The Dispatch Podcast - Biden Presser Leaves Dems in Limbo | Roundtable

Episode Date: July 12, 2024

Sarah, Steve, and Jonah are joined by Axios’ national political correspondent Alex Thompson to analyze Joe Biden’s performance during Thursday’s press conference and where the president stands within his own party. The Agenda: —Vindication for Robert Hur —Criticizing media coverage of Biden —Vice President Kamala Harris’ electability —Tensions between former Barack Obama aides and the Biden campaign —Donald Trump’s campaign strategy Show Notes: —The Dispatch Podcast with Jonathan Martin and Alex Burns —George Clooney's New York Times op-ed The Dispatch Podcast is a production of The Dispatch, a digital media company covering politics, policy, and culture from a non-partisan, conservative perspective. To access all of The Dispatch’s offerings—including members-only newsletters, bonus podcast episodes, and weekly livestreams—click here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

During the Volvo Fall Experience event, discover exceptional offers and thoughtful design that leaves plenty of room for autumn adventures. And see for yourself how Volvo's legendary safety brings peace of mind to every crisp morning commute. This September, leased a 26 XE90 plug-in hybrid from $599 bi-weekly at 3.99% during the Volvo Fall Experience event. Conditions supply, visit your local Volvo retailer or go to explorevolvo.com. Td Bank knows that running a small business is a journey, from startup to growing and managing your business. That's why they have a dedicated small business advice hub on their website to provide tips and insights on business banking to entrepreneurs. No matter the stage of business you're in, visit td.com slash small business advice to find out more or to match with a TD small business banking account manager. Welcome to the Dispatch podcast.

I'm Sarah Isger, joined by Steve Hayes and Jonah Goldberg. But we have a special guest today. Alex Thompson, National Political Correspondent at Axios. Thanks for joining us. Great to be here. So, let's be here. Let's start with the run up to the press conference that President Biden held at NATO this week. Alex, what was the mood from the White House, from Democrats on the Hill, before the press conference?

Well, within the White House and the Biden campaign, there's really a split. The higher up in the org chart you go, really, the more there is this attitude of there is just a, this is a freak out, that there's a bunker mentality, that this is just the, latest of people doubting Joe Biden and him, you know, getting back up and is going to recover and persevere. Then, you know, throughout the White House, it's really split. There are people that are demoralized. There are some people that, you know, especially the ones that didn't see Biden on a day-to-day basis, a feeling of disillusionment, feeling that maybe senior staff were, you know, obscuring or not telling the truth about any limitations that he had. and then, you know, if you're on a campaign

and you just moved to Wilmington, Delaware, you're, you know, pretty low morale. You're checking your lease, seeing what the outlaws are. If you just move to Wilmington, Delaware for any reason, you're probably pretty low. And then, you know, Democrats in Congress, you know, despite only probably, I don't know what the count is now, I think it's just over a dozen have urged him to step aside

or, you know, change the language. You know, behind closed doors, they're freaking out. And they're freaking out because, they're worried that they could lose their own jobs. They're worried that Donald Trump could win. And also they're worried because they don't know what to do about it. You know, there are no good options. Even if you are saying, let's get rid of Joe Biden tomorrow,

that's still very, it's still very messy. You either have an unpopular vice president at the top the ticket, who at least voters don't question her age, or you go to an open convention, which has its own risk, because the Democratic Convention doesn't end until just a month before early voting. So that, I guess, is like the state of play. That was heading into the press conference. And I was wondering whether there was a sense that some people were holding their powder dry

for the press conference, basically assuming that President Biden would not do well. And then the floodgates could kind of be released. and this would all take care of itself. And that's not what happened at the press conference. You know, I'd love your feelings on the press conference, but more now post-press conference. Do Democrats feel more stuck, resigned to their fate? You know, I think they're going to keep their powder,

continue to keep their powder dry. I mean, you can't hide Biden all the way to the convention. So he has a Lester Holt, interview on Monday. He's going to be out and about. The Biden team is also, you know, Trump is likely to select his vice presidential nominee in the coming days. The RNC will start. Press attention will probably wane a bit. And then Democrats, I'm not resigned to the debate. I also think there's this increasing sense that it's not helpful to go public, not just because it creates more media, but also because it makes Biden dig in more.

It was interesting. Jim Kleinberg went on the Today Show just this morning and we're talking Friday morning and basically said, you know, give him the space. Like he's earned the right to like give space. And I think it's partly because you're seeing, and you already saw it in the way that Democrats were talking and their statements about Joe Biden because the first half of every statement was about how great Joe Biden was. and how historic he was and everything else. And part of that is because, like, Democrats are tiptoeing around his ego

with a lot of these things. Steve, what did you feel at the end of the press conference? I think you're right. And I think the framing of your question to Alex was right. Like, if people were waiting for another disastrous performance, like the one they sought the debate, that's not what Biden gave us. there wasn't, you know, an eight-second glitch or whatever it was as there was in the debate. So in that sense, he survived.

And I think that's, you know, that is the way that most people are characterizing his performance. That's now the metric of success, literal and metaphorical survival. I suppose that's where we are right now. But I think if you apply to Joe Biden's press conference, the same set of sort of judgments that you would apply to a president who's not. struggling the way that he is with cognitive decline, this would have been a dramatic failure of a press conference. I mean, he opened the press conference really in response to the first statement after he read from the teleprompter. I thought his reading from the teleprompter was halting. Dr. El Shiva Coleman, the University of Chicago neurologist, I spoke to last week

about President Biden about these things, so that reading is often the last thing to go. Usually you can get through a reading without struggling. I thought he struggled. I thought it was halting. After that, he opened his press conference by mistaking Vice President Harris for President Trump. He said he wasn't going to follow the advice of the commander-in-chief, and then he corrected to military chief of staff. He talked pretty openly about how he needs to pace himself, better manage his schedule to accommodate these challenges. His answer on Ukraine and ability to strike into Russia, I thought was mostly gibberish. He said the following sentence. We're going to make sure that rents are kept at 5% increased corporate rents for

apartments and the like. Homes are limited to 5%. No idea what that means. There are many other non-sequiters, you know, halting statements. And this was all, of course, just a couple of hours after he introduced Voldemir Zelensky as Vladimir Putin. So to me, that's not a good night. Is it a night enough to stem Democrat complaints and keep people from to flood? And to flood. cutting the public with requests that he resign, maybe. But it wasn't a good night, I think, if we're not grading on a massive, massive curve. Jonah, here seems to be the biggest problem for Democrats politically. I take Steve's point that perhaps we should be grading the president on whether he's good

at being president or even a good candidate. But that's not what we're grading. We're grading whether he can even stay the candidate or stay president. And I think to the extent that's the curve or that's the test. however you want to think about it. He passed that test, not with flying colors, but he passed it. And so we move on. This is the problem for Democrats, though, like Alex's point,

now there's the Lester Holt interview. Then there will be more press conferences, the more interviews. And if he fails any one of them, that's the end of the ballgame. And as you get closer and closer to that roll call vote that's currently scheduled for August 7th, the situation gets more and more dire. Like if he has a debate-like performance interview, you know, on August 6th, but he does mediocrely well, like Steve said, between now and August 6th, what the hell do they do then?

And so I think that's the biggest problem for Democrats is not that they don't like, do like, think Joe Biden's great or not. It's the concern that a good performance, a mediocre performance, whatever it is, actually makes this situation worse. Because, of course, the worst case scenario isn't August 6th. The worst case scenario is August 8th, right? It's after the first ballot where he gets the majority of DNC delegates. And then there's a problem.

Then it just gets that much harder. Then you're in Access Hollywood territory in 2016, where Republicans could talk a big game about replacing Trump on the ballot. But, like, not really. That's not an option. practically at that point. So, you know, yeah, it didn't open the floodgates, but I do wonder if we're still going to see

the anonymous sources from the White House, from the campaign. As Alex said, not because they think it'll move Joe Biden, clearly it won't, but for their own credibility down the road? Look, there are, for the country, for the Democratic Party, and frankly, for the Republican Party, too, for all of us who care about politics in the direction of the country, The only meals on the menu are crap sandwiches, right? So pick the one with the best bread that you like

because that's the best you can make at this situation. Now, you've been making this point for a while now, Sarah, that like the good performances don't really matter if you expect that there will be one more bad one coming or five more bad ones coming, right? It's like if you know that you're going to stumble while walking a tightrope eventually, who cares about how many steps you take that go fine, right?

Because, and so it's a numbers game, if you just believe that Biden is going to have another bad episode or several, at some point in public between now and the convention or now in the election, best to just simply deal with that fact when you have the most time left on the calendar to deal with it. That's the dilemma for the, Democrats and it seems to me that they are not confronting it well i mean James carville and

paul bagala and those guys are and david axelrod is trying valiantly um but for most of these guys it's like uh what does it yogi berra say i came to a fork in the road and i took it um they just don't it's like every day they pull off the bandaid a little bit and then they press it back down and stick it back on and i think that's unsustainable and i just want to make one one last point, which just doesn't get mentioned a lot, which is that presidents who are campaigning for re-election aren't supposed to be campaigning to prove that they're compass mentis. They're supposed to be campaigning to prove that they can, they deserve another four years. None of Biden's campaigning is about that to the extent it's even campaigning.

And I take a backseat to very few in my criticisms of Kamala Harris. I don't think she was a good pick. I don't think she's a particularly good politician. But you know what she can do? She can campaign. She can, you know, she's not Brick Tamlin from Anchorman when asked about abortion in a debate, right? I mean, she, you know, like, she would not frumfer about sisters raping their sisters and then say, we beat Medicare in response to a question about abortion.

This is not high praise, but that's the thing. And so I think they're in an untenable situation. And at some point, if the conversation actually focuses on, is he okay to govern for four more years, it's going to get worse before it gets better. So, Alex, let's go back in time a little bit. As you know, I'm friends with Rob Her. I worked with Rob Her at the Department of Justice. And I remember so clearly this conversation that I had with Rob and I'll only share my side of it because I haven't talked to him about this. But after his report came out, I remember texting him and saying,

you're Cassandra at the gates, right? This idea that you're telling everyone the problem and what's going to happen and nobody's going to listen to you because that's not the moment we're in. And instead, they're going to, you know, attack you, your motives, what a bad guy you are rather than listen to what you're trying to tell the country. And maybe more importantly, Democrats here with six, eight months left to go before they actually solidify who their nominee was. There was time at that point to have a robust primary with real candidates jumping in and instead they said rob her somehow wanted a judicial

appointment from Donald Trump. With that in mind, what grade would you give the media's coverage of this issue before the debate? For the whole presidency running up to the debate and whether you think it was an issue, it's a relatively new issue. Like you can factor all that I'm not going to directly give it a grade just because I'm not a media reporter and I think I don't think it would be a good grade how about that

and you know the her report was really I think the moment when like you know covering the age is difficult because like you can observe it and you can talk about it but it's it is you know because he was such they limited access to him

it's tough to report in some of the ways it is up to report. But after her, who was the person that, you know, had, I guess, like five hours of access to Joe Biden. And not only did he interview him, but then the transcript was released, and the transcript is very clear that he is all over the place, right? Like, he is, you just read it, and it's, it's so discursive, and he does jumble, and he has these, these very weird mental lapses throughout it, I think in retrospect, if you look back at the coverage of the release of the her transcript, a lot of the coverage has not aged well. The transcript has moments

of great lucidity and recall, and then also some of these other, like, bad moments. And I think the problem is, like, the fact that he had the bad moments was the news. Because if the president United States, you have to remember that her report, I think, like, I think that her interview was October 8th and October 9th, or it's right around October 7th. You know, if he's having some of these little, you know, brain burps at all, you know, I think that was worth, you know, increasing scrutiny, especially given that he had done less interviews with tough reporters than any president in decades. And, you know, I think the turning point for that, like in retrospect, You know, he did a decent amount of interviews the first year, but the last, but like after the really catastrophic George Stephanopoulos interview during Afghanistan, which is age, if you go back and read it, it is aged so poorly.

He promised that he wouldn't withdraw troops into all the American citizens were out. Ten days later, he withdraws all the troops. Hundreds of American citizens are left. I mean, just after that interview, they really circled the wagons with tough interviews. I think Jake Tapper snuck one in because he, like, convinced he, like, got Biden, Biden called him and Tapper got him to commit. But, like, really, they did not open him up. So that was my own long, discursive answer.

But that's sort of where I land. And I think the her stuff, you can quibble with maybe some of the ways. And some people in the Biden administration still quibble with some of the ways he wrote the report. but now feel that the report has certainly, certainly age. And, you know, one last thing about the her thing. I mean, like, they were, I think the way they tried to discredit him, right? It was it was Trump appointed Robert Her. Trump appointed Robert Her.

And then there was even like Apo floating out, you know, within progressive circles about him. So there was a determined effort to discredit him in order to discredit the report. And Steve, you know, just to sort of summarize the Her report, It was this idea that there was evidence that Biden had willfully retained national security information in violation of federal law, but that Robert Hurd did not believe he could get a conviction in front of a jury because he didn't think the jury would believe that Biden remembered doing it, even if he had done it. Yeah. That seems pretty indisputable now.

No, I mean, totally vindicated. Absolutely. I mean, I think you walked through the history. well, Alex, I'd love to follow up because I think Jonah had a really good G-file about this earlier this week. And I think the big debate about sort of the media's performance has missed a number of things. I mean, it isn't the case, as many of our friends on the right are claiming that there was some massive conspiracy and all these left-wing journalists just like huddled together and decided that they weren't going to tell the country that Joe Biden is. is having cognitive struggles. But at the same time, when you look back on it,

it's a huge, huge missed story. And I can say this to you because you didn't really miss the story. I mean, a lot of your reporting early on got at aspects of this. I mean, I think I can't remember the exact date you can tell me, but I think it was like April 2023, you reported on the shortened schedule that Joe Biden was doing. And, you know, there were elements of your reporting. And you were also doing some reporting for a book in addition to the reporting that you were doing for Axios.

I think you were really trying to sort of penetrate this and get a full understanding. Is the reason that the country didn't get a better sense of exactly how quick the decline or where we were sort of in the decline because it's so hard to nail down? I mean, it is hard. If he's not being exposed to journalists, it is hard to ask those questions.

and it's hard if you have a, you know, a ring around Joe Biden that's determined not only to tell you know what your hearing isn't true or what you think you're seeing isn't accurate, but also pushing back very, very hard and almost shaming journalists who had the audacity to ask these questions. And I know this because I've talked to some journalists who are on the receiving end of this, like sort of a how dare you ask these questions. And I wonder to what extent that back and forth between journalists covering the White House and the Biden's administration or the senior officials insistence that there was nothing wrong and that it was somehow inappropriate to ask plays a role in both the collective missing of the big parts of this story early.

And again, I should point out a lot of people did have elements of this reporting. It's not that it was entirely honest. there were reporters who covered this. But broadly, we didn't appreciate exactly where things were. How much of that is a part of this tension that I'm describing? Yeah, I think the White House was very effective and incredibly aggressive to any reporter that asked questions about the age. You know, and I think, you know, there was,

if you're not getting access to the president, then there should have been more curiosity as to why that is, rather than just sort of accepting, and not every reporter did accept it, but accepting, oh, well, you know, he still does the quick, you know, one, two questions when he's walking to, you know, that's when they asked, when he's walking to Marine One, whenever a reporter asked, why is he doing interviews,

why is he doing press conference, they'd be like, well, he's done a historic number of these, like, little pull-asides. And, you know, the, the few, times when, you know, you would see him sort of unscripted would be at fundraisers. But then they started, you know, adding teleprompters to the fundraisers. And he was having these big note cards at the fundraisers. But then even so, he would still make, you know, these gaffs. Like, one I distinctly remember was in September, it was last fall. And he talked about, you know, Charlottesville and

being the motivation why he ran. But then he told the story almost word for word, just minutes apart and got some attention at the time, but then it very quickly, there wasn't a lot of follow-up, it sort of quickly went away. You know, the other thing I would say is, you know, I became more aggressive about it once he declared for re-election, because in my mind it was just like, you have to think about 86, not how he is right now. So anything that is happening now is you have to think about it like beyond the November. It's more than if he can beat Donald Trump it's about does he have the mental fitness to serve another you know at that point five years and I think there was a little bit of like just focus on on the election um the other

thing just as part of the context of this I do think there is a world in which you know he did like I noticed the slip and one thing I always did was I really would always gut check with the with the white house photographers you know the New York Times photographers the wire photographers because they notice everything. They notice every little adjustment, every little change in how the team is orchestrating the president. And you could tell, especially like starting last summer, and some people close to president sort of speculate that like, you know, this is also when the Hunter plea deal unravels, that that is when you start seeing the ramp get a little bit steeper downward. And it seemed to get worse, especially the physical aspects of it,

started to get worse at a faster rate. We've now seen since the debate a very aggressive White House press corps on these questions, almost an obsessive White House press court. And I think the sort of conspiracy that you're getting from the Sean Hannity right is they just all want to get him out. They're on the Democrats team. They're doing this to get him out. This is all political. It seems to me that the likelyer explanation is they felt burned by the aggressive ways in which the White House had said, hey, look, there's no issue here. You're crazy. This is inappropriate for you to even ask. And then they see this. And they think, yeah, maybe I was too, maybe I wasn't aggressive enough. Maybe I should have pushed harder back then. Is that a factor?

How big a factor? How should we think about that? I definitely think, I mean, maybe if there is a grand conspiracy, I'm not invited to the meeting. But I think there is a personal aspect of this where they feel like they weren't told the truth and the White House wasn't candid. And I think, you know, you saw that at the press briefing earlier this week when Ed O'Keefe, who is like a complete pro and a really nice person and definitely has not carried water, doesn't carry, I think he's been as tough and respectful as anybody. You know, he just said, like, hey, we're all getting miffed out here about the way that you guys. share or don't share information and there was a personal edge to that

I mean reporters don't like feeling like they haven't been told the truth can I make one correction on that or just one qualification not on Alex's point but on Steve's question I agree that any time and Sarah knows this probably better than

all of us anytime people don't know how something works they go towards a conspiracy theory to explain it. Everything looks like a conspiracy when you don't know how it works, right? And that's true all sorts of things

because there are no coincidences and all that. That said, part of the thing that's informing a lot, I think this impression that the media is wagon circling here or pissed that is being political are things like the George Stephanopoulos interview,

which I think was tougher than I expected it to be and I'm not trying to say it was outrageous. But there were very few questions, if any, about, like, can he do the job? Can he be president of the United States? Can he handle the nuclear codes?

Does he know the names of foreign leaders and all that kind of stuff? It was all about can you win, right? It was all about the politics. And similarly, I mean, like, we, because we know the granular differences between a reporter and a pundit and a political commentator

that we can make these distinct. professionally, but most people just watch the TV shows and these things wash over them. And they, what they hear from Democratic politicians and pundits and some reporters and some commentators and some hosts and whatever is only a conversation about the campaign and not about the job. And like the Democrats who are coming out with their statements, none of them are talking about his ability to do the job. They're all talking about we need, Democrats need the person who can most,

win. So it's not outrageous or unforgivable for a normal person to conclude that this is all about partisan politics and not about anything else, because that's the only conversation that's going on. And the interview went to George Stephanopoulos, right? Like if you're inclined to think that it's a conspiracy, you give the interview to the Democratic partisan. No, I think that's exactly right. I mean, Sarah, can I ask you a question? Sorry, I'm asking, I'm in question asking mode today. I mean, I think we've seen, when I interviewed Alex Burns and Jonathan Martin about their book, we've talked about that a bunch here. That was back in May of 2022.

They had done some reporting on these age issues. We talked to them. Alex Burns said this was a massive concern among Democrats back in the spring of 2022. Asked him a bunch of questions, and Alex raised in that conversation with me, this notion of the Fox effect. That if Fox is covering it and if Fox is very interested in it, mainstream journalists really don't want to do that. And I saw that up close when I covered Benghazi. I think there was a big story there. I think it was a legitimate story.

But people didn't want to cover it because Fox was covering it. And I will say, because there really were excesses in the Fox coverage of it, right? I mean, Sean Hannity has portrayed Joe Biden as somebody who can't, you know, talk without drooling for four years. And I look this morning and I look at what Sean Hannity is tweeting and what a lot of people on the writer tweeting is the fact that Biden pulled out this piece of paper. which had the list of reporters he was going to call on at the press conference. That's something that happens in almost every presidential press conference. Literally, I can remember George W. Bush doing it. I think Donald Trump did it.

Barack Obama did it. There's nothing at all unusual for a president to have a list of names to call on reporters from. And yet, if you look into right-wing world this morning, that's part of the conspiracy. Sarah, how routine is that? Am I wrong? Am I remembering this wrong? that that's a normal part of the way this happens? Yeah, I mean, I've felt the need on Twitter

before the press conference to sort of call some balls and strikes on things that are normal and things that aren't normal. I'm happy to, you know, mention all sorts of things that Biden says or does that would really concern me as a staffer. Things that would not concern me as a staffer.

Absolutely having a list of names for reporters. So when I ran press conferences, I actually just called on the reporters from the sidelines because then I would have a better sense of when to end the press conference because remember in a press conference, you want to take as many questions as possible,

but every additional question is an opportunity for an error and at some point, the press core that has assembled runs out of topical questions and at some point you move into the weirdo questions because they will ask something. They're never going to stop. And so you're trying to cut it off after the end of the topical questions before you get to the bizarro questions that your guy isn't

prepped for and that the answer can only be weird. And so because your principle is having to think about the answers to questions, generally speaking, that's what the comms person is doing there. Now, again, I did it from the sidelines, you know, calling on people myself, calling the, you know, last question. Biden did it himself. You can see why they chose to do it that way, instead of having the press secretary off on the side calling it. So nothing unusual about that. There was the, you know, why were they moving it? Why were they so late?

Boy, is that normal? Again, something that I actually gives me like panic to be running late to a press conference. So, you know, at the Department of Justice, they all started within two minutes of the correct time. But I'm literally the only person in D.C. who ever ran a press conference on time. And there's all sorts of very boring reasons

that they run late, that people would not believe. He doesn't feel like it. He's chatting with someone. He wanted to return a phone call. He decided to go to the bathroom and it's taking a long time. I mean, I can't tell you the number of reasons that things ran late that I was like, no one would believe this.

They're going to think we're having some like last minute changes to the speech and like, no, that's been put to bed hours ago. Isn't it kind of bad when you're trying to prove to the whole world that your brain isn't broken to be really late? So all the punditry, all the pregame punditry is all about will he be able to string two sentences together? Wouldn't you prefer to be on time for that press conference? Yeah. Again, there's this, talking about conspiracy theories. There's this conspiracy theory I feel like that is so ubiquitous that it's not even a conspiracy theory that staff has any control

over their principle when it comes to things like this. They don't. And the principle, you can tell them as many times as you want. Sir, actually, this time, it's really important to be on time. Or, you know, Hey, Carly, instead of 45 minutes, could you please just talk for 20 minutes? We don't have 45 minutes to do this. The audience doesn't want 45 minutes. Only talk for 20 minutes. It will have no effect whatsoever.

Like, they're just, this is who they are. Joe Biden runs late. That's who he is. There was a whole Twitter account dedicated to, you know, how late is the Obama press briefing? And it would just, you know, tweet out how late it had run. You know, 28 minutes would have been short, a short delay. The last one I wanted to mention was one that I also saw going around.

By the way, it doesn't mean it's not political malpractice. Of course it was. He lengthened the amount of time that anyone tuning in for that press conference heard people talking about how he can't be president. It was dumb. I saw one about, you know, whisper, whisper, whisper, anonymous source for cabinet meetings, the White House staff would send questions to the cabinet secretary's staff. the cabinet secretary staff would send their answers back all before the meeting.

That's how meetings work with principles. Like that one I found like particularly not only not egregious. I was like, oh, good, they're running meetings well. You don't walk into a meeting with the president and the attorney general. I mean, like, so what did you want to talk about today, Mr. President? And then he comes up with a topic and you're like, oh, I don't really, I don't really know. Let me find out the answers to some of that. No.

You get the question. You get the answers. then they spend their time discussing the difficulties of that, ideas to fix the problem. So some of this reporting is very fair on Biden's limitations, and some of it betrays to me people who don't know how high-level government things work behind the scenes. Not long ago, I saw someone go through a sudden loss, and it was a stark reminder of how quickly life can change and why protecting the people you love is so important. Knowing you can take steps to help protect your loved ones and give them that extra layer of security brings real

peace of mind. The truth is the consequences of not having life insurance can be serious. That kind of financial strain on top of everything else is why life insurance indeed matters. Ethos is an online platform that makes getting life insurance fast and easy to protect your family's future in minutes, not months. Ethos keeps it simple. It's 100% online, no medical exam, just a few health questions. You can get a quote in as little as 10 minutes, same-day coverage, and policies starting at about two bucks a day, build monthly, with options up to $3 million in coverage. With a 4.8 out of five-star rating on trust pilot and thousands of families already applying through Ethos, it builds trust. Protect your family with life insurance

from Ethos. Get your free quote at ethos.com slash dispatch. That's ETHOS.com slash dispatch. Application times may vary, rates may vary. I would like to talk about vice presidents. So, Alex, we saw several questions from reporters at the press conference yesterday about why Joe Biden doesn't want to hand it off to his vice president, trying to get at the idea that, A, do you think she can't win? Do you think you have a better shot at winning against Donald Trump than Harris? B, you know, I particularly like Asma, a colleague from NPR's question, you ran in 2020 in the primary

and then in the general saying you were going to be a bridge candidate for Democrats. Basically, let the bench of the young people grow up just a little bit more so that they're ready to really take on the big stuff. And then I'm going to step out of the way. And here we are with him not stepping out of the way. What do you hear from the White House and Democrats

about Vice President Harris and whether they are more comfortable with her at this point than the president running, what concerns they have about her, how real are these questions? I can tell you, there's more and more Democrats that, you know, they're giving her a second luck and they're like, huh, you know?

She's looking pretty good. Like, literally, this is like some of the most pro-comla commentary and just like whispers, hot takes that I've seen in a long time. And it goes, I think, what Steve said, which is, or maybe, I know it's Jonah, I think, who basically just said, like, she can speak, you know, she can make compelling. This feels like when you show up to the party and you're like, ugh, everyone's so unattractive. And then you have three drinks and you're like, maybe not so that. I mean, listen, Democrats have been drinking heavily the last two weeks.

So that could be part of the reason. But yeah, I mean, and the fact is that I do think, you know, The Beltway, it's a combination of things. Like the White House and a lot of Biden aides don't think that she is as electable as Joe Biden. And, you know, it's sort of ironic, though, because they're doing to her what they're still super mad that Obama's people did to him. And it's just, you know,

some of this is just inherent in the vice presidency. But given how much they, you know, they complain about the Obama stuff to this day. I find it a little, just a little ironic. I think, you know, her main hurdles beyond, you know,

some of the word salad and, and sort of, you know, trite, trite musings, you know, philosophical musings that she sometimes has. You know, the other problem that she's going to have is, you know, she doesn't have like a really stable staff.

I mean, her turnover has been extraordinary. And if she were to sort of ascend at the top of the ticket, you know, what does that staff look like and is it stable? I think are some of like the questions that other Democrats are having. And that's why you still are, even with Jim Clyburn saying,

hey, I'm going to be with her. And certainly the path to least resistance, the cleanest thing. is to just give her the nomination. There are still a lot of people who want to beat Donald Trump that are nervous about just handing it off and not opening things up.

Jonah, this seems to me like two different ways, you know, is it a bunny or is it a duck? Is Joe Biden the most likely to win in November? If you think yes, you stick with Joe Biden. And I think there's plenty of data that will fulfill that next. narrative, that hypothesis. If you think Joe Biden's definitely going to lose, then you want to take a risk on someone else. And both of those things can actually be true at the same time.

But I think it depends which one you're looking at to decide if you're a Democrat, whether you want Joe Biden to stay the nominee or you want to take a risk on Harris. Because if you think Joe Biden has the best shot, you stick with Biden. If you think that Joe Biden's definitely going to lose, then you're like, eh, why not take a flyer with Harris, even if she's more likely to lose than Joe Biden, because at least with her, the spectrum of probabilities is broader potentially. Yeah, I mean, this gets back to my, the only dishes on the menu are crap sandwiches point, right? And so it's all triage and cost-benefit analysis and risk. So that's why I start from the proposition that if you think it is unavoidable that Biden is going to have a

another bad episode. Put yourself in that position 60 days from now and think about how much worse it will be then. So let's figure out a way to minimize that bad outcome and do what we need to do. And like, I mean, I'm kind of obsessive about how so much of this is the result of weak parties. Like if you actually had party leaders that could exercise discipline and control, you would not be in anything like this situation. But that's where we are. Which also makes the Obama-Biden tension, I think, has really come to the front because I think, again, if you're an outsider, whatever you want to think of it, and you're seeing James Carville and David Axelrod and the Pod Save America bros all coming out, George Clooney, you know, with his op-ed saying Biden needs to step aside, you're like, whoa, except if you realize that the Biden team has never seen them as allies and think that they were just waiting in the tall grass for this. moment. They would love nothing more than to see Biden fall on his face because it would, first of all, justify everything they ever thought about Joe Biden and also make Barack Obama look

that much better and themselves look that much better. And Biden's team look like they're not as competent. I mean, this is, like, this isn't about party unity at the Democratic side. This is a long-running feud between team Biden and team Obama. One quick thing, just really quick before you go, like that's been funny as the Biden team has been snirking. at George Clooney in the press. They leaked that Biden was there for a full three hours, and George Clooney couldn't keep up with Joe Biden. And then they did it just last night in a CNN report.

They leaked that Joe Biden had to fly six time zones from Italy because George Clooney said that that night was the only night that worked for him and he was being like a Hollywood prima donna. So I think your point is spot on that George Clooney is not the man that's going to sway Joe Biden's need. I have a total Iran-Iraq war attitude towards that conflict. Well, just like when it leaked that George Clooney had called Barack Obama to get his permission to run the op-ed, I was like, and see. I find, I think the single greatest moment of all, of just the sort of, I mean, you, you lament that Tom Wolfe is dead, right?

I mean, because he would have been great at a lot of this stuff. But Joe Biden calling in to Morning Joe to condemn Democratic elites, it's like giving a speech in Davos condemning all of those economic elites who are trying, but not in a kind of like, it's like going to Davos and saying, I don't mean you guys. I mean those other economic elites. I mean, to call into Morning Joe and say, I'm taking on the establishment and it's parody.

By the way, worth noting, Steve, since you were talking about Fox effect that mainstream journalists don't like covering something if Fox is covering it because then they get lumped in with being right-wing lunatics, you'll notice there is no MSNBC effect. There is no Joe Scarborough effect. If Joe Scarborough says something, it's not like the mainstream media folks are then like, oh, no, we can't possibly talk about that because Joe Scarborough said it. So I would be more willing to buy into this idea of like a bunch of reporters don't want to buy into, you know, partisan hackers. but it doesn't seem to work that way. Yeah. You know, if anything, I think mainstream reporters watch Morning Joe and take their cues from the framing of a lot of this stuff, honestly. It was considered the agenda setting show

in the Obama administration. I mean, this was playbook, Morning Joe. Like, if you wanted to know it was going to go on in D.C. that day, it was circular. Like, you had to turn into Morning Joe because the White House was tuning into Morning Joe to figure out what the White House is going to do. Yeah. Sarah, I just want to point out your framing

of the question that you put to Alex just a minute ago because I think it's the correct framing and I think it's incredibly depressing because you said in this debate that Democrats are having internally about whether they should sort of jump ship and go from Joe Biden to Kamala the question they keep asking themselves is who is the better candidate

who's more likely to win in November right it's just stunning and again I mean I've been doing this for 25 years I don't think of myself as particularly naive but it is just stunning how little of the discussion is about Joe Biden's ability to do the job until he's 86, as Alex said. I mean, it really is all about can he win?

Yeah, I mean, in fairness, as long as they can get him elected, then Harris becomes president. Fine, who cares? But that's a pretty, I mean, I've talked to like some longtime Biden people and some Democrats, and if they're honest, they'll basically admit what you just said, Sarah, which is that there is this very great, moral calculus that you are put you are trying to elect somebody that you do not have confidence

can do the job for more years and then also when is that line you know like is there a moment when Joe Biden's going to be like you know what I am too old right that's the problem he's really proven that he's not going to then you know after the day after the inauguration be like well we got that out of the way take the reins Kamala so that should be concerning are you really going to want a 25th Amendment, this guy? You want to talk about something that would further shake the country's faith in in our politics is if he were to do something like that. I mean, I think that would be, you know, if Joe Biden were to remain and win,

I think the sooner he's not president, the better the country, the better off the country will be. And I say that as somebody who obviously has, I just don't have any love for Kamala Harris. I think she was bad as a candidate. I think she'd be bad as a president. But can you imagine how unsettling that would be to people? Like this guy campaigns that it has to be me, has to be me, has to be me, has to be me. And then he then he steps down.

The whole thing would feel like a big joke. And the alternative is the Democrats having a fight over whether and how to invoke the 25th Amendment. Yeah. And Harris, of course, has to be the one to vote to remove the president to become acting president. By the way, she doesn't get to become president if they 25th Amendment him for a disability. She only becomes acting president. I mean, we're an uncharted territory at that point when you become permanent acting president.

Only the president can resign and allow her to be sworn in. I mean, that's a bigger mess for them than I think the political mess that you're describing, Steve, which would be the bait and switch. I saw someone on Twitter say, vote for the cadaver. It's important, which is a little cruel, but it also sort of gets at the weird otherworldly logic

of the situation that we're in. you know. Alex, how much are you hearing Democrats talk wild hypotheticals and how much are they just focused on making it through Monday's Lester Holt interview? Like, do they careen between the two? How rational are these conversations happening? Or do they sound like this podcast? Well, which category does this podcast go into?

Bonkers out. You know, if you talk to the donor community, like they're on the board. They're on, like, the board drawing up every possible scenario. They're, like, they're sending around to all their rich friends, linking to, like, Ezra Klein and Madagliacius and Josh Barrow. And, like, you know, we could host, you know, and we're going to have, you know, this Blitz primary.

And we're going to have, like, CNN Town Halls with Newsom and Kamala. And, like, just, you know, they've come up with every single possible scenario. Never change, donors, never change. Yes. So when you get to, I'd say there's two categories. When you get to lawmakers, you know, there are people that are having serious conversations about, okay, like, there are some Democrats that feel, you know, Joe Biden has never been a quick decision maker. And there is, there are some Democrats that are like, we have to let him come to the conclusion on his own. and

Grandpa will give up the keys to the Corvette Just give him a sec And get in there And so there's the There are some Democrats that are like Okay like game this out a few weeks from now We need to be prepared for a few weeks from now That there will be another debate like moment

Or something else that will come up It trigger another like mini crisis There are those that are there And then there are some Democrats that are basically just like I need to go back to my district and, like, hold on for dear life and try to win my race. And, like, I can't deal with whatever is going on in D.C. I can't control it. And that's just where we are.

And don't, please press, don't ask me about it. This episode is brought to you by Squarespace. Squarespace is the platform that helps you create a polished professional home online. Whether you're building a site for your business, you're writing, or a new project, Squarespace brings everything together in one place. With Squarespace's cutting-edge design tools, you can launch a website that looks sharp from day one. Use one of their award-winning templates or try the new Blueprint AI, which tailors a site for you based on your goals and style. It's quick, intuitive, and requires zero coding experience.

You can also tap into built-in analytics and see who's engaging with your site and email campaigns to stay connected with subscribers or clients. And Squarespace goes beyond design. You can offer services, book appointments, and receive. receive payments directly through your site. It's a single hub for managing your work and reaching your audience without having to piece together a bunch of different tools. All seamlessly integrated.

Go to Squarespace.com slash dispatch for a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, use offer code dispatch to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. Can we talk with our remaining minutes about the other side of this? So Donald Trump's team has been very clear, Chris Lasavita, Susie Wiles, the folks running Trump's campaign, that they would prefer to run against Joe Biden. They want the known, known, known, unknown of a Harris. Yeah, they think it's a win-win. They think they could beat Harris as well, but they have a whole campaign strategy built around running against Joe Biden.

They've been feeding this idea that he is mentally and physically and firm, and obviously that seed has. germinated and grown into quite the beanstock. So perfect. Stick with this. So every day the Joe Biden's in the race, they are happy. But they also have an age issue and they need to pick a vice president. Jonah, you know, they certainly are putting it out there that the list is North Dakota Governor Doug Bergam, Florida Senator Marco Rubio, and Ohio Senator J.D. Vance.

it appears very much like Rubio's off the list at this point. And so it's between Bergman Vance. But there's always the like Trump surprise could happen. Hey, it's Katie Britt, Elise Stefonic, whatever. Do you think that Trump's vice presidential pick matters at all, depending on whether it's Biden or a different Democrat, or depending on what happens between now and November? Like vice presidents generally haven't mattered.

I have thought that Vice President Harris matters in this race, more so than any vice president in modern American history because people think that she will become president if Joe Biden were to win. They're not picking a vice president. They're picking a president. I don't know that people have that same sense

about Donald Trump that Donald Trump's pick for VP would become president in some actuarially likely scenario. And if it's not that, vice presidents generally haven't actually made any electoral difference. So is this worth our time?

Well, first of all, this is the life we have chosen. So, you know, we just suck it up. Is it worth Alex's time to listen to this drivel? And you're just completely ignoring the fact that the President of the United States said that Donald Trump is his vice president last night. So, you know, which? The memes have been great. They have one now with Vice President Harris and Zelensky. And someone says, see the collusion between Trump and Putin.

Pretty well done, actually. So I think, first of all, for governing stuff, I think it matters enormously right now because... Really? Same way. Vance represents something, the populist, nationalist takeover of the Republican Party or the insurgency within it. But that's like saying Harris represents the very progressive wing of the Democratic Party, but once you become vice president, you got to do whatever the big guy says. hasn't really gotten to fly her progressive freak flag. Yeah, my only point is, is that long term, it's not, there's a non-trivial chance

that Donald Trump doesn't finish a term, and there's a non-trivial chance that whoever he picks his vice president inherits something of the mantle of the MAGA faction of the GOP. If he had picked Rubio, you could see a post-Trump world where the Republican Party has a regression to the mean of the pre-Trump party.

With Vance, he is the hero. He's the avatar of the people, who don't want to go back. And he believes that stuff, particularly on foreign policy. So I think that stuff matters. And we know from Pence in the first Trump administration, because Trump doesn't care about a lot of things, Pence had a huge role in influencing staffing at the non-sexy stuff,

at the margins, the stuff that mattered for actual governing. Vance could play the same role and cede a Trump administration with, you know, mini-cash Patel's all over the place, that kind of thing. So it's worth keeping in mind. My nightmare. So yesterday I had to clear out this pile. And I do, it was Mad Max meets Heart of Darkness in my garage, piles of dead flies, and then dozens of spiders gorging on the dead flies.

That's one version of having cashed hotels everywhere. But to answer your original question just very quickly, electorally, I do think it matters at the margins. The Trump people believe, and I think they're right to believe, they have a problem with women. They have a problem on abortion. That's why they've, you know, they've beclowned the pro-life movement

and the Heritage Foundation and all these people to sort of seem moderate or claim to be moderate. I mean, I'm your feminist ally, Sarah, but I don't want to speak for you. I don't feel like J.D. Vance is the guy you pick to win over the sort of Mika Brzynski

voter. And he, I don't know that he solves any of their gender gap problems. So I think he could matter in that respect in a way that even Doug Bergam and Marco Rubio could have improved things, or never mind a female running mate. You haven't heard J.D. Vance's wife. She would crush it on Morning Joe. But I believe. She's incredible. Alex, is this a little bit like the Princess Bride scene about which cup the poison is in? Like when they hear that Donald Trump is pumped to run against Joe Biden and Joe Biden's staying is exactly what the Trump team wants.

It's a little bit like, yes, but a smart person would know better than to put the poison in his own cop. Like, did they think they're playing 3D, 5D chess here? Or do they understand that this is what Republicans think is best for them? I think it's a combination of not 5D chess, but really just trolling. I think they're trying to make the Democrats overthink it. So it is Princess Bride. Yeah, yeah, I mean, a little bit.

It's just like a little bit of trolling. And then I also think there's probably, you know, Tim Alberta wrote this great piece of the Atlantic that, you know, I think he knows those people. You know, there is a sincerity to the fact they've been planning to run against Joe Biden. And they think they feel very confident. Again, they can beat Joe Biden. I think they feel confident they can beat anybody. But the less predictable is probably for them a little bit worse at this moment.

Steve, do you see a difference between Bergham and Vance and actually how an administration would go? The bigger difference is probably what, you know, accepting the mantle of Trumpism without Trump and sort of MAGA plus. I mean, I think J.D. Vance has shown himself very malleable to put it in the most charitable possible way. Philosophically, he has become sort of Trump plus in the way that he makes arguments. He has become very committed to the kind of magified view of the world and the policy prescriptions that flow from. that. I think Doug Bergam is more of an empty vessel. He, you know, it's not that he's without ideology, but he is a successful businessman who has undoubtedly learned lessons over the decades of being a successful businessman and I think would be likely to apply those to the vice presidency.

If it were Marco Rubio, I think he's sort of the hardest to predict. I've been doing a bunch of reporting for a profile that may never run of Marco Rubio, sort of an updated profile. But in talking to a lot of people in his orbit, there's a big split in Rubio world about whether the Marco Rubio that we're seeing right now is closer to what Marco Rubio actually believes, or if the Marco Rubio that I came to know when I covered his Senate primary in 2010, which is closer to the Tea Party anti-government Marco, is the true Marco. And I think you have people who've known Marco for literally decades who are on opposite sides of that. You know, people who have worked for Marco, know I'm on a personal level, who say, yeah, actually he's sort of evolved to this point. And this is actually who he always was. He just now is able to be freer about it. And a lot of other people, and I tend to side with the second group, a lot of other people who say, no, basically he was this kind of quasi-establishment, Florida, former Speaker of the House, who became, who just emphasized Tea Party style issues more in 2010 to, to win a race, but actually believes those more than he believes the kind of industrial policy Marco stuff that we're hearing from him now. But in it, you know, if he were to be picked and Trump were not to serve out his term

and Marco were to become president, I do think we would see, especially as it relates to Vance or compared to Vance, we would see something much more like a traditional Republican, older, limited government style presidency in a Marco Rubio than we would be. Jady Vance, who I think is, you know, his inclination is to sort of continue to plus it up, continue to plus it up. Here's what I see as the big problem and why I'm surprised that we're down to this list. You have to assume that Trump feels like he learned something from picking Mike Pence. Obviously, he thinks that was a mistake.

So what should have been the takeaways if you don't want to repeat that mistake? A, having someone with their own political ambitions, and B, having someone who deep down has principles is, you know, smart and well thought of in a greater sort of D.C. sense and therefore, when push really comes to shove, they're going to pick themselves over you, their own political ambitions over you, and there are going to be principles that they have once they get the thing that are going to be red lines. I actually, like, J.D. Vance is the poster child of having his own ambitions. Yep, he's saying all the things he needs to say right now to get the vice presidency.

And then his whole goal is to become president. So if you ask him to do something that he thinks hurts his chances of becoming president, I don't know that he's going to do it. Don Jr. made the point about how he doesn't want his father to pick Marco Rubio because then Republicans would have an incentive to impeach Donald Trump. Love this new political theory, by the way. You don't want to pick a vice president who helps you politically. You want to pick one who hurts you politically because it's an insurance policy.

I mean, honestly, it's what Biden is living on. Can you imagine if Joe Biden had Amy Klobuchar as his vice president right now? People would have, like, you know, driven him out to the country and left him there a la Admiral Stockdale in the S&L skit. Just for the record, I've been making this argument about Trump for a long time that he wants the scariest vice presidential pick possible that does not cost him the election. Like if he could get away with having Lauren Bobert in there, because what he wants is to become president and then hold up like Lauren Bobert or Marjorie Jela Green like a Medusa's head and say,

you can't impeach me. And I think it's real. Which makes none of these three options make any sense. I would have said like Doug Bergam because he has no sort of political future on his own, but the guy ran for president. So he thinks he has a political future on his own, regardless of whether that's realistic or not. So and none of this makes a lot of sense to me, honestly. and it's odd for Donald Trump to trust.

I mean, it continues to be odd for Donald Trump to see someone who trashed him in the most serious of terms and then has this come to Jesus moment over and over again. He likes those people because he prefers someone who he won over. It feeds his ego more than someone who was always with him. That's the J.D. Vance argument. It always has been.

But again and again, those are the very people who then end up reverting back to who they really are. And J.D. Vance at the end of the day is an incredibly smart, well-educated lawyer with a brilliant wife who's not going to let him do insurrections, for instance. So I don't know that he's really fixing his pens problem here. All right. Final word to you, Alex. I don't know.

What are you most interested in? What story are you, like, gnawing? at to get answers to right now, between now and the Republican convention or the Democratic roll call. Again, like, I sort of agree with Jonah that like so much the coverage is about how this will affect the election in November. I think I'm much more interested. I've long had like this weird side interest in presidential health. And like I wrote a whole, that is the weird side of interest. I mean, I wrote like a whole like 5,000 word piece on like presidents and mental health and like JFK taking like psychotropics like on the side and like you know ways to manage the anxiety

of being present anyway so I'm very interesting you know it's funny I'm reading this book called the Daughters of Yalta by Catherine Grace Katz and many many obviously this book was written a little while ago many many times she talks about FDR's failing health going into the Yalta conference and it sounds so much like Joe Biden limiting his schedule that he's having trouble focusing in meetings anyway so like, this is not a new problem. Yeah. And the ways that White House has concealed it is not new. Yes.

His daughter. And in this case, you know, it's a lot of the family, right? I'm much more interested in other ways that his health has been affecting his presidency. And because it would suggest how it will affect the presidency in the future. So those are the things that I'm really interested in. I'm also interested in like the doctor stuff, right? It took us like, it's interesting. There is not really a box effect on this story right now

because the New York Post is the first one that reported that this Parkinson's doctor had visited the White House and then you saw a swarm, right? And, you know, I'm also interested like, hey, were there any other doctor visits, you know, back in Delaware because there aren't visitor logs for that? Like I'm interested to see, is there more to this story than we already know,

not just how does this affect the election. That's funny. I had a friend from the George W. Bush administration who texted me last week and said, why isn't anyone following the Delaware story? There's no White House visitor logs. Every White House knows that if you want to have a secret meeting, you do it at the home because there's no logs.

And I was like, huh. And he has spent, I mean, I try to get the numbers on this. Huge amounts of time. Nearly between a quarter and a half of it. this time is president in Delaware. Right. Right. Well, that's where the classified documents were Jonah. So with that, Alex, thank you so much for joining us.

It was such a treat to have you join a dispatch podcast. And I'm sorry that Steve and Jonah were here. I couldn't do much about it. Next time, we'll do it in Delaware, you know, so that way they won't know where we are. So good to be here. We'll talk to you next week. Thank you.