The Press Box - Kamala Harris, Joe Biden, and Covering the Democratic Convention With CBS News’ Robert Costa and Ed O’Keefe

Episode Date: August 21, 2024

Hello media consumers! Bryan has a bonus mid-week episode with two special guests from CBS News. First he speaks with White House correspondent Ed O’Keefe, who discusses working the floors of the convention, staking out Joe Biden during his final days in the White House, and the early returns on Kamala Harris and Tim Walz (1:21) Then he talks with the chief election and campaign correspondent, Robert Costa, to discuss his conversations with Donald Trump and Joe Biden, his thoughts on the convention so far, and leaving the theater after Biden announced that he is stepping down. (25:45) Host: Bryan Curtis Guest: Ed O’Keefe and Robert Costa Producer: Brian H. Waters Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, I'm Tara Palmeri. I'm Puck Senior Political Correspondent and host of Somebody's Got to win. Brought to you by The Ringer and Spotify. The 2024 election has been upended with Joe Biden off the ticket and Donald Trump facing a new challenger, Kamala Harris. If you want to hear what the insiders are really saying about the race, join me Tuesdays and Thursdays as I break it all down with lawmakers, journalists, and political strategists.

We'll go deeper than the headlines to the anxieties at the highest levels of power. And of course, we'll chew over all. the hot political gossip as we head into this historic election. Be sure to follow, somebody's got to win at Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello media consumers. Welcome to a bonus edition of the press box from the Democratic Convention, Brian Curtis of the Ringer here along with producer Brian Waters. This week in Chicago, I've seen a lot of Democrats, I've seen a lot of protesters,

and of course I've seen a lot of reporters, including both Wolf Blitzer and Brett Barry and the security line. For this podcast, I want to talk politics and how you cover a convention with a couple of television pros, Ed O'Keefe and Robert Costa of CBS News. Let's begin with Ed O'Keefe. On Wednesday, I took my trusty microphone to the CBS Skybox high above the floor of the United Center. What a perfect and romantic place to interview CBS's senior White House correspondent. Unfortunately, at that moment, John Legend started doing a sound check on the stage. So Ed and I retreated to an office where we got to talk. Ed is not just the White House correspondent for CBS. He works the floor during the convention. You know, the place

where people are dancing and holding signs and in the case of the Washington State delegation this week, wearing light up cowboy hats. So Ed and I talked about working the floor, about staking out Joe Biden in his final days as a candidate, and the early returns on Kamala Harris and Tim Walls. Here's Ed O'Keefe. All right, Ed, we're in the upper levels of the United Center, but this is an unusual altitude for you because you usually work the floor during the convention. Yes. And as a lapsed Knicks fan, it's been bittersweet being in this building because many of my middle school memories had something to do with things that happened on the floor here.

Is this Charles Smith-era Knicks that we're dealing with? I was Ewing and Starks and those guys. And every time they'd come to Chicago and, you know, couldn't get by them. But Marv Albert on the call, I remember that. too. And they played the intro music the other night. That was a flashback. So I saw you sitting on the front row of the floors. Is there a particular sort of strategy to working the Florida convention? Well, so we like to, you know, while the others are up in the booth and while the speeches are happening, we're trying to sort of find the colorful or the interesting or potentially the newsy people who are down on the floor hanging out. And for example,

in Milwaukee with the Republicans, we talked to Pennsylvania delegates who had been at the rally with Trump just a few days before and who could describe to us pretty vividly what they saw and then being with him four days later in Milwaukee and the sort of thought of they didn't think he'd be there. They didn't think they'd be there necessarily quite that way. And what that meant in the moment for Republicans, they thought that was it. They were on the verge of victory based on what had happened that weekend. Of course, things have changed dramatically. to a kid in a cheesehead hat who did a pretty good Donald Trump impression was attending his first convention as a Wisconsin delegate.

So it's things like that. And then talking to Don Jr. about how he convinced his father to pick J.D. Vance. Here it's been, you know, delegates who I think a month ago would have thought they were attending a funeral and instead are at a wedding and are quite happy about it. And spending a lot of time, for example, with California delegates, which we wouldn't normally do because while they take up a lot of space, they didn't necessarily have a lot of relevance in recent presidential cycles. But many of them can sort of tell you the story of how they knew Kamala Harris when she was a district attorney

and she was running for attorney general when she was running for the Senate and the spade work that she was doing then to prepare her for what's happening this week. Kind of surprise me how much of the floor is a giant costume party. Yeah, and that's always been an element of this. And in fact, we met in Milwaukee and we're doing a story this week for CBS mornings about a team from the Smithsonian that has been coming to convention since 1988 to collect some of the hats and the outfits and the handmade signs and the press passes and they keep them in this treasure trove at the American History Museum in D.C. And you would think this otherwise ends up in the garbage

or in the recesses if your closet or under the bed in some kind of containers it is in my house. But it turns out they actually scour the floor for the stuff that they think has mileage, decades, if not centuries from now to sort of convey the story of 2024. And, you know, they say the more handmade, the more original it is, the better. There's ladies here in Taylor Swift, Kamala Harris dresses, one woman with a, like a green St. Patrick's Day, Irish hat that's covered in buttons and had light up lights. And then you've seen them with these bracelets that are radio control, depending on where they are in the room, they can change the colors. I guess this is a feature of Taylor Swift concerts that they've now adopted here as a

well. So it's, yeah, and it's designed, it's all, remember, it's all designed for television. And increasingly now for social media, because if you aren't watching it live the night of, you're going to wake up in the morning and it's going to be all of your Instagram feed. And the Democrats want to make sure that whatever's there is a bright and shiny object that, you know, draws you in and potentially wins your vote. I've been reading about the chaotic Democratic convention here in Chicago in 1968. I was not here, but I've heard about it. You were not here, but your CBS predecessors, Dan Rather and Mike Wallace got a little bit roughed up on the

floor during that convention. Have you ever had party minders or security try to shoo you away from either people or places? They were trying to keep us away from Governor Newsom last night, but I think that was primarily because they were just overly excited and needed something to do. I have not, though, been accosted quite that way. I think it was John Chancellor at the 1960 or even 56 convention who went the wrong way, and they pulled him off the floor, and he signed off by saying this is John Chancellor reporting from somewhere in custody. And, you know, because that can kind of happen. But so far, and I think lessons have been learned since then.

Party don't want any of that. They don't want to suggest that they're being, you know, aggressive or anti-press on the floor. Although if you talk to our friends in newspapers and the wires, they even having a hell of a time this week because they haven't credentialed enough for them or given them the numbers that they have been accustomed to in the past. And it's a testament to the changing name. of the way people are consuming their information?

Gavin Newsom not usually allergic to the cameras. No, and that was what was so intriguing, was that for whatever reason, it was just crowd flow. They were just trying to keep us away because, you know, we roll deep. There's four of us in a team that go down there. And when you're all squeezed in like sardines, it's hard to move four people amid that crowd.

What has the last two months been like for you? Well, see, two months ago, I think we all thought we're slogging towards contest America doesn't want and has made repeatedly clear to us they're not interested it was late may when Biden threw down the gauntlet and said let's have a debate and later that day CNN and ABC got their hands on at the date night which happened kind of quick and was surprising but I think all the networks would acknowledge is the end result of a push that we've been making to change the way televised debates are held and so far it's been rather successful we think and to be able

to negotiate directly with them as opposed to having that commission on presidential debates control it so that proved who could be done the buildup to that debate was pretty intense and we know the president basically hit away for several days at camp david to prepare and then they walked out on that stage and within seconds you could tell something was up and it went pretty south from there And what was most telling to me sitting in New York with our team watching it for our coverage was how quickly Democrats were acknowledging the panic. Not like, oh, here we go again. He's stumbling over his words and he can't remember if he's in Cleveland or Columbus

or whether that Congresswoman is alive or not anymore. But instead it was he clearly has something going on and he's freezing up and he can't do it. and there were Democrats that night who were in Washington watching together, members of Congress, who turned to each other and said, that's it, we have to do something. Because if we don't, it's not just that the party's going to lose the White House, they're going to lose Congress. And if we lose Congress, we lose the Supreme Court. And if we lose the Supreme Court, we lose the next 20, 30, 40 years.

So pretty quickly, it's no longer just hangaring and in pearl clutching, and we have to figure out something to do. and there was word that there were members getting ready to draft a statement to go to the White House collectively and say it's time to hang it up Mr. President and of course now we know what was going on and how long it took but the panic that night and the swiftness was which Democrats wanted to do something about it we had not seen before these are not just strategists in your phone these are actual members of Congress lawmakers themselves who were gathered together at different watch parties in DC

because Congress was in session that week all sitting in a room going what are we going to do about And they started writing letters, drafting copies of them to prepare. They started calling White House and campaign officials. And we know the White House chief of staff, the campaign manager, were calling various senior Democrats or notable Democrats, either in the messaging space, you could say, those that appear frequently on television, or in the fundraising space, who might have been at large donor parties that night, to see. say, so what do you think? And it was basically their task to go out and figure out how bad

was it. And they were told pretty quickly, it's pretty bad. Fast forward to the weekend of July 21st. I'll never forget it. I'll never forget it because on that Sunday, there was no indication that it was coming, that he was sitting in Rojavut Beach, still suffering from COVID, a really bad call. Just the first lady, their two most loyal aides, Anthony Bernal and Annie Tomasini and Steve Richetti and Mike Donald and coming in with really bad polling data and that he went to bed Saturday night woke up Sunday morning and said let's do this it's all so like many here in this business in Washington you thought to yourself well it may not be today maybe he'd do it today because you want to get ahead of the markets opening

in Asia and in New York on Monday morning and you don't want to cause a sudden crash in the middle of the day but I also kept in the back of my mind this is a president who doesn't want to give us satisfaction of announcing it 2 o'clock that he's speaking at 9 o'clock and having seven hours of mindless speculation and celebration that he's leaving. So the surprise element of it didn't surprise me, but we were surprised that he did it when it did it. But it happened on that particular day. Yeah. And you were in Rojobeith? No, I was in a movie theater in Washington, D.C., with my kids. I was trying, it was a, remember, it was a week after Milwaukee, it was just a few days after Milwaukee. It was a week

after the assassination attempt on Trump. I was with my 8-year-old and my 5-year-old, that despicable me 4, the 1.30 showing. Just for history's sake, we've got to get the movie. Yes. I still have not seen the end of it because by 146, I was getting a call from a producer saying, did you see the text? Or did you see the tweet? So I looked at this.

And I panicked and I turned to my two girls and I said, we have to go. And the idiot, we put her popcorn and their, Twizzlers were like, what, no. What do you mean we have to go? And I just grabbed the phone, texted my wife. I said, did you see what happened? I needed to come to the theater. Sorry, you're not getting her afternoon.

Can you get here as fast as you can? I said, oh my God, I'm coming. 20 minutes past, which was actually, I thought it would take longer. I got there as fast as you could. Through the tickets at her, through the keys at her. And before I got out of the theater, turned to the eight-year-old,

who follows some of this stuff with enough knowledge of what daddy does and what, you know, who the president is everything. I said, President Biden is dropping out of the race. I have to go cover this. I'm sorry.

Mom's on her way. Remember, this is a week after the assassination. So, like a kid with the earphones on, on the airplane that starts screaming because they don't realize that they're not speaking at the right volume. She bellows out. Does this mean Connolly Harris is going to become

president and I immediately thought everyone in the movie theater was going to think that the president had died or been shot just like Donald Trump. I said, no, no, no, no, no, we don't know, we don't know. Ran out by 3 o'clock was down at the bureau on set and later that night they said go to Rojolode which if you cover Biden is a place you've had to go at least once or twice. And if you're there for vacation, for to go to the beach is a great thing. You're there to work? Well, You know, you hope the weather's good. You hope you have a nice view. And you think that maybe you'll see them out getting ice cream or riding a bike or going to church.

So we got to Rojavis. And then we learned later the details of how it is that he dropped out, why he did, and that he then spent Sunday calling just a small handful of his closest aides and advisors, while the vice president was starting to call hundreds of people, basically working off a spreadsheet of the biggest names in the party that she knew she would need to have on her side and spent that day making those calls pretty quickly and demonstrating that despite all the skeptics and the belief that she wasn't up to this and she didn't know what she was doing she'd been keeping names and numbers in the receipts and proved pretty quick that

she could consolidate the point so your daughter's scoop and despicable ome before turned out to be correct it held up yes yes um i was just one worried that people in the theater would be like, did he die or, you know, was he shot too? And so that's why I just tried to quiet her down. Yeah, I mean, I ran home. I said to the girls, before I left her home of speech, this is going to change the next several months. You may not see as much of me, but you understand what's going on through.

She is now running for president, and we've got to see whether or not it's her or Donald Trump. So fast forward to August 7th. Now, Harris has picked Tim Walz as her running mate. Yep. And you were in Wisconsin at one of the first of the time. of their rallies. What was notable about that rally, given that what you, how do you cover the hand? That more than 12,000 people showed up at lunchtime on a Wednesday in All Claire, Wisconsin. That doesn't happen in the August before the presidential election. It might happen the week

before a presidential election or two weeks before in October when everyone was really starting to think about it when early voting has begun and when the knocking on the door and the advertising really got into August, 80 plus days before, less than 24 hours after she picks the guy. So you saw a lot of reporters who covered Biden events where he was lucky of three dozen people were in the room, mostly because they're official events and they just never organized big ones.

But it wouldn't be in a room much bigger than this, that you realize something is up here. That almost overnight they had Obama, Bernie, Trump-sized crowds showing up for events. and it just proved what those Democrats who started texting on the debate and I've said. This president is sitting on, is literally capping,

enthusiasm, desire, and a real untapped energy that is not being uncorked by two old men running against each other. That if you step aside, sir, you open this up to the next generation, it will unleash something that we need in order to sustain our hold on the White House. That she could raise hundreds of millions of dollars in less than a month,

but tens of thousands of people were shown up at a farm field in Wisconsin on a Wednesday when it was really hot out, and then even more showed up that night in Detroit, and even more showed up two days later in Phoenix in Las Vegas. I mean, it was proven. And it makes you think, what was he not being pulled, or how strong was his pride that it was blocking him from accepting reality, which is that he needed to do it. And that many Democrats had expected him to do it

when he ran four years ago and suggested he would be a bridge to the next generation. What stuck out to you about the first two nights of the convention? They need a good copy editor and line producer to keep it shorter. Especially night one. Yeah, but that was caused by what many had feared could happen in Chicago, which is not transpired the way they feared the most, which is there was some activity out in the streets. A bunch of people breached the security fence.

That caused the Secret Service that was step in. They couldn't get to the entry points. Traffic got snarled. Maybe those delegations should have left a little earlier. So we noticed when they started, there were empty seats. It seemed a little weird that for the first 90 minutes, there weren't a lot of people there. and then suddenly they were there later, and everyone explained,

oh, we were held up. So they figured that out. There's been a great sense of unity in the message, explaining who she is, that she's ready to do this. But very little explicit suggestion to the voter back home that a black South Asian woman can do this, because they're making in the preposition that everyone understands, that she kept. It's just who is she? What is she going to do? That's what they're focused on.

And I've sort of suggested to people that she's not the first person to do this. Hillary Clinton did this, right? So she really was the first woman to run on a national ticket. And she's not the first minority to do this. That was Barack Obama. So now you have a woman who is also a minority doing it. And in some ways, the country's like, well, we've seen that before. That's not the issue. Can she serve as president? The voters will decide that. But all that conventional wisdom that she wasn't ready for this, she doesn't know what she's doing,

either didn't exist in the minds of voters or is being pushed aside because her side of the aisle, at least has a real strong urgency to make sure that they can hold on to things and they're going to let bygones be bygones. If you look at polls, her popularity has jumped over the last couple of weeks,

but she does remain undefined for a number of voters. Have you seen the Democrat try to define her over the first? Yeah, and it was like 36, percent of voters in our poll suggested they don't know what she stands for which was higher than Trump's numbers which is understandable because he's been on the

global stage for eight years that's higher though than a nominee normally would have at this point but that's because she's only been at this for a month so you saw her present some modest economic proposals in North Carolina last week

before she got here so that puts some meat on the potato or meet alongside, whatever, meet on the boat, whatever your analogy. They've started to sort of let her say her piece on things like peace in the Middle East, essentially saying I'm with the president on what Israel can and should be able to do, but they have to be far more conscious of the deaths of civilians and things like that. So emphasizing that a little more maybe than the president would, certainly far more comfortable, eager and willing to talk about the issue of abortion services.

access to them, which she has been for the last two years. So that gives you a sense of what she's about. What they believe here is, though, is you've got to just talk about who she is as a person, that if the country can get comfortable with her as a person, if the vibe check is good, the other stuff will just come from them. That many voters may not care at this point what she's really about so long as she's not Trump and she's not going to stumble her way through the first few months of this if she wouldn't. So that's why you saw her husband so effectively talk about some elements of when they first met, what, you know, life was like with her, that they've leaned into, embraced and explained the mixed marriage or the mixed family

that was developed 10 years ago this week when they got married and that his ex-wife, I mean, the fact that his ex-wife was there and sit with the kids and produced a video. Right? I mean, we know that he was close with Ivanka Trump and Marla Maples, but they didn't attend the conventions and he didn't talk about them that much and didn't hang out with them at least not in public. But I think it was a reminder to people. Look if you're uncomfortable with this, just remember, this is common for a lot of Americans. And just because we're divorced doesn't mean we don't talk to each other like each other. And I think that would probably bring some comfort or some understanding to a lot of people who may not even be familiar

with divorce, that at least they're, you know, pleasant with each other. So there's a theory with some in the party that if you give some basic biographical points, middle class upbringing. We've heard that a lot this week. Prosecutor, we've heard of that a ton this week. And some general sort of political values that maybe she is going to have to get somewhat specific but not totally specific.

And that'll get it over the finish line in November. And they see it as there's 70 days to get specific and we'll decide what we do that. And maybe it comes in the debate. Maybe it comes in speeches that they decide to give for whatever reason around jobs reports or Federal Reserve decisions or after a ceasefire deal is announced,

if one is announced in the Middle East, or around the opening school, maybe she gives some kind of speech on education. But again, to your point, it's the biographical and vibe check stuff that they believe they've edited first. Let me ask you about your career before you go. You were the homepage editor of the Washington Post once about that time?

I was the overnight homepage, home editor of the Washington Post.com, which was one of my first jobs out of college. It was 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. when that newsroom was at the courthouse metro stop in Arlington. We had this great view of the mall at night, and it was basically, you know, that the first language or the first thing I had to know in journalism was HTML code, I think is a testament to where we are now.

And it was who rebuilt the homepage overnight, refreshed it. Mostly we would get updates from Afghanistan or Iraq that had to be worked on a homepage. But from that, back into the line of work you're in. We launched a radio station with WTOP, the Powerhouse News Talk station in Washington called Washington Post Radio, which was designed to cut into NPR.

It didn't last a year and a half, but what they recruited me to do was to write the scripts and produce the sound for the morning newsreader who was based in that newsroom. And when it folded, they turned to me and they said, well, you just learn how to edit audio and write for broadcast. Why don't you go host a podcast? And this was the first iteration of podcast,

before you could make money to it. And so I hosted a 15-minute podcast every day called the Post-Politic podcast that SiriusXM heard and said, we would like to air this. Did you guys have any issue with that? No, so every day at 345 or 245, the Podish channel would air it.

And then they said, how are you come and fill in for three hours from noon to three? They're the guy that hosts the show when he's on the paper. So they threw me in the live radio. As a newspaper guy, and then would fill in on their morning show and then started doing TV inside politics,

Washington Week, stuff for the post on TV stations and I started to realize I kind of like that better. Then print? And your goal before had been to be a print report? My goal had been to be a journalist. I think I thought one day I'd probably like to try television. But when I did, I realized, no, no, no, no, no.

I like this a lot better. There was something about doing it in 3D was opposed to just the written word that was appealing. And I was telling this story somebody the other day. When I realized that Mitch McConnell knew my name, not because I was in the pages of the Washington Post, but because I'd been on Facebook,

I realized, okay, that's where the power is in political journalism. They may read everything, but they all watch it, and they watch it pretty close. Sports people say the same thing, too. You know, the athletes are sitting there in the locker with the ESPN on. Right. They've seen you holding a microphone.

That guy's important. I'm going to talk to him. But you think Mitch McConnell apparently thinks the same way. Mitch McConnell is such a devoted Sunday show viewer that he reads the transcripts of the show. That is a lot of devotion. Yeah, there's five. It's more devoted than I've ever been myself personally.

Yeah. All right, Ed O'Keefe, keep your head on a swivel down there on the floor. We'll see what we can do. Thank you for coming on the press box. Thanks for having it. All right, from Ed O'Keefe to Robert Costa, whose official title at CBS is chief election and campaign correspondent. Costa is a big deal reporter.

After Joe Biden dropped out of the race, sending Ed O'Keefe scrambling out of the movie Despicable Me Four, Costa was the reporter who scored the first sit-down interview with Biden. Before he came to television, Costa worked at the Washington Post. Three years ago, he co-wrote a book about the final days of Donald Trump's White House and the first days of Joe Biden's with none other than Bob Woodward. In Chicago, Costa and I talked to. about the first couple of days of the Democratic Convention,

what it was like to interview Joe Biden and Donald Trump, and a little about Bob Woodward. Here's Robert Costa. Okay, Robert, I was going to start with your interview with Joe Biden, but you actually talked to Donald Trump yesterday. What was that conversation like? I spoke to former President Trump on the phone, called him up while I was walking outside before we had our special coverage on CBS News.

Just wanted to get his take on things. he was on the tarmac in Michigan. He was about to get on his plane after an event with sheriffs in Michigan. And it was interesting because he was not very hyped up about the Democratic convention. I asked him about former President Obama about to speak in a few hours. And I said, what do you think about it? And he said, I don't really think about it. He said, it's life, Bob.

It is life. He's going to do what he's going to do. And that's about it, right? So for former President Trump, that's a pretty muted comment. We haven't seen him, at least for now, as of 109 p.m. on Wednesday, lash out at President Obama. I mean, they have a simmering relationship going back years with when Trump questioned Obama's love of country and credentials, the birther episode, the questioning of the birth certificate, the false claims about that. But Trump was focused on the battleground states. I mean, Trump people and Trump himself, the Harris campaign, they know that this election's not about the national vote, the popular vote. I mean, that matters, of course, but it's going to be who wins Michigan, who wins Wisconsin, who wins Pennsylvania. So it's no surprise. Vice President Harris was in Milwaukee on Tuesday night and Trump was in Michigan on Tuesday.

That's where the battle really is playing out. Let me ask you about your interview with Joe Biden that aired a week and a half ago. You taped that in the treaty room. at the residence of the White House. Before we get into what Biden said, can you give me everything you remember behind the scenes about that interview? It was a fascinating moment as a journalist

to go up to the second floor of the White House because I've been to the White House a lot as a reporter. You go to the White House to cover things in the East Room. And so you've seen that kind of main floor of the White House. If you take a tour, you see the red room, the green room, the blue room, the East Room, and some iconic things on that ground floor,

like the JFK portrait with his hands, his arms folded. But I'd never been upstairs. I mean, very few people get a chance to go upstairs. I never had an expectation I would be in the residence. So the treaty room has a lot of history. It's the first room you encounter when you go up the staircase, the red staircase you always see in movies where the presidents go up to their home, which is on the second and third floor of the White House.

The first floor, when you come up the stairs, from the ground floor, that second floor of the White House, you see the treaty room right there when you come up the staircase. And it's a red carpeted staircase. And you go in and it's clearly President Biden's private office. A lot of presidents have used it as their private office upstairs. Yes, they use the Oval Office, but the Oval Office has kind of a ceremonial professional feel to it. It's so many people are in and out of the Oval Office every day. It was such a prison into President Biden just to look at the office before he came by for the interview. You saw pictures of Bo, Hunter, Ashley, you saw pictures of Jill. You saw these old black and white photos of Biden's

parents that are, you know, he's so proud of his family heritage. You hear Biden so often talk about, you got my word as a Biden. He really values his family's name, his family's history in Delaware. And this tiny state has such a place of pride in the president's mind and the kind of whole political identity of Joe Biden. But it's notable, too, the first thing you see when you hang hanging above his desk where he works at night is a portrait of Ulysses S. Grant. And for the Biden presidency, and I talked to him about this, there's really a sense that it began in the darkness and he was trying to find kind of a sense of stability. for American democracy. When I was working with Bob Woodward on our book, Perel, I was thinking about the title with Woodward for a while. And as we know, Bob is, Bob loves the one word titles, fear, rage. So we were following rage. So we were inclined toward a one word as we worked on our book.

But I kind of love the idea of winter of peril as a title. I think I even went on Microsoft paint and came up with an idea of winter of peril because that was a line from Biden's inaugural in 2021, just days after January 6th. Ultimately, of course, the book ends up being peril. And the book's a lot about Joe Biden. Of course, the Trump stuff gets attention in the book because it's about January 6th, but so much of the book is about Biden. And I've spent a lot of time really thinking about President Biden, his presidency, and how he conceptualizes it in the arc of a 50-plus year career. He's close to the historian John Meacham, who he talked to as he thought through a presidential run in 2018, And Mike Donald and a Biden advisor and Biden himself really latched on to this idea of the soul of America.

And Meacham has often written about America's better angels and how they compete with the darker side of American democracy and American history. And so Biden as a political figure, but also someone who appreciates history has always really understood that, yes, he has all this time in the Senate, eight years as vice president. But he comes into the presidency during a pandemic, but also after an insurrection. at the Capitol. And that has really forged how Biden has seen his presidency. So when I sat down with him, I was really looking to have a setting with him where he could be himself at ease. I didn't ask to do it in the residence. That was something that just came about. But I was pleased to do it there because Biden is someone who so often in interviews understandably as president is kind of, you're in a very back and forth setting. But after he had made this decision not to run, CBS Sunday morning is such a joyful

show to work for from time to time to have kind of a reflection about where he stands as a person, as a family member, as a president, as a Democrat. In 15, 20 minutes, you can't cover everything. But I thought for someone who does prize kind of reflection from time to time, that was the time to maybe get him to reflect. And if it was going to be in the residence, where else better than to have that kind of conversation? 15, 20 minutes. That's how much time you had with him? Yeah, I think the interview was about 15 minutes, yes. So you've got to be efficient as an interviewer. That's right.

After his debate with Trump on June 27th, Democratic Party, big wigs, and a big chunk of voter said, you know, Biden isn't the politician he was even a few months ago. He has lost something. After sitting down with him, where do you come down on that idea? What do you mean, lost something? Well, that he is not as effective a politician as he was, say, a couple years ago. Well, President Biden clearly,

believes he was able to beat Trump in 2020 and he could do it again. And so there's not a sense of a loss of confidence with the president himself or his closest advisors who I've tracked for a long time as a reporter. Biden, though, the decision is there's going to be books and books written about this summer. What a summer in American political history, an assassination attempt, a president exits a race. I really haven't seen anything like this since 68. And Johnson got out early compared to President Biden. Johnson got out March 31st, 1968. For Biden, Biden is elected to the Senate at age 29 and 72. He's a Democrat's Democrat. And to him, the party rhythms and the party cohesion is something he takes seriously and has an antenna for unlike most politicians. He's been part of the party apparatus,

the system for so long through ups and downs, highs and lows, sideways and other ways. You think about 72, his wife and daughter being killed, 87, 88, the failure in the presidential run, all the controversies when he was Senate judiciary chair with the Supreme Court nomination, Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the tensions from time to time as vice president with President Obama. Finally, he finds himself in the presidency, which he has long sought. And so he's battle tested in his view to whether any kind of poll or any kind of law, of confidence. But that debate was a turning point. He tells everybody, as he told me, he was sick. And a lot of Biden people, when you talk to them now, they say, you know, look at the Biden on the

campaign trail, look at the Biden on the convention stage. That's the Biden they know. And he was sick on the debate stage. There's some regret among some Biden advisors about, you know, man, that was not the perfect time for that debate. But Biden, someone who was watching what the party was doing. And as he told me, he didn't want to spend the whole campaign responding to what former Speaker Pelosi was saying publicly about him or what other Democrats were saying, questioning him. Because it all comes back to that winter apparel idea. I mean, he believes, as he said in our interview, that he was always going to be a transition president. Now, he wanted two terms. He wanted to be a transition president, but also a two-term president. Ultimately, he decided, though,

Trump was the threat he confronted in 20. He runs in 20 because of Trump. And if his party doesn't have faith in him to beat Trump, the focus should be on beating Trump rather than having him have a second term. But the interesting thing is it's so clear to me based in my reporting that Biden's ambition has not waned. This is someone who still has this consuming belief that he can transform the country on policy, economic policy, policy, really protect his idea, his conceptualization of the West in Europe and the Anglo-American Alliance, the alliance with Europe when it comes to confronting Russia, to dealing with the Middle East. And so he wanted a second term, but he didn't want to just be mired in a political fight with

his own party. But it's a tough moment. I mean, the Democrats right now are so united here in Chicago. But there is something beneath the surface. There's a, there's a concern that if this, there's a belief, there's so much confidence now that Vice President Harris, among Democrats, at least, is going to win or is poised to win. But there is a sense when I talked to some of the top Democrats privately, I had lunch with it and breakfast with a couple of them today in Chicago, that they believe, you know, if this somehow sours or Vice President Harris can't win or doesn't win, And there's going to be a lot of Monday morning quarterback in November about what exactly happened in July and August of 2024.

What's been striking to you about the Democratic convention through two nights other than that sense of unity? What's striking is that they are taking an approach to Trump that is mocking of Trump versus casting him as this threat to American democracy. though I know that on Wednesday night, they are going to focus on January 6th. But it's trying to, I think, figure out a way to take on Trump while also selling and introducing Vice President Harris and Governor Walls to the country. I think the challenge for Democrats has always been, do you come at Trump like President

Obama did and frame him as someone who's blowing a leaf blower outside as a neighbor? So do you frame him as someone who's annoying? or do you kind of use the Biden framework, which was always, this was the guy who rallied a mob in his argument to attack the capital, or at least to go for, he inspired some of them to go attack the capital in Biden's view. So that's a danger to democracy. And Obama himself said, even after calling Trump the annoying neighbor, he said that Biden was a president who came to power during a time of real danger for the country. But for Democrats, it's always, it's always a question of how do you reach those voters who might not have the same fear of Trump that many Democrats have? Some of those maybe low information or voters who are disengaged with politics, they don't watch the news all the time. If they don't find Trump to be this figure of fear, do you mock him?

Do you just focus on Harris's message? Do you try to compete with Trump on the labor front, on the immigration front to counter some? of his message. And I think for Democrats, it's always kind of a gut check as much as it is a poll testing idea because Trump has slipped by them before. I mean, there's still anger about 2016 about how they didn't really take Trump as seriously as they should have. They didn't land the right argument against him, especially in some of the suburbs of the

swing states. They allowed people to feel like it was not a huge political cost as a swing voter to vote for Trump. So it's just, it's interesting now to hear that. in a post-Biden moment for the Democrats, how they're talking about Trump. And the most important speech is going to be Vice President Harris by far. I mean, I've covered her. I've interviewed her. I've covered her in the Senate, interviewed her as Vice President for CBS News. She is a political athlete in the sense that she has one statewide. She's been a prosecutor in San Francisco.

I've talked to Governor Newsom about her. I've talked to people in San Francisco in California who've known her for decades. She is someone who's a tough political operator in their view. and she is someone who's willing to throw an elbow rhetorically, who can hold her own. But the country just doesn't know her and how she casts herself, what kind of message she makes. This is a convention that has Bernie Sanders, who railing against the billionaires and the oligarchs in his speech, followed by J.B. Pritzker, the wealthy governor of Illinois. So is she going to be the progressive Bernie Sanders? Is she going to be a business-friendly Democrat? Is she going to be someone who balances between both of those wings of the Democratic Party?

my expectation based on my conversation with her advisor she will but it's going to be a tricky balance we heard michelle obama trying to define her biography last night middle class is a term the democrats keep using in this convention Obama had that line saying her story is your story trying to make her background very tangible very familiar to voters i thought that was interesting you were a proud son of pennsylvania joshapiro the governor of pennsylvania is going to speak tonight. I thought it was interesting that Kamala Harris interviewed him to be her running mate. And then he makes this phone call according to reporting to her staff expressing some doubt about whether he was right for the job. What did you make of that?

I've known Governor Shapiro, Josh Shapiro for a long time. I grew up in Bucks County. I started my career at 16 writing for free and sometimes for 50 bucks an article for the Bucks County Courier Times covering concerts mostly, but I covered some politics too. And Josh Shapiro back then 20 years ago, I'm 38. So this is about 20 years ago, 22 years ago. When I was starting out, he was this star, nobody knew him outside of Pennsylvania. But he was this star state rep. He wasn't a congressman. He'd been a, Shapiro, he's now known as this kind of Obama cadence like governor from Pennsylvania who has a soaring speaking style and a lot of appeal and has seemed savvy and smart, all true as Democrats. see it, but I've known Shapiro for a long time. You've got to understand about Josh Shapiro. He was chief of staff for a congressman for a while named Joe Hoffell, who ran statewide in Pennsylvania a few times. So Shapiro knows Washington. He has a lot of connections in D.C. He knows how the legislative

process works. He was a total operator on Capitol Hill in the best sense. I mean, he ran in office. He was known as an aide who we really could go to. And then he comes back to Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, which is near Philadelphia. And he decided. to run for state representative, which is as low as you can get in state, state elective office. I mean, these are tiny little districts in Pennsylvania. And I used to go see him, actually, in his Montgomery County state office. I actually ran into Shapiro at the convention. I'm from Bucks County, Pennsylvania. In Pennsylvania, you have pride in your counties. I said, you better be talking about Bucks County. And he goes, I don't know. I said, you're such a Montgomery County

guy. You know, it's always Montgomery County with you. We had a little back and forth. It was funny, to me at least. But Shapiro, he becomes this operator too, as a respected politically in Harrisburg, the state capital. He facilitates this whole thing years ago to get someone a Republican to be speaker of the House by cutting a deal with House Democrats in the State House. And he really built this reputation as someone who could work the inside play, who had appeal, yes, as a state rap and could shake hands and make speeches. But he was a former Chief of Staff in the House, who then became this state rep who was quickly made deputy speaker of the state house because of his ability to work behind the scenes. And so that's the Josh Shapiro I got to really know

in cover. And then eventually he's careful politician. He has all this opportunity to run, run, he decides to run from Montgomery County elected office, which is pretty boring. But he's one of these old school politicians who kind of slowly climbs the ladder. State rep, Montgomery County, then he runs for attorney general, then he runs for governor. And now he's governor of Pennsylvania, one of the crucial states, why didn't he want to be vice president? I can't read his mind. He's one of the most careful people I know I've ever covered I've ever met.

And so if he didn't feel like the rhythm was there, he's not the kind of person who's just going to jump into a dynamic or plead for a position just because he, of power. He has been so methodical his entire career that I've covered him, that I'm not surprised if he for some reason sensed this wasn't the perfect thing or he didn't want to leave being governor. Because look, he has to run for reelection at some point. It is a bit of a risk to be on the ticket.

Sometimes it's the greatest thing that can happen to you politically. But look, Paul Ryan's out of politics. Jack Kemp faded after he was on the ticket. I could go on and on. Joe Lieberman didn't really make his career. So being on the ticket's no guarantee of anything, really. So. Last one for you, Robert.

besides what happens on stage, the stuff we all see, what do you get out of covering a convention? I mean, it's total history. Right when I got here, I went to Manny's Deli in Chicago, which is basically, I think, owned by David Axorod, but I just saw Axoride. I went, I've been going to Manny's too much. The potato al-lokka there is just,

I ran into Mark Liebevich, and I said, you should have some of this latka. He's very healthy, and he did not have any of it. But at least I had it. It was good. I went there to have lunch with Bill Daley, the former Obama chief of staff, who is the son of Bill Daley, Richard Daley, the former mayor of Chicago. And I was talking to Bill Daley about being at his father's side in 1968 when all that was going down with the protests, anti-war protests and the chaos with Johnson getting out of the race and Humphrey. And so part of the fun of a convention, especially after 20, really stunk because of the pandemic, to see people again and to talk politics, to run into friends in the media, to run into political people you've known for a long time, like Shapiro. I knew Pete Buttigieg when he was mayor, South Bend. I remember I went to have breakfast with him in South Bend when he was mayor.

And Mike Schmuel, his top advisor, who later ran his campaign, said to me, no, Pete's going to run for president someday. And I was like, president or what? Because it was just, it was South Bend mayor running for president. But it happened. I was talking to Pete, Secretary Buttigieg, about, I remember when he ran for DNC chair, people forget about this. He was trying, he was, he was hustling for years back in 16, he was trying to run for DNC chair as the mayor of South Bend. And so you just get to run into people, whether it's in Milwaukee for the Republicans or hear the Democrats and talk to people. And in an age of Zoom and social media and kind of this lack of tactile experience, a convention is, Such a wonderful experience. We actually get to run into people in a natural way and talk politics and trade stories that doesn't feel corporate or forced or just kind of phony.

So I like that. All right. Robert Costa will be looking for you on CBS News and in various Chicago delis. Thank you so much for coming on the press box. Thank you. See you. That is the press box. I'm Brian Curtis.

Blacks your magic by Brian Waters. A couple of things I want to put on your radar before we go. I am writing daily dispatches from Chicago that you can find on the ringer.com. For night number one, I wrote about the night of the politically vanquished at the DNC. That is the night that Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton spoke. For night two, I wrote about the great speech given by Obama, by which I mean Michelle Obama, not Barack Obama. You can look for those every day this week on the ringer.com. We've also got another podcast coming from Chicago.

Thursday night, after Kamala Harris's speech, Semaphors Benji Sarlin and I are going to trudge to the press room and do what thousands of other political reporters have done before us. We're going to record a podcast. We're going to talk about Harris's speech. We're going to talk about all the highs and lows of the Democratic Convention. Brian's going to have that up late on Thursday night, so stay up late and listen to us or listen to us on your way to work Friday morning.

Until then, happy politics. Enjoy the convention, and I will talk to you soon.