Plain English with Derek Thompson - "People Feel Lied To": The White House, the Media, and the Joe Biden Blame Game

Episode Date: July 5, 2024

Joe Biden's disastrous debate performance has created a crisis for the Democratic Party and a set of interlocking debates about whether the White House—or the White House media—covered up his cognitive decline. The Atlantic’s Mark Leibovich, who first wrote that Biden should drop out of the race two years ago, joins to discuss Biden campaign strategy and the hypocrisy of many Democrats who refused to state publicly what they knew privately: that Biden's age-related blunders were getting more serious. Then we are joined by the busiest man in media, Alex Thompson, political correspondent of Axios, who has absolutely dominated this story in the past week. As a group, we talk about Biden’s age, the Democratic campaign strategy—Project "Bubble Wrap"—that is blowing up in their faces, the failures of the political press and Democratic operatives to see what’s in front of their noses, and the chances that Kamala Harris will imminently replace Joe Biden as the Democratic presidential nominee. If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at [e-mail]. Host: Derek Thompson Guests: Mark Leibovich & Alex Thompson Producer: Devon Baroldi Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Greetings, it's Mal. Call your banners because it's time to head back to Westrose for House of the Dragon, season two. The ringers, Dragon riders will soar alongside you each week with a heron-hall-sized slate of conversations. The Dragon has three heads, and on Sunday nights immediately after Hot D concludes, Chris Ryan, Joanna Robinson and I will be with you for Talk the Thrones. Then on Mondays, two more shows away. Dan Lath and Charles Holmes, Steve Allman and Jomi Adon, A.K.A. the Midnight Boys, Pugh!

Poo! We'll head to the tourney grounds to share their reactions. And of course, Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald will sip the Arbor's finest vintage on the watch. Then on Tuesdays, Joanna and I will head to the bowels of a pleasure den for our House of our deep dives. Then on Thursdays, Joe, Neil Miller, and Dave Gonzalez will gather the Ravens for trial by content. In this season, full episodes of Talk to Thrones, House of Ar, and the Midnight Boys will also be available on video on Spotify and the new Ringervverse YouTube channel. podcast episodes available on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. For the last week since Joe Biden's catastrophic debate performance,

I've been thinking a lot about one word. Bubble wrap. Last November, Joe Biden turned 81 years old, making him, again, the oldest person do ever hold the office of presidency. Peter Baker, a New York Times correspondent, reported last November on a discussion happening within the president's inner circle. Some people said Biden's staff members should stop treating him like an old man they don't trust. They should let him interact with the public and reporters more.

This was a response to an administration and a campaign that had kept Joe Biden unusually distant. According to the American presidency project, Biden has averaged 11 news conferences a year, fewer than any Democratic president in history. But as Baker went on to report, Biden's most important aides said, he needed to be protected even more. The strategy had an internal nickname. It was Project Bubble Wrap. The president was old. He was frail. And the best way to maximize his odds of beating Donald Trump was to avoid danger and exposure. Let Trump make the mistake. Play, prevent defense, and pray you return an interception for a touchdown. The argument for bubble wrap one out. Well, just about every president, and every Democratic president certainly,

sits for major interviews with the legacy news organizations like the New York Times and the Washington Post. Biden declined. Just about every president sits for the annual Super Bowl interview, taking advantage of an audience numbering in the tens of millions. Biden declined. Meanwhile, pro-Biden media was running cover for the president. He's sharp as I've ever seen him, Joe Scarborough claimed on MSNBC this spring. But if you knew where to look or where to listen, the warning signs were obvious. In February this year, the New York Times columnist and podcaster, and I guess full disclosure, the co-author of the book I'm writing, Ezra Klein, wrote that Biden was clearly diminished,

and the Democrats were better served by looking elsewhere. Also in February, on CNN, the political consultant James Carville said Biden skipping the Super Bowl interview, despite being behind in the race, strongly suggested that the staff didn't have confidence in him. In June, the Wall Street Journal ran a long front-page story entitled, quote, behind closed doors, Biden shows signs of slipping. Here's the lead of that story.

When Joe Biden met with congressional leaders in the West Wing in January to negotiate a Ukraine funding deal, he spoke so softly at times that some participants struggled to hear him. He read from notes to make obvious points, paused for extended periods, and sometimes closed his eyes for so long that some in the room wondered whether he had tuned out. This is not a political podcast, and we don't do a lot of political shows on plain English. We'll see if I succeed in keeping it that way, as politics colonizes the news cycle in the next four months. But if you want to know my position on this issue of Joe Biden and his age and its effect on his campaign, I gave it on November 17th last year. Biden's age, I said, created a two-layered crisis.

The first crisis is that voters think he's too old. The second crisis is that the White House, knowing that voters think he's old, is reluctant to run a normal presidential campaign in the television age because every TV appearance by the president merely serves to remind the public of the very thing that the campaign wants them to forget. And then last Thursday night's debate happened. and all hell broke loose. The reason I'm doing this long wind-up

and sharing this timeline with you is that in the week after Biden's disastrous debate, the eight days after his disastrous debate, I've been struck by the popularity of two narratives, one from the left and one from the right. On the pro-Biden left, you are hearing the story that Thursday was just one bad night. It was just jet lag.

No, it was just over preparation. No, it was only just a cold. One bad debate. This is obvious nonsense. The debate was not an exception to the rule that Joe Biden is too old to run for president. The debate for anybody interested in paying attention to reality was confirmation of the longstanding suspicion that Joe Biden is too old to run for president. if the Biden administration wanted to limit the impact of the damage, they could have had the president doing multiple primetime news conferences in which he theoretically flexed his ability to think clearly and fluently in unstructured and challenging environments. Environments, I have to stress, that aren't just theatrical,

but actually offer the public a simulation of Biden's ability to think clearly and fluently in the most challenging job on earth. Instead, we had Operation Bubble Wrap. and it was because of Biden's relative scarcity that the debate became this unique opportunity for the public and the media and the donors and elected officials to see under the bright lights

in 4K crystal clarity what does it look like when Biden is answering questions without a teleprompter telling him what to say next? The Biden administration by keeping the president scarce and then choosing to have this debate put all their eggs in one basket

and then the basket caught on fire and exploded in front of 50 million people. On the anti-Biden right, and to be honest, truly even in the center right now, there is a suddenly popular claim that this is the news media's fault, that the media as a whole ran cover for Joe Biden, covered up the risks of his age

and the signs of cognitive slippage, and thus the story of Biden's terrible night is really a story about media collusion. We're going to talk a lot about this theory in today's episode, so I'm not going to go into depth here in the open, but let me just say this. It was entirely possible and, in fact, easy to be a reader and listener of mainstream legacy news journalism and come away from Thursday night's debate,

shocked but not remotely surprised. And if you were deeply surprised by Biden's performance last Thursday night, I think that says a lot about your media diet. I think it says a lot about the biases that you might be inviting into your newsfeed. Today we have a unique show recorded fresh Friday morning. The Atlantic's Mark Leibovic is here. Mark wrote his first story encouraging Joe Biden to drop out of the race two years ago, and actually 25 months ago now. So here is one mainstream journalist we cannot accuse of ignoring the obvious.

And then 20 minutes in as if bursting through the back door of our virtual podcast studio, we are joined by the busiest man in media, Alex Thompson, political correspondent of Axios, who has absolutely dominated this story in the last eight days. Mark Alex and I talk about Biden's age, the debate, the campaign strategy that is blowing up in his face, the failures of the political press and democratic operatives to see what's been right in front of their noses, and what happens next. I'm Derek Thompson. This is plain English.

Mark Leithletz, welcome to the show. Great to be with you, Derek. So two years ago, almost two years ago exactly, you wrote an extremely unsubtle essay for the Atlantic entitled Why Biden Shouldn't Run in 2024, the lead of which was, quote, let me put this bluntly, Joe Biden should not run for re-election in 2024.

He is too old. And quote, how did you feel watching things? Thursday night's debate. Well, horrified by the degree to which he is certainly too old now. I mean, I believed it, and I think a lot of people around him believed it two years ago. You know, I think what's new now is just the degree of how it's all been slayed out in the open. And probably, you know, the decline over the last two years has been significant as we saw,

but, you know, in the most painful but also, you know, a clear sort of way. you know, a lot of people in the last couple weeks said, oh, do you feel vindicated and so forth? I mean, I've written, that was the first piece, and I've written subsequent pieces in the last couple of years to this effect, whether just the age question, I've sort of hammered it. Because here's the thing. The question of vindicated is, I don't think relevant here, because I don't think this was a controversial position at all. It was a position shared by a massive super majority of Americans. you know, well into the 70% range, including majorities of Democrats, overwhelming majorities of independents. And so, yeah, it was a plain sight kind of thing. I mean, the reason,

I don't know why others didn't talk about it so early or seize on it. What I do know is that the White House has always been so prickly around anything questioning age. You get a lot of, how dare you, this is in bad taste. This is inappropriate. As if something that 75% of the country shares in must somehow become a taboo because the White House messaging team believes it must be. I mean, it's completely insulting. And look, other people in the media have sort of jumped onto the cause more recently and certainly since the debate. But I honestly don't think this was ever that complicated. I never took the how dare you.

This is not helpful. Seriously at all. I mean, this is not helpful thing is insulting because obviously it fundamentally. you know, misunderstands and misstates what we do as journalists. But I don't know. I never felt a lot of heat. I mean, I heard a lot, but I just sort of took it as noise because I think this is a pretty obvious thing. I love you to one layer deeper on what it was like reporting or writing that Biden shouldn't run for election in 2024 and hearing from this administration. Because one story that I'm trying to figure out is what has been the Biden campaign strategy for, you know,

for keeping Biden a little bit out of you and therefore raising the salience of last Thursday's debate because it was such a unique opportunity for tens of millions of people to simultaneously watch this person answer antagonistic questions in an unstructured environment.

This was the White House's strategy. Give him this one chance, hope he hits it out of the park, and instead it was a massive obvious strikeout. Now, they have mimics that also since the debate in that they have put so much weight into the Stephanopoulos interview that's going to air tonight. And so, again, it's this, where has he been?

The idea that he has been cloistered sheltered a little bit, that's not true, he's been cloistered a lot. I mean, this has been huge. And just as, I think, damning, if not more so, has been the reaction to the debate, which has been extreme cloistering all over again. I mean, they could say, oh, he looked how great he did at this little set piece rally in North Carolina and this three-minute speech from the Oval Office. I mean, you know, people like Joe Biden, politicians can do those things in their sleep,

which apparently has to, he has to get more of. But so I think, yeah, I mean, the cloistering, though, is part of a larger issue, which I would maintain has been hiding in plain sight. And, you know, what I've heard from the White House is, again, there's, I see people around town, you know, just I live in Washington. It's a small town. It's a small world. And they'll say, yeah, well, I guess you think.

he's too old. Like, why are you so obsessed with this? You've written this story and that story and that story. And apparently a lot of people complain to editors over my head, but I can't speak to those discussions. But I'll say, you know, I'm right. And that always freezes them. They don't really, they don't really dispute that. I mean, they said, I mean, there's not, I mean, in real, like, sort of private conversations or kind of happenstance conversation, you don't get the, oh, he's running circles around me. He's never been sharper. I mean, A lot of the, I've said this in the last few days, and I've written this in last few days, a lot of the same people who are defending him publicly on the record on camera right now

are the same people who have been saying off camera that this decline is clear, marketable, and they all have stories to tell. Stop right there, stop right there. Are you talking about people in the administration, people in the DNC who are in politics but not in the White House, or are you talking about the media? Are you talking about media commentators? Oh, not the media. Okay, tell me.

As specific as possible. What category are we describing here? White House and campaign aides, people who are around him, you know, top officials in the administration, and elected officials, mainly Democratic elected officials in the Senate and the House who deal fairly regularly with the White House because they're very vigorous with outreach. Even Biden himself has been, they all see it. a lot of governors, a lot of Democratic governors who's talked to, I hear it from all of, I've heard it from every category of those groups. It's just astonishing. It goes to, you know, there's a social psychologist, right? I should associate an economist, a Quran, Timor Karan, who wrote a book called Private Truth's Public Lies about this concept of preference falsification, where there are some narratives where if you inject people with truth serum or talk to them after three drinks, quietly. where they don't think anyone that important is going to be listening to them, they'll say one thing. But if you get them in front of a camera in front of a million people or you put them in a large room,

they say something completely different. And I think what a lot of Americans are responding to right now, what a lot of people, including Democrats, are really frustrated with right now, is that you've had this private truth's public lies phenomenon within the Democratic Party, that the party itself and its own strategy has relied upon a kind of public falsification of the truth. That whenever Mark Liebervitz is talking to people privately, they say, yeah, the president is too old to perform the job, to campaign the same way. We need people to campaign when they're running four points behind the opponent.

But you get them in front of the camera on Morning Joe or, you know, Rachel Maddow, and suddenly they're saying, oh, this guy's never been more vigorous. He's never been sharper. Yeah, you hear them in the green room. You don't need three drinks, believe it. This is a very easy truth to get at. And I would point out that, I mean, the Republican Party has been, has had the same two step going for many, many years now around Trump. I mean, you have the public, dear leader, praise. This is like the greatest golfer and the greatest president of all time. And then in public, the vast majority of people, I mean, I read a whole book about this, the vast majority of people in the Republican Party leaders, people who go on TV. to defend him, are fully aware of what they're dealing with, the malignancy of it, the absurdity of it. I mean, I guess this is going to sound much more highfalutin than I am, but Vaklov-Hawvel apparently had this notion of people in kind of authoritarian environments living in the lie. Republicans have been living in the lie of who Donald Trump really is versus the kind of stuff

they say about him, the kind of reverence they afford to him publicly. Democrats, I think on this particular issue, have also been living in a very big lie. And that's why I think in this issue in particular, Democrats are susceptible to a charge of real hypocrisy because, you know, if Democrats are the honest party, the only thing that it can save America from just the, from MAGA and all its contours, you know, the Democrats are not susceptible to such lies. I think that this is a serious argument against that. I think it's a real moment for self-reflection for Democrats when they have for years been raising an objection to Republicans that I think is entirely valid, which is that they are living in the lie.

They are acting as if they are complicit in a kind of authoritarian project to hold him up as dear leader in public while behind the scenes they say this man is an absolute cretan who shouldn't be anywhere near the nuclear code. There's a difference. I'm not trying to make an equivalence. I'm not trying to make a moral equivalence of the significance of the failures of Biden and Trump.

Exactly. But the echo here, I think, is really eerie and very damning. Mark, when people are lying about Trump's character in public, I've always had the understanding that they're lying because they're afraid of of the Trump base, why would Democrats be falsifying their honest point of view in public? Because they're terrified of Joe Biden, the White House, and the Democratic base. It's the same dynamic to some degree. I mean, first of all, the level of tiptoeing around Joe Biden himself from within his inner circle is really high. I mean, people are terrified of him. He's easily

triggered, especially around issues of his age and fitness. So that's on the very kind of direct personal scale. But look, I mean, people in both parties are terrified of their leaders. I mean, all of these people who could run for president, who could have primaried Biden a year and a half ago, know that it could have been career suicide. They were told it would be career suicide if they were to step out of line, disrespect the president, and somehow make this harder for him, because how dare you make this road back to the White House easier for Donald Trump? a level of terror that is inflicted in a whole different way. I mean, you probably don't get the death threats and the menace that someone who crosses Donald Trump and the Republican Party

would get. But you definitely get, you know, some serious, serious pressure and pushback that makes it much harder to speak out or do anything. Mark, we are now joined by Axios's Alexei Thompson. Alex, welcome to the show. Thank you so much. I'm sorry. Sorry, I was late. No, it's no problem. It came in through the back door. This feels like live television. Alex, right now, it is 927 a.m. Eastern Standard Time. And I want to plunge right into the moment. There's so much that we could pay attention to right now. The White House inner circle seems to be saying that Biden's staying in the race. Some major donors reportedly pressuring Biden to step aside. More elected Democrats seem to be sticking out their necks to say Biden should step aside. What are you paying the most and closest attention to? What is the most important thing that you are watching to understand? this moment right now? I would say two things. One is most of, so the donors, the politicians, everyone else, most of them do not matter. In fact, I remember some people brought up this, this theory, this sort of Aaron Sork and fever dream of Barack Obama is going to go into the Oval

office and tell Biden, it's time. And, you know, I do think there's a world in which Obama basically says it is time. But the thing that people forget is that the relationship with Biden and Obama changed in a significant way after 2015, when Obama, in Biden's mind, at least, Obama has a different recollection of events than his people do. But in Biden's mind, Obama picked Hillary over him. And there is a world in which Obama getting involved and saying to Joe, it's time, could actually have could do more to keep Joe Biden in the race to maybe on any single other factor there is a world in which Biden is like I'm staying till the end now but so I guess you know it's a very long answer to your question which is the inner circle and by the inner

circle I mean so obviously Jill Biden Hunter Biden the three and then like basically five anonymous aids that most people have never heard of this is Mike Donnellan Bruce Reed, Steve Rischetti, Anthony Bernal, who is the First Lady's top aide, and Annie Tomicini. Those are the most important aides in terms of what I'm watching. The other thing that I've been focused on is, you know, everyone's obviously focused on the polling, but to my mind, the thing that I've been looking at is there's no way that this was the first time, or I don't believe this was the first time. And so I've been trying to report out other instances

of how his age was evident within the inner circle before the debate, because I do think the other thing that could really change this is reporting beyond polling. Alex, I wanted to ask you this question for the last week. You reported on Friday morning when you seemed to talk to people in and around the White House that they weren't just sad after the debate. They were surprised. They were angry. They were shocked.

And one thing that I'm trying to understand is, how is it possible that Joe Biden, seeming old and discombobulated, could come as a surprise to people in the White House? I'm not in the White House. I'm not a political reporter. I read Axios. I read the New York Times.

I read people like Mark in the Atlantic. I knew he was old and discombobulated. My wife knew he was old and discombobulated. Everyone I know knew he was old and discombobulated. How could it be possible that people in the White House, close to his inner circle, were the most surprised people in America, seemingly, by Thursday night's performance? Yeah, I think there were two things. One is that access to Biden was so intermittent.

So, like, let's take out, like, they, I mean, you saw it, I saw it, we saw all saw on camera, but I'll get to that in a second. Access to Biden, access to any president is intermittent. Access to Biden was really, you know, there were a lot of gaps. And so there were, you know, one example that comes to mind. So one White House person told me that they were in a meeting with Joe Biden, and he wanted to call the mother of a congresswoman. And then someone had to partly be like, you called the mother two weeks ago. And, you know, there was sort of a, people were like, oh, that's like a little weird. And then, but it's also one of those sort of brain farts that you could in a one-off excuse, right?

Biden's calling lots of people. And so this person was like, it was a little bit weird, but also you could excuse it, right? And as a one-off. So the thing is, because access to him was so restricted, the people that saw these brainfarmes, parts really did sort of excuse them as a one-off. Now, in terms of sort of this public, this public posture, I'm talking about as like, well, you could, all he had to do is watch him. I do think there is, and I heard Mark talk about this just a little bit earlier,

there was this, there was a right-wing caricature all the way back into the 2019 of, like, Dementia Joe, right? And this, and part of it, we can argue that how much. Part of it was very much in bad faith, just meant to try to politically damage Joe Biden. The fact is that Joe Biden now has significantly, has a certain significant slippage from the Joe Biden of that time. And so I think the White House sort of entered this bunker mentality of everything about this narrative. It's just a right-wing caricature. Here's what really bothers me about the intersection between the Dementia Joe character, caricature, and the reality that we live in right now.

And Mark, I'm going to send this question to you, and then I want Alex to answer it as well. Here's a thought experiment. I want you to imagine a laboratory study where we divided a population of two groups. One group just watched Fox News for the last two years, and they heard rumors about Dementia Joe for the last 24 months. The next group just watched MSNBC and the most pro-Biden media for the last two years. And they've been hearing over and over again that he has never been sharper. He is sharp as attack. He's running his younger AIDS-ragged because he's got so much energy and competence.

There is no question in my mind that the group that was more surprised by Thursday night was group number two. And that is fairly stunning to me because the role of journalism The role of information is to make people less surprised, rather than more surprised, by the next incremental piece of reality that they confront. What's the value of information if it doesn't help you slightly predict and anticipate the future? I mean, is it slightly scandalizing that someone marinating in Fox News, and let's be honest, right-wing conspiracies for the last two years, was less surprised by Thursday night than someone

who had had MSNBC on for the last year and a half. Marinating, scandalizing, all of those things. You're also describing a dystopian world where we have two massive focus groups of this sort. The only thing worse would be if Frank Luntz was moderating this focus. And Frank Lentz is at the top. Yeah, you're on the dials.

No, you're right. I mean, I think this does cast into sharp relief the information bubbles we're dealing with on both sides. And again, you know, you say both sides and immediately you hear mostly from the left. I mean, how dare you say this is a both sides thing? He's a convicted felon, you know, go down the list.

But it's 100% true. And I totally agree with the premise that far more people on the MSNBC side of this ledger would have been shocked by Thursday. I don't think anyone who is, you know, somewhere in the middle of all this who would sort of adhere to reporting truth, something down the middle would have been shocked either or should have been shocked either. Molly Ball at the Wall Street Journal reported that, and I'm quoting here, quote, several Democratic operatives pointed out that it was elites, elected officials and media commentators who seemed most shaken by Biden's debate performance. How is this not an indictment of the information environment of those elected officials, Democratic elected officials and media commentators, that they were the most shocked and shaken by reality?

I think it is an indictment. I'm not going to even argue with your premise, because the fact of the matter is that in some ways what you're seeing right now is sort of media elites, Democratic elites that like skew left, really catching up with the American people, where the American people have been now for at least a year, if not longer. Like American people have been very, American people cannot agree on anything, except for the fact over the last year, every poll showed that over 70% of Americans are like, Joe Biden, that kind of old. And they have been very clear. And, you know, one thing I wanted to add just, you know, one thing I noticed, and Mark may not want to engage in this, but I did notice, you know, as a potential example, this was like three weeks ago, you know, Mark wrote this really great piece. You know, he used the Bill Maher term, Ruth Bader Biden, but he wrote this great piece, was clearly obviously mocked for it. But one thing I thought was interesting is I saw, Mark, I now watch Morning Joe very regularly because I cover Joe Biden, and I know Joe Biden and his advisors watch it very closely.

But Mark was on Morning Joe, I think, like a week after, and I don't think they even asked you about it. Oh, yeah, no, I never went on Morning Joe for those things. I mean, those are the kinds of things that I typically, those are the stories I don't get calls from MSNBC on. Probably shouldn't have said that, but it's true. No, I mean, that is not something I would have, expected to have heard from those producers on.

Now that we all agree that we see reality clearly and nobody else does, let me at least give us an opportunity for self-criticism here. I do think that someone observing from afar might say it's a little suspicious that only after the debate are we having this conversation. It's a little suspicious that only after the debate does the New York Times run the headline, quote, Biden's lapses are said to be increasingly common and worrisome. Mark, increasingly a word that is banned in the Atlantic. but apparently allowed in New York Times headlines.

Not on this podcast. I rise in defensive increasingly. I try to use it all the time. I've used it throughout my career, I think, to great effect. I agree. I'm not against the right. But just to continue, it is only after the debate that New York Magazine,

you know, publishes Olivia's withering, excellent, withering story about Biden's obvious diminishment. So one explanation for the sheer density of stories like this right now in the media. Makeup call. It's a makeup call. cover your ass. We have it out for Biden because we're trying to cover up for the fact that we missed this story for the last two years. That's an explanation that is ready for people to subscribe

to. There's another explanation, which is that sources became more likely to share their worries after the debate. So it became a sort of supply increase. People started answering their phones. People started reaching out to people like Mark and Alex Moore. As honestly as we can be, which do we think it is? Do we feel more invited to cover this issue in a new way after Thursday? or is the thing that's changed most significantly, if there is simply more of a story, that there are more sources willing to talk about Biden's age, not just more motivation for us to report on this story.

Let's go Alex Verst and then, Mark. All right. So I'll say, I'm going to leave Mark to do the media criticism part of this just because I don't cover the media, and Mark has sort of established himself where he won't lose friends if he criticizes the media. It's a low place to start from, so it's okay, though. But I will definitely weigh in, you know, as someone that has covered the age, like, fairly aggressively, or decently aggressively.

In retrospect, honestly, I wish I covered even more aggressively. But as someone that's covered it for over a year, I think your supply analogy is spot on. because I've covered the Biden White House for three and a half years, and I have never been able to get people on the phone so easily as I have over the last week. People are not, I'm not even going to prompt people to send background quotes and information. It is coming in because to our earlier point, people feel lied to by the senior staff of this White House. They feel lied to by the president's family, and they are angry. So you are right that it has become easier to report on the president's age. Also, I'd say the other thing that's happened is that the White House comms office has no close now.

Like, no one believes their denials. And, you know, it's always like a tough thing when you're dealing with the comms operation because, you know, every comms operation lies in their own special way. But determining the extent of it and when to take them seriously, when to not is a tricky balance, it's a tricky dance. But right now, I don't think many reporters are taking their denials very seriously. Mark? Yeah, I would agree.

I mean, first of all, I mean, right now, I mean, this story is the, from what I can tell, I mean, 80% of the whole story. I mean, it's one of the most kind of exciting, I mean, I hate to say, I hate to put it in terms of like a spectator sport, but it's an incredibly invigorating story. And again, I think, like we said before, I think there is an element of makeup call to that. But I also think, as Alex said, the feeling of being lied to. I mean, there are different tiers of being lied to. I think within the White House, there is definitely a very big tier or series of tears that goes out when you get beyond an inner ring of maybe eight or nine close aides family members.

You know, there's a lot of feeling of betrayal. And they, to me, in my experience, have spoken pretty candidly from the start, is far more so now. And I think they're talking to a lot more reporters for a variety of reasons. And, yeah, I mean, the White House Communications Office right now, not a high morale place. I mean, Andrew Bates deserves something between a presidential Medal of Freedom or, I don't know, some kind of like five-year detox or something for having to go out and trot out some of this party line stuff about the president running younger AIDS ragged and stuff like that.

So anyway, it's, it's, I think, again, my posture from the beginning has been that this issue has been hiding in plain sight. I think the American people have been there, if you believe, polls. And, you know, I think we have a very pronounced and very concentrated period of kind of, I guess you'd say, you know, collective lucidity among people, whether in the press or in the Democratic Party or in the sort of top elite ranks, where this is now a topic that can be discussed. And I think I'd be curious to get Alex's take on this. I mean, I think the fact that we are now eight days out from the debate and it's just taking this long for anything to happen is itself incredibly damning and also quite destructive to Democrats who want to keep Donald Trump out of the White House. I would completely agree with that. The fact that Joe Biden has still not done an unscripted interview or any sort of interaction, really like lengthy interaction with reporters on camera,

eight days after a debate severely questioned his senility, I don't think this is really so much like a really damning in terms of a strategic thing. I think what is damning is the way this White House operates. sort of bunker mentality of these close aides where loyalty is the most important virtue and taking you know raising problems does sometimes cast you out the fact of the matter is like at perhaps the worst moment of his entire presidency arguably and definitely one probably the worst moment is political career in which he he truly humiliated himself um for world history to uh for 90 minutes the fact that still two days later, they were doing any Leibowitz, probably Vanity Fair Shoot at Camp David,

it didn't even have a camera, is just, it's still crazy to me. It's just crazy to me. Alex, I only disagree with one thing that you said. I think it is absolutely damning of strategy. The strategy for the last year and a half has been to keep Biden scarce. Do a historically few number of press conferences. Don't give an interview the New York Times. Don't give your interview to the Washington Post. Don't give your interview to CNN. A super bowl. Don't go to the Super Bowl.

Appear only in very brief, highly scripted encounters. Here's what that strategy does. And then, of course, in the aftermath, don't appear on television in unscripted environments in the eight days after the debate. Here's what that does. It means that you're putting all your eggs in one basket.

And that basket is the debate. And 50 million people saw it. Another 50 million people saw clips from it. And now that is the single, solitary piece of evidence of how does the President of the United States interact with antagonistic and difficult questions in unstructured environments, which is a kind of simulation for what it's like to think on your feet as President of the United States. And it was a disastrous performance. And so the White House can't simultaneously put all of its eggs in one basket and also say, oh, well, it's only one basket that he dropped and sat on fire. It was your strategy to ask the American people to focus on this basket in the way. on this debate on the way that they have.

And I think that has been really core to the question of why are we fixated so much on a handful of answers on one Thursday night because it was the public and the media's unique opportunity to see Biden in this environment. I want to move on to predicting the near future, at least talking about the next click of the dial here. Mark Kamala Harris, attention is rapidly shifting

to the vice president. How would you evaluate her as a political talent and as a potential Democratic presidential candidate. Because I feel like people have their menu of options here. You can say she's been underrated because of how fiercely she was criticized for her failure to thrive in the 2020 election. On the other hand, you could say maybe she's overrated now because you have all these people saying, well, obviously the buck has to move to Kamala, but we're not entirely

sure of what it's like when you put the glare of the glare of. media lights right on her. How do you evaluate her as a political talent? Dubiously, based on evidence in the last few years, I mean, I think not only did she underperform in 2020, I mean, she was a top tier candidate going in. She didn't make it to Iowa. I mean, she didn't come close to making it to Iowa. And then Biden boxed himself in saying that he was going to pick whatever his very narrow commitment was that he made in that debate, woman, I think black woman, I don't remember what it was exactly. He said, he said woman and then...

Woman, yeah. In it publicly, but then there was increasing, like, pressure after George Floyd. Yeah, which, which, yes, which to me boxed him into such a tiny box. So, yeah, I mean, she, I think was the frontrunner in that competition, such as it was, to begin with. And then he picked her, unclear how much she really helped him win in 2020. And look,

I mean, she has not, I mean, to a lot of people, both inside the White House, inside the Biden world, and if you look at public opinion and also people that she's spoken to, you know, her performance has been uneven at best. But I will say that one of the things I think she has benefited from in the last few days is just a sense of kind of palpable collective relief among people who have been kind of stuck on this Biden train for so long that suddenly the age and, fitness question is off the table. The question, I mean, you actually have an alternative. There's actually another way out. Now, I would argue, and I suspect many others would argue, that there is a way

to throw this open and open it up to a much more vigorous and dynamic process over the last six weeks. Of course, we were saying this eight days ago, and it was the last seven weeks then. So, I mean, that's got to start yesterday. But the fact is the Democrat has a very, the Democratic Party is a very deep bench of talent. But I also think that if, if Harris was a candidate, she is very unproven. She has a very low bar, which I think she could probably clear, but it would take some real doing. And I think part of it is, I mean, who are running made is, how involved Biden is. But I do think the Democratic Party's instinct is to be unified. So I think people will do a lot of mental and kind of political contortions to try to get to a point

where she is somehow an acceptable person at the top of the ticket, get her a vice president, and hopefully, you know, she can bring it home. But I do, I think the relief about not having to think about Biden at the top of the ticket is significant to watch. Alex, somebody looking at this situation from 30,000 feet might say, it's not that complicated. Joe Biden has been running consistently behind not only Donald Trump, but also Democrats in these swing states running for Senate.

His biggest problem as a candidate is that the public thinks he's too old, and this is not a problem that can be fixed in the absence of a time machine. The only solution is to step away, and it is incredibly difficult to imagine the Democratic Party moving over, stepping over, a black female vice president to open this race up to a bunch of white governors. At the same time, I think it's important to fold in the fact that relations between Kamala's team and the Biden

inner circle have not been warm over the last few years. And so what might seem like an obvious next step, next chapter to this story for some people, might not actually feel that obvious inside the White House. Can you take us a little bit inside your reporting and explain sort of how you see this next chapter evolving? Like what, again, it repeats this first question I asked you maybe to a certain extent. What should a smart person pay attention to in order to anticipate the next click of the dial in the story? Yeah, I mean, I think sort of your top-down look is right on.

The fact of the matter is that Biden's people have basically been quietly saying they think, for lack of a better sort of thing, is like, well, Kamla sucks. It's been sort of the subtext. I wouldn't it be great if someone said that on the record. You know, Mike Donnellon said. she's had incredible staff turnover she has been risk averse to at times the point of parity where at one point my favorite was that when the white house was looking for a portfolio item for her early on and suggested i don't remember it was after they suggested another triangle or not but the fact is that they asked what about having her to the nordic countries um and you know she

she basically doesn't do, you know, she has, she has walked, she's backed away from any sort of controversial portfolio item the first three and a half years. And you can understand why the Biden people get really frustrated with that, especially when Joe Biden, you know, was a pretty willing, you know, willing person and taking on tough portfolio items when he was vice president. you know, you don't really just like say, oh, I'm going to own the portfolio of like the withdrawal from Iraq, which is one thing he did, the stimulus package, which, you know, you had the salendra of it all and everything else. They were like politically tough things that Joe Biden did embrace his vice president. I think that is added to the, you know, the tension. Now, they've come to sort of a decent

place over the last year because Kamala Harris is basically. like, you don't like saying the word abortion, so because you're an Irish, 80-year-old Irish Catholic, I'll do abortion. And that has been sort of this middle ground. Now, you know, to your point about like, so, and I think Biden, the Biden, the Biden team is sort of justified staying in because of that weakness. Now, I think in some ways that's been unfair to Kamala Harris, because there have been polls that have shown that actually she is more electable than Joe Biden, mostly because there's an appeal to some younger voters and also 80% of the country doesn't think she's too old. So, you know, I do think she clearly does have weakness as a candidate,

but I do think that Biden people in some ways have exaggerated them in their own minds to justify staying in. Now, the one thing, you know, that this like open convention or Kamla, can we step over her? Let's say next, let's say this interview tonight, or I don't remember what was posting, but like, let's say the George Stephanopoulos interview is going to be a disaster. And then Biden's press conference next week is also a disaster. And Biden gets out. Now, there, Kamla is by far and away the frontrunner to have that nomination. People don't necessarily want the mess. But it is not a given. And she's going to have a really critical week or two right after that. And she's going to have to go out

publicly and do some really tough interviews, something she has not been doing. And she, and really be in these unscripted settings, the spotlight, the glare of the spotlight is going to be incredibly bright and how she reacts to it's going to be so important. The one thing that I think, you know, that is going to be interesting to see how she responds is, you know, she was one of the main public validators for Joe Biden's mental fitness. Especially after the her report, she went out there and called it a political hit job and basically recounted that Joe Biden is completely on it in every single way. You know, he's basically like, you know, virile.

And, you know, I, you know, and maybe she can get past those questions, but I think people should ask them pretty aggressively. Mark, last round of questions. We are in such a liquid moment right now. You know, you use the word invigorating and exciting. And what's happening right now is potentially catastrophic to the Democrats' chance of winning the presidency. And if you are someone who doesn't like Donald Trump,

then this is a potentially catastrophic moment. But at the same time, there is a kind of palpable, hot-blooded thrill. Sense of pensability. Yes, this sense of a possibility. And the danger of that is that, you know, thrill can make people overly confident about what is true, about what is strategic, about what is smart. It's still possible that Democrats make some incredible blundering error that significantly damages their chance of winning the election in November. And I wonder if the same way that you were looking just ahead of the corner in June of 2022, when you said, let's just call a spade a spade.

The president of the United States is too old to run for re-election, and the sooner we recognize this fact, the better off the Democratic Party will be. Is there a similar obviousness that is beginning to sort of click into view for you that might be under-considered, now that you have everyone scrambling around right now trying to imagine the various ways

that Joe Biden steps down and someone else steps up? Is there something that we, the press, might be missing right now that in six months, nine months from now, we'll say, oh, my God, how is it not obvious that this story should have been the A-block, that this possibility should have been the A-block of every primetime cable news show? Well, I mean, you know, that sort of assumes some kind of methodical process that moves on here. I mean, I think, first of all, none of this can begin because everyone's, I mean, Democrats, you know, really anyone who doesn't want Donald Trump in the White House and actually people who are supporting Donald Trump, it's all kind of. have stuck on the needle of, well, can you move Biden off of his stubborn position? Because until, you know, he is willing to move on, nothing can happen. And so that's maddening and it's very delicate. You know, I hate the idea that like, oh, this is a personal decision. It is such a not personal decision at this point. I mean, it is a national security decision. It is a existential decision and so

forward. But, you know, I would say this. I think at this point, the riskiest move is sticking with Joe Biden. I just don't, that's the scenario of more of him, this dragging out is such an enervating, such a deadening, such a dispiriting possibility for, I think, a generation of political observers. You know, probably, you know, a lot of them independence, a lot of them lapsing Democrats, a lot of them, you know, sort of scattering Democrats, potentially, you know, whether black, brown voters, young voters, you know, women voters, supporters, you name the block, they desperately want something to break the dynamic of Biden v. Trump, especially given how incredibly weak Biden seems to be right now and only seems more to be getting

more so. So I don't know. I think, look, if it's a Kamala somehow passed the torch to Kamala, scenario that would be deeply, I don't know about risky. I mean, again, I think risky right now, Democrats are way behind. And Democrats with Biden are way behind. But I think it's risky, but also it could potentially yield an incredible sort of big bang explosion of possibility that unleashes a future that Democrats have been basically sort of paralyzed from sort of proceeding to over the last many, many years. I mean, what people forget is that

You know, Barack Obama was elected in 2008. And since then, okay, he runs through election. That's eight years. The choices, it's now Hillary's turn. Okay, well, that didn't work out. All right, well, we're really desperate now. So let's reach back to the second choice to Hillary. And, okay, well, actually, believe it or not, he actually won in 2020.

He got us out of this jam. And, you know, he's made what I think is a catastrophic decision to run again. And, you know, down the list, I don't think he's picked a particularly good vice president. president. But, I mean, at some point, you sort of have to make due with these decisions that have already been made. Alex, obviously the question here is, will Joe Biden ultimately step aside the next few days? Let's make this the last question. Fill in the blank. If these three things happen, it maximizes the chance that Joe Biden drops out within the next two weeks. The George Stephanopoulos interview is a disaster. And just a bit of context.

the last George Stephanopal's interview, Joe Biden did, was a disaster. It was during the Afghanistan withdrawal, just the last time he sat down with him. And Joe Biden, if you go back, clearly a lot of it did not age well because he said stuff, you know, most particularly he said that he would not withdraw troops until all the American citizens who wanted to get out, got out. He would not withdraw the troops. And then 10 days later, he did just that, leaving at least hundreds of American citizens behind that did want to go. So George Chene Albis interview is a disaster. The press conference that he's doing at NATO next week, which Bloomberg reporter called a

big boy press conference, and then the White House has then repeated that line in the press briefing. That goes a disaster. But also, I think there's a deeper problem. I think the reason why this has become. such an acute crisis is because it goes beyond whether or not Joe Biden can beat Donald Trump. I actually think he still could. There are tens of millions of people in this country that would vote for Joe, you know,

they vote for Hunter Biden over Donald Trump. So the fact is that Joe Biden could still definitely win this race. But I think the thing that's made this to crisis is that there are people being like, well, you know, what happens if he does win? president, is he mentally fit? And the fact is that people in the White House, people in the administration, are asking that exact same question right now

of can he do this job, not just in 2028, 2027, 2026, but even like next year. And, you know, why are we electing someone that we're not sure? The problem is not that, the problem is that, debate Biden, for lack of a better term, exists at all in a president. And I think that's why

this is not going away. I also don't think one, George Stephanopoulos interview, I think it may make the difference internally, but I don't think it's, you know, everything they've done to stem the bleeding suggests they think it's a flesh wound when in fact they're bleeding out. Alex Thompson, Mark Bivitz. Thank you very much. Thanks, guys. Thanks. Thank you for listening. Today's episode was produced by Devin Beraldi.

Our summer schedule for plain English for the next few weeks will be one episode a week on Fridays. We'll see you next week.