What A Day - Biden Defies Calls To Exit The Presidential Race

Episode Date: July 8, 2024

President Joe Biden spent the long July Fourth weekend trying to save his re-election bid after his disastrous debate performance more than a week ago. On the campaign trail and in his first post-debate interview with ABC, the president was adamant that he would not leave the race. But Biden’s publicity blitz did little to assure panicked Democrats in Washington, with some top lawmakers in both the House and Senate privately voicing hopes that the president will drop out. Alex Thompson, national political reporter for Axios, gets us up to speed on what happened over the long holiday break.And in headlines: French voters successfully rallied to stop the formation of the country’s first far-right government since World War II, Tropical Storm Beryl is expected to make landfall in southern Texas today, and four crew members inside NASA’s first Mars simulation have emerged from their year-long isolation.Show Notes:What A Day – YouTube – https://www.youtube.com/@whatadaypodcastFollow us on Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/crookedmedia/For a transcript of this episode, please visit crooked.com/whataday

It's Monday, July 8th. I'm Traevelle Anderson. And I'm Priyanka Arabindi, and this is What A Day, the pod that wants you to pucker up for pedaling. Unlike the Tour de France, which fined a racer for stopping during a stage last Friday to kiss his wife on the sidelines. Maybe they fined him because it wasn't a French kiss. Did we ever think of that? Maybe. Who knows? On today's show, voters in both France and the UK told the right to kiss off. Plus, the Atlantic's first major storm of the season, Beryl, is expected to hit Texas today. But first, President Joe Biden spent the long 4th of July

weekend trying to save his reelection bid after his disastrous debate performance more than a week ago. He spent a few days on the campaign trail trying to reassure both voters and lawmakers on Capitol Hill that he's up for the job. And he was adamant about one thing. He is not planning to leave this race. He said so on Friday during his first post-debate interview with ABC's George Stephanopoulos. Take a listen. I mean, if the Lord Almighty came out and said, Joe, get out of the race, I'd get out of the race. The Lord Almighty's not coming down. He also struck a defiant tone during multiple campaign rallies in two key swing states,

in Wisconsin on Friday and in Pennsylvania over the weekend. Speaking at his Wisconsin rally, Biden dismissed growing calls from lawmakers in his own party to leave the race. So let me ask you, what do you think? You think I'm too old to restore Roe v. Wade to law of the land? You think I'm too old to ban assault weapons again? To protect Social Security and Medicare? To get child care, elder care for working families who need it in the nation? No. To make billionaires

finally start to pay something beyond 8.2% of it, is that great? Let me ask you, you think I'm too old to beat Donald Trump? No. Okay, I hear a little something-something there, Priyanka. He's still

got a lot of fight left in him. I'm quoting fight song. That's where we are at in this stage of the election cycle. Okay. Now, you mentioned growing calls from sitting Democratic lawmakers for Biden to leave the race. We talked last week about how Lloyd Doggett from Texas was the first to do so. Who else has joined since? On Saturday, Minnesota Congresswoman Angie Craig became the fifth House lawmaker to say that Biden

should leave the race. And on Sunday, California Representative Adam Schiff, who is currently running for a seat in the Senate, told NBC's Kristen Welker that Vice President Kamala Harris could, quote, overwhelmingly beat Donald Trump, but suggested that he was not convinced that Biden could. I think the vice president would be a phenomenal president. I think she has the experience, the judgment, the leadership ability to be an extraordinary president. Could she win overwhelmingly, Congressman? I think she very well could win overwhelmingly. But before we get into a decision about who else it should be, the president needs to make the decision whether it's him. Meanwhile, top House Democrats met late on Sunday to discuss Biden's

position at the top of the ticket. At least four of them reportedly said that Biden should leave the race, including New Jersey's Jerry Nadler. And multiple outlets reported this weekend that Senator Mark Warner of Virginia is privately trying to organize a group of senators to ask Biden to leave the race. So there is obviously a lot going on in the background and among voters who are taking all of us in. To get a better sense of it all, I spoke with Alex Thompson. He is a national political reporter for Axios. And I started by asking him whether Biden's weekend offensive has done enough to calm the nerves of worried Democratic lawmakers.

Well, it depends who you're talking about. If you're talking about Democrats in Washington, absolutely not. If you're talking about high information voters that are probably listening to this podcast, absolutely not. If you're talking about regular voters, we honestly just don't know yet. There is an argument out there that among most voters, the age stuff was not fully baked in, at least mostly baked in. And so maybe Beltway Democrats are only just catching up to where the public was,

but we just don't know. But even so, Joe Biden clearly feels that he knows and has made it very, very clear, unambiguously clear that he has no intentions of getting out, at least for now. You tweeted on Sunday that you expect a lot of Democrats to call for Biden to step aside this week. My question is, why this week? What didn't they see in the days since the debate that could have convinced them otherwise? Or are they just kind of following the few brave people who stepped out and said it first? So I'd say two things. One is just like a simple logistical thing, which is that Congress was on vacation over July 4th week. The other thing I would say is a lot of Democrats were watching

and waiting to see what the Biden campaign would do and also how Biden would do in the interview with George Stephanopoulos and also how the polling would look. And I think the reaction from most Democrats that I've talked to has been they are unsatisfied with how things have gone so far. The fact that you had, you know, the debate was a Thursday night.

The fact that Joe Biden did not sit for a televised interview until the next Friday, so eight days later, and then only sat for 22 minutes, still had some trouble stringing some thoughts together, and then also sort of appeared in the eyes of many Democrats to be a bit out of touch with where the political map is at this moment in terms of, you know, he was sort of denying the polling that he was behind. I think you combine all that together, I think it's very likely that more Democrats, and you saw this yesterday where

Hakeem Jeffries, you know, called a bunch of Democratic lawmakers. A few of them came out and said explicitly that they thought Joe Biden should step aside. Now, that's not everybody, but this is going to snowball over this week as Congress is back in session. Right. I mean, it'll ultimately be his own decision whether or not to go. But at what point does the political pressure on him become too much? It's so hard to know because Joe Biden deeply, deeply believes and the people very close to him believe that he is the most electable person against Donald Trump. And if you believe that, then just because some senators tell you they want you to get out of the race, if your conviction is that I am the best chance to defeat Donald Trump, why would you

leave the race? That's the really interesting question to see what happens over the next week or two. Is there any way that Joe Biden can be convinced that he is no longer electable against Donald Trump? I think that is the only way to convince him to drop out. What are people within the campaign, within the White House, saying privately about the prospects of Biden staying in the race? So there's a deep divide here. So you have the Biden loyalists

that basically very much believe, you can call it the Biden mythology or, you know, it's mythology, but it's very much based in reality too, which is that Biden, you know, has beat off his doubters so many times in his entire life, right? That is key to sort of how he sees himself. It's key to how many of the people around him also see him and anger, and they sort of go back and forth. The sadness is that they feel that, first of all, they may lose to Trump now. They feel sadness that now, like, any important policy work is going to be completely clouded out. And then they feel angry because some people feel that White House senior leadership was not candid about Joe Biden's limitations. There was a new Bloomberg Morning Consult poll that came out Saturday, had some mixed

results for Biden, showed that he gained some ground among voters in Michigan and Wisconsin after the debate, but that among all swing state voters, a majority of them thought that Biden should leave the race. What do we know about how voters are feeling? I know not so much, but what do we know as of now about how they're feeling about Biden? If you take the national polls, though, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, I believe CNN, all show that Biden basically lost a few points, you know, one to four points, you know, around there, that range, and that the concerns

about his age, already significant, increased slightly too. That being said, you know, he's still three to six points down. That is not an insurmountable deficit. Now, the Bloomberg poll showed him actually gaining a bit in the swing states. Now, there are a few ways you could potentially reconcile those things. One is that the Biden campaign has been spending much, much more money than the Trump campaign the last three months in those swing states. So maybe that's helped their polling or at least helped them shore up the polling. Possible the poll is an outlier. Also possible that voters actually mostly have baked in the age thing and actually aren't reacting

the same way that the Twitter ad audience. So it's going to be fascinating to see this next round of polls. I would say if you're a Democrat that's very, very worried, there are two questions about the debate that the debate raised. One is, can Joe Biden beat Donald Trump? And everything I've seen in Harvard Democrats, the answer is 100% yes. Joe Biden can still beat Donald Trump in part because there are tens of millions of people in this country that hate Trump so much that they would still vote for Joe Biden at 110.

So Joe Biden can still win. But the other question is, does the debate make you wonder if he's mentally capable of serving another four and a half years? And that's sort of a deeper question that goes beyond the election. What or who kind of ultimately decides here whether Biden survives this political fight?

Well, the short answer is basically it's a one-person decision here. And that's Joe Biden. If Joe Biden wants to be the nominee, he will be the nominee. And there is really a fear among some Democrats that if the more vocally they try to push him out of the race, the more he will dig in and try to stay. Because Joe Biden is a proud person. Joe Biden has had a chip on his shoulder the entire life about feeling that elites have never taken him seriously enough. This is why I think you see every single Democratic lawmaker that's called for him to drop out of the race.

You notice that the first half of the statement is all about how great Joe Biden is and how amazing and how, you know, historic his legacy is and all these things, which all may be true. But it's an interesting tactic. They're not trying to shame him out of the race. They're trying to coax him out of the race. They're trying to coax him out of the race. How, if at all, can Biden put this past him and make the campaign about the issues again in the next month, you know, ahead of the convention? Is he able to kind of change this conversation, do you think? He's going to have to be much more accessible than he has been the last three and a half years. The fact is that this is a president that's given less press conferences, less serious interviews than any president in several decades. He has still not sat down with the New York Times,

the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, or with Reuters, not to mention upstarts like us at Axios or Politico. There's a difference between a sustained one-on-one or even a few-on-one conversation where you drill down on details. He has not been doing many of those. And so he has a credibility problem. He and his team both have a credibility problem. That was my conversation with Alex Thompson, national political reporter for Axios. All of this is moving very quickly and will continue to as Congress returns to work this week. We'll be sure to keep you updated on this story. Thank you so much for that, Priyanka. That's the latest for now. We'll get to some headlines in a moment, but if you like our show, make sure you subscribe, share it with your friends. We'll be back after some ads.

Now let's wrap up with some headlines. Headlines. two. In a surprise upset, a left-wing coalition called the New Popular Front won the largest block of seats in the French National Assembly after the second round of legislative elections on Sunday. The far-right National Rally were projected to win the most seats after dominating the first round of elections last week, but eventually came in third place behind President Emmanuel Macron's centrist coalition. The results reflected a coordinated and ultimately successful strategy between the leftist and centrist coalitions to pull some candidates from three-way races that could have resulted in a far-right win. Still, no single party won a majority of the seats, which could leave France politically gridlocked. Meanwhile, across the English channel,

Keir Starmer became the new British prime minister on Friday after his Labour Party trounced the Conservative Party in Thursday's elections. The results ended 14 years of Conservative Party rule. Hopefully, the United States can make it a three-peat. You know what I'm saying, Priyanka? Yes, please send some of that. Good luck, good juju, whatever it was, our way,

because we need it. Tropical storm Beryl is expected to make landfall in southern Texas today, making it the first hurricane to hit the U.S. this year. The storm began as a Category 5 hurricane and killed at least 11 people across the Caribbean over the weekend. As Beryl moved up through the Gulf of Mexico, it weakened to a tropical storm.

But U.S. officials say that they're concerned that the storm could pick up strength again and warned residents in Texas to expect power outages from the violent winds. Multiple school districts across Houston said that they'll be closed today and tomorrow. Meanwhile, elsewhere in the country, a record-breaking heat wave has scorched the western U.S. the last several days. Palm Springs, the popular California desert destination, saw a record high temperature of 124 degrees on Friday, and the mountainous city of Ashland, Oregon, hit 111 degrees on Saturday. Triple-digit temperatures are expected to continue throughout this week,

so we will say it again. Please, please stay cool out there, preferably in there, inside somewhere. Protesters took to the streets across Israel yesterday, calling for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to step down. Here's some of the demonstrations as recorded by the AP. Protesters also called for an immediate ceasefire proposal to ensure the release of the more than 100 remaining hostages held by Hamas. Sunday marked the nine-month anniversary of Hamas's initial attack. The protesters blocked highways, rallied in front of government officials' homes, and released 1,500 balloons into the sky. Those were assembled to commemorate the Israelis who were killed or have been held hostage since October 7th. And while a ceasefire is still far off, Hamas gave approval to the U.S.

proposed phase deal over the weekend after it dropped one of their initial demands that Israel permanently end its fighting. Netanyahu has insisted that any ceasefire proposal must allow Israeli forces to continue operations in Gaza until their military missions are complete. Finally, I am one step closer to being able to leave this planet. On Saturday, the four crew members inside NASA's first Mars simulation came out of isolation. It was part of a massive project to research what it will take to put humans on the planet. The crew spent over a year inside of a 1,700-square-foot facility in Houston called Mars Dune Alpha. Here is science officer Anca Solario.

I am astonished that I got to live at Mars Dune Alpha and that I got to contribute to the one thing that is dearest to my heart. Bringing life to Mars. Throughout the past year, they simulated spacewalks and figured out how to grow and reuse their own resources. They also learned how to live in isolation and what it would be like to have limited communication abilities. Which is kind of shocking that they didn't learn that all in 2020 like the rest of us, but it's fine. They built a Mars simulator to figure it out. As for what's next, NASA is planning two more simulations to continue the research on how to make a habitat on Mars. I'm thinking of who I would send to Mars. The list is kind of long. Listen, I don't like this. We're barely good

stewards of this rock that we're on. And now they want to go take over another one. Yes, but counterpoint. What if all the annoying people you've ever met moved to Mars? You know what? Okay. You sold me. Let's do it.

Right? Okay. Just that easy. Yep. Maybe that's what they're doing here. And those are the headlines. One more thing before we go. In case you missed it,

Killing Justice from Crooked Media and The Branch follows the reporting and legal fallout from the death of a prominent Indian judge once flags are raised about the circumstances of his death at a wedding. Host Ravi Gupta examines the conflicting evidence to answer how one man's death has become a magnet for the increasingly polarized politics in India and what this means for the future of the world's

largest democracy. You can binge all eight episodes now on Apple or Spotify. For ad-free episodes, join the Friends of the Pod community at cricket.com slash friends. That is all for today. If you like the show, make sure to subscribe, leave a review, vive la France, and tell your friends to listen. And if you're into reading and not just directions on how to vote by mail from Mars like me, Wooder Day is also a nightly newsletter. Check it out and subscribe at crooked.com slash subscribe. I'm Trevelle Anderson.

I'm Priyanka Arabindi. And kiss me, I'm biking. I haven't been biking in a long time. Listen, I'm not biking, but you can kiss me too. That's fine. Yeah, I'm probably not biking. If I'm biking, the bike is probably stationary. But, you know, I could use a kiss.

Why not? Why not? Why not? What a Day is a production of Crooked Media. It's recorded and mixed by Bill Lance. Our associate producers are Raven Yamamoto and Natalie Bettendorf. We had production help today from Michelle Alloy, Greg Walters, and Julia Clare. Our showrunner is Erica Morrison, and our executive producer is Adrienne Hill. Our theme music is by Colin Gilliard and Julia Clare. Our showrunner is Erica Morrison and our executive producer is Adrian Hill. Our theme music is by Colin Gilliard and Kshaka.