DeProgram with John Kiriakou and Ted Rall - DeProgram Show - Interview with Jake Tapper, Author of "Original Sin"

Episode Date: July 8, 2025

We’re pleased to announce a special episode of the “DeProgram show with political cartoonist Ted Rall and CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou”! One year ago today, President Joe Biden shocked the world with a disastrous presidential debate appearance that marked the beginning of the end of his reelection campaign and withdrawal a few weeks later. In the room where it happened was moderator Jake Tapper. Today join us for a LIVE interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper, diving into his explosive book, “Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again.” The book, co-authored with Axios’ Alex Thompson, documents a damning account of President Joe Biden’s mental and physical decline during his presidency, based on over 200 interviews. It details how Biden’s inner circle, including aides and family, allegedly concealed his cognitive struggles—such as forgetting the names of longtime aides, failing to recognize famous friends like George Clooney, and confusing key officials—as well as physical challenges, including internal White House discussions about potential wheelchair use due to Biden’s spinal degeneration. “Original Sin” exposes a tightly controlled Administration that closed off access to Biden, scripted Cabinet meetings, and bullied those who asked about his fitness as enemies and partisan hacks. This is no less than one of the biggest political scandals in U.S. history. Don’t miss Ted and John’s hard-hitting exploration of these revelations and their impact on the 2024 election. Join us live on YouTube and Rumble to ask Jake Tapper your questions and engage with this critical look at the unraveling of the Biden presidency. Tune in for the unfiltered truth on the “DeProgram show”—where bold insights meet fearless dialogue!

Leave it. Hello, everyone. Thanks for joining us. You're watching another episode of Deep Program. We changed our schedule a little bit this week. Normally, we're on Wednesday at 5 p.m. Eastern. This today, we're doing today's show to accommodate a special guest, Jake Tapper, author of Original Sin, the big blockbuster New York Times bestseller, about the Joe Biden presidency and his mental and physical diminishment over the course of his presidency and all the political repercussions is joining us. a little bit later on in the show, so do stay tuned. I'm here, Ted Raul with John Kiriakou, as usual. We're very excited about this, and we're really looking forward to talking to Jake. Here's Jake's book, which I read with great interest. And so for people who are interested in asking a question, we will take and we will look at the questions in the feed,

both on YouTube and on Rumble, keep them polite and succinct. Otherwise, you know, you can rude and long-winded, but we just won't read them to, Jake, at all. So it'll be like you're wasting your time. And definitely precise questions, specific, especially if they're related to the book and you've read the book, are definitely going to be prioritized. There are no ground rules here.

Jake, to his credit, did not give us any no-fly zone, or anything like that. So we can talk about anything we want. It's terrible. And we're going to have a good time. I assume he's looking forward to it. And I know we are too. But before we get to that,

there's some breaking news that happened just in the few minutes before the show began. This was the last day of the current session of the U.S. Supreme Court. They unveiled a bunch of new rulings. And one of the big ones that I know John wants to talk about and I do too, about birthright citizenship, well, sort of obliquely about birth.

That's a good way to say it. Yeah. John. It'll be a second fight. The Supreme Court ruled just within the last hour that, and the vote was six to three. You, I'm sure you obviously know what the breakdown of that vote was. Yes. But they voted six to three to prohibit in many cases federal district court judges from

freezing presidential executive orders now Donald Trump writes a lot of executive orders and invariably somebody sues in a friendly federal district where they think there's there's going to be a friendly injunction there almost always is and then whatever the the executive order had called for is frozen and then generally it's been overturned That has driven Donald Trump crazy. And so he appealed directly to the Supreme Court rather than to go through the district court, the circuit court of appeals and then to the Supreme Court. And sure enough, he won 63.

Now, what this means is that for a lot of these things that we're seeing, like, for example, education policy, abortion, stuff like that, where Donald Trump has taken a stand, people can no longer sue to stop that policy from being implemented. Honest to God, this is going to set a lot of causes back 50 years, maybe more. This is going to be a real change in the way our country is governed. Now, let me add one other things. This was a 119 page decision written by Justice Coney Barrett. And it does not specifically address birthright citizenship.

But what it does is it opens the door for the reconsideration of birthright citizenship. I've mentioned on the show many times our friend and sometimes guest Bruce Fine. Bruce is a former deputy attorney general of the United States. And he told me as recently as two weeks ago that birthright citizenship is written in stone. And actually it's not. It may be thrown out. So, yes, so the history of this is strange, right? So the 14th Amendment passed in 1868 right after the Civil War.

It basically said anybody who is a freed slave who is born in the United States is a U.S. citizen. Then in the late 1890s, a Chinese-American, Mr. Wong, brought his case successfully to the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled that the 14th Amendment birthright citizenship applies to. anyone who's born in the United States, regardless of where the plaintiff is. And so now President Trump issued an executive order, which we all laughed at at the time, January 20th, overturning birthright citizenship. And then immediately a number of court jurisdictions throughout the country filed by at least 22 discreet plaintiffs, major groups, said, you know, we are, suing the government to, we need an emergency injunction to prevent the mass deportation of

some of the 150,000 babies who are born every year who become U.S. citizens because they're born here. So that's what's a question here. Now, when those injunctions were, a universal injunction is an injunction that is one jurisdiction, but applies to the entire country. And John, I have to admit, I can argue the issue of universal injunctions either way. I could make, you know, like in a standard debate class where they say pick one shot aside or the other, I really could do both. I mean, on the one hand, there are cases like this where you can't, let's say you have a whole massive class of plaintiffs who are mostly not represented by counsel and who are throughout the jurisdiction of 50 states and a bunch of possessions. They,

they need rapid action to avoid, for example, being shoved onto a plane and deported to a country they've never been to before. And if that injunction comes from a different jurisdiction, so what? But on the other hand, you could also see the mischief that, and people, you know, plaintiffs and defendants on the left and the right have complained about these universal injunctions for years because it can go towards an injustice as well. I just don't, you know, I know where I stand on birthright citizenship. I think it's an incredibly important defining aspect of the American experience. We're not, like we wouldn't be the same kind of melting pot. We're absolutely not. That's right. That's right. It would be a completely different country if this had happened a generation

or two or 10 ago? It will change the, it'll change us. And not for the better, I think. I mean, you know, I have French citizenship. I got French citizenship through my mother, even though I'm born in Massachusetts. But there are people who are third and fourth generation illegal immigrants to France,

who even though their grandparents were born there, cannot become citizens because they don't have birthright citizenship. And it causes all sorts of problems, people living in the shadows, a permanent underclass, criminal class, it's bad. It's not good for the French people, and they should get rid of it. But on the other hand, I don't know where I stand on universal injunctions. This is a tough one, and I think that this is why the administration decided to do this in two different steps.

So first was universal injunctions. Much to the surprise of many, they won, and they won pretty easily. Next is going to be birthright citizenship. And like you, Ted, I've lived in a lot of different countries that don't have birthright citizenship. I lived in Kuwait, which is notoriously difficult. More than difficult, it's impossible to get citizenship there. It's just impossible. They have three tiers, first, second, and third class citizenship.

So a first class citizen is someone who can trace his lineage to the census of 1920. That's when they decided, hey, we should probably have a first-ever census. We might want to be a country someday, 1971. And we should probably count to see who's who and where they live. So if you can trace your lineage to someone who registered in the census of 1920, your first class, Kuwaiti, the second class Kuwaiti is someone who can trace their lineage to someone who was living in Kuwait in 1920, but for one reason or another, didn't register. A third class citizen is someone who somehow got citizenship after 1920,

and they get almost no rights. And so it doesn't matter if you and the four generations before you have been born in Kuwait, you do not get Kuwaiti citizenship. His Highness, the Emir, could bestow it on you, but that's pretty much the only way to get it. And that's how most of the countries in the Middle East are. So maybe we're a little bit spoiled with birthright citizenship. But to tell you the truth, I always considered it to be something that made this country special, you know? It was special because we're all different. And we all come from different places. And that's what makes us strong and great because we borrow from each other's cultures. And now it looks like that could end. And yeah, you don't get that cultural diversity

that, you know, like Japan isn't a notoriously homogenous society. Yes. They have a lot of problems that come from that, social problems, and that's another country where it's almost impossible to, you know, you can get there and get a work permit. That's not so hard. But even if you marry a Japanese national, you're probably never going to become Japanese.

Even if you become fluent in Japanese, if you make Japan your life, you're never. never going to be they're never going to recognize you as one there are exceptions sure but it's almost unheard of if you meet an American or someone else who you know I went to Japan I married a Japanese person and now I'm Japanese like for real you know whoa how did you do that and and it's it's just you know and it's not good I mean the you know societies that don't have that welcoming aspect, they deprive themselves of, you know, ideological diversity, cultural diversity, different points of view that allow them to understand other people.

And look, every single week, you and I talk about issues that come in large part because countries don't understand each other. Yeah. So I guess maybe that's a good place to talk a little bit about a middle the possibility of a comprehensive Middle East peace deal? You know, I gave a talk yesterday to the Canadian foreign ministry, which is a little bit ironic because I'm banned for life from Canada. But they invited me to address the Office of Peacekeeping. 125 people showed up.

And this was one of the very first things that they wanted to talk about. This was initially reported in Harets yesterday, and quickly it spread like wildfire through the Israeli press. Now, believe it or not, this idea comes not from the Israelis or the Arabs. It comes from Donald Trump. Now, interestingly enough, he only posted about it on truth social after the Israeli press broke the story. So here's the deal, as Donald Trump is saying it is. The Israelis will withdraw from Gaza. The ceasefire would go into effect immediately.

In exchange, Saudi Arabia and all the other Gulf countries that don't currently have relations with diplomatic relations with Israel will establish diplomatic relations. Really, that just means Saudi Arabia. That's huge. The Saudis would administer Gaza. The Israelis would own Gaza, but they would commit at a future date to a Palestinian state, which we've been hearing since 1948. And again, according to Donald Trump, all criminal charges would be dropped against Benjamin Netanyahu. Wait, what?

You're wrong. Okay, but there's no, but none of the parties negotiating this agreement have the standing to drop criminal charges against Benjamin Netanyahu. No, they do. And of course, Netanyahu says, oh, I'm for that. I'm for that deal. That sounds like the deal I want. Not to mention his own country. I mean, he has criminal charges there.

He has the internet. Seven. felonies and it's unclear to me who has the authority i i think i'm not positive i think only the minister of justice has the authority to drop these charges i think um the supreme court might also but i i i looked and i just couldn't seem to to find it um good question from marvel is bb's fear of of the trial seriously the only thing keeping this war going that is that is most definitely a school of thought in israel Yeah. Because the Palestinians are defeated. Hamas is defeated. They've slaughtered everybody. The whole place is physically destroyed. Why keep it going?

But anyway, so here's what it would be. The Saudis open relations with the Israelis. They open an embassy in Tel Aviv, not in Jerusalem. The Israelis open an embassy in Riyadh. The charges against Netanyahu are dropped. The Israelis withdraw from Gaza. The Saudis move into Gaza and the Saudis develop it economically with a port, an airport, a water desalinization plant, a water treatment facility, and an electrical grid. This would be tens of billions of dollars. And frankly, it's something that the Saudis offered to do in 1991. And the Israelis, the Israelis rather, told them absolutely not. So here we are all these years later. and at least right back where we were back where we started the skeleton of a deal now here's the little the little chink in the armor it's that oh and Syria would be part of it would join the Abraham Accords presumably yes Syria would but that that would be some difficult negotiations over territory and water rights so this would be you know the the Israeli press is calling it a two-state

solution, I'm not going to call it a two-state solution. I call it a one-and-a-half state solution because it doesn't have anything to do with the West Bank, and that's where most Palestinians live. Well, maybe it's a one-and-a-quarter state solutions, and half the West Bank or more of it is already gone. That's right. Under the annotation, effectively, of the Israelis. Not to mention, I mean, how could the people of Gaza or the Palestinians or whoever represent them possibly agree to letting Israel own Gaza. I mean, that's a non-starter right there. You got that right.

See, but they throw that same bone out that they throw every year since 1948, that yes, we commit to a Palestinian state at some point in the future. I think the two-state solution is dead as a doorknail. I don't think we're ever going to see it. I don't think anyone believes in it. It's pure fantasy.

It's like a headline ripped from the 80s. We're not going to see that at all. At this point, you know, the solution is going to be a one-state solution, a Democratic Republic of Palestine, or whatever you want to call it, Israel, Palestine, whatever. Republic of Palestine makes sense. It's going to be democratic, and the idea of a colonial settler state is going to be gone. I mean, it is, I mean, it is, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the. whatever rationale there was for the creation of the state of Israel after World War II,

even if you're completely a historical and we forget about the Balfour Declaration and all that, is gone. I mean, you know, it is far less safe to be Jewish in Israel than anywhere else in the world. So, you know, the Jewish people don't need Israel to keep them safe. They don't. Yes. I mean, no. You know, the Israelis will tell you,

like every Israeli will tell you that the two-state solution is dead. And the only people talking about the two-state solution are the Americans. The one-state solution, well, you know, for all intents of purposes, we have a one-state solution and it doesn't work. It doesn't work. Well, how they're treated as high state. It's not a democratic state. It's not a democratic state.

So, I mean, what's left, but a three-state solution where the West Bank is Palestine, they're going to have to come to some agreement over at least a piece of Jerusalem. And then the Gazans have to have some sort of self-determination, whether it's under Saudi administration or independence or whatever. You can't just pretend that there are no people in Gaza, or if there are people in Gaza that they don't have any rights that anybody else has. Right. No, that is exactly. And you can't really kind of pretend that at this point,

after all these years of occupation, that Gaza and the West Bank aren't kind of, they're part of Israel effectively, right? You know, whatever you want to call Israel slash Palestine. May I add something, Ted, please? Star Lion makes a point. The joke among Arabs is that everyone hates Palestinians, especially Kuwaitis, because they claim Palestinian refugees sided with Saddam and sacked their city. That's exactly what happened. We lobbied Arafat hard. And I mean, everybody from President George H.W. Bush to the CIA director, to the secretaries of state and defense, that you've got to side with the Kuwaitis.

And they didn't. Arafat publicly endorsed Saddam Hussein. He publicly endorsed the invasion and annexation of Kuwait. and they weren't Palestinian refugees in Kuwait. They were Palestinians who had lived in Kuwait for decades in most cases, but didn't have any rights because of this crazy three-tier plan, or not planned, but policy of citizenship that they have in Kuwait. And so in the United Nations, it was the only ones that were really loud in the United Nations

in support of Iraq were Yemen, Cuba, and the Palestinians. And the Kuwaitis said, by the time our country's liberated, there will be no Palestinians of Kuwait. Now, they didn't expel all of them, but that was the point. The Saudis expelled almost all Yemenis. I happened to go to Yemen about six weeks after the war ended, and there were more than six million Yemenis, in a country of 12 million at the time.

Six million refugees all being pushed back to Yemen. It was a humanitarian disaster. And so here we are, what, 30, 34 years later, and things haven't returned to normal. In the UAE, in Bahrain, in Kuwait, they replaced a lot of those Palestinians with South Asians. and Filipinos and the shame of it is that the Palestinians were the ones that made these countries run. The Palestinians were the bankers, the lawyers, the engineers, the university professors. They were the educated ones. They were the professionals. You can bring all of the fast food cashiers that you want from Bangladesh or the Philippines or Sri Lanka. They're not going to make

the country run. It was the Palestinians that made the country run. And where did the Palestinians go? They scattered to the winds. And that's what made it even worse. Because we're talking about people who were generations in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. And they had to start fresh in another country. It's insane. Not a lot of people know that history.

John, we've got a few minutes before Jake Tapper joins us to talk about his book about Biden. But I wanted to be, and we have a few more things to talk about before that happens, but I wanted to, first of all, just let people know about a cool thing that you're doing. You can attend, anyone can attend an exclusive seminar with some guy named John Kiriaku, a.k.a. former senior operations officer for the CIA who bravely exposed the agency's enhanced interrogation program. Those of us who don't like jargon, call that torture, join and you can join uh john in live remote sessions they're 90 minutes small group q and a so you can interact with john directly and i'm going to put up the uh URL but basically it's iv like the ivy league

cyber it's like cyber bill money cyber security cyber security so ivycyber.com So these are live remote sessions. Spots are limited. Go to the website and sign up. And I'll go ahead and put that up there now. So anyway, that's IvyCyber.com. Go check it out. All right, not to be missed at all.

Jake Tapper coming up soon. Thanks everyone for patiently waiting. It's going to be a nice, Jake's giving us 45 minutes. And so have your questions ready, put them up in the chat. Producer Robbie is going to moderate the chat. He suffers no fools. So don't play or you'll find out. OK, so let's talk a little bit about the,

I know you've both been following the Sean Combs trial here in New York City. The closing arguments have already been concluded by the prosecution. The defense shocked the media world by wrapping things up in a matter of hours. they're probably no witnesses no witnesses as we speak they are in they're currently delivering their their defense closing argument and then the jury will be

discharged predictions Ted I said maybe a month ago I think Diddy is is a total asshole I really do I wouldn't want my kids anywhere near the man but i'm just not seeing a crime here you know i suppose these freak-offs um can be construed as trafficking if if people were forced to do it but if people were forced to do it why did they never ever say anything they never complained to the authorities they never went public they never said anything to anybody and they continued to take his money so is that really and live with him in several cases so is that really sex trafficking is it a violation of the man act i'm just not seeing it and i'm definitely not seeing racketeering

and may i interrupt myself for one second and several of you um adrian star lion a couple people talking about Kuwait, Bahrain, the eastern province of Saudi Arabia. You know what? That is an issue that is near and dear to my heart. I spent years and years living in those countries and studying that issue. And we're going to talk about that at length. And I promise we'll do it in near future. Thanks for raising it. Yeah. Michael Gardner, victims often keep quiet. That's true. that's true and that's why this this is going to the jury probably in the next day or two yes um yeah no i mean i think i thought it was devastating when the defense presented um text messages from uh you know his girlfriend basically saying oh i can't wait till we do this next one um you know

what i saw there was yes the same things you did and i agree with you i don't think um i think they overcharged him. I don't know if they could. I mean, certainly they could have charged him with assault for that videotaped beating in the hotel hallway. There's probably other things as well. But to me, you know, I think I know what a sex trafficker is. You know, I think Jeffrey Epstein was a sex trafficker. Yes. But that's not what this is. This is an abusive, violent man who mistreats women and men and uses emotional and financial and physical manipulation to get what he wants, all things that arguably should be illegal and and prosecutable, but largely aren't, especially after the passage of time. I think they just overcharged him and they laid it

on too thick and I think at bare minimum he's going to get discounted charges. I think you are exactly right they it was it was a case of charge stacking and it was also a case of venue shopping because remember that the house that they raided the houses that they rated were in los angeles and miami beach so if you're rating his residences in the southern district of california and the southern district of florida then why in the world do you do you charge him in the southern district of new york it's crazy totally totally crazy Just a few minutes away. Jake Tapper is going to be joining us. There's House hearings going on right now. We just have a few minutes here about the results of the U.S.

airstrikes against Iran. We're getting really mixed reports. Democrats and Republicans attended the same briefings, came out with totally different impressions. You know, DIA said the damage was minimal. CIA said the damage was massive. the Iranians say that the damage was massive. The foreign minister spoke on national television last night and said that. But there were no injuries because everybody, you know, got away and they evacuated all of the enriched uranium. So it's just a question of rebuilding what was bombed. I think a lot of this was for show.

think a lot of it was for the Israelis to save face and frankly for the americans to show strength and save face uh the the iranian attack on aludate air base and gutter i'm smiling because it's a very iran way of doing it um they make an announcement we're going to destroy the aludade air base and we're going to launch a rocket in one hour and then that rocket when it gets there it's going to destroy the air base. And so we shoot a Patriot missile and it takes the rocket out. And then everybody declares victory. And there we go. And I see Jake Tapper on Holden. He's a valuable, his time is valuable. So let's go ahead and put him on. All right. There he is. Jake Tappers. Ted, I think we're actually seeing you. I've only seen your grumpy rendering of yourself.

So this is this is this is revelatory. John, I know. John, I've interviewed before. John, I've seen. But Ted, Ted, you're not as grumpy as you make yourself more. Well, I don't tell anyone. That's going to be our secret, Jake. Thank you so much for joining us. We really appreciate it a lot.

So shall we get to it? There's a lot of people who will have questions that we will pass along some of those. It was exactly a year ago. I'm sure you're aware of that. I am very aware. I am very aware, yeah. I mean, so, you know, I read your book very carefully. And, you know, it's so great.

It's so well written. Congratulations on the book. I've been recommending it a lot. And let me just also note, you are the only cartoonist on the, for want of a better term, on the left, that was noting any of this. stuff in your cartoons at all that I know of, that I know of. Maybe I don't, I don't know where Pat Oliphant is exactly in my impression is he's retired. He's retired. But I think he, I think he would have been with you there, but anyway. Right. And I mean, I guess that will be a question, right?

I mean, like, obviously as a cartoonist, all I have to do, I'm only beholden to myself and my syndicate. I look at, I mean, you know, my mother died of Alzheimer's in February of 20, And so when Biden was running, I thought I recognized a lot of the same things that I saw in my mother and in in in the memory care unit of her nursing home where she passed away and you know, it wasn't like he was that far gone. I like the way you wrote it in the book. It's not like he, you know, he was swallowing his own tongue. He, he was able to function, obviously, but there was a diminishment. It was a decline. It's not a straight line. right. It's sort of everybody's familiar with it. But I recognized it and I said it, man, I caught so much abuse for talking about this. And so did the Republicans who brought it up, too. You know, they were dismissed as partisan hacks in a big way. But I think first, maybe we can set the stage. Can you take us back to when you were on that, you know, you were the moderator,

you and Dana, your colleague Dana Bash. You're there. You're, you're, you're at the podium, you're getting ready. You see Trump and Biden come out. Like, what set the stage? Like, what was it like? When did you realize something was wrong? It's a great question. First of all, let me say, I'm so sorry about your mom. Thank you. And I lost my grandfather to Alzheimer's, and I know what a cruel and devastating disease it is. And one of the things in the book, as you know, is a number, it tells the stories of a number of lawmakers and others having encounters with Biden and thinking privately, behind the scenes and thinking, oh, my God, that reminds me of my dad who died of Parkinson's, or that

reminds me of my dad who died of Alzheimer's. So you were just more public with what you were voicing, but you were not alone. And who knows what he has because they have not been transparent. I mean, it's a lot of neurologists we talk to who said that there's something neurodegenerative going on, but they, you know, they can't diagnose him unless they examine him. So the debate is in Atlanta one year ago today, June 27th. And it's incredibly high stakes, incredibly high drama, lots of pressure. Everybody's trying to work the refs, me and Dana. You know, the Trump people full on attack, you know, these leftist tax, blah, blah, blah,

never going to be fair. And the Biden people, they're doing, they're kind of actually trying to do something. different. They're trying to set an expectation that Dana and I are there to assist Biden. They want us to be fact-checking, which we all know what that means. That means fact-checking Trump, not fact-checking Biden, although Biden is perfectly capable of telling Woppers in his own right. But that's not what they were demanding. So very high pressure. The debate is supposed to start at 9 p.m. Eastern. And by 8 p.m., Trump has come and done his run through, done his walkthrough. Both campaigns were invited to come and do a walk through. Both of them, obviously. Trump did not show up

on time. Nobody expects politicians, especially presidential candidates to be on time. But Trump does show up and whatever you think of him. He is a creature of television. He's there, which is my camera? Where's my mark? Is the camera showing me when Biden's talking? Blah, blah, blah. you know, all the, every performance question that somebody would ask. Biden by 8 o'clock is still not shown up. He's still not there. And CNN people, we know that he's in Atlanta because, you know, Air Force One has landed. So, and that's reported by the White House press corps. So we know he's there. But where is he? Somebody from CNN calls the campaign or the White House, rather, and says, you know, where is he? He really should come to this. And the response is,

he doesn't need to he's done he's done he he he feels he doesn't need to he's done a million of these which gives you an idea also of just like how kind of diluted and out of touch president biden was i mean like i would think that at that point he should be like he should have done a run through he should be checking coffees he should be like i mean this is it's the fight of his life and and i don't know how frank anybody has been with him i doubt that they're showing him Ted Raul comics, but they probably should have. And the idea is, like, you have to go out there and show the American people that you're capable of being president for four more years because they, according to polls, do not think that. Like, honestly, like,

he could have come out and, you know, proposed Zoran Mamdani's policy agenda. He could have said free buses and free help. I mean, it didn't even really matter that the test for him was, can you convince people that you are you're up for the job yeah he um he finally shows up at like 832 after being after CNN people have said please come and just see this because it's it's it's um it's a different uh stage there's no audience it's just me and dana and him and trump and like maybe some stage managers in the back but you know whatever just go and see it's not this is it's kind of important anyway and this is a guy who's true tripped a few times at various events, right?

So you don't want that on national television. Yeah, and by the way, there is this kind of like weird lighting on the stage. As I remember, it was only like one foot off the ground or something, one step off the ground. But there was this weird light that if you watch the tape, you'll see like Jill Biden after it's over, Jill Biden helps him down, which I was sympathetic to because, you know, if you're 81, 82, and that could be confusing. but still anyway um he finally shows up they do the run through he does not ask all the questions that trump does uh and i so i was supposed to be out there on the stage at dan and i were supposed to be

out there on the stage at 830 but like we didn't get out through so like 850 it's not that big a deal but like it's just kind of odd when i'm walking out there i'm uh 56 so i feel like i'm among brethren you guys might be a year to me but but 61 yeah we're all middle-aged man and like for me and you'll identify with this i think i love sleep i love going to bed before 10 it's just like the greatest thing in the world sure so as i'm walking out there i'm like oh man this is late like it's almost 9 o'clock and i'm going to be have to do i'm going to have to do this until 10 30 that's past my bedtime and then biden starts shuffling out and i'm like oh god what's it like like for him. Because like, you know, I know from Alex Thompson, my co-author is reporting, like,

his days were pretty much 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. as much as possible. Anyway, he comes out. He's obviously, you know, I've been watching him. But if you hadn't seen him in a year, you know, the shuffle, the gate, because of his degenerative spine issue was bad. He has a cold, so he's coughing. He looks every day of his 81 years. And Trump, of course, looks like you know like trump it looks this he's looked the exact same since he came down that escalator in 2015 for you know whatever you think that's maybe even lost a little weight so anyway then he starts to speak and it's fine but then it was that second answer i think he gave where he just completely lost his train of thought in a very in a in a like i don't want to be mean about

it was awful for everybody watching like not in a mean way just like it's sad aging is sad um ailing being ill is sad and you know we all go through it either ourselves or our parents or our grandparents we see it one of the reasons why people got mad of you ted is because there's still this taboo about talking about any of this um like even when it's like and you i've seen cartoons you've done on the subject but like even when it's like even when it's on like Diane Feinstein or RBG or in Hatch. Remember when he took glasses off that he wasn't even wearing, you know, like Strom Thurman and on and on.

Still going on right now more members of Congress who are over the age of 70 than ever before. It's going to keep going on. Six Democrats in the House have died while in office since April last year. Five of them were 70s or 80s. I mean, there's your House majority right there. So in any case, that second answer, it's so awful, it's so painful. It loses his train of thought. I have an iPad, so does Dano, so we can communicate with the control room because you can't speak, obviously.

But, you know, just in case there's something we need to say, like, let's go to question 10 or whatever. And I wrote, holy smokes in all caps. And I said smokes because I didn't know who was in the control room. for all I knew, my mom, no, whatever. I was thinking, holy fuck, like, oh, my God. Yeah. Like, we've seen him aging. And this is always the thing, because everyone's like, oh, you know, this is the

worst kept secret, worst kept cover. It's not really accurate. It's a much more complicated thing. We all saw him age. We saw moments of acuity issues, enough for you to do cartoons on. But we didn't know what was going on behind the scenes. We didn't know it was this bad. I don't think that's right now I think I mean I knew I mean obviously you referred to my my work during that period for four years I mean I thought it was bad and getting worse but yeah I mean I thought somehow he'd be able to pull it together I mean otherwise okay I don't know if anyone's asked you this it's not in the book as far as I can tell why do you think I mean the people around him Jill the family you know Hunter was a key um yeah

advisor here, the so-called Politburo, the people who were making the decisions, they knew what was going on with the president. Why did they agree to the debate? Why didn't they just say, okay, we're going to have to tough it out? We'll just say, you know, we'll say Trump's a liar. He's, you know, he's disreputable. We don't have to, we won't talk to him because he's disgusting in debates. That's pretty credible. He is disgusting during debate. It's not like he came out and was Teddy Roosevelt. Just blow it up, blow him off and just say, I mean, didn't they know this was going to happen? It's a complicated question, and there's a lot of answers, a lot of different parts of the answer.

One of them is that Mike Donnellan, who was Biden's top advisor, said and thought the American people voted, elected Biden for president once, thinking he was too old. They're going to do it again. like the aging thing was art now obviously he had diminished quite a bit since 2020 even if you go back and look at those videos but people thought he was too old back then he still won so that's one two there is a self-deception that is necessary for any of this cover-up to have happened which is it's not that bad his decision-making is fine this is what they're still saying to this day his decision-making was fine like he's a magic eight ball and and like first of all i don't know that that's true um you could point point to plenty of decisions, both the decision to run for reelection, the decision to cover up his diminishment, but also, I mean, I don't know that every decision he made was great, and we can, we could talk about that if you want. The choice of, I mean, the choice of Kamala Harris, right? I mean, if you're, you know, the Democrats were taking a gamble by nominating him in, in 2020, at the age of 82 when he would take the oath of office.

I think it was 79 when he took here. Right, 78. Yeah, he turned 78, I think. after like a few weeks after the election right right you're right 78 but they're taking a chance you know it's like then you know you're going to need your number two to be right great number two and one that you know that could be president and that you have every faith can do the job in a re-election campaign hopefully now they liked her uh on paper they thought she'd been vetted because she'd run in 2019 although she did you know she didn't even make it to iowa right um but it's hard to argue that they thought she could do the job as president. And it's pretty clear. Like we have reporting in the book that at the end of the day, even though, you know, it was fed to the papers that the three last

contenders were all three African-American women, Karen Bass, who's now the mayor of Los Angeles, Val Demings, former police chief, former member of Congress and Kamala Harris. The truth is it was Gretchen Whitmer. It was between Gretchen Whitmer and Kamala Harris. And Biden's heart was with Whitmer, who obviously, you know, had run a state and all that. But 2020 was, you know, George Floyd, Black Lives Matter, and black women are the beating heart of the Democratic Party. So at the end of the day, you know, Cedrican Richmond, who was a...

Yeah, at the end, Cedric Richmond, who was an advisor to Biden, a former Democratic congressman from New Orleans, said to Biden, if you don't pick a black woman, that's fine, but I'm going to have to have to enter the witness relocation program, something like that. He was joking, but I mean, like, right, right. Yeah, I have a question, Jake. In the very beginning of Biden's term, he went up to Capitol Hill to have a conversation with Democratic members of the House about over 2021, yeah. That's right. You write about this in the book. And it was clear to, it was clear to Democratic leaders who were there and Speaker Pelosi that he was not himself.

She took over the meeting and she was the one who went through the agenda. Was there any fallout among rank and file elected Democrats from that meeting? So this is a great question. He went up there twice. He was supposed to tell the progress. This is, I don't want to get too much in the weeds, but this is when there's the big infrastructure bill and then there's the big build back better bill, which is a lot of social justice, social safety net stuff, spending, and that probably can't get through the Senate,

even though Democrats control the Senate. There's probably too much opposition to it from the mansions and the cinemas of the world. But in any case, so he's supposed to tell the progressives vote for infrastructure and we're going to we're going to get build back better but the the progressives correctly knew that this was their only chance to get that big spending bill that big social safety net bill big about big back better sorry I'm getting it confused with big beautiful bill so much alliteration you think they'd come up with a better initial anyway um and Biden's supposed

to go up there and do that and say separate them and vote for infrastructure and he doesn't yeah and he also gives a very rambling speech and he's quoting satchel page and all this other stuff and at the time now jonathan martin and alex burns wrote about this in their book but their book came out in like 2022 i think so this is kind of before biden's diminishment was as bad as it became um and kind of before it was like a serious issue we we trace the serious diminishment to end of 2022, mid-20203. But in any case, he writes about it. People at the time just think he's either a clever politician who doesn't want to alienate

anybody or he's just being cagey or, you know, he loves being loved. He doesn't want to alienate anybody, blah, blah, blah. He owes the progressives so much, which he does in terms of getting, you know, they rallied around him, progressives, led by Bernie Sanders. and AOC and others, despite Ms. Gimmings, despite the fact that he is arguably the most conservative Democrat before he became president, just in terms of his history, arguably the most conservative Democrat that the party had nominated, maybe since Jimmy Carter, maybe, just because in terms of like I would agree with that. The aggregate of his of his record, not where he is in 2019, but like, you know, school busing and justice reform and. all that stuff. You can find all sorts of stuff about him. More cops on the street. I have serious misgivings about abortion. I mean, like, you know, I think in his heart, he's a, I mean, who knows what he thinks

now. But like, he always seemed to be a center, a centrist. Yes. Democrat. So the progressive really rally around him and get out the vote. I mean, in credits of Bernie Sanders and AOC for doing the party thing, you know, so as to not have a repeat of 2000. And so I do feel like he felt like indebted to them. And then there was all this stuff that was negotiated behind the scenes after Bernie dropped out in terms of staffing for the White House. And Joe Biden was, I mean, people in the Progressive Caucus will say, the most progressive president in their lifetime. I mean, this is people born after LBJ. But yeah.

Right. Yeah. You forget. The kids in Congress today. They're younger than us. Right. I've got a question for you, Jake. This is actually a viewer question from Tusker. If Biden was only capable of being president from 1030 to 4 every day, who was making the decisions and directing the White House at other times of the day? So I don't want to overstate it. He wasn't only capable of being president from 10 to 4. He was, that's when that was the best time to schedule stuff for him. And they tried to schedule as little as possible in the morning or in the evening.

The question as to who made decisions is a really good one. And it also goes into a question of how are the decisions made? We talked to a bunch of cabinet secretaries for the book who would only talk to us on backgrounds. So they're identified in the book as cabinet secretary number one, number two, number three. One of them said that starting in October 2023, when there was a cabinet meeting, there wasn't another one for almost another year, and that the Biden team, the Politburo, as they were called,

and the family kept him away from even his cabinet officials, his cabinet secretaries, which is probably the best thing that could happen to Pete Buttigieg because now he can say I didn't really see him in that last year, which is true, generally speaking. So who was making the decisions? Well, one of the cabinet secretary said to us that they would bring their pitch or whatever

to the Pala Bureau, Mike Donald and Steve Rischetti, others, and say, this is, I need to make, I need him to make a decision. They wouldn't be allowed to meet with the president, these secretaries, other than Secretary of Defense and Secretary of State. They were, but the other ones were not. And, you know, they would say, we need a decision. But they would wonder when the decision would come back, how much did the Pala Bureau shape the decision? In other words, Ted, if I were to tell you John can have anything he wants for dinner tomorrow. Tell him

that. And you, Ted, were to go to John and say, for dinner tomorrow you can have chicken or you can have fish. And the fish is like three days old. And then John comes, you know, so you give me the answer and John gets chicken tomorrow night. Well, you've got to pick, but how much were your options

limited? And I think there is a question I think where one... You know, but I just think it's it's always a lot more complicated. You know, it's not as much as Republicans in Congress would like to make like this organized star chamber of people like, you know, doing their fingers like Mr. Burns and whatever.

It was a lot more complicated than that. And that doesn't mean it's any better. Sure. It's just a lot more complicated. Jake, let me ask you, I'm sure you have an answer for this. This may be the toughest question we're going to ask you here. Okay. You probably know what it's going to be.

So a lot of people, particularly on the left, but also on the right, they're criticizing you for not having spoken out before you put out the book about what you believed, which I don't know what you believed about Biden's mental acuity. You know, for all the years that you were, you know, you're hosting on CNN, you know, why did you not at some point try to source some, or did you try to source some people inside the administration who would go on the record and say, listen, there's a problem at the White House. The president is declining and he's not really up for the job. Yeah. It's a great question and a totally fair question. And I'm just, again, it's complicated. So I'm going to give you the

complicated answer, which is I didn't know it was that bad until you guys did. I didn't know it was that bad until debate night when I saw it 15 feet in front of me. I knew he was aging and I'd covered it, you know, when he, when he ran. I've interviewed him twice in the last five, six years. In September 2020, I interviewed him in Michigan. And he seemed fine. And he seemed totally with it. But I did ask him if he would pledge to be transparent since he was going to be so old.

Would he be transparent about his health? And he said he would. He obviously was not. And then the next time I interviewed him was October 2022. And he seemed old. And he did not seem adult, but he seemed old. But, you know, you can find times that I covered or questioned this throughout the years. Corrine John Pierre came on the show in 2023, the press secretary for the White House.

And I asked her about voter concerns about his age, just as I had asked him about voter concerns about his age in 2022. And then after the Her report came out, Robert Hur, the special counsel, investigating his mishandling of classified information. He was owed some apologies, I think. Oh, yes. But after the Her report came out, I did not question Robert Hur at all as a reporter when he said that Biden to a jury would seem like a well-meaning elderly man with a poor memory. And I believed it.

And I had no reason to think that he was anything other than. in telling the truth, Robert Hur, about what he, what he saw. And, yeah, and, like, all the time, a bunch of us. He tells if the Robert Her stuff were really disturbing. I mean, you know, he didn't remember the year that Bo died. Yeah. I mean, I'm never going to forget the minute that my mother died. Yeah.

You know? And that's not, obviously, because he, you know, because it didn't mean anything to him. Obviously, he loved Boat equally and dearly. Yes. And just to just to remind your viewers. Robert Herr is asking about then vice president or then former vice president of classified information in 2017 after the vice presidency. 2017, 2018, and Her asks about that.

And Biden's responses, and this is all in a transcript and there's audio out there too, so you can check for yourself if you don't believe me, but not you, but your viewers. And he says, now you have to remember during this period, Bo was either deployed or dying. And that's not true. Bo, who served in Iraq, was deployed in 2008 to 2009, and he died in May 2015. And then there's this back and forth, when did Bo die? When did Bo die? And that's not like this is one of the, you know, three worst days of his life, you know.

So it's not like he doesn't remember it, but he's addled and he doesn't remember. He literally didn't remember what years he was served as vice president of the United States. Yeah. years. And so I would say that, you know, from that moment on, I was not skeptical at all of any of the accusations. I mean, at that point, shouldn't he be removed from office? I mean, you could make that argument, yeah. And in fact, there were people that we, that wouldn't go on the record, but we refer to in the book, Democrats who worked for Biden, who wondered the night of the debate, who's running the country. And, in,

In fact, one of the most interesting House Democrats, I think, is this woman in Washington State named Marie Glucent-Perez. She has this, she represents this swing district in Washington State. And she was the only House Democrat to say, not only should he not be the candidate, he should step down as president. And like J.D. Vance, and again, like you noted like how if Republicans ever said anything, it would just like get called partisan and J.D. Vance was making the same argument, but like, that's not a ridiculous argument. It's not at all a ridiculous argument. I mean, and I don't understand.

Also, I wanted to get your thoughts about the responsibilities under the Constitution of Vice President Harris is the only person who could have triggered, you know, a move at a simple majority of the cabinet to remove the president. Now, I understand that it's the worst, it's a terribly written amendment because it's self-serving, right? The person who triggers it then becomes president. It's like, you know, you're going to look like crap if you exercise it. But how much did she know and how, you know, and when did she know it? It's a really good question. We were not able to find anyone that she ever said anything to about, you know, he shouldn't be president and whatever.

And I think one of the, one of the things about Kamala Harris, and look, I have no idea if she's going to run for governor or for president. And I have no idea if this issue will matter to Democratic voters in 2028. I personally think it should because this was a huge disgrace and a big lie to the country. And I'm not saying every Democrat in the world was in on it. No. But the best possible answer Kamala Harris could give, Vice President Harris could give is, you know what? I didn't see him that often.

I wasn't actually that important an advisor to him. you know we have lunch once every two weeks and you know and this this part she would never say that of course what she did say to people was I would see him in the Oval Office and I would see him in the Situation Room and he was always fine and I believe that because those are high adrenaline moments when you're in the Oval Office or we literally don't have any or really any stories of all the anecdotes in the book of him having bad moments we don't have any that I don't, I can't remember any to take place in the Oval Office or the situation room because those are, those are high energy moments. And our argument is never, is not, this is weekend

of Bernie's. It's not. It's good, as you noted, Ted, good moments and bad moments, good days and bad days, certainly enough that one should wonder, should the 25th Amendment be invoked. But I don't know that it's such a, it's such a tough thing to do. It's never been tried. I mean, other than when like a president goes under the knife for heart surgery or whatever, it's never really been done. And it was written after JFK's assassination. And it's poorly, as are many things written by the people in that big white building in Congress, very poorly written. Jake, in the immediate aftermath of the debate, and before Biden dropped out, John Heiliman reported that there was talk of certainly Biden dropping out and then the Democratic Party calling for four regional primaries or one national primary in four regions.

Yeah. Nothing ever came to that. No. Tell us a little bit about the background that went into the decision to just sort of grant the nomination to Kamala Harris? Yeah. The party of democracy, right? Right. So they, there was talk of having some sort of contest.

And how would you do it? So the debate was June 27th. So the Democratic Convention was less than two months away. Right. So how would you do it? Now, keep in mind also, a big complicating factor is that Joe Biden doesn't drop out until July 21st, almost a whole month. month and that three plus weeks yeah valuable if he had dropped down 20th we might be writing a completely different story here in terms of like if there had been some sort of contest there were

obviously people that wanted to run for president there were people there were governors that were even after Biden had said Biden announced he was going to run for re-election in april 23 there were governors up until and others up until the end of 2023 who were still wondering old school phone that's Joe Biden calling he's best at you Tyler hello um hotel phone so but there were there were Democrats wanting to run in December 2023 like he still might drop out drop out I still might run and there were arguably five or six that were ready to go uh governor Newsom of California Governor Whitmer of Michigan, Governor Pritzker of Illinois,

Pete Buttigieg, she's the Secretary of Transportation, Senator Amy Klobuchar, Minnesota, and then Vice President in here. So those six, I think, at the drop of a dime in December, 2023 could have run. But it was, you know, by then it was like really, really risky. And both Pelosi and Obama were pushing for some sort of contest. What about just an old-fashioned? 19th century open convention. See what happens.

That's how we did up with William Jellings-Bryan. Just go out there at the convention and woo the delegates. Think about the excitement. Well, it would have been, first of all, I mean, it would have been great to cover. So it's probably of your lifetime, yeah. Yeah. But it's hard to argue that that would have been less democratic than what happened.

I mean, you know, what happened was an anointing. So Biden, Biden calls Kamala Harris. These are details in the book. Biden calls Kamala Harris says he's dropping out, finally. And he's going to, he's going to, she brings it up. He says he's going to endorse her. He sends over the letter. Oh, no, wait.

That's not what happened. He said he's dropping out. He sends over the, the letter that they're going to post on social media. It doesn't mention her. And she says, if you're endorsing me, where's the endorsement? It's not here. So then they talk about it. come back. We're going to endorse you like 15, 20 minutes after.

Originally, he was going to wait until, this was a Sunday, Thursday in the Oval Office Address, and then he was going to announce he was endorsing Harris. But Harris correctly realized that that non-endorsement would cause lots of other Democrats to maybe go in. Anyway, they do the deal. They announce that he's endorsing her. First of all, that basically shuts out. any competition because Biden has a hundred million dollars. Biden Harris have a hundred million dollars in the bank, the Biden Harris campaign. She now has that. Newsom, Whitmer, they have zero or whatever, maybe in their Senate campaign or whatever, they have something. But like, you couldn't

compete with that. Harris and her team are calling delegates. They're calling other potential candidates. The first one she's worried about, by the way, is not anybody I mentioned, but she's worried about Josh Shapiro, the governor of Pennsylvania. That's the first call she makes of a potential challenger, but he's on board immediately. He's like, of course, it takes Pritzker and Whitmer a beat before they endorse. They wait until the next day to endorse, but by Monday, everybody's on board. And it's not democratic. It's entertaining by delegates and not even delegates that get to hear what the other options are.

Let's roll back to 2020, speaking of not Democratic. Right. I mean, the Democratic Party brand over the last eight years or so has been Donald Trump lies like the day is long, but we tell you the truth. We're not like Donald Trump. Right. And yet, we're going to present a guy, have him campaign from his basement under the cloak of COVID, not expose him to people like you to be interviewed, you know, in a straightforward way, not some of them out to mix it up with the public. And we see these disturbing. strange incidents that go back to 2020, like that incident with a dog-faced pony soldier where he was annoyed by one of the voters somewhere. I mean, it seemed, the Biden administration seems like Kabuki Theater from day one to me. I mean, like when there's an op-ed in the New York Times that says, by Hillary Clinton, I know she probably didn't write it, but she could write it. She could write it. Probably would do a better job than what they, whoever wrote it. But Joe Biden,

when they sent out, for example, that letter that you described, he didn't write that. He couldn't have written that. He couldn't have written that in 2018. So, you know, I mean, what is the toxic effect on the American public? And I don't even mean just on the Democratic Party, knowing that they're being, you know, it's one thing to be lied to. It's another thing when you know you're being lied to. It's like you're insulting my intelligence.

You think I'm stupid. Yeah. So that's a really great question. First of all, I would argue that the Democratic Party has not truly had a competitive primary in 2008 since Obama won. And what happened then was the voters said, I don't want this establishment candidate. I want this new guy. That's what happened. And they got the stronger candidate as a result. They did. And the contest made him better. The Obama that ran in the summer of 2008 was so, like I was on the trail covering him in 2007. And he was awful. I mean, he was

he was annoyed that he was there the questions were stupid uh you know from voters from reporters everything he hated the process and people his advisors had to give him a talking to like you need stop like do you want to be president or or not um and he got his shit together um and Kamala Harris did not benefit from that she did not get one of those and she would have benefited from it I think as a candidate or maybe somebody else would have won I agree with that um Jake had a question from Nick, was, were you able to talk to any heads of state for your book about their impressions of the former President Biden? Oh, and just one other thing based on your past, took your tough question.

I just want to say, Alex and I, Alex Thompson from Axis and I, we started writing this book after the election. Like, this is not like something I've been working on. It was 100% after the election. I sent Alex the proposal. I talked to him about, I had the idea for the book. I talked to him about it the day before the election. he was on set, very impulsive, like, but here's this young reporter who's been doing tough

stuff. This would be a big combo. And then the day after our sent him a proposal. And then the interviews we did, we did more than 200 interviews. And all but one or after the election, when people, when Democrats suddenly felt like their tongues were loosened. Yeah, because before it was all, like, if you say anything, you're helping Trump. If you say anything, you're helping Trump. Now it's like, there's no, there's no help. There's no threat of Trump. It's just a reality. so now and even then they were like off the record or on background so just i wanted to get that out there um the question what was the question again uh did you talk to any heads of state yes yes um there are there is a head of there is a european head of state mentioned in the book

talking about an event uh a sit down with biden and it was also it's in a part of the book in which we talk about one of the uh odder things about biden when it comes to trying to figure how much he was having acuity issues, which was he was always kind of long-winded, always gaff-prone, always prone to saying something inappropriate. And I mean, that's just the Joe Biden. The three of us are old enough to remember, you know, Joe Biden in the 1980s and the 1990s, young and healthy and, you know, really out of control sometimes. People thought he was a braying ass.

His image was completely revamped when he was vice president and to become this avuncular, beloved figure. But in the 80s and 90s, people thought he was just a jerk. In fact, there's a great anecdote. Rolling Stone did a... Rolling Stone... I'm sorry. I promised to be next. Rolling Stone did a profile.

of Obama in 2007, I think, 2007 or 2008. And there's a moment where Obama is sitting in a hearing and the chairman of the committee is just going on and on and on and on. And Obama writes, like, shoot me now and passes to a aid. Biden was the chairman. It was a foreign relations committee or yeah, foreign relations. And like Biden was the chairman. So there was that quality. So we have a head of state there. And we also have a moment where the Macron sees Biden at the Normandy festivities and refers to as, I think the word he used, it's a French word, but it's basically embarrassing. It's that he was embarrassed for Biden who, I mean, there were. I know. Well, yeah, there we go. Yeah. And Biden was in the eyes of Democratic members of Congress who were there, he seemed,

more frail than the D-Day veterans and some of the D-Day veterans who were 99 and 100-year-old, 100 years old. Like, that's how stiff and out of it he seemed, that there were like people, I mean, honestly, just 18 years older than him, who seemed better. Do you think he benefited to sort of call back something you just mentioned? Do you think he benefited from the fact that nobody ever thought he was a, brainiac in the first place. I mean, you know, imagine if, say, Barack Obama had suffered something like this in the future, God forbid. And, I mean, it would be a startling difference, right? Like,

my mother was a genius, smartest person I ever met. To see her diminishment was insane. It was like, what the hell? It's like watching Christopher Reeve, this great athletic guy suddenly incapacitated. Joe Biden wasn't, you know, I mean, he wasn't really, but he wasn't. But he was. wasn't that smart. I think it's more, yeah, no, he's not a, he's not a brilliant guy. But I think it's more the just the fact that some of the ways that people age, they become long-winded and they start saying things that are inappropriate and they start having gas, making gas. And those are qualities that Joe Biden had to begin with. So I've got to ask you about, sorry, I've got to interrupt. I've got to ask you, Jake, about the, about the stutter thing, right? That was always the cover. Yeah.

This is a stutter. I know, you know, we all know people who stutter. He never stutters. He stuttered sometimes. He stutter sometimes. It's not like a... But those aren't stutters. What?

Those are like brain farts. Well, it depends. I mean, there are times when, you know, you see him and he's like, and then he starts talking. I mean, he does, he does have a stutter. But, like, obviously, that was not what we were all seeing. That was not what we were all watching. That was the Democratic talking point.

You're picking on a man who stutters. Yeah, and I really pissed off of, there's a guy in the book who did a profile of Biden for the Atlantic. And he has a stutter, a really bad man. I think his name's John Hendrickson. And he wrote an article about Biden and his stutter that was notable for two reasons. One, Biden thought, Biden would like kind of get mad, like, I don't have a stutter anymore. And, you know, it's just like, that's not how stutters work. I mean, like, maybe you've successfully learned coping mechanisms, but you still have a stutter.

But so that was interesting. And then the other thing was Hendrickson got really mad after the debate when people would say, you know, he just has a stutter. That's all that was. And Hendricks's like, no, Hendrickson's like, no, I have a stutter. That is not what that is. That is completely different. Right. Yeah.

Should there be accountability? And if so, what should it look like? I mean, there should be. I don't know, and I'm not degrading them, but I don't know that a partisan hearing in Congress in the House or Senate is the way to go. Sure. And also some of the people they've called, like they called Nira Tandon, who was, you know, she was director of the Domestic Policy Council,

didn't really have a ton of interaction with Joe Biden. Like, I don't know that, like, that didn't make any sense when I saw her on the witness list. There should be accountability, but it isn't the kind of thing. It's the kind of thing that voters are going to, my prediction is that people are going to stop talking about this by next year. Agreed. And voters will still be angry at the Democratic Party and they won't even know why. And I think that I think this is one of the main reasons why. The Mamdami thing might be partly related to this, right, with the New York mayoral race.

You know, it's like, oh, again, you're shoving the establishment Democrats are shoving this guy down our throats. Totally agree. And it's also the same asking you to pretend, asking you as a voter pretend. For Biden, it's pretend that he's fine and everything's great. And it's just a little, no big deal. Pretend. And the voters were like, no, that's not what's happening. And then for Cuomo, it's pretend like that half of us didn't call for this guy to resign four years ago because of sexual, sexually predatory behavior.

Like, forget that I said that. And it's, I mean, voters are, voters might not be paying attention to the degree that the likes of us are, but they're pretty smart. That's my take too. I mean, it does kind of hurt my brain, and I know we have to let you go, but it just hurts my brain that probably nothing much is going to come of this. Probably not. And I think it's one of the biggest political scandals in U.S. history. Since WMD, I think, and like I'm trying to think, like, what were the repercussions for that?

Mm-hmm. And I'm really like years later, Obama got elected, the anti, like the more anti-examination. Iraq war candidate got elected. And then ultimately, Republicans nominated somebody who was late to the game, but still anti-Iraq war, Trump. But like, other than that, it's not as though the people who did what they did. There weren't, I don't think there were, if there were hearings, they weren't effective, because I don't really even remember it. You know, and so it will be up to the voters if they decide. I mean, I will ask about it, but, you know, I'm having a tough time booking a lot of Democrats now, like the ones who might have known, they don't want to talk

to me. Because they know I'm going to ask about, like, well, what did you see? Right. And like, you know, so I don't know. Did you see, by the way, just an interesting note that Bill Clinton did a non-endorsement of Mamdani today? No, it's like following up the New York Times. Vote for anyone you want, even paper boy love prints. But it was it was like basically like I wish him well in November and I wish him well you know working together to make the man who's going to endorse Eric Adams

this fall. Oh my God. He might or I don't know. I mean the team Jeffries has been quiet Chuck. Almost running as an independent. Well he is going to run as an independent. I don't know how much he's going to run but he's not taking himself off

the line for independent for he had the independent party nomination so he will be on the ballot. He's not taking himself off I don't know how much he's going to spend or whatever. And I do always just think, like, there are so many big egos in that city. Can you imagine just being somebody who's like a centrist, maybe center left and thinking, well, like, this guy is, the, Mom Dani is very vulnerable. Nobody wants to vote for Adams.

Nobody, like, I mean, I could see somebody doing that. I don't know how the math works. And I don't, ultimately, I do think it's going to be between Adams and Momdani, but who knows? They were post-editorialized yesterday that they're asking Cuomo to drop out and endorse Mamdani. And they're trying to get Port Curtis Slewa, the Republican nominee who lives with all of his cats out of town. They literally think that under the law somehow, I can't figure this out, that they need to

get him out of the state in order to get him off the ballot. They have to offer him a job in the Trump administration. That's so funny. All these machinations are nuts. I'm not even sure that Eric Adams or Governor Cuomo live in New York City. Right, right. Mom Downey might be the only one who actually pays rent. Cuomo, I think, has a piettaire that he got a few months ago.

Right. Hillary Clinton in her Senate raise. You know, and he doesn't like New York City, and New Yorkers know it. It's just the whole thing is peculiar. I asked Rahm Emanuel about Mamdani yesterday, and he immediately started talking about the Democratic nominees for governor in New Jersey and Virginia. Hamburger and Mikey Sherrill, who are, you know, one's a CIA veteran and one's like an Air Force veteran and they're like center-left Democrats and much more, much more appealing for Rahm Emanuel to talk about, I'm sure. I love the Mbdaany thing. I just love the reaction to it. but it's so great.

Jake, thank you so much for taking the time. And Ted, I have another book coming out in October that John is in. Oh, great. So I can come back. Oh, that would be great. Anytime. Yeah.

We're here twice a week. You'll find it interesting. I know John finds it interesting, but it's about a terrorism prosecution. It was when it was Obama, the Obama era, here's a terrorist abroad. We're going to prosecute him.

We're not just going to send him to Gitmo and lock him up and throw away the key. We're going to actually build a case against him. Imagine that. And yeah, and it was successfully done. And just the sleuthing that went into it was just unbelievable. And then John was involved in one random part of this

that took place in 2002 or 2003. This is the story that was new, 2011. But anyway, so John, thank you. face-to-face for helping me with the book. Goodos. Send me, I'll send both of you advance reader copies of the book. Thank you, thank you.

But let's do it again in October. I'd love to do it. All right, well, it's a day. Pleasure's ours. Thank you, Ted. Thank you, Ted. Thank you, both of yours and Ted, I've been reading your, I mean, I think you were,

were you at Columbia in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the 90s and the 90s and the 90s and then 90 to 91. So I was the cartoonist at the Daily Dartmouth in, I graduated in 91. So I've been aware and enjoying your work for, because at the Daily D, we'd get all the other newspapers from other colleges. And I've been, so I've admired you and Jeff Seschel at Brown. I've admired your stuff for a long time. Now a good historian. Yeah, he's great.

He's fantastic. And a speech writer. Yeah. So, anyway, thanks, guys. Appreciate it. Thanks, Jake. Bye, Jake. awesome that was awesome i so love inside politics it's like the thing that i love the most in the

world people would crap all over me on my on my sputnik show when we would do politics friday it was like the least popular segment of the week when i would go on and on about polls i knew it pissed people off but i didn't care I mean, God bless the Sputnik. I love the fact that they were so internationalist, and they wanted to know about, like, the internal workings of Eritrea. But, you know, and I was like, there's nothing else like it. We did a segment once on trans rights in Pakistan.

And I was like, seriously, but they wanted to talk about it. Okay. Yeah, for me, I mean, look, I mean, we're Americans. We live here under this ridiculous system. And, you know, and it's the, I mean, to me, what's so fascinating about it is the gap between the red, the high, the highfaluting rhetoric, you know, a shining city on a hill and the gutter reality of a bunch of imbeciles trying to pretend like we don't notice the president is half dead. You know, I said several times well, well before Joe Biden dropped out that that Parkinson's disease runs in my family. My father died as a result of Parkinson's. He fell down the steps and hit his head.

And I can name six close relatives who suffer from Parkinson's disease. And I remember saying on the show a number of times, Joe Biden has Parkinson's disease. I recognize the gate. I recognize his inability to get started when he wants to move someplace. He needs a gentle nudge or push to the back of the knee. He has Parkinson's disease. and they just denied and denied and denied. And it was clear that it was, as Jake said,

it was some kind of neurodegenerative disease, Louis Body Syndrome, Parkinson's, something. Maybe more than one, because that happened. Maybe more than one, exactly. And I mean, I think the thing that's, it's so disturbing. I mean, you know, you know that they lied to us, and here's how you know, Because let's just say it wasn't true.

Yeah. And, well, what would you do? If you were the president, you'd say, fuck you. That's right. You name your accredited doctor. I'll show up and perform and take any test you want. Bring it. Nobody ever did that.

No. I mean, that's how you know. There's a cover up. And you know, the Democratic Party hasn't changed one iota since then. They fired David Hogg the other day. fired him. They had a re-goat and threw them out. And if anything, the Democratic Party is just getting worse. More insular, insular in a way, but then beholden to really specific special interests, you know, on the other side. And it's just not, it's not a party that I could ever be

comfortable in. No, there, I mean, yeah, I mean, it's funny when I was a kid, like probably you. My mother explained the two-party system to me in just early 70s. I was a little kid. She said, oh, you know, the Republicans are the party of a big business, and Democrats are the party of Jane and Joe Sixpack. And I don't know if that was ever true, but it hasn't been true for a long time. Very long time. It hasn't been true in most of our lifetimes.

It's disgusting, really, because, I mean, at least if they were two parties that were both, you know, we're plutocrats, we don't care about, you know, we only care about, you know, the defense industry and, you know, all that, then, you know, we know where we stand. You know, I always think that country, you know, some of the countries you and I visit where there's a dictator or an authoritarian regime, but those people, they have peace of mind. I mean, they might be oppressed by their government, but they're not being conned. They understand the reality of their situation. They understand their class interest.

They'd be happy to see the government overthrown. That's not true here. people are still donating money to candidates from a party that is screwing them. Yes. Yes, indeed. That was fun. What do you think about any before we wrap it up because we went long, it was worth it? Yeah.

You know, do you think there was any, you know, what do you think of the big takeaways from what Jake had to say? Any, there was clearly a conspiracy within the White House to keep the same. from the American people. The conspiracy extended, of course, to the Biden family. The country was hurt because of it. And there are no plans of any kind for the Democratic Party to change its position on such a thing. Agreed. I think the Kamala Harris thing is also really particularly damning. I agree. Every respect from how she was chosen to how she conducted herself during her vice presidency to her her ultimate, her failure to make her, you know, carve away that could defeat Donald Trump. And now we have people in immigration gulags being chased down the street as a result of all this.

I don't know. It's disgusting. Well, everyone, thank you so much for joining us for the program with John Hiraakou and me, Ted Rall. We will be back Wednesday at our usual time 5 p.m. Eastern time next week. If anything breaks and it's a big deal, we will bring it to you. please like follow share the show tell your friends really appreciate you big thanks to jake tapper for joining us and we're out