Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 12/27/24: BOMBSHELL: WSJ Reveals Biden Decline Coverup

Episode Date: December 27, 2024

Krystal and Kyle discuss bombshell reporting that Biden’s age concerns were covered up.   To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show AD FREE, uncut and 1 hour early visit: www.breakingpoints.com   Merch Store: https://shop.breakingpoints.com/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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I recorded a great interview with Matt Brunig from the People's Policy Project. Got into a lot about healthcare and some of the lies that have been spread recently, but also got his reaction to this new Wall Street Journal reporting about how Biden's aides hit him and lied to the public about the state of his decline. Enjoy this interview. And if you do like it and want the full thing and to get our interviews every single week, you can subscribe on Substack. We'll have the link down below for you. In any case, enjoy. Matt, I wanted

to zoom out a little bit to talk to you about the Biden administration, the legacy. I saw you tweeting about this Wall Street Journal article that just came out where, I don't know if you've seen it yet, babe, but they've got all these details of the lengths that his aides went to. Oh, I did see this, yeah. To cover up his incredible decline. They begin with this anecdote of Michael LaRosa out there touting the first lady, Jill Biden, like her campaign schedule and how she'd been to so many places in Iowa. And the staff was pissed at him because they're like, well, in contrast, this makes Joe Biden look terrible because he can't really do anything. So obviously there's the age and decline part. But I also and i'd love to get your reaction

just to that piece matt because you were saying and it is incredible they knew all this and yet they still decided to go forward with him they still decided hey it's a good idea for you to get out there and debate donald trump like none of us can really know what was going on in their minds but did they just they just didn't think there was any choice but to sort of march, go forward on this death march? Were they setting him up for failure? They did the debate early in case something like this happens. They could try to pull the plug, right? Isn't that the theory?

I don't know. What do you what do you read into all of that, Matt? Yeah, I mean, it's hard to figure out the mixture of things, right? Because Biden is making decisions. And so maybe on some level, you know, if Biden wants to debate, he's going to debate. There's nothing you can do to make him not debate. But the individual staffers also make decisions, right? So that's the part I don't, if I'm an individual staffer and I see the situation as it is, as we all now understand it, why wouldn't I do something, say something? I mean, you could resign, you could do whatever, right, to make a big fuss about it, especially if you think, as so many seem to, that Trump was this sort of existentially,

you know, horrible figure that we needed to avoid. And you're going to play this game where somehow we're going to hide Biden, but then he's also going to win an election without what? Because it's not even just the debate, right? That was the singular moment. But elections involve tremendous amount of public appearances and interviews and whatever. And you're not going to be able to hide them away from that. So I don't know. I find that whatever the thought process involved in all that, very, very strange. And to say even, okay, well, so we had the debate early. Well, you need to be thinking about this before the primary, right? Because, oh, well, he can bow out after the debate, and then what? We're left with Harris, who at that point had been a very

unsuccessful politician. I mean, you know, she's a senator, but presidentially she'd done very, very poorly. So, yeah, I don't know. A lot of bad decision making in that. Yeah, they cocooned Biden's closest aides, cocooned him to hide him and to protect him from public scrutiny. And then the other people who were in contact with him was probably limited. And then if you think about all the incentive structures, it makes it so that it's just like, hey, shut up, don't say anything. If you resign and you try to virtue signal about how this is a problem, you're immediately going to be castigated as you're like a right wing op. You don't have a future in any Democratic politics anymore. So like all of the

incentive structures are there to just kind of force everybody to don't ask, don't tell. Right. It's like a don't ask, don't tell policy. I mean, his circle of advisors has been the same since like 19. Right. And they're willing to lie for him. They're willing to lie for him and hide his family members. Right. And yeah. And, you know, there's lots of reporting about how he didn't want to hear any negative news. And so they didn't bring him any negative. By the way, Trump was the same way, right? Like, it's funny that the ego. There are. Yeah, there are some Trumpian characters. I just don't want to hear anything negative. Show me Trump famously. So that would say, show me the good things and have it like on one page and big font. Like you have to have his name in the briefing in order for him to be like, that's right, Trump. I like this.

And since you already have this very narrow circle of longtime advisors established with very few, you know, people who have been able to penetrate that in the past couple of years, if you're someone who has any kind of an in, you know that the minute you tell him something he doesn't want to hear, you're out. And so he surrounds himself with, yes, men and women, and then, you know, creates, self-creates this bubble. And then that's reinforced by the aide's desire to hide from the public and even from, like, cabinet secretaries and members of Congress what's going on. And it's in everybody's self-interest to perpetuate this thing right up into the point where it's not possible. There's an anecdote in here. They say if the president was having an off day, meetings could be scrapped altogether. On one such occasion, spring of 2021, 2021 people

were talking about here, a national security official explained to another aide why a meeting needed to be rescheduled. Quote, he had good days and bad days, and today was a bad day. So we're going to address this tomorrow. Like, so it does raise a lot of questions about how many people around him knew the state of this decline. And as you said, Matt, like some of them, I guess, maybe earnestly believed what they were saying about Trump being this genuine threat. And yet they're so terrified, I think, of any kind of an actual democratic process that they just like push forward anyway, in spite of really knowing what's going on. I feel like a bigger problem is the media, right? Because it really was on the media to sort of be like, OK, we got issues here and take the candidates

seriously. You know, the people who ran Mary Williamson ran, Dean Phillips ran like there were the door was open a little bit. Right. But the media shut them all out, didn't talk about them, made them seem ridiculous. And obviously all the governors who had a chance, like Gavin Newsom and all of them, they sort of fell in line and backed off. The midterms were decent. Yeah. But like, don't you I, I'm curious what you think, Matt. Was it, was a bigger problem, the media and this whole thing for not taking challengers to Biden seriously or. And not doing more reporting earlier on.

Or reporting. Yeah, that's the, that's the media failure. I'd focus on more than anything. I remember Olivia Newsy had a piece shortly after kind of this all went down with the debate where, I mean, she basically is indicating that, you know, she's known that he's had trouble for a while. She's been covering him and she kind of then lays it all out and that's all well and good. But then, you know, you kind of look at it and you think, well, Olivia, maybe you should have written about this a year ago when you seem to have indicated you had knowledge of it.

And there had to be a number of media people who had some kind of information about it. It seemed like partially what happened among liberal media is they just decided that this was like a Fox News lie. I remember when there was a, what was it? It was, they had a special counsel to investigate Oh, that's right. Yeah, they classified documents. Something her, Robert Her. Oh, yes, yes. And this dude was like, yeah, he's an old man

who means well, but damn, his brain is not working. And everybody was like, how dare you, sir? Yeah, yeah. He specifically was saying, how dare you, sir? Yeah, yeah. He specifically was saying, look, I don't know if we should bring charges against him for the mishandling of these documents because he's really not there.

And I remember, I actually remember Iglesias was so incensed by this. And I thought it was a decent point at the time. I mean, I thought, you know, to get my cards on the table, I wrote something in Politico in 2020 during the or 2019 during the primary then that that Biden was his mind was gone. But, you know, it was sort of like, oh, what a clever thing this they couldn't find enough evidence to charge him. So instead, they're going to spear him and say that he's just

completely gone. And, you know, I don't know, just this sort of desire to think, well, that's a right wing smear. That's a right wing smear. That's a right wing smear, I think, kept people from looking at the reality and reporting it correctly. That happened with Julian Castro. I was thinking about him, too. He was like, did you just forget the thing you said five seconds ago? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it was something that us Bernie people at the time were kind of pointing out, like, hey, man, he lost his fastball at the very least.

But it was – maybe that's part of the problem is that everybody dismissed it then, and he won the election. So it sort of felt like, well, I guess they were being hyperbolic. If the guy could win, obviously his brain's working good enough. Yeah. And so then – but then everybody, like, time continues. And he got worse. It only goes in one direction.

It does not get better. Yeah. One, and there's also, there's also a question, I mean, it seems pretty clear that you don't have to be

fully there cognitively to be president, you know? Apparently. Apparently. That's so true. So, in a way, you could kind of, I could see someone reasoning like well who cares like we had trump and we had biden reagan had uh alzheimer's or

something that's right you know one really it's not really that necessary but the problem is that even though it seems like it doesn't really it's not strictly necessary when voters realize that you're that way that turns them off so it becomes necessary they don't love like a yeah you having like a bowl of mush in your head what does that say about us as a country that he's right like that people were like yeah maybe his brain doesn't work but like whatever his strongest defenders at the end were like bernie and aoc remember that was. That was a political calculation is what that was. I mean, I think it was that.

But I think also ideologically, like on an idea, like we got Lena Kahn and this transition, I do want to hear your thoughts, Matt, on kind of like the Biden economic legacy. We got Lena Kahn. We got Jennifer Abruzzo at the NLRB, who was fantastic.

You know, we got some industrial policy and a few things that are like a legitimate minor, but legitimate break with the neoliberal era. And with Kamala, you were less likely to get those things. So I do think that was part of the calculus with them, too, is like, I don't really care that his brain is cooked. At least we got Lena Kahn. We also got Gaza, and that is enough of an excuse for them to tell the truth. Right. Sure. I'm not. Yes. I'm just trying to explain the thinking because it's commonly also give no indication that she was

going to break with Biden. He's not stepping down. I've heard him say it a thousand times. He's not going to step down for everybody. Just shut the fuck up and accept it. I think that was their thinking. I think it was a little if Biden wins, then we'll have his ear because we're the ones who defended him. Yeah, no, I think the I think the because I remember for a while it wasn't even clear it was going to be Harris that would take over. There was a lot of you know, when they were saying all that, no one knew what would happen. But I think the assumption there from Bernie world, you know, Bernie specifically, not like, you know, his fans, but was look, Biden very, very clearly is not going to step down. He's made this so clear. So here's a little moment where kind of the center is abandoning him and they're calling on him to step down. We know he's not

going to. So what if we kind of, you know, suck up the void, get close to him? And he did actually adopt some of their policies. I remember in that inner brief period after the debate, before he dropped out, they got him to endorse national rank control. So, you know, I forgot about that. You remember that? I totally forgot about that. By the way, to your point, guys, it's kind of weird that Iglesias was such a big defender of Biden, given that Iglesias has made crystal clear that his politics economically are much more like a Bill Clinton or Barack Obama than a Joe Biden. So why was he such we shouldn't he have been arguing that Biden

has gone too far left on economic issues? You know what I'm saying? Like it's not even ideologically. They're actually not lined up. up yeah but he still was like one of his biggest defenders what do you make of that well you know i don't know glacies has uh complicated views you know at some level uh you know he wrote a he wrote a the one billion americans book you know so what yeah and then and now he's like you people like immigration too much like hold up hold the phone here, buddy. Oh, that's so true. He just pretended like he didn't write the book. I don't know what book that is.

Matt, how do you see, in terms of the economic legacy, you know, it's always difficult to just be like, put aside the genocide. But, you know, on some of the economic pieces, do you see Biden as sort of transitional figure? The parallel that often comes to mind is like a Jimmy Carter who was this transitional figure between like the New Deal era and the neoliberal era. And I do think Joe Biden in some ways occupies that same sort of space.

How significant do you see some of the breaks being, you know, from neoliberalism? Do you think where did that come from? Like, was that just like Ron Klain? Was it Bernie Sanders influence? Was it just that's where the center of the party was now and sort of where the world is moving? What what do you make of some of those pieces? Yeah. So what happened there? I think on the administrative agency front,

what seems to have happened with someone like Lena Kahn or Cantor is that if you recall in the 2020 primary, Warren kind of didn't really endorse Bernie when she dropped out, which was a little bit of a blow because that was sort of like the left block. It seems like she was given essentially, I don't know if a literal dispensation for that or what, but she seemed to have been allowed to select the FTC chair and some of these other administrative cabinet level officials so that that seems to be what what happened there right in the same way that uh buddha judge became department of uh transportation secretary uh warren's dispensation for uh her behavior in the election was that she got to pick those nominees so what you know what did we it was always very funny like are we talking about biden administration are we talking about biden himself biden himself his mind is so gone what

do we even you know it's always just sort of like which puppet is, is, uh, or which puppeteer is running which piece of this puzzle? Um, yeah, that's so true. The other thing he did, uh, would have been, uh, kind of run the economy hot, this sort of like macro economic stimulus, uh, stuff that seemed to be coming out of what was just kind of the consensus liberals to progressive opinion on what happened after 2008, which is that Obama did not pass a big enough stimulus and that kept the economy depressed for a decade. And so they're trying to learn the lessons from that. And that, I mean, you could find that pretty much anywhere in any of the kind of center left to left policy world. And that's where he would have staffed his agency,

staffed his administration with those same kind of people, whether it's Center for American Progress, Roosevelt, people like that. So there's that part of it, industrial policy, and then climate, right? So I don't know. These are just sort of these strands that he picked up. And it's kind of hard in retrospect to know how much he was hip to it or what exactly was going on. But it seemed to be he managed to get... The people who managed to control him were people who were of those various policy sort of persuasions. One of the things I fear is that the infrastructure bill and the IRA and the CHIPS Act and like the lasting positive implications of that, that that's all going to happen under the Trump presidency. And Trump will just hop in front of that parade and pretend like it was his tax cuts for the rich

that did it or something, you know. So it makes me. So it makes me fear a backslide, a potential backslide. We had this debate long ago about whether or not the neoliberal era was actually coming to an end. And my case was that because of the deleterious impact of money in politics, it basically locks in a sort of neoliberal era because the politicians are always going to default to doing what their donors want them to do, which is always neoliberal. And it makes me wonder, like, let's assume for a second a Democrat wins in 2028, which is very possible considering how batshit crazy this administration is going to be. Let's say you get a Gavin Newsom or Pete Buttigieg just to play it safe at the moment's probably one of the more likely things to happen. Are they going to be more inclined to just revert back to Obama-style economics,

or are they going to be more inclined to either copy a Biden style or potentially even go further than a Biden style? I don't know the answer to that, and I'm curious what you guys think about it. No, the primary is going to be very interesting in this respect. Obviously, I'm on the hunt

for who's going to carry the left torch. I assume it's not going to be Bernie this go around. But that seems like it's, you know, it's going to it's really unclear where things are going to go, especially because you had Biden, which did who did one thing. And then, as Crystal was pointing out, the the Harris and her campaign did something quite different. So even his successor, who was the VP, went a whole other route with it. There seemed to be this blip that for a while in kind of election world that, you know, we need to run it a certain way, focus on a few specific popular issues like abortion access, whatever, and keep everything, you know, everything else kind of under wraps and tack to the right, be more conservative, say some negative things about immigration, go on TV and pretend like you have a gun and like stuff like that. Like that was like that was a little moment, but it failed.

So but, you know, is it why did it fail? I don't I don't know. Like, it's very unclear. Like, we don't have a't know like it's very unclear like we don't have a success biden is gone harris did something completely different obama's way in the rearview mirror bernie didn't succeed in the primary he had a kind of an exciting moment like so who i have no idea i don't think anyone maybe that's why we're having there's so many debates now about yeah the problem the groups or was the problem david shore

like what's the what's the issue you know i just hope that they don't take the worst possible lesson which is like how could you run on that six thousand dollar child tax credit that was a bad idea that's way too much money here i mean how could you run it's a little bit of that out there i mean they're like crazy i'm sort sort of I hate to keep bringing up Matt Iglesias, but one of the points that he and others in his lane are sort of raising is, look, Biden did all this stuff you people wanted them to do. And the economy was unpopular. People didn't love it. It wasn't popular. So I guess you were wrong about like supporting labor rights and antitrust policy and like these more left-wing type policy ideas i mean that is

one argument that's being made another argument that's being made like immigrants you should yeah just like throw trans people under the bus adopt trump's like you know hawkish border cruelty she did which she did and obviously that's what she did hard enough yeah yeah the moderation on what you might think of as more cultural type issues if you include immigration and then pared down her she was not economically ambitious she did all those things but then i think some people you know why not back in 2020 she said a thing on a questionnaire in an interview and people still remember that. And so that's why she lost, which I mean, like, obviously, I think this argument is incorrect, because also at the same time, when you are at sort of like peak wokeness, Biden wins.

So wouldn't you think that the wokeness destroying the Democratic Party would have been a factor at the time when it was at like peak woke wokeness on the whatever. Wokeness on the woke-o-meter. This is an iHeart podcast.