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- [00:00]
Andrew Egger
Hi, I'm Andrew Egger with the Bulwark. Former President Joe Biden just gave his first post presidential speech since he left office and all this started happening. I am joined to talk about that with Lauren Egan, our resident Dem whisperer at the Bulwark. Lauren, let me. Let me just pre prejudice everybody. Get. Get everybody a little bit mad before you even start talking. I did not watch the whole speech. I watched maybe the first half of it was putting kids down and stuff, but when he got up on stage and he got up in there and the music was still playing, and he launched right into his remarks and you couldn't hear him at all and the music was still going, and they had to yank the speaker like 15 seconds into his speech, and he kind of kept talking quietly all through that. The PTSD that I felt brings you back in that second. Yeah, I mean, what. Oh, yeah, talk us through the Biden speech. What was he up there? What was going on tonight with the former president?
- [00:58]
Lauren Egan
Look, this was supposed to be like his first speech since he left office, and it was to a group of disability advocates. It was mostly about Social Security and the need to protect that. But, I mean, you know, it's just like most presidents play a role within their party after they leave office. The Bidens are obviously trying to figure out what that role looks like for them, especially since his legacy in the party right now is so fraught. But he gets up there on stage and you're just kind of like, people don't really want to hear from him right now. Poll after poll shows that the president, you know, is kind of like toxic politically within the Democratic Party at the moment. And it's the same stuff where he's just like, really struggling to finish a sentence, really struggling to communicate clearly or to get a point across. So, yeah, it did give me a little bit of PTSD from 2024, which not. Not fun, you know?
- [01:49]
Andrew Egger
Yeah, yeah, it's so hard. I mean, like, I feel like I got right back on that treadmill where it was always the same thing with Biden where, like, yeah, fundamentally the stuff he's saying, I would love to have a country that still stood for all this stuff that still was into, like, protecting Social Security and just fundamental decency and, you know, being good to your neighbors and all those sorts of things. But it's just. It's so hard to extricate that from the messenger right up there, who's this guy who had this, you know, totally tragic and horrible self destruction of his presidential campaign last year. And, and kind of set us on the, the glide path to where we are today and just rolling the same sort of jokes that he was always doing on the trail. I mean, it's just. It's got to be impossible to be that guy, right?
- [02:35]
Lauren Egan
I think that's right. Yeah. I think that's what makes him such a complicated figure in the party right now, where, you know, it's not abnormal to have the, the former president up there giving a speech at an event like this. But when he's saying things about, like, how awful he recognizes the Trump administration for being, who in the hell do.
- [02:55]
Andrew Egger
They think they are? I really think. I mean, just basic, basic decency. Who do you think they are?
- [03:04]
Lauren Egan
It's kind of like, yeah, dude, we know. Like, why did you kind of set the country on this, on this path? And just like, this lack of acknowledgment, obviously, that he has for kind of the role he played in getting us here. It's why I think, like, a lot of Democratic voters just are, and a lot of Democratic strategists, too, and candidates that are running for, for midterm elections just don't want anything to want him to say away. They don't want to hear from him. They think it'd be better off for the party if they could just move on and not kind of like, remind voters constantly that Democrats really kind of, you know, dropped the ball in this past election.
- [03:48]
Andrew Egger
Yeah. Yeah. How much I'm curious about this. Obviously, you know, Biden's political career is, Is over. I mean, he, he will finish out, you know, he will still do these speeches, these sorts of things as a president emeritus for as long as he wants to do them. He's not obviously, obviously not running for anything again. One thing we were talking a little bit about in kind of the pre show here is how much all that applies to Kamala Harris, you know, who, who, who has gone from, you know, the sort of by default heir apparent of the party who, if she'd, you know, overperform by a couple percentage points, would literally be president right now to this sort of penumbral figure where, where. Where it's not clear whether she's going to be able to kind of escape the, the gravitational black hole of having been on. Been in that White House, been on that ticket, failed to. To land the plane of keeping Trump back out of the White House. Where are Democrats kind of right now? As, as far as Harris is concerned.
- [04:39]
Lauren Egan
Concerned they extend a lot more grace to her than they do with Biden. I Think Biden's just, like, pretty toxic. I mean, you know, he's been asking to get more involved and go campaign and raise money, and the DNC sent out, like, a fundraising email from him, which, you know, they say actually didn't perform horribly. But point being, they're not really eager to put him out on the campaign shell or, like, get him to headline any big, splashy DNC events. Any of these, like, town halls that we've seen. They're not putting him out there. There definitely is a lot more sort of, like I said, grace, that's extended towards Harris. It wasn't her decision to, you know, have Biden stay in the race that late. And Democrats, I think, have a lot of goodwill towards her because I feel like she did run a really good campaign in those, you know, that just few short week period that she had. At the same time, her legacy, no matter what, and her political brand is still, still tied to Biden's. And that's going to be a really big challenge for her as she's trying to figure out what she wants to do next with her career. We know that the New York Times reported that she offered to go to Wisconsin to campaign in that Supreme Court race that just happened. That Democrat did win, and they didn't want her there. They thought it would be a distraction and just kind of, like, bring up a lot of, like, messiness from 2024 that doesn't actually help Democrats. So instead she had a zoom call with, with volunteers and organizers in Wisconsin. But what was interesting about it is that they didn't about that zoom call until after the polls were closed. And then Harris, like, tweeted out some pictures and some videos from that zoom call, which to me just is so interesting that they just view sort of obviously Biden. But Harris, too, is just this really complicated figure. And all that just kind of speaks to how leaderless the Democratic Party is right now. I mean, you think back to the first Trump administration, the former president. Then for the Democrats, Obama was not this toxic figure. And he's definitely stayed quiet, if you recall those first few months of the first Trump administration. But they look to him for leadership in a way that, like, no one is looking to Joe Biden for leadership in this moment.
- [06:44]
Andrew Egger
Yeah, yeah. And it is a little bit of a Rorschach test as well. Right. Because. Because you mentioned the way that the, that the Democratic Party, there's this humongous, humongous power vacuum just in terms of, like, who are our leaders from now on. If you're Democrats, like, who is gonna step up? Like, the whole ticket is now gone. You know, the former president has sort of shuffled off into the sunset. His former vice president just suffered this excruciating defeat, is still figuring things out as far as her future and the party is concerned. And meanwhile, everything is happening as we've all seen it happening, sort of demanding a new leadership, a new opposition. And there kind of are two strains of thought here, right? One, I mean, there are some Democrats who don't think it's a giant problem that there are no figureheads sort of leading Democrats into the breach right now because they think the job right now is almost for Democrats to just sort of sit down and shut up and let Trump self destruct. I mean, that's, that's what, you know, James Carville has been, has been arguing for a while now.
- [07:38]
Lauren Egan
Democrats need to play possum. I believe that this administration, in less than 30 days, in the midst of.
- [07:44]
Andrew Egger
A massive collapse, at the same time, there's a lot of other people who are saying, look, the country's burning down around our ears. We better get organized and figure out what the plan is, what the punchback is here. How are you reading that? I mean, like, like, like what, where, where are we in the tea leaves? Just in, in terms of, of the, the beginnings of, of somebody, anybody stepping up to fill that kind of gap that's been left.
- [08:09]
Lauren Egan
I think we've seen a little bit of that in the past few weeks. I mean, Cory Booker's the notable person that's kind of stepped up recently with his filibuster. And I think Democrats, I think, were really pleased that that filibuster, which was obviously quite impressive that that broke through so much. And I think there'd been a lot of, you know, anxiety that they hadn't really been able to break through the news cycle, that they weren't able to, like, you know, even like, have any sort of cultural relevance on Tick Tock or Instagram or whatever. And when Booker did that filibuster, that was, everyone kind of like, was like, thank God. Like, we have finally something to, like, feel proud about and feel like gives us some sort of hope that we can maybe find an effective leader. That's not to say that Democrats are, you know, banking everything on Booker or anything like that, but we're starting to see Democrats like him sort of try and experiment a bit more and try and see, you know, whether or not they can break through like that. But it's still, you know, a big, like, that's the challenge for Democrats right now. And there's not a ton of confidence that, you know, Schumer is that's like the next obvious person. Right. In terms of, of hierarchy in the party. Not a ton of confidence that he's the man for the moment either. And same with, with Jefferies on the House side. So, you know, it's the thing that they're constantly sort of having conversations about and struggling over. And I think there's some hope that with the midterm elections there's going to be some new candidates and some like fresh faces. I do think that there's an acknowledgment that Democratic voters really want just like someone new, some new people to get excited about that haven't been in D.C. that haven't, you know, had any sort of like establishment connections to the Biden administration. So this midterms, you know, the party's obviously going to be looking to see what sort of candidates kind of like pop off and might become sort of more of a national figurehead that can rally the party a bit more.
- [10:15]
Andrew Egger
Yeah, yeah, man. And it's just such. You go, you go around and around on it. Right. Because obviously first, obviously, you know, that's, that's the next opportunity for them to inject it. Inject some, some new blood, get some new people excited, you know, take a message again to voters in a really systematic way. At the same time, we're what we're like 90 days into our break. Yeah. I mean, it's. Who knows what we're all going to look like in late 20. And I think part of the messaging struggle is just figuring out, all right, we're going to war with the army we have right now and how are we going to do that right now with the weapons we have right now, which are few. I mean, they have so little institutional power anywhere in Washington. They don't have the presidency. They don't have either house of Congress. They're outgunned. Six, three in the Supreme Court, the liberal side is obviously doesn't break down quite the same way in the Supreme Court. But even just figuring out how to take those first baby steps toward getting their message to people where to sort of cross counter programming the like what is turning out to be the alarmingly large and formidable sort of right wing messaging machine that has been such a force.
- [11:24]
Lauren Egan
Yeah. And to that point, I think right now one of their biggest tools is shaping public opinion and trying to kind of like do some, you know, like, for lack of a better term, like media stunts. To sort of shape the narrative. The problem, though, is like, there just aren't that many people in the Democratic Party right now who are really good at that. And that's part of the challenge that they're facing. The filibuster with Booker was a good start, but like you said, like, we're not that far into this presidency and we've got a long way to go till midterms. Who's going to kind of be that person that can step up and, you know, is really effective online and effective in front of a camera and effective at shaping a narrative. And there's no obvious person who's really, really good at that right now in the party.
- [12:08]
Andrew Egger
Let's talk about one other thing that is happening for Democrats this week. Senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland has been really plugged into this developing crisis around the White House gearing up to seemingly defy a Supreme Court order ordering them to basically go get Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the man who was mistakenly and wrongly deported to El Salvador with a bunch of these other Venezuelans a few months ago. A lot of proper nouns in that sentence. You all know the story. We're all following along. And Senator Van Hollen is from Maryland. Camara Abrego Garcia was a Maryland resident before he was booted into this concentration camp in El Salvador. And he announced today. He's been talking about it for days. He announced today he's going there. He's going to organize a trip down to El Salvador, I think, tomorrow. Is that what he said? He's going to be on a plane tomorrow going down?
- [13:03]
Lauren Egan
Yeah.
- [13:03]
Andrew Egger
How do you see that? I mean, do you, do you think that's the kind of thing that's going to prove fruitful for Democrats? We're going to see more of or just what do you make of it in general?
- [13:10]
Lauren Egan
Yeah. I mean, I think we'll have to see how the trip goes tomorrow. But I do think that this is an important step for them to take, you know, and we're talking about how you shape public opinion or how you really, you know, hold Trump accountable for some of the things that he's doing. This is how you do it when you're in the minority and don't have a ton of legislative power. There was some frustration in the party that, that this didn't happen sooner. Right. It's been about a month now. I think there were some strategists that I've been talking with who said, you know, this should have been something we did. You know, when it became immediately became apparent that the Trump administration was going to ignore court orders. But Democrats have had a really hard time figuring out how to talk about immigration. It's something they still feel really uncomfort about. I do think that this situation, though, gives them kind of a natural first opportunity to create a contrast with Trump on immigration, because this is not popular. This is. You know, I know that the Trump folks think that this is like giving red meat to their base, but polls do show, like, once you actually explain to people what the particulars of this and what exactly they're doing, it's not. This is not necessarily, like a winning thing or a winning policy for the Trump folks to pursue. And so now the Democrats, I think, are, like, aware of that, and they can feel, like, a little bit more comfortable, obviously, and kind of like going there and really trying to make this a bit of a wedge issue and drawing a more clear contrast with him. So I'm super curious to see how this trip goes and what other Democrats might go as well. There was a few other House members that came out and said, like, Maxwell Frost said he would be interested in going. I think Cory Booker also said that he'd be interested in organizing some sort of trip. So this could definitely, like, turn into a thing where we see a bunch of Democrats start going to El Salvador, depending on how long this drags out. So, yeah, I'm curious to see how this, this trip ends up going.
- [15:08]
Andrew Egger
Yeah, well, we'll definitely keep following it. Thank you, Lauren, for coming on and talking through some of this stuff with us. And thanks to all you people out there for, for following along, listening and watching.