Andrew Egger (3:57)

Yeah, just so, I guess just a few things. I mean, one, I mean it's a little hard for us to talk about because we are obviously political reporters. You know, we know as much about kind of the ins and outs of the health diagnosis as anybody does as, as any other layman, like relative bozo on the subject does. I think that, I mean, obviously it's difficult news. I guess the small mercy here is that he is getting this news and we're getting this news in his post presidency. I mean, it would be a much more fraught thing if this had happened a year ago. If this, you know, I mean, imagine just in addition to all of the, all of the kind of like personal difficulty here and all the sort of familial pain and all those sorts of things, having to juggle all of this in addition to the just the burden of having to run the country, which I mean it's just kind of like a common place to talk about how, how much that burden puts pressure on a person, how much it ages a person throughout, throughout their term. And so that's one, you know, just.

Stein (4:59)

To pick on that. Like we've had presidents who have served in incredible distress before, like Woodrow Wilson, Kennedy was serving with incredible distress. Nixon was beset by demons and potentially alcoholism. Right. Like, so it's not that this is totally abnormal. But there's something that feels oddly different in a way. Now. He, I agree with you. He, you know, thank God he wasn't in office when this happened.

Andrew Egger (5:27)

But, but this is, I mean, this is the whole, this is the whole thing about being the oldest president ever in a long time. The baseline of vigor and even all things going quite well. It was kind of a roll of the dice on any given day, like how up to it he was going to be. And obviously this just dramatically complicates that in a way that would not have necessarily afflicted those other presidents.

Stein (5:54)

Well, I mean, this clearly makes, obviously brings home the point that he should never have announced he was running for a second term. I mean, that's, I mean, I'm not trying to be crude about it, but you know, everything that's been reported this past couple weeks, the release of the Robert her audio, even the testimonials of Democrats who now are sort of open to the reckoning that they got it completely wrong. You know, it all points in the same direction, which is he should have taken a one term pledge, should have never had said I was going to run again and should have recognized that at 80 years old, you're at a heightened risk for things like this to happen. You're rolling the dice.

Andrew Egger (6:32)

Yeah, yeah, well. And hopefully at the very least, you know, we can finally put to bed the sort of ridiculous exercise of any time the president or the former president is in an interview or whatever, kind of having him go through that, that gauntlet of like, well, should you have dropped out? Should you have run again, making him trot out that answer, oh, I think I could have won if I'd run again. I mean, just that whole horrible, like, at no point was that a useful exercise for anything because what's the guy supposed to say?

Stein (6:57)

But he was never going to say, yeah, I shouldn't have run. Like, no, I mean, he's, he played the game and frankly, you know, that was deceitful. Right. Like, I think he should have been more honest about his frailties and certainly the people around him should have been. I do, I do agree with that.

Andrew Egger (7:14)

Yeah. I just go around and around on that because on the one hand, yes, obviously, I mean, like, like, obviously it is the case that he hung on way too long and that especially the people around him were like actively covering for him in various ways. And yet it's very difficult, I mean, to put yourself in his shoes and to say, like any aging professional who's losing their fastball where they, where they're just like, no, I still got it in me. I can still do it. I'm still there.

Stein (7:41)

So that's where. Yes, and, but that's where I get back to this whole thing of, like, it's taboo. Right. Like, Steve Scale, longtime Biden advisor, ran super PAC for him, never worked in the White House, but was one of the bigger online fans and fans, period. He wrote a piece for us where he's like, you know, I think the, the crux of one of the parts is, like, they failed to recognize that they would have been rewarded had they just acknowledged the frailty. I mean, they were very afraid of being like, no, he can't. He's not going to serve a second term. This is just a transition presidency for real. And Steve writes that, like, in fact, had he done that, had he been open about, like, look, I, I, I probably could give it a go, but I'm going to be, like, responsible and, you know, I'm old and, and you, you deserve someone younger. Steve's point is that had he done lines like that, had he, had he made that his posture, that he would have been rewarded for the public, for his honesty, and they would have been, they would have rallied to his side. And I mean, you talk about a sports analogy, but I do think there's something to it. It's like, you know, it's when it seems like it's like the aging at season and they've announced that they're going to retire. Like there is some sort of camaraderie that is felt. There is, there is a nostalgia that almost kicks in. So I don't know, who knows if it translates in politics, but you don't, you don't really have that much politics because people just feel like they are important, too important to retire.

Andrew Egger (9:06)

Yeah. And it was just difficult as well, because, I mean, imagine if it had been the other way around. Imagine if, like, if the cancer diagnosis that we got the news of today, if that had come a year and a half ago or two years ago, and it was only just now that, like, the, the obvious kind of, like, aging was catching up to him mentally and in terms of his stamina and all, I mean, I think it's hard to do a counterfactual, but I think you might have seen a different story. I mean, like, if the president had publicly been diagnosed with an aggressive form of cancer, that's the kind of thing people kind of wrap their heads around. Whereas, you know, one of the problems with the kind of aging and the Gradual slipping and all of that that we kind of all saw over the last year is that's the kind of thing that it's so easy for everyone to kind of live in denial about. Right. I mean, and especially the person. The person who's involved.

Stein (9:51)

The other thing about that, though, which kind of has tripped me up a little bit, is like, in a way, you can say, okay, maybe he is physically not where he ever was and is slipping badly, but so long as he's mentally there. Right. Like, that's what counts. Right. Like. And so for a little while, and, you know, I'm just dipping back into my time editing the White House, beat around this for a little while. Like, the stories were around sort of the physical stuff. Right. It was like, oh, he needs the shorter staircase. He's wearing these different sneakers. He's, you know, not really, you know, doing three or four nights in a row overseas. He's ducking out on the last night. Like, he's tired, more like. And that's bad. Obviously, it's not great, but you can sort of put that into a different bucket than the mental stuff. The mental stuff was always harder for us to kind of COVID because, you know, you'd have slippages in interviews and you'd have gas. And of course, that was, like, you write about it, but there was. It didn't. Never felt like we could. I don't know. I didn't. I don't want to say never felt, but it was hard to come to some sort of consensus opinion about where he was on a mental scale up until the debate.

Andrew Egger (11:03)

Debate, yeah.

Stein (11:04)

And then it became very obvious. I mean, there were certainly signs, and we wrote about them, but it just. Those two buckets were always hard to kind of make put together. Does that. I don't know if that makes sense.

Andrew Egger (11:14)

Yeah, no, absolutely. And the other. The other element of it is just, you know, seeing the whole kind of, like, political apparatus around him, kind of like helping him message himself and kind of like.

Stein (11:25)

Yeah. And that certainly felt. That certainly felt mental. But there's also like, well, maybe he's just tired. I don't know.

Andrew Egger (11:30)

Right. And just the fact that that's always happening for the President of the United States. Right. I mean, there's. There's always Donald Trump. Well, I mean, totally with Donald Trump, he'll say something insane, and the. And the people will come around and kind of like, massage it back in the direction of policy or whatever. And that's the kind of stuff we don't need to endlessly relitigate. The move of last year. I guess the one thing, and I hate even talking this much about politics for the whole thing because really it's a personal story about him. But I guess the one other political thing that we need to say in the context of all of this is going forward. Well, I guess two things I would say one thing about the kind of horrible nitty gritty politics stuff that we have to talk about, which is that it's just kind of underscores again the difficulty that Kamala Harris has now, like in terms of her political future. Just because she more than anybody else was like in the room working with him, like in a, in a personal position to kind of stick up for him and his, his acuity and his, his readiness and all these sorts of things. And the one, on the one hand it's like what's she supposed to say? She's not going to go out and sandbag her boss in real time. On the other hand, it's hard for her to come out and, and, and explain why all through that period she along with the rest of the apparatus was saying no, he's, he's there, he's got it all going. And I mean like, you know, if it hadn't been for that debate in the world that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris and I guess all of us would have rather had than the world that we'd be in. Right. Than the world that we're in right now in our ideal world, you know, going back a year ago, this would be nation shaking news. Right. Because Joe Biden would be the president again and we'd be dealing with all this. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like I say, in our, in our ideal world.

Stein (13:09)

Well, look. Yeah, no, I hear you. It's it again. I go back to what you just said, which is like it's, is, was her supposed to just sandbag her boss.

Andrew Egger (13:18)

It's, it's a no situation.

Stein (13:21)

It's, it's hard. It's hard.

Andrew Egger (13:23)

But, but that means it's, it's a no win situation. But like that doesn't mean it's not going to like stick around.

Stein (13:29)

No, it should. Yeah, of course. And that's the, that's the price you pay is that you took that path and now you have to answer questions for it.

Andrew Egger (13:37)

Can I, can I just say one other thing on the politics of this, which is just like the thing that keep coming back to when I think about this and we don't, we again, we don't really know fully like what the deal is. With this cancer, we know it's quite bad. It's, you know, prostate cancer kills a lot of.

Stein (13:49)

He's 82 years old, he's got prostate cancer. They said, they didn't say treatment, they said management. You know, people live with prostate cancer, they can live for years managing prostate cancer. But at his age, you know, it's, it's not a great diagnosis.

Andrew Egger (14:05)

Like, without, without getting into, like prognosticating about all of that. Like, the thing that I keep coming back to is just the, the tragic fact that, that Biden is, is likely not going to live to kind of know what, what his legacy is. Right? I mean, like, right now you can tell that it's just eating like the, the fact that is eating him is the end of his presidency. It's the fact that he kind of crash landed out and Donald Trump went back in and the endless relitigation in the press and all these books coming out. I mean, like, that, that is the only fact of his presidency as far as like the current political moment is concerned. And he might not get to see what comes after that and what comes after that. We don't know what his ultimate legacy will be because we don't know how this story ends in the short term. Obviously, if Donald Trump totally crashes the United States basically out of circulation as the power it's been, then Joe Biden's legacy is enabling that to happen. If we kind of get back on the rails and there's life after all of this in a way that we all like and appreciate, then maybe Biden's ultimate legacy is a lot of the good work that he got done while he was president. And nobody gets to know what that is now. And, and it's, it is a tragedy that, that, you know, this is the moment that that Biden is, is enduring as he's enduring all these other things. And, and we don't know, you know, whether he'll be around to, to ultimately see how history judges him. I mean, nobody gets to ultimately see how history judges them, I guess, but that's just kind of the, the, the tragedy of it all that, that's kind of going around my head right now.

Stein (15:32)

You know what, that's a good place to end it on. Not much tied to that. Andre, thank you so much, man. Really appreciate it. To the viewers, I appreciate your understanding of this very delicate conversation. We thought it was important enough that we should hop on and quickly discuss it with you all.

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