse in 0:01:56.240 --> 0:01:58.560 this arena during the debate itself and watched it on 0:01:58.760 --> 0:02:01.640 a JumboTron in the middle, and there were TV screens 0:02:01.680 --> 0:02:04.440 all around the concourse as well, and on the floor 0:02:04.480 --> 0:02:06.640 where the basketball court usually is, there was a red 0:02:06.680 --> 0:02:09.440 carpet and leading up to the debate and afterward that 0:02:09.560 --> 0:02:13.079 was transformed into this spin room, spin floor, and surrogates 0:02:13.080 --> 0:02:15.320 for each of the candidates came out and greeted reporters 0:02:15.320 --> 0:02:18.080 and fielded their questions. So I watched the debate unfold 0:02:18.160 --> 0:02:19.760 that way, and I think what stands out to me 0:02:20.880 --> 0:02:23.040 is how once the debate ended, there was an intense 0:02:23.120 --> 0:02:25.880 quiet in the arena. We made our way down to 0:02:25.919 --> 0:02:28.040 the floor, and then all of a sudden, there was 0:02:28.120 --> 0:02:31.119 kind of a crush of Republican surrogate circuits for Donald Trump, 0:02:31.120 --> 0:02:33.520 who came onto the floor to field questions, holding up signs, 0:02:33.520 --> 0:02:35.839 and reporters flocked to them. But we had to wait 0:02:35.840 --> 0:02:39.560 a good ten or fifteen minutes before any Democrats came out, 0:02:39.919 --> 0:02:43.840 and finally we saw Governor Gavin Neussom of California Senator 0:02:43.919 --> 0:02:47.640 Raphael Warnick of Georgia. They stood together, reporters gathered around them. 0:02:47.639 --> 0:02:49.720 But it's clear that in those ten or fifteen minutes, 0:02:49.760 --> 0:02:51.840 in that vacuum, there must have been a lot of 0:02:51.840 --> 0:02:53.880 soul searching and a lot of effort that went into 0:02:53.919 --> 0:02:56.240 how to spin this in any positive light. 0:02:57.000 --> 0:02:58.880 The mind boggles. I mean, when you sign up to 0:02:58.960 --> 0:03:01.320 via surrogate Nina that it could go badly, but then 0:03:01.360 --> 0:03:03.840 you sort of feel like you almost become like an 0:03:03.880 --> 0:03:08.160 undertaker in the trying to talk about how Biden performed. 0:03:08.200 --> 0:03:10.959 I think we know many people listening to this will 0:03:11.000 --> 0:03:13.280 have either watched it in the US or around the 0:03:13.280 --> 0:03:17.600 world or certainly seen some of the most damning clips. 0:03:17.720 --> 0:03:21.120 We're seeing a lot of commentators talking about this is 0:03:21.160 --> 0:03:24.440 the moment, the beginning of the end of the Biden presidency. 0:03:24.480 --> 0:03:27.160 I saw one person many people calling for him to 0:03:27.200 --> 0:03:31.200 stand down. How serious do you sense that is in 0:03:31.520 --> 0:03:34.519 among senior Democrats and in the White House? Or is 0:03:35.040 --> 0:03:37.240 that also a sort of moment of silence where people 0:03:37.280 --> 0:03:39.200 are still just trying to compute that it happened. 0:03:40.120 --> 0:03:43.280 There were a lot of whispers about the president's capacity 0:03:43.320 --> 0:03:46.480 to serve a second term. I think that this has 0:03:46.520 --> 0:03:50.640 amplified those whispers, and you talk about senior Democrats. As 0:03:50.680 --> 0:03:54.360 I watched the response to this on television and saw 0:03:54.600 --> 0:03:58.000 surrogates and others in that arena last night, I noticed 0:03:58.000 --> 0:03:59.920 that a lot of graybeards in the party is now 0:04:00.360 --> 0:04:03.520 types who have been big backers of the Bidens felt. 0:04:03.800 --> 0:04:05.440 I don't know if emboldened is the right word, but 0:04:05.560 --> 0:04:09.360 able to talk about the president's age and capacity in 0:04:09.360 --> 0:04:11.240 a way that they hadn't before. So I think that 0:04:11.280 --> 0:04:14.040 we're at a moment where the next forty eight or 0:04:14.040 --> 0:04:15.960 seventy two hours are going to be key in terms 0:04:16.000 --> 0:04:19.520 of how large that conversation gets, how all encompassing it 0:04:19.560 --> 0:04:22.400 gets and plenty of people have drawn the analogy to 0:04:23.000 --> 0:04:25.720 nineteen sixty eight when LBJA addressed the nation and said 0:04:25.720 --> 0:04:27.480 that he wasn't going to seek a second term. I'll 0:04:27.480 --> 0:04:29.480 point out that happened in March of that exactly, the 0:04:29.520 --> 0:04:31.880 primaries were still very much underway. And I think the 0:04:31.880 --> 0:04:35.080 trickiness of this moment is Joe Biden has been the 0:04:35.120 --> 0:04:37.800 presumptive nominee now for such a long time. Yes, there 0:04:37.839 --> 0:04:39.919 have been some Democrats who have made these outsider runs 0:04:39.920 --> 0:04:42.640 to succeed him, but that hasn't happened, and so I 0:04:42.640 --> 0:04:45.000 think that the actual procedure by which that would happen 0:04:45.040 --> 0:04:48.080 is so unclear. It certainly colors and shapes the conversation 0:04:48.120 --> 0:04:49.760 that we're going to have here in the next few days. 0:04:50.160 --> 0:04:57.120 Tim O'Brien, Stephanie, are you in your sort of bones, 0:04:57.320 --> 0:04:59.400 do you think that this will be the beginning of 0:04:59.400 --> 0:05:03.120 a process that sees Biden no longer the candidate or 0:05:03.800 --> 0:05:05.520 do we have to fall back to all the same 0:05:05.560 --> 0:05:07.440 reasons why we didn't think that was likely a few 0:05:07.440 --> 0:05:09.479 months ago, or even nine months ago. 0:05:09.839 --> 0:05:13.400 Well, I think it raises the stakes. Clearly. He's badly 0:05:13.520 --> 0:05:17.120 damaged by this debate. It's a monumental set back. He 0:05:17.160 --> 0:05:19.760 had one job in that debate, which was to convince 0:05:19.839 --> 0:05:22.360 voters he could stand shoulder to shoulder with Donald Trump 0:05:22.800 --> 0:05:26.280 and displays much energy in an acute mind, and an 0:05:26.320 --> 0:05:29.320 ability to defend some of the core policy issues that 0:05:29.360 --> 0:05:33.080 the Democrats are steaking this campaign around. And he failed 0:05:33.120 --> 0:05:36.680 and failed and failed, and he failed spectacularly to the 0:05:36.720 --> 0:05:39.760 extent that I think actually probably his own team wasn't 0:05:39.760 --> 0:05:43.240 fully prepared for how bad this would be. The you know, 0:05:43.279 --> 0:05:47.880 the reality of removing him or coaching him to remove 0:05:47.960 --> 0:05:52.960 himself or Biden himself willingly letting go is somewhat complex. 0:05:53.000 --> 0:05:56.320 He controls the delegates that have been pledged to him. Historically, 0:05:56.360 --> 0:05:59.800 in the United States, conventions were venues in which there 0:05:59.880 --> 0:06:02.919 were real hashing out of who the nominee would be, 0:06:03.440 --> 0:06:06.520 and that stopped around nineteen sixty I think JFK was 0:06:06.520 --> 0:06:09.800 the last presidential candidate who was in a convention where 0:06:09.800 --> 0:06:12.120 there was actual brokeraing going on on the floor. So 0:06:12.200 --> 0:06:15.960 that's sixty four years ago, and I think we're there's 0:06:16.000 --> 0:06:18.880 a possibility that this August we actually might have a 0:06:18.920 --> 0:06:23.000 broker convention. And because certainly anybody in the party I 0:06:23.040 --> 0:06:28.800 think with a sense of strategic wiliness and tactical import 0:06:29.160 --> 0:06:32.320 is back on their heels. At a minimum, they're gonna 0:06:32.360 --> 0:06:34.240 I think they're gonna be. There's gonna be a lot 0:06:34.279 --> 0:06:37.960 of polling to see how badly Biden's hemorrhaging support. And 0:06:38.040 --> 0:06:40.720 so then if the if the idea becomes he doesn't 0:06:40.760 --> 0:06:43.760 to rescue this bid for the Democrats and to staunch 0:06:43.880 --> 0:06:46.320 some of the I think unusual threats Donald Trump presents. 0:06:46.839 --> 0:06:49.040 How do you deal with that? There's first a small 0:06:49.080 --> 0:06:50.960 handful of people who would talk to Joe Biden, and 0:06:50.960 --> 0:06:53.960 the most important is his wife Jill and his sister Valerie, 0:06:54.040 --> 0:06:57.240 who are easily his two closest advisors. And then there's 0:06:57.240 --> 0:07:00.760 a handful of White House professionals, might Donald in chief 0:07:00.800 --> 0:07:03.640 of chief among them Ron Plain and Anita Dunn, and 0:07:03.680 --> 0:07:06.760 they all would gradually have to say it might be 0:07:06.800 --> 0:07:08.880 in the best interests of the party in this election 0:07:09.080 --> 0:07:13.440 for you to willingly release your delegates. If he says no, 0:07:14.400 --> 0:07:18.400 then it gets into kind of raw and interesting mud wrestling. 0:07:19.000 --> 0:07:22.280 And I don't think anyone has an idea of what 0:07:22.320 --> 0:07:25.080 that would look like. So there's that if he does 0:07:25.160 --> 0:07:27.720 release his delegates, and he does decide to step aside, 0:07:27.760 --> 0:07:32.120 there is not a clear person to who's waiting in 0:07:32.120 --> 0:07:34.760 the wings to take on me. Obviously, Kamala Harris's vice 0:07:34.840 --> 0:07:38.600 president is an obvious go to. There's not unified support 0:07:38.640 --> 0:07:41.440 for her for a number of reasons on policy issues, 0:07:41.480 --> 0:07:44.160 she hasn't been as firm on her feet at certain 0:07:44.160 --> 0:07:46.400 moments as people would want. I also think the fact 0:07:46.400 --> 0:07:48.000 that she's a woman and a loan of color has 0:07:48.120 --> 0:07:51.000 weighed against her, so that she if she wants this, 0:07:51.120 --> 0:07:53.600 she has to play for it. There's Gavin Newsom, the 0:07:53.640 --> 0:07:56.840 governor of California, at Gretchen Whitmer, the governor of Michigan. 0:07:56.840 --> 0:07:58.720 They're all going to be in the wings. So there's 0:07:59.080 --> 0:08:01.840 both what will buy do and then what happens if 0:08:01.880 --> 0:08:03.520 he does it, and all of that's up in the air. 0:08:03.520 --> 0:08:06.040 I mean, he's certainly been quite stubborn to date, and 0:08:06.120 --> 0:08:08.680 if he was in denial about his mental state, then 0:08:08.880 --> 0:08:11.920 probably the only one who wasn't surprised by his performance 0:08:12.000 --> 0:08:14.800 last night may have been Joe Biden. But I remember 0:08:14.960 --> 0:08:19.400 Israel Kline, the The York Times columnist and obviously podcast host. 0:08:20.000 --> 0:08:21.800 He had pitched this whole thing, and I think he 0:08:21.840 --> 0:08:25.080 got a lot of blowback from others in the Democratic 0:08:25.120 --> 0:08:27.800 Party a few months ago where he talked about actually 0:08:27.840 --> 0:08:30.000 this kind of scenario that you would go a few 0:08:30.000 --> 0:08:31.760 months things would not be getting better in the polls. 0:08:31.760 --> 0:08:35.359 He obviously didn't foresee a debate that was as catastrophic 0:08:35.400 --> 0:08:38.439 as last night. And the point he made was there 0:08:38.480 --> 0:08:41.280 had been a fear around an open convention and a 0:08:41.400 --> 0:08:43.960 sort of quote unquote brawl if it happens in a 0:08:44.000 --> 0:08:48.600 convention setting, but actually for a set of voters who 0:08:48.600 --> 0:08:51.959 were quote unquotes double haters and are fed up with 0:08:52.000 --> 0:08:55.240 both candidates very unenthusiastic. The people voting for Trump, many 0:08:55.240 --> 0:09:00.120 of them not enthusiastically doing so, unlike twenty sixteen. In 0:09:00.160 --> 0:09:05.120 that context, actually a lively fight for the candidate candidacy 0:09:05.640 --> 0:09:09.440 at an in Chicago where you have a number of 0:09:09.480 --> 0:09:14.040 credible candidates could actually be a way to energize support 0:09:14.040 --> 0:09:16.319 for Democrats. David, do you think there's anything in that, 0:09:16.400 --> 0:09:18.080 because we now seem to be a little bit closer 0:09:18.080 --> 0:09:19.240 to that scenario than we were. 0:09:19.840 --> 0:09:21.480 I mean, something that stood out to me as I 0:09:21.520 --> 0:09:24.959 watched his surrogates yesterday is how young they all are 0:09:25.200 --> 0:09:27.400 compared to him, And so I mentioned Gavin Newsom coming 0:09:27.400 --> 0:09:29.400 out at the end of the debate after the debate concluded. 0:09:29.440 --> 0:09:32.360 He was on the floor before it, and he's a 0:09:32.440 --> 0:09:34.640 quarter of a century younger than Joe Biden. 0:09:34.559 --> 0:09:34.880 And. 0:09:36.440 --> 0:09:37.520 Everybody's younger there. 0:09:38.280 --> 0:09:41.280 Yeah, yeah, we joked, you know who is enjoying this 0:09:41.320 --> 0:09:43.200 more than Gavin Newsom himself just being out on the 0:09:43.200 --> 0:09:46.000 floor and greeting reporters and batting down these questions of 0:09:46.400 --> 0:09:48.280 is he the backup candidate if something were to happen 0:09:48.280 --> 0:09:50.120 for Joe Biden, who pushed that out of the way 0:09:50.200 --> 0:09:50.960 quite quickly. 0:09:50.720 --> 0:09:53.280 And David a quarter century younger still makes him fifty six, 0:09:53.320 --> 0:09:53.880 because that's. 0:09:53.720 --> 0:09:57.120 How exactly exactly I think that we could have that. 0:09:57.160 --> 0:09:59.040 I think what's interesting too about as Reclined is that 0:09:59.400 --> 0:10:01.800 he wrote that got that blowback, and then he was 0:10:02.600 --> 0:10:04.599 one among many converts who saw the State of the 0:10:04.679 --> 0:10:07.400 Union address and thought that Joe Biden had pulled it off. 0:10:07.440 --> 0:10:09.960 And I think that fueled a lot of optimism about 0:10:09.960 --> 0:10:11.520 how this debate was going to go among those who 0:10:11.559 --> 0:10:14.880 had been skeptical about the Presidence performance in this debate. 0:10:14.960 --> 0:10:16.319 Going back to something that Tim said that I want 0:10:16.320 --> 0:10:18.480 to hit on is I think once I watched the 0:10:18.520 --> 0:10:21.840 debate start, I began to think that there was a 0:10:21.840 --> 0:10:24.400 bit of perhaps political malpractice. I mean, this is a 0:10:24.400 --> 0:10:29.199 debate that the Biden campaign wanted to have earlier than usual. Customarily, 0:10:29.280 --> 0:10:31.720 these debates don't happen until the parties have picked their nominees, 0:10:31.760 --> 0:10:34.720 and that didn't happen here. And I think Tim's hitting 0:10:34.720 --> 0:10:36.760 on something. Joe Biden, of course, has been a politician 0:10:36.840 --> 0:10:39.480 for a very long time and has a very close 0:10:39.559 --> 0:10:44.400 circle of allies and advisors. The shorthand forward is Biden World, 0:10:44.720 --> 0:10:46.520 and I think that there has to be some element 0:10:46.559 --> 0:10:48.920 of soul searching that's going to happen now about why 0:10:48.920 --> 0:10:51.200 didn't anyone speak up? Why didn't anyone sound the alarm 0:10:51.240 --> 0:10:53.560 about this? I mean, the drum of commentary heading into 0:10:53.600 --> 0:10:57.120 this debate from those people in particular and their friends 0:10:57.120 --> 0:10:59.000 on cable TV here in the United States has been 0:10:59.320 --> 0:11:01.320 there's no way that he's going to batch this. The 0:11:01.360 --> 0:11:03.800 bar is low. He's definitely going to clear this bar. 0:11:03.960 --> 0:11:06.080 And if this was a real concern that he perhaps 0:11:06.120 --> 0:11:08.880 has good days and bad days, and there wasn't a 0:11:08.880 --> 0:11:10.400 guarantee that this was going to be a success like 0:11:10.440 --> 0:11:12.360 the State of the Union. They put him in a 0:11:12.480 --> 0:11:14.480 very tricky position. I mean, he may very well have 0:11:14.520 --> 0:11:16.839 wanted to be in that position, but one would think 0:11:16.840 --> 0:11:18.920 that there would have been more protection and they would 0:11:18.960 --> 0:11:21.280 have done more to prevent what happened yesterday from taking place. 0:11:21.320 --> 0:11:23.760 Yeah, and I think that's interesting because you do feel, 0:11:24.320 --> 0:11:27.760 among many other lots of sort of soul searching, it 0:11:27.800 --> 0:11:31.320 does go back to the judgment question, the judgment of 0:11:31.480 --> 0:11:34.960 his team not only putting him up for this, but 0:11:35.040 --> 0:11:39.040 as you intimate, setting the terms of the debate, which 0:11:39.480 --> 0:11:41.679 in a way that even at the time seemed to 0:11:41.920 --> 0:11:45.200 oddly favor Donald Trump. You know, he was unpopular in 0:11:45.320 --> 0:11:49.480 the past debates for having spoken over Joe Biden and 0:11:49.520 --> 0:11:52.120 for seeming sort of seeming like a bully. But if 0:11:52.120 --> 0:11:55.240 you silence the microphones, if you don't have any fact 0:11:55.320 --> 0:11:59.960 checking in real time from the hosts, that all these 0:12:00.080 --> 0:12:02.760 people all these months who've said, no, really, he's fine. 0:12:02.880 --> 0:12:04.400 I mean, David, do you think that's also going to 0:12:04.440 --> 0:12:08.480 bounce back on senior Democrats who have insisted that he's 0:12:08.520 --> 0:12:10.880 absolutely on top of everything, because it was very hard 0:12:11.320 --> 0:12:13.160 for many people to believe that watching him. 0:12:13.679 --> 0:12:16.720 Yeah, I was struck, especially by Claire mccaskell, the former senator, 0:12:16.720 --> 0:12:19.680 who spoke immediately after this and just acknowledged the fact 0:12:19.679 --> 0:12:21.880 that he had this job to do and couldn't do it. 0:12:21.920 --> 0:12:23.560 As Tim laid out at the top, it just it 0:12:23.600 --> 0:12:27.760 didn't work. And the objective was fairly simple here. You know, 0:12:27.920 --> 0:12:30.120 you look at how these two candidates prepared for this debate, 0:12:30.280 --> 0:12:32.840 and Joe Biden did it in a very traditional way. 0:12:32.920 --> 0:12:35.800 He absconded to Camp David outside of Washington, d C. 0:12:36.400 --> 0:12:39.120 Hold up with his advisors, did, as we understand it, 0:12:39.160 --> 0:12:41.439 a few rounds of mock debates to get ready for this. 0:12:42.760 --> 0:12:46.200 It was astonishing that that yielded nothing in terms of 0:12:46.800 --> 0:12:49.520 canned lines that he might use to rankle Donald Trump, 0:12:50.040 --> 0:12:53.160 or to emphasize how his policies are different, or to 0:12:53.240 --> 0:12:57.360 underscore when Donald Trump was lying or bending the truth, 0:12:57.600 --> 0:13:00.880 or has happened sort of completely off ffiscating what happened 0:13:00.920 --> 0:13:03.400 with January the sixth, then with the COVID nineteen pandemic. 0:13:03.720 --> 0:13:05.360 There were such extremes here and we knew going into 0:13:05.400 --> 0:13:07.319 this debate. We talk about the rules. I mean, I 0:13:07.360 --> 0:13:09.520 think that Dana Bash and Jake Tapper, the two CNN 0:13:09.520 --> 0:13:12.360 anchors who moderated had said their job here wasn't to 0:13:12.640 --> 0:13:15.960 fact check it in real time, but absent that, it 0:13:16.040 --> 0:13:19.280 rested upon Joe Biden to do that. And I think 0:13:19.320 --> 0:13:20.840 that may be in one of the greatest failings of 0:13:20.880 --> 0:13:22.719 this that Donald Trump spewed a lot of lies which 0:13:22.760 --> 0:13:24.880 were used to at this point, but Joe Biden did 0:13:24.880 --> 0:13:26.920 nothing in the face of that to acknowledge or emphasize 0:13:26.960 --> 0:13:28.319 the fact that these were all in truth. 0:13:28.760 --> 0:13:30.960 Yeah, I guess that was one other conclusion you could 0:13:31.000 --> 0:13:33.800 draw that actually, lots of other people could have beaten 0:13:33.840 --> 0:13:35.640 Donald Trump, that he would not have been hard to 0:13:35.679 --> 0:13:38.160 beat in that debate, just he was extremely hard to 0:13:38.200 --> 0:13:39.800 beat by Jay Biden, Right. 0:13:39.840 --> 0:13:42.840 I don't think he was perceived as a convicted felon 0:13:43.120 --> 0:13:45.680 and someone who had been found guilty of sexual assault 0:13:45.720 --> 0:13:48.760 and twice impeached and foamed in an insurrection. He came 0:13:48.800 --> 0:13:51.760 off as an energetic frat boy ready to get into 0:13:51.800 --> 0:13:53.800 a bar fight, and at the moments on the I 0:13:53.840 --> 0:13:56.760 think on the debate screen where he was perplexed by 0:13:56.840 --> 0:14:01.000 Biden's ineptitude, he looked like an avatar. Are for everyone 0:14:01.080 --> 0:14:04.719 watching the show who was also confused by Biden's inability 0:14:04.720 --> 0:14:08.040 to land a blow, you know, and David raised his 0:14:08.120 --> 0:14:10.920 good point about you know, the prep lines and and 0:14:10.920 --> 0:14:14.520 and the policy lines that that didn't come up. I 0:14:14.559 --> 0:14:16.640 almost think it's even it's it's it is definitely that, 0:14:16.679 --> 0:14:19.200 as David pointing out. And it's even worse because I 0:14:19.200 --> 0:14:22.320 think a couple of moments he tried to yes and 0:14:22.320 --> 0:14:26.480 and either his response has meandered into sort of, oh 0:14:26.600 --> 0:14:28.760 grandpa was walking around in the woods late at night 0:14:28.800 --> 0:14:33.960 in his pajamas or uh. He mangled the point of 0:14:34.000 --> 0:14:37.000 the line and it was painful to watch. And sometimes 0:14:37.000 --> 0:14:39.160 when Trump was giving an answer, they'd have it, you know, 0:14:39.320 --> 0:14:42.000 side by side on the TV screen, and and. 0:14:41.720 --> 0:14:43.520 And the other point you think, how would you have 0:14:43.560 --> 0:14:44.920 allowed the side by sides? 0:14:45.160 --> 0:14:47.680 Yeah, and you know Biden's slack jaw or or he's 0:14:47.680 --> 0:14:51.040 looking off vacant and and and you sort of want 0:14:51.040 --> 0:14:52.840 to put a warm blanket around his shoulders and lead 0:14:52.880 --> 0:14:56.000 him off stage. And that's you know that TV is 0:14:56.040 --> 0:14:59.560 a visual medium medium and in a debate, you know, 0:14:59.640 --> 0:15:02.520 famous see Richard Nixon was sweating because he had a 0:15:02.520 --> 0:15:05.560 fever and he hadn't really shaved, and people who listened 0:15:05.600 --> 0:15:08.320 to the Kennedy Nixon debate on the radio thought Nixon 0:15:08.360 --> 0:15:10.840 and one people watched on TV were like, this guy 0:15:11.000 --> 0:15:13.600 looks like he's an unhealthy thug, and why would we 0:15:13.680 --> 0:15:14.240 vote for him? 0:15:14.680 --> 0:15:17.920 And it's a delicious thing just to interject, because Mark Thompson, 0:15:17.960 --> 0:15:19.960 the head of CNN ahead of this, said he wanted 0:15:19.960 --> 0:15:22.080 this debate to hearken back to that tim He wanted 0:15:22.120 --> 0:15:25.120 to have this kind of spare, slim down version of 0:15:25.160 --> 0:15:27.240 the debate, and so to have that element of a 0:15:27.320 --> 0:15:28.920 Canady yes was ailing. I mean, that's what we heard 0:15:28.960 --> 0:15:31.200 sort of minutes into this debate that Joe Biden had 0:15:31.200 --> 0:15:32.720 a cold and that was what was causing all of this. 0:15:32.840 --> 0:15:35.400 It's I mean, it's a delicious parallel that you're bringing 0:15:35.480 --> 0:15:35.760 up there. 0:15:35.880 --> 0:15:37.480 And you know, one of the clips I think that 0:15:37.520 --> 0:15:39.360 went viral, or one of the moments that went viral, 0:15:39.520 --> 0:15:44.480 was when he tried to explain how the administration and 0:15:44.560 --> 0:15:47.800 Democrats had bulked up Medicaid and had delivered better health 0:15:47.800 --> 0:15:50.320 care to Americans and there was a long pause where 0:15:50.320 --> 0:15:53.640 he didn't talk, and he ended up, you know, as 0:15:53.760 --> 0:15:55.920 was well known now, saying, you know, we killed Medicaid. 0:15:56.480 --> 0:15:59.560 It happened on immigration, it happened on abortion. It happened 0:15:59.560 --> 0:16:03.400 on the I mean, inflation, all the touch points, and 0:16:03.440 --> 0:16:06.000 it was just very painful to watch because Joe Biden 0:16:06.000 --> 0:16:08.920 in twenty twenty beat Donald Trump twice in debates and 0:16:09.040 --> 0:16:11.720 owned him. And so this obviously is a much more 0:16:11.840 --> 0:16:15.560 I think adult and challenged person this time around, who 0:16:15.560 --> 0:16:18.200 has been a great public servant, but maybe a year 0:16:18.200 --> 0:16:21.080 ago should have said the best thing i can do 0:16:21.160 --> 0:16:23.560 right now, I've gotten us through this first term and 0:16:23.600 --> 0:16:25.320 into a new place, So I'm going to step aside 0:16:25.320 --> 0:16:29.240 for a new generation of Democrats. And he could have 0:16:29.280 --> 0:16:31.360 owned the narrative at that point, and now the narrative 0:16:31.360 --> 0:16:31.920 owns him. 0:16:32.160 --> 0:16:36.440 I'm going to let you go in one second, but David, 0:16:36.480 --> 0:16:39.040 to go back to where we started, insofar as it's 0:16:39.040 --> 0:16:43.400 possible to say, what is your sense in terms of 0:16:44.480 --> 0:16:49.440 the critical mass of senior Democrats and the likelihood of 0:16:49.480 --> 0:16:52.120 them approaching Joe Biden or is this all going to 0:16:52.200 --> 0:16:55.640 be in the hands of whether he accepts some kind 0:16:55.680 --> 0:16:59.880 of reality or decides to stand down over the next 0:17:00.040 --> 0:17:00.720 few days. 0:17:01.040 --> 0:17:03.160 I'm very curious what the conversations are going to be 0:17:03.240 --> 0:17:05.879 like among those senior Democrats and the degree to which 0:17:06.200 --> 0:17:09.080 his campaign and Biden world, as I mentioned, pushed back 0:17:09.359 --> 0:17:12.040 on all of this. Kate Bettingfield, his longtime aid and 0:17:12.119 --> 0:17:14.840 former communications advisor, was on CNN last night and I 0:17:14.880 --> 0:17:17.640 was struck by how frank she was in her assessment 0:17:17.640 --> 0:17:19.240 of this debate as well. And think she's quite at 0:17:19.240 --> 0:17:20.879 the point where she's saying that he shouldn't run her, 0:17:20.880 --> 0:17:21.800 he should step aside. 0:17:21.880 --> 0:17:22.360 But I'll be. 0:17:22.320 --> 0:17:27.000 Looking for any indications that there are movements in that 0:17:27.080 --> 0:17:29.080 for a moment, that the ground on which she is 0:17:29.080 --> 0:17:31.760 standing is changing. And I again, I'll go back to 0:17:31.760 --> 0:17:35.640 what I said. I think that the whispers have changed 0:17:35.680 --> 0:17:41.520 to a wider, broader conversation about his fitness and capacity 0:17:41.520 --> 0:17:43.280 for the job. And I just want to see sort 0:17:43.280 --> 0:17:46.040 of how much traction that gets among senior Democrats, as 0:17:46.040 --> 0:17:47.760 you say, just among policymakers more broadly. 0:17:47.840 --> 0:17:50.919 And they're supposed to be out on the stump today campaigning, 0:17:50.960 --> 0:17:53.159 and I guess potentially through the weekend. I mean, is 0:17:53.160 --> 0:17:54.879 there any sense, I mean, even just looking at it 0:17:54.960 --> 0:17:57.239 last night, you didn't feel that Biden was necessarily up 0:17:57.280 --> 0:17:57.640 to that. 0:17:58.320 --> 0:18:01.480 Yeah, So he went to this waffle house restaurant for 0:18:01.600 --> 0:18:04.399 an early breakfast before he caught a flight to Raleigh, 0:18:04.440 --> 0:18:08.119 and he actually actually seemed markedly better and more animated 0:18:08.119 --> 0:18:10.040 at that at that restaurant. But yeah, he goes to Raleigh, 0:18:10.040 --> 0:18:13.040 North Carolina, which is this battleground state where I'm from, 0:18:13.040 --> 0:18:15.480 and he's supposed to campaign there today, and then this 0:18:15.560 --> 0:18:17.640 weekend he has a series of kind of high dollar 0:18:18.000 --> 0:18:20.399 fundraising events, one in the Hamptons and I think a 0:18:20.400 --> 0:18:23.640 couple in New Jersey as well, So it's quite possible 0:18:23.680 --> 0:18:26.159 that at those events he may address this or be 0:18:26.200 --> 0:18:29.200 asked about this. Customarily, we don't get transcripts of the 0:18:29.400 --> 0:18:31.840 back and forth between donors and the president, but we 0:18:31.840 --> 0:18:33.520 do get a transcript of what he says at the top, 0:18:33.520 --> 0:18:34.080 and we'll read that. 0:18:34.359 --> 0:18:37.040 And it feels like ethically bad judgment to send someone 0:18:37.040 --> 0:18:40.320 who's flubbed a debate to a waffle house the next day. 0:18:40.320 --> 0:18:43.359 It's like having Rishi Sunak in front of Number ten 0:18:43.680 --> 0:18:45.800 in the middle of the rain all visiting Titanic, Like, 0:18:45.840 --> 0:18:48.439 how hard are some of these atmospherics to master? 0:18:49.840 --> 0:18:52.720 Well, this goes back to the malepractice and tim do 0:18:52.720 --> 0:18:54.040 you think, what's the chance that they're going to be 0:18:54.040 --> 0:18:55.720 telling those but donnors are going to be telling in 0:18:55.760 --> 0:18:58.000 the truth, because there don't seem to have been a 0:18:58.000 --> 0:19:00.000 lot of people telling in the truth. If last night 0:19:00.359 --> 0:19:02.280 it is more than just a bad night, if it 0:19:02.359 --> 0:19:05.760 really does speak to his demeanor day to day. 0:19:06.160 --> 0:19:09.080 I mean, I do think he even surprised his own handlers, 0:19:09.440 --> 0:19:11.840 and I think people who had the state of the 0:19:11.920 --> 0:19:14.200 union in mind, and even some of his some of 0:19:14.240 --> 0:19:16.480 his other campaign stops where he looked stiff but was 0:19:16.560 --> 0:19:20.200 verbally acute. And I could be wrong, but I don't 0:19:20.200 --> 0:19:23.320 think anybody would have put him on the stage anticipating 0:19:23.840 --> 0:19:26.880 you know, that you'd end up like with quasi motor there. 0:19:27.000 --> 0:19:30.639