How Groupthink Protected Biden and Re-elected Trump

Summary

How Groupthink Protected Biden and Re-Elected Trump: An In-Depth Analysis

In the May 21, 2025 episode of The Ezra Klein Show titled "How Groupthink Protected Biden and Re-Elected Trump," host Ezra Klein delves into a provocative and timely question: Was there a Joe Biden cover-up within the Democratic Party that facilitated Donald Trump’s re-election? Drawing extensively from the insights of Jake Tapper, a CNN anchor, and Alex Thompson, a seasoned journalist at Axios, the discussion unpacks the intricate dynamics of political loyalty, institutional failures, and the pervasive influence of groupthink within the Democratic Party.

---

1. The Concern Over Joe Biden’s Presidency

Ezra Klein begins the conversation by reflecting on his personal concerns regarding Joe Biden's age and cognitive capabilities during the 2020 presidential campaign. "[...] I was worried about Biden's age when he ran for president in 2020," Klein admits ([01:07]). His inquiries to top White House staffers consistently yielded reassurances about Biden's energy and command over presidential duties. However, Klein questions the authenticity of these reassurances, pondering whether the staffers were perhaps deceiving themselves.

He states, “The White House, I came to think, had created this false distinction in their minds. They would admit privately, publicly even, that Biden couldn't communicate as he'd once been able to. But that was just theatrics, the real work of the presidency” ([01:20]).

---

2. Introducing “Original Sin”: Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson's Exposé

Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson are introduced as the authors of the book Original Sin, President Biden's Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again. The book is a culmination of over 200 interviews, aiming to reconstruct what Democrats ought to have known about Biden’s evident decline. Tapper, who co-moderated a pivotal and disastrous presidential debate with Biden, brings firsthand experience to the table.

Tapper notes, “When you read those transcripts, though, and you produce some of them in the book, this sense that the President of the United States is actually appearing too forgetful to be convicted of a crime that requires intent in front of a jury is a much more extraordinary and damning thing” ([09:13]).

---

3. Biden’s Cognitive Decline: Evidence and Examples

Alex Thompson provides detailed accounts of Joe Biden’s deteriorating cognitive functions. Referencing Robert Herr’s interviews, Thompson describes Biden as “a meandering old man” who struggled with basic factual recall. “[...] he is just meandering, unable to focus on the train of thought. He doesn't know dates. He's asked about a period that's significant for the investigation, about his holding and sharing information that is of a classified nature” ([05:12]-[05:23]).

One striking example discussed is Biden’s confusion between Egypt and Mexico during a press conference, underscoring the severity of his cognitive lapses: “In this interview, meant to reassure people about his memory, he mixes up Egypt and Mexico” ([12:38]).

---

4. The White House Cover-Up: Self-Deception and Institutional Failings

The conversation shifts to how the White House and Democratic elites managed Biden’s declining capabilities. Thompson asserts, “A lot of people were seeing things I'm not. If they tell me he's good in the meetings, I don't know if he's good in the meetings” ([16:15]). This internal self-deception, combined with a steadfast loyalty to Biden, created a cover-up that masked his true state from both the public and within the party.

Tapper recounts witnessing Biden's press conference post-Herr report, where Biden attacked Robert Hur while displaying undeniable signs of cognitive distress: “And then at the end, he takes some questions, and in this interview, meant to reassure people about his memory, he mixes up Egypt and Mexico” ([12:38]).

---

5. The 2024 Presidential Campaign and Election: A Crisis Unfolds

As the 2024 campaign progressed, Biden’s team made several accommodations to mask his declining abilities. The use of teleprompters at small fundraisers became more prevalent, and his public appearances were increasingly constrained. “[...] he started keeping him (Biden) away from people, ... limit his interactions with anybody who wasn't a must-visit” ([22:50]).

The June 27, 2024 presidential debate became a pivotal moment. Tapper, co-moderating the debate, observed Biden’s poor performance, marked by disjointed answers and visible cognitive strain: “He starts talking. He obviously has a cold. He sounds awful. [...] he completely loses his train of thought” ([40:10]-[44:43]). This debacle was met with shock not only by the public but also by party insiders who had privately acknowledged Biden’s decline.

---

6. Groupthink, Loyalty, and Institutional Failings within the Democratic Party

A central theme in the discussion is the phenomenon of groupthink within the Democratic Party, where loyalty to Joe Biden overshadowed objective assessments of his capabilities. “[...] the Democratic Party was talking to itself” ([58:14]). This insular conversation prevented any meaningful dissent or critical evaluation, leading to a lack of preparedness and strategic missteps that ultimately contributed to Trump’s re-election.

Tapper highlights how the party elite's reluctance to challenge Biden stemmed from a fear of deepening partisan divides, echoing historical failures to hold leaders accountable: “You can always count on them... to do the right thing after they've exhausted every other possible option” ([80:38]).

---

7. Lessons Learned: A Call for Structural Reforms

The episode concludes with reflections on the broader implications for American political structures. Klein and Thompson emphasize the necessity for robust institutional checks to prevent similar occurrences. Thompson suggests concrete measures, such as annual, sworn medical reports for the President to be submitted to Congress: “... White House medical reports should be affirmed under threat of perjury and given to Congress every year” ([68:25]).

Moreover, the conversation underscores the importance of media vigilance and internal party accountability in identifying and addressing leadership deficiencies promptly.

---

8. Final Thoughts and Recommended Readings

Before wrapping up, Alex Thompson shares his book recommendations, offering listeners avenues to further explore related themes:

1. "Lorne" by Susan Morrison – A history of Saturday Night Live.
2. "Hitler's People" by Richard Evans – An exploration of how the Holocaust came to be in Germany.
3. "The Holy Roller" – A graphic novel by Andy Samberg, featuring a Jewish bowling superhero from Ohio.

---

Conclusion

The episode of The Ezra Klein Show provides a compelling examination of how internal dynamics, characterized by groupthink and unwavering loyalty, can obscure critical issues within a political party. The alleged cover-up of Joe Biden's cognitive decline illustrates the dangers of prioritizing party unity over transparent and honest assessments of leadership. Tapper and Thompson's insights from Original Sin serve as a cautionary tale for ensuring accountability and fostering an environment where leadership can be objectively evaluated and, if necessary, reformed to safeguard democratic integrity.

Notable Quotes:

• Ezra Klein [01:07]:

  "The harder question in retrospect was whether they were lying to themselves."

• Jake Tapper [09:13]:

  “When you read those transcripts... the President of the United States is actually appearing too forgetful to be convicted of a crime that requires intent in front of a jury is a much more extraordinary and damning thing.”

• Alex Thompson [16:15]:

  “The definition of a cover up is when you are hiding something. That is an ugly fact."

• Jake Tapper [40:10]:

  “He completely loses his train of thought.”

• Alex Thompson [68:25]:

  “We need to do two things: White House medical reports should be affirmed under threat of perjury and given to Congress every year...”

---

This comprehensive summary encapsulates the nuanced discussion between Ezra Klein, Jake Tapper, and Alex Thompson, shedding light on the complex interplay of political loyalty, institutional failure, and the critical importance of transparency and accountability within democratic frameworks.

Transcript

[Advertiser]

You just realized your business needed to hire someone yesterday. How can you find amazing candidates fast? Easy. Just use Indeed. Join the 3.5 million employers worldwide that use Indeed to hire great talent fast. There's no need to wait any longer. Speed up your hiring right now with Indeed and listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit. To get your jobs more visibility at indeed.com NYT just go to indeed.com NYT right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed indeed.com NYT terms and conditions apply. Hiring Indeed is all you need.

[Ezra Klein]

This episode is about a seemingly simple question Was there a Joe Biden cover up? Like a lot of people, I was worried about Biden's age when he ran for president in 2020. So after he won, I found myself continuously asking top White House staffers, how's the president? How's he in meetings? What's his energy like? I always got the same answer. He's great. Completely in command. His energy is amazing. These are people I'd known for a long time. I don't think they were lying to me. The harder question in retrospect was whether they were lying to themselves. The White House, I came to think, had created this false distinction in their minds. They would admit privately, publicly even, that Biden couldn't communicate as he'd once been able to. But that was just theatrics, the real work of the presidency. They always told me it was decision making, and it was in decision making that they believed Biden shined. That never made sense to me. In what possible definition of the presidency? In what possible definition of running a reelection campaign is the ability to communicate with the public, not core to the job? And how can you believe that that had degraded, but nothing else had. We all know the story from there. Biden's collapse in the presidential debate, the push to remove him from the ticket, Kamala Harris sprint of a campaign, Donald Trump's return to the White House. And in the last couple of months, I feel like I've watched a new conventional wisdom solidify. When I was writing pieces about how Biden shouldn't run again, I got raked over the coals. I will say it was definitely not something everybody believed. But now the argument is that everybody knew he was incapable of handling the job of the presidency, that they knew it and they were covering it up. Was there a cover up? A cover up would at least reveal core of cold rationality to this system. It would mean that people dealing with Biden every single day they knew the truth. They saw it clearly and decided to lie. That there were adults in the room, if only malign ones in a way that would be more comforting than what I think actually happened. And so there are questions here that are relevant long beyond the Biden campaign. How do you see what is right in front of your eyes when you don't want to see it? How do you not let loyalty to a person, to a party, to a cause blind you? Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson's new book, Original Sin, President Biden's decline, its cover up and his disastrous choice to run again is a reconstruction of what Democrats should have known and when they should have known it. Tapper is, of course, an anchor at cnn. He was co moderator of that historic and for Biden disastrous presidential debate. Thompson had covered Biden at Axios. So I asked Tapper on the show to talk through what they learned in the more than 200 interviews behind that book and what lessons we can take from it. And I wanted to start in a particular moment, the moment when I found my own doubts about Biden impossible to ignore any longer.

[Jake Tapper]

And just to note, we taped this.

[Ezra Klein]

Before the news of Joe Biden's cancer diagnosis.

[Jake Tapper]

The episode isn't any less relevant. In fact, maybe it's more relevant.

[Ezra Klein]

But of course, I want to say.

[Jake Tapper]

That we wish him well. Jake Tapper, welcome to the show.

[Alex Thompson]

It's great to be here. Thanks so much and congrats on all the success of this.

[Jake Tapper]

Thank you. I want to start a bit in the middle.

[Alex Thompson]

Okay.

[Jake Tapper]

You tell the story of special prosecutor Robert Herr's interviews with Biden in a lot more detail than I'd heard it before. And I think people know that that report comes out and the prosecutor calls Biden a sort of well meaning old man with a flagging memory.

[Alex Thompson]

Something like that. Yeah. Which is nice, by the way. It's a nice description. That's not a mean description. That's an accurate nice description. He could have been.

[Jake Tapper]

Well, at the moment it was taken as a very mean description.

[Alex Thompson]

It was.

[Jake Tapper]

So what was going on behind that description?

[Alex Thompson]

Well, I think for Robert Hur and the prosecutors, they were legitimately flabbergasted by how President Biden appeared in that deposition. In the interview in October 2023, they were stunned. And I think they legitimately debated how he would appear to a jury. I think they legitimately thought, if there's even one person that sees him the way that we see him, which is addled, we're not gonna be able to get a conviction.

[Jake Tapper]

What was happening in those conversations that he seemed so addled.

[Alex Thompson]

Well, if you read the transcript of her interview, he is just meandering, unable to focus on the train of thought. He doesn't know dates. He's asked about a period that's significant for the investigation, about his holding and sharing information that is of a classified nature. So 2017, 2018. And first of all, he thinks that it is around the time that Beau died and that Beau was deployed, and it's not. Beau died in 2015, and Beau had been deployed years before that. And then second of all, he's just unable to place events.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Trump gets elected in November of 2017. 2016. All right, so why do I have 2017?

[Alex Thompson]

That's when you left office.

[Unnamed Speaker]

January of 2017. Okay. But that's when Trump has sworn in.

[Alex Thompson]

It's beyond just an avuncular, charming Irish pal sharing anecdotes. It's a meandering old man.

[Unnamed Speaker]

The genesis of the book and the title, Promise Me dad, was a. I know you're all closer to your sons and daughters, but Beau was like my right arm. That was my left. These guys were a year and a day apart and they could finish each other's sentences.

[Alex Thompson]

And.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Bo, I used to go home on the train and the period that I was still in the Senate anyway.

[Alex Thompson]

And while he got assailed Robert Her. As a partisan hack out to destroy Biden, my conclusion and the conclusion of Attorney General Merrick Garland, by the way, was far from that.

[Jake Tapper]

My read of how people reacted to that document was it was a suspicion that Hur was trying to find a middle path, that he didn't want to prosecute the president, and so he sort of dinged him on memory so the right could feel good about that. I think people understood that as a political document. When you read those transcripts, though, and you produce some of them in the book, this sense that the President of the United States is actually appearing too forgetful to be convicted of a crime that requires intent in front of a jury is a much more extraordinary and damning thing. And in retrospect, it makes the reaction to the Hur report look much too modest, because I think people assumed it wasn't quite on the level.

[Alex Thompson]

I think it was on the level. The pushback was interesting because there was the White House pushback, which was not about, hey, the President broke the law, which is how prosecutors at DOJ thought it was going to be received. They thought, the White House is going to be low crap. The president broke the law. The pushback was not on that, but that he was old, which I think is the tell from the White House. And the White House went to war not just against Robert Hur, the they went to war against their own Attorney General, Merrick Garland. And Garland comes to the conclusion, and this is in our book, that ultimately Biden, even though he brought him on board saying he wanted a fair, just attorney General and a Justice Department that had no fear or favor for anyone, Garland ultimately came to the conclusion that's not what he wanted. That's not what Biden wanted. Biden did not want an independent Justice Department. He wanted one that would protect him and his son.

[Jake Tapper]

So I had this weird experience with this, which I happened to be at the White House on the day the hurt report comes out.

[Alex Thompson]

Oh, wow.

[Jake Tapper]

And I'm there doing a bunch of other reporting, but one of the things I'm there working on is a story that in my head at that moment is titled, is Joe Biden up to this? Because he'd been doing basically no interviews, not really doing press conferences. We had no real evidence that he was capable of the rigors of campaigning at that point. And then they decided not to do the super bowl interview, which for me was some kind of very big tell. Like that was a moment when I really shifted. You have a different explanation than they ever gave me on why they didn't do the super bowl interview. Why?

[Alex Thompson]

Well, first of all, laid across all of this is the fact that he's not capable of doing good interviews as of 2023, period.

[Jake Tapper]

Right. They don't do the super bowl interview the year before, either. They blame that on it being Fox, but they don't do it.

[Alex Thompson]

They told me actually it's because they knew that her report was about to drop and they knew it would have all this stuff about classified information and about him seeming super old behind the scenes and adult behind the scenes. And they didn't want to have a interview on that, no matter with whom and no matter what the format was going to be. They didn't want 10 minutes, 15 minutes, 20 minutes about what it would have been. Oh, my God, this. Her report says that you're not up to the task.

[Jake Tapper]

The horny view comes out. Biden seems himself authentically furious, and they call a press conference. It happens late that night. I remember being in my hotel room after being at the White House all day watching this press conference.

[Unnamed Speaker]

I know there's some attention paid to some language in the report about my recollection of events. There's even reference that I don't Remember when my son died? How in the hell dare he raise that? Frankly, when I was asked the question, I thought to myself, it wasn't any of their damn business.

[Jake Tapper]

And Biden attacks her. He is angry about the allegation that he didn't remember when Beau died.

[Unnamed Speaker]

For any extraneous commentary. They don't know what they're talking about. It has no place in this report. The bottom line is the matter is now closed. I'm going to continue what I've always focused on, my job of being President of the United States of America.

[Jake Tapper]

And then at the end, he takes some questions, and in this interview, meant to reassure people about his memory, he mixes up Egypt and Mexico.

[Unnamed Speaker]

As you know, initially the president of Mexico, El Sisi, did not want to open up the gate to allow humanitarian material to get in. I talked to him. I convinced him.

[Jake Tapper]

For me, that was the moment when I realized, okay, it went from the question mark like, can he do this? To he can't. If you can't go out and not have a memory flub in the press conference about your memory, you're in real trouble.

[Alex Thompson]

And I would note that what Biden said in that press conference was not true. To hear Biden tell it, Robert Herr says, do you remember what year Beau died? But that's not what happened. He bought Biden, brought up Beau. Where did you keep papers that related to those things that you were actively working?

[Unnamed Speaker]

Well, I don't know. This is what, 20, 17, 18. Remember, in this time frame, my son has either been deployed or is dying.

[Alex Thompson]

And look, I can't imagine the grief he feels about Beau or his first wife and daughter. And that's also one of the subtexts of this book, obviously, or texts in this book, is that the two main areas where we think, according to Top aids, that his diminishment happened the most had to do with times of extreme stress for Hunter in the summer of 2023 when the plea deal fell apart, and then the summer of 2024 when he was convicted of a crime in a Delaware jury. Because in Joe Biden's brain, understandably, he thought there was a very real fear he was going to lose a third child, that Hunter was going to either overdose or commit suicide. And I'm not saying that as an excuse. I'm not saying that lightly, but I'm just saying this is part of what happened, that stress helped really deteriorate his essence.

[Jake Tapper]

I think those parts of the books are really persuasive and sad. The reason I want to focus on this her week is that to me, it's a moment when a lot of things burst out into the open. After that press conference, I write this series of pieces arguing that Biden should step aside or be convinced not to run. There should be an open convention.

[Alex Thompson]

Just. You didn't ask me to toot your horn, but let me just say that was very gutsy and very difficult for you to do. And I applauded you then and I applaud you now because first of all, probably a lot of people who are fans of yours didn't want to hear it. And also, it's kind of lonely to be saying things like that.

[Jake Tapper]

I appreciate that. But the thing I want to get at here, because you have more information on this than I do, is, as you can imagine, when I write these pieces, I get a lot of incoming from Biden world.

[Alex Thompson]

Yeah.

[Jake Tapper]

And they're not happy about it. And my honest assessment of them, my view of how they think of this is that they actually think I'm wrong.

[Alex Thompson]

Yeah.

[Jake Tapper]

They think I'm being unfair.

[Alex Thompson]

Some of them do.

[Jake Tapper]

Some of them do. Certainly the ones I hear from.

[Alex Thompson]

Well, you're not telling me who you heard from, but I'll tell you that this disaster that happened with Joe Biden running for reelection and then the COVID up of what he was like behind the scenes, what Robert Hur saw was orchestrated by Joe and Jill and Hunter and Mike Donilon and Steve Richetti and there are other people to a lesser extent, but those five people are the most responsible.

[Jake Tapper]

So cover up. That's the word I want to get at here.

[Alex Thompson]

Yeah.

[Jake Tapper]

One thing throughout this whole period and for years before it, which was always a bad sign, is like a lot of political parties, I am asking people in the White House constantly, how's Joe Biden in meetings? How's he doing? And they all say to a person, the line you often hear is, he can perform the presidency, but he can't, quote, unquote, perform the presidency. His communication skills have degraded, but as a decision maker, he's better than ever. And it keeps a lot of people from writing what's sort of in front of your face. You think, well, these people are seeing things I'm not. If they tell me he's good in the meetings, I don't know if he's good in the meetings. So when you say there's a cover up, my sense of these people is that this is what they believed or at least had talked themselves into believing. Do you feel most people were seeing him in meetings and he Came off the way he came off with Robert Hur and they're just not telling anybody. Or is it something more psychologically complex going on here?

[Alex Thompson]

Both. Yes, they were lying to themselves, they were lying to others, but at all. The definition of a cover up is when you are hiding something. That is an ugly fact. And the ugly fact is that the Joe Biden that we all saw at the debate on June 27, 2024 did not just step out of nowhere. That was Joe Biden. And that was the logical consequence of what they had been hiding since in a big way since 2023. Look, I'm not saying that every meeting President Biden had he came across as addled. What I am saying what Alex Thompson and I who he's my co author, Alex Thompson from Axios. What we are asserting is that there was as far back as 2019 a Biden that was fine and then a non functioning Biden and that from 2019 to 2024 the non functioning Biden would rear his head increasingly. And what do I mean by non functioning? I mean losing his train of thought in a manner that's uncomfortable. I mean not able to come up with the names of top aides or close friends. I mean not recognizing people that he should recognize. I mean not able at all to communicate to the American people. And there's a degree to which, and this metaphor was used by so many White House aides we interviewed the frog and the boiling water. I think there is a degree to which people, as the water is increasingly turned up, they don't notice that it's getting hotter and hotter. And then we would hear from so many people who worked at the White House, then left and then came back six months later or turned on the TV six months later and they could not believe what they saw.

[Jake Tapper]

I always feel like you can track this across the couple of elections. Biden rescues the ticket to some degree in 2012 after Obama's bad first debate with Mitt Romney. Biden mauls Paul Ryan.

[Alex Thompson]

You can cut tax rates by 20% and still preserve these important preferences for middle class taxpayers.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Not mathematically possible.

[Alex Thompson]

It is mathematically possible. It's been done before. It's precisely what we're proposing.

[Unnamed Speaker]

It has never been done before.

[Alex Thompson]

It's been done a couple of times.

[Unnamed Speaker]

It has never been done before.

[Alex Thompson]

Jack Kennedy lowered tax rates, increased growth.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Ronald Reagan, wow, you're Jack Kennedy.

[Alex Thompson]

Ronald Reagan.

[Jake Tapper]

It's an exceptional debate and he sort of gives a ticket its mojo Back before Obama's second debate with Romney, you go to the 2016 convention. I think he gives the best speech at the convention.

[Unnamed Speaker]

His lack of empathy and compassion can be summed up in a phrase I suspect he's most proud of having made famous. You're fired. I mean, really, I'm not joking. Think about that. Think about that. Think about everything you learned as a child, no matter where you were raised. How can there be pleasure in saying you're fired? He's trying to tell us he cares about the middle class.

[Alex Thompson]

Give me a break.

[Unnamed Speaker]

That's a bunch of Malarkey.

[Jake Tapper]

By 2020, I thought his communication problems were already clear.

[Unnamed Speaker]

There's a reason why he's bringing up all this malarkey. There's a reason for it. He doesn't want to talk about the substantive issues. It's not about his family and my family. It's about your family. And your family's hurting badly. If you're making less than. If you're a middle class family, you're getting hurt badly right now.

[Alex Thompson]

As even top campaign advisors told me. And Alex Covid was a disaster for the American people, but it was a blessing for Joe Biden's campaign in 2020 because he got to basically run from his basement. I mean, there were some appearances outside, but nobody was judging the size of the crowds. And a lot of this stuff was just done on tv.

[Jake Tapper]

You mentioned some of the accommodations that his staff begins making for him. One of the ones that feels very striking is the teleprompter at what are usually impromptu fundraiser remarks.

[Alex Thompson]

Yeah, I'm talking about like 40, 50 people.

[Jake Tapper]

Yeah. Do you want to talk through what that was?

[Alex Thompson]

So his presidency starts off, he's still, you know, we're all still in COVID lockdown. People forget the degree to which 2021 is still part of COVID And note cards and teleprompters are standard procedure for him. They become crutches to the degree that Democrats are getting phone calls in 2023. Cuz he's doing small fundraisers. 40, 50 people. And his campaign staff is demanding a teleprompter. We have a Chicago fundraiser where the host doesn't want to have a teleprompter there. And they're like, this is the price of admission. And Biden will walk in, read from the teleprompter and walk out. Sometimes he'll do a photo line, sometimes he won't. But it's very odd and it's very weird. And that's not what happens in these fundraisers. The whole point of these fundraisers, if you're giving huge money to the Democratic Party or to a pro Biden super PAC or whatever is you are getting time with the stars of the event. And he's not really doing that in any comfortable degree. And he's making people feel very uncomfortable because why does he need a teleprompter to come in and talk for 10 minutes? Something that anybody in politics or the media should be able to do. Just talk for 10 minutes about whatever. And those become crutches to the degree that then they become also part of the COVID up, even if they didn't start out that way.

[Jake Tapper]

What are other accommodations that the staff begins to make over the course of that term?

[Alex Thompson]

The hours in which he's asked to function? It's not normal to say that a president can't do anything after 6pm or should only very, very rarely do something after 6pm that's not normal.

[Jake Tapper]

But they would always say he had lots of fundraisers that were at night. They always resisted this. It got reported, it got rebutted. But your view is that they really did try to keep him unscheduled after.

[Alex Thompson]

Six as much as possible. That's not to say it was 100%, of course not. But as much as possible. And the degree to which they started keeping him away from people, or rather keep keeping other we people away from him. A cabinet secretary told us so he had a cabinet meeting in October 2023 and then he didn't have on another one until like I think September 2024 after he had dropped out. Why would he keep the cabinet at bay? We had a White House staffer, say somebody who left because they were so upset by what was going on that there was a very purposeful decision to just limit his interactions with anybody who wasn't a must visit.

[Jake Tapper]

Who makes a decision like that? Well, because I don't get the sense Joe Biden himself believed Joe Biden was diminished.

[Alex Thompson]

I don't know what he's aware of. I don't let him off the hook. Because I'm older than you, Ezra. I'm 56. How old are you?

[Jake Tapper]

41.

[Alex Thompson]

Okay, so I'm great, Jake, thank you. I appreciate it. I. I'm not capable of doing things that I was capable when I was 41, both physically and probably mentally. I find myself stumbling a little bit more on the teleprompter than I did five or 10 years ago. It just happens. It's just part of aging. I only say this because I'm aware of my limitations. I don't believe that Joe Biden is not aware of his limitations.

[Jake Tapper]

My sense of Joe Biden's belief about himself is not that he has no limits. He knows he walks more slowly and might fall and they change the way he gets off the plane, that kind of thing, but that he is not sitting there thinking, I am addled, I am losing it. I have to limit my meetings. No, if you are saying someone is doing that, who is doing that? Mike Donilon, Rashetti. From everything they say in public, they seem to believe he could have been president through the end of this term, which is crazy. Fair enough. But I believe on some level they believe it.

[Alex Thompson]

I believe that they believe it too.

[Jake Tapper]

So when you say somebody is deciding to limit his meetings with other people, who is deciding to limit his meetings with other people? And are they saying this to the rest of the staff? Does a memo go out like, what is going on here?

[Alex Thompson]

So as JFK quoted after the Bay of Pigs, success has a hundred fathers and defeat is an orphan. There are very few people willing to acknowledge who made the fateful decisions, X, Y or Z. I would say that ultimately on the staffing level, who do I think is responsible for decisions that protected Joe Biden? The way that we're talking about, I would say Anthony Bernal, who was the chief of staff for the First Lady's office and perhaps the most powerful chief of staff in the history of first ladies, and Mike Donilon. And those two would convey the wishes of the President and the First Lady. So when the decision was made by Joe Biden that he was going to run for reelection, that decision would be conveyed to the staff from Anthony Bernal and Mike Donilon. Mike Donilon would say presidents get decide if they're running for reelection. And he's decided he's running for reelection. End of story. Anthony Bernal would say, you don't run for president for one term, you run for president for two terms. And they were conveying the wishes of the first couple. And in the book we talk about this, there is a shocking lack of discussion about this with Biden. It is just Biden decides he's running and that's it. And in fact, there's a very good, and I'm sure you know him already, John Anzalone, the pollster who, you know, he worked for Biden all the way back in, like in the 80s when Biden was plagiarizing speeches in Iowa. John Anzalone has known and loved Joe Biden forever. And Anzalone wants to pull for it. He wants to see what Are the liabilities. How do we do this? Obviously he's aging. And Anita Dunn says, we're not polling for this. The decision's already been made. And there is not one meeting where they all sit down and talk about this and kick the tires of it. And when Jeff Zients, who becomes the White House chief of staff after Ron Klain leaves in early 2023, he comes in, you know, and he's a former Bain Capital guy. He has Bainbrain. He wants to run the diagnostics, he wants to kick the tires, he wants to see is this a good idea. But the decision's already been made. It's done.

[Jake Tapper]

One thing I saw happen during this period is the bar got set really low for Joe Biden. Oh, yeah, because there was a big right wing argument that this guy is senile. He has actually lost it. And the counter argument then became pretty easy because he wasn't senile. But there's this really vast range between senile and at the peak of his powers. How do you think his age affected just how he carried out the day to day work of the presidency? Not the campaigning, not the politics, but the decision making, the attention, the party leadership.

[Alex Thompson]

I think that his presence in the Oval declined and he would spend more time in the resonance now in terms of the decision making itself. What we call them in the book, the Politburo. Well, we didn't call them that. People in the Biden administration called them that. The Rashetti, Donilon, etc. The people that surrounded Biden that were like the true believers, they would argue the Politpiro, that the decisions were always fine and sound and never problematic. There are people in this book, senators, Democratic senators, who would take issue with that, not as an affirmative prosecution against him, but just as a question. There's a scene in the book where Biden talks to the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, Mark Warner, a man with whom he does not have a particularly close relationship. And Warner is concerned because the White House is about to authorize the release of, I think it's 11 Yemenis from Gitmo. And there are a lot of senators, Democrats and Republicans, who are worried these guys are just going to go rejoin the fight, whether with the Houthis militias in Iraq or Hamas or Hezbollah or whatever, Syria, they're going to rejoin the fight. And Biden calls Warner. And Warner is under the impression that Biden does not know much about this, that he doesn't really understand what's going on and that concerns him. And then there's another scene in June 2024, before the debate, Biden has an immigration event. And Senator Bennett of Colorado goes to it. Another pro Biden Democrat. And Biden at this event has just like this, this moment where he's like whispering into the microphone, nobody can hear a word. He's.

[Unnamed Speaker]

I'm not sure going to show it, Secretary.

[Alex Thompson]

It's very odd. And it's reported as Biden forgets the name of his DHS secretary. But it's much worse than that. But in any case, Bennett leaves the White House thinking, well, this is why Biden's immigration policy is such a mess. He's not capable of leading the disparate factions in the Democratic Party and in his administration on this. And in fact, there had been a desire to beef up border security at the beginning of the Biden administration. And that kind of just like faded away. And Secretary Mayorkas and others never knew why. It just went away. And Bennett's overall conclusion is this did have an impact on the country.

[Jake Tapper]

I want to pick up on the Bennett vignette because I took note of that too in the book. This binary, I guess, that they created between can you make good decisions and can you do the superficial theatrical dimension of the presidency. One is real presidenting and the other is just BS the media cares about. I always thought that distinction was incredibly false. The power of the president, as is famously said, is the power to persuade. If you can't communicate effectively, you can't persuade. You are giving up a lot of your power. But a lot of the presidency isn't about major decisions. I mean, you know all this better than I do, but it's just constant presiding over meetings, constant taking in information, constant sensing into the shape, the zeitgeist of the country, of your party, of the issues of the constituencies. One of my sort of conclusions covering the White House was that Biden's just attentional bandwidth was more limited than it would have been when he was 65, of course. And so he was extremely engaged on Ukraine, extremely engaged on Israel and Gaza. But his attention to domestic policy seemed.

[Alex Thompson]

To meet a flag 100%.

[Jake Tapper]

And his ability or interest, I mean, Biden had sharp elbows for his entire career. He was a moderate Democrat who had little patience for a lot of the people who would disagree with him. And that intense party leadership. We're going to do this. Not that you guys have gotten too far away from the American people here. We're pivoting back. That was just gone. That doesn't mean he was making bad decisions. But energy matters how present the president is on different topics matters, because without him, the White House is not going to do risky things that might cause problems for him.

[Alex Thompson]

Yeah, I think that's absolutely right. I think that when it came to domestic policy, he let his first chief of staff, Ron Klain, kind of run things for a while. Ron Klain, who was a hero to progressives and therefore Joe Biden in many ways was a hero to progressives. That's one of the reasons, by the way, that the progressives were the very last ones to abandon him, the progressives and the Black Caucus, because they had gotten so much that they wanted from him policy wise. I don't mean that in a pejorative way. Policy is why they're in the game. So I think you're right. It became something that he was not focused on. And then beyond that, I think also is just the fact that as you note, he was interested in foreign policy. That's his area of expertise. And in fact, one of the reasons Obama picks him is for that. And that really is just what he likes. But we had a cabinet secretary say, and this is in the book, that if you expect the president to be somebody who can be woken up at 2am because there's a national or international crisis, that Biden was not capable of that in 2024. And that's a cabinet secretary telling us that. That's not Donald Trump Jr. It's not Steve Bannon, It's a Biden loving Democratic cabinet secretary.

[Jake Tapper]

And did this person believe that at the time or do they believe it in retrospect?

[Alex Thompson]

At the time? The way they presented it to me, they didn't say it to us. I mean, 99% of this book was told to us after the election. As you know, very frustratingly, they got really honest after the election and before that they were either not so honest or elusive or didn't return calls and texts. But you know, we interviewed more than 200 people and that was almost all after the election. But yeah, I mean, we have cabinet secretaries in there talking about something happened, they kept them at bay. And one of them saying that they didn't think that he could be relied upon to handle that 2am phone call, which is actually a very terrifying thought.

[Advertiser]

You just realized your business needed to hire someone yesterday. How can you find amazing candidates fast? Easy. Just use Indeed join the 3.5 million employers worldwide that use indeed to hire great talent fast. There's no need to wait any longer. Speed up your hiring right now with indeed and listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility@ Indeed.com NYT just go to Indeed.com right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com NYT terms and conditions apply. Hiring Indeed is all you need.

[Lori Leibovich]

Hi, this is Lori Leibovich, editor of well, at the New York Times. There's a lot of misinformation in the health and wellness space, but at the New York Times, no matter what the topic, we apply the same journalistic standards to everything we write about, whether it's the gut microbiome or how to get a good night's sleep, even if we're talking about something like is it bad for me to drink coffee on an empty stomach. Everything that our readers get when they dig into a well article has been vetted. Our reporters are consulting experts calling dozens of people doing the research. It can go on for months so that you can make great decisions about your physical health and your mental health. We take our reporting extra seriously because we know New York Times subscribers are counting on us. If you already subscribe, thank you. If you'd like to subscribe, go to nytimes.com subscribe.

[Jake Tapper]

It seems to me that in the campaign, the most consequential decision made after Joe Biden decides to run.

[Alex Thompson]

For reelection, which is a huge decision. But. Yes.

[Jake Tapper]

Although, as you say, doesn't even seem to have been a decision at all in the sense that there was a process conversation.

[Alex Thompson]

There was no process seems to have happened, but it was a decision. Yeah. By the president.

[Jake Tapper]

Is the decision to go for a June debate. Now, if you're not a presidential campaign nerd, that doesn't happen usually. We do not have June debates.

[Alex Thompson]

Yeah. We wait until after Labor Day. Yes.

[Jake Tapper]

How does the June debate happen? Because in a way, it's a show of confidence.

[Alex Thompson]

It's a complicated process and there are lots of different parts. One of the parts is that both Trump and Biden had lost all confidence in the Commission on Presidential Debates. So they had just, they had discarded it. So it was really for the networks, every network for himself or herself trying to get a debate. There was an eagerness by both Trump and Biden to start the presidential campaign. For Joe Biden's case, he and Donilon thought the sooner we make this a choice election, the better. Right now, it's a referendum on Biden. And as Biden would always say, don't compare me to the Almighty, compare me to the alternative. Biden thought the moment people realize that it's between me and Donald Trump. They will come back to me now. There were people internally who thought, no, we shouldn't do this. Steve Rushetty thought debating Trump just like sullied everybody involved in the process. He brings out the worst in everybody. The old saw about don't ever wrestle with the pig because you just get dirty and the pig likes it. And Anita Dunn initially and Jenna Malley Dillon, his campaign chair, didn't want Biden to debate Trump for any number of reasons. But then the HUR report dropped in which there were serious questions and a permission structure for folks in the media to talk about the aging issue. And then Anita Dunn thought, okay, we do have to do this. We have to show that he's okay and he can do this. And that's where the June debate came in. An eagerness by Biden to change the subject from himself to Donald Trump.

[Jake Tapper]

So on some level, doesn't the June debate imply this is not cover up, that they believed he could do this?

[Alex Thompson]

I would say it was malpractice by his people. And the degree to which they were not honest with themselves about Joe Biden's abilities and such is kind of striking. The evidence for the fact that it was a cover up is the fact that we were also shocked by what we saw on the debate stage on June 27, when in reality that was not a shock to people who had seen him like that behind the scenes.

[Jake Tapper]

You were right there. You're moderating this debate.

[Alex Thompson]

Yeah. Co moderating with Dana Bash. Yeah.

[Jake Tapper]

Tell me about your experience of it. Because on some level, I was a little bit shocked by everybody's shock.

[Alex Thompson]

Oh, really?

[Jake Tapper]

That's funny, I guess, because I had done this thing after I'd done these pieces and before I did these pieces where I went back through all of these speeches and looked at all these clips and came to the View. He really wasn't looking good quite often. But what's it like for you being there? You're co moderating that debate. It begins. Tell me about your experience that night.

[Alex Thompson]

Well, first, before it begins, he is late showing up. We're in Atlanta in a battleground state, Georgia. Biden won in 2020 and Trump won in 2016. And both campaigns and candidates had been offered walkthroughs. Neither of them show up on time, of course, but the time for them to show up was laughably early. It wasn't really necessary for them to show up as early as CNN asked them to be. But Donald Trump shows up. And, you know, whatever you think of Donald Trump, he's a pro. Which one's my camera? What if I want to ask a follow up? What if I want this? What do I do when Biden's talking? Is the camera on me? Et cetera, et cetera. Now I'm supposed to go out the debate starting at 9pm which by the way was another shocker to me. When I found out that they had agreed to do a 9pm debate for an hour and a half, I thought to myself, that's late for me. Like, how is it gonna be for Joe Biden? I mean, I understand Donald Trump runs on some energy force that I don't understand, but like, that's late. But okay, I guess they know what they're doing. I think there is a degree to which of I guess they know what they're doing infected the heads of so many of us. Covering him because why would you put him out there for an hour and a half debate at 9 o' clock at night when they could have agreed to a 7pm debate? But in any case, he walks out.

[Jake Tapper]

Well, he also, I think it's an important thing in their heads. As I understand it, they sort of see him as a clutch player. He gives us pretty excellent, at least for him at this period. State of the Union address in 2024. And he's vibrant and he's loud and his quiet voice is gone. And there's all this talk about do they have him on stimulants. But I think they had come to the view that Biden can perform in the clutch.

[Alex Thompson]

He's a gamer. That's what they say, he's a gamer. To look at the legend of Joe Biden and everything he has overcome and not realize that that infuses the man with a degree of not just the man, but the man and his family and his supporters with a sense of this guy rises to the occasion and it doesn't matter what fate throws at him and fate has thrown a lot of horrible things at him. He will rise. And his whole philosophy as he lays out in one of his books is get up. His dad used to say to him, get up. So yes, this idea that he's a gamer, this idea that he will rise, that yes, this has been a horrible month for him. He's traveled all over the place and his son was convicted in a court and he showed up to debate rehearsal, debate practice, unprepared and sick and needing to take naps. But he is going to rise to this moment. Okay, I get it. That's how they think about these things. And that's how Joe Biden thinks about these things. Because at 8:30, I'm supposed to be out on stage just sitting there, and they're doing lighting and all that stuff. And I can't go out there because Joe Biden has just shown up a half hour before the debate. He's supposed to have been there hours before. And why was he so late? Because he didn't think he needed to do it. He didn't think he needed to do a walkthrough, which is crazy. Every candidate does a walkthrough. Barack Obama did walkthroughs. Like you just do this. So he walks out, he hobbles out. You know, he does that shuffling thing, seeming really old. But I had seen him, so I was not surprised. He starts talking. He obviously has a cold. He sounds awful. His voice is already thinner and reedier than it had been. But now it's, you know, it's really bad. His first answer's whatever, it's fine, serviceable. But then he gets to that horrible answer where he completely loses his train of thought.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Eligible for what I've been able to do with the, with the COVID Excuse me, with dealing with everything we have to do with. Look, if we finally beat Medicare.

[Alex Thompson]

Thank you, President Biden, President Trump.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Well, he's right. He did beat Medicare. He beat it to death. And he's destroying Medicare.

[Alex Thompson]

And, and we have these iPads. And I wrote to the control room, holy smokes. And Danner writes to me on a piece of paper. He just lost the election.

[Jake Tapper]

It's one thing about this debate, and it was why his just complete absence of doing any serious extended oppositional interviews, just tough interviews. I don't mean like with Fox News, I mean, say with you, was, I think, worrying. You can talk about communication style, you can talk about how somebody comes off when they're communicating. But one thing communication is supposed to reveal is, is train of thought is how people are reasoning under pressure. And what I watched in some of the subsequent interviews, but very much in that debate, was somebody who, under pressure, was not reasoning well. You would not want this person in the meeting with Xi. You would not want this person exhausted after a couple nights of poor sleep and an international crisis. You wouldn't really want this person being the principal, structuring and deciding between competing alternatives in a hot meeting about immigration or inflation. I feel like this is where saying it's all communication, as they often did, really fell apart. Communication is like how you think, right? And he was not staying on normal tracks like his own train of thought was derailing.

[Alex Thompson]

There were people that we talked to who worked for Joe Biden. Okay, I'm not talking about Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham and I mean, who work for Joe Biden who watched that debate and thought, who is running the country? Because it's not that person. Now, that's not me saying that, that's them saying that. But I think it is a reasonable question. So I found that debate incredibly disturbing. And the degree to which the Democratic Party attempted to gaslight the country. And when I say Democratic Party, I mean mainly the White House, but also leaders of the Democratic Party attempted to gaslight the public about it immediately, as if like, oh, he had a cold. I've had colds. We've all had colds. This was not that. And I think one of the reasons why the Democratic Party's numbers are still so low is that they have not reckoned with the lies that they told about this. And these are lies. These are not lies about tariffs. These are not lies about economic policy or things that I don't fully understand as the average voter. These are lies about things that we all perfectly understand. Aging, colds, being addled, not being at your best. I mean, these are things that we all have access to.

[Jake Tapper]

So I talked to a lot of members of Congress in that period between the debate and Biden stepping aside. And I'd watch him go through this thing where they would talk me through every meeting basically they had had with him in the past year or two. And those meetings, they began to realize, had become more seldom than they had been before. Yeah, but there'd be the meeting where he was great.

[Alex Thompson]

Yeah, 2021, 2022, or even there were.

[Jake Tapper]

Meetings like that in 2023, and even 2024, people still had good experiences with him in those years. And there would sometimes be the memory of something they had sort of pushed aside where they thought he was tired or. Or they thought he was distracted. I often heard people say they often thought he was distracted by some other matter. Which when it's the President is not a crazy thing to imagine that their mind is on some terrible crisis and that we all have a bunch of data points in our head about other people and we have an image of them, and then we have also the image of them. It is convenient for us to believe. And it can take a lot to push us off of that. But then when you get pushed, you sort of reconstruct a new story out of things you had been downplaying. How much do you Think that was happening a lot.

[Alex Thompson]

And I think that especially these are political animals and they were terrified of Donald Trump. And I think that after it became clear that Donald Trump was going to be the nominee, a lot of people said, well, this is what we got. And this is the only person who's ever beaten Donald Trump. So this is what we got to do. And a lot of members of Congress who saw things and wanted to speak up were told, what do you want? Donald Trump? This is what you want. They were called a traitor.

[Jake Tapper]

I want you to be more specific because that isn't what they were told. In a way they were told, at least in my experience, they were told, do you want Kamala Harris?

[Alex Thompson]

Oh, well, that was another argument.

[Jake Tapper]

That was the actual, it seemed to me, first line of defense.

[Alex Thompson]

Sure, absolutely. The Kamala defense, which is, if Joe Biden doesn't do it, do you want his vice president, who is even less popular than him, to be the nominee? That's crazy. So yes, she was their line of defense. And by the way, this drove David Plouffe insane. David Plouffe, of course, Barack Obama's incredibly successful 2008 campaign manager, served as a senior advisor to Obama and then basically retired from politics in 2012 until he was called back to help Kamala Harris run for President in July 2024. This drove Plouff crazy. Cuz Plouff's whole argument was, you picked her. You picked her to be the vice president. If you didn't have confidence in her, you shouldn't have picked her. And he knows what he's talking about because he and Axelrod helped pick Biden for Obama.

[Jake Tapper]

Well, this was a thing that drove me completely crazy in that post debate period. The Biden team's response, Joe Biden's response when he called in to say Morning Joe was the elites are trying to push me out of the race.

[Unnamed Speaker]

I'm getting so frustrated by the elites now. I'm not talking about you guys, but about the elites in the party who they know so much more. But then of these guys, don't think I should let them run again against me. Go ahead, announce the president, challenge me at the convention.

[Jake Tapper]

But the elites, myself very much included with my stuff in February of that year, were late. If you looked at polling going back years at that point, super majorities of the country believed he was too old to run again. This had been true in 2022. It was something that Biden himself had to Finesse in the 2020 race when he didn't quite promise to be A one term president said things that sounded like that, that he was going to be a transitional figure. But the public had already come to this conclusion long ago. And you could see it, it was in every poll forever. It was the Democratic Party that was late to give it credence. Put aside whether or not you thought the issue was that he could or could not perform the role of the presidency. The public was saying, we don't want this guy. We don't think he should continue being president. And then the party in the ways that parties do, closes ranks around him. Nobody of any national profile will dare run against him in the 2023. 2020 primary.

[Alex Thompson]

Primary. Even though people are trying to, they're trying to get like Bill Daley and others. Bill Daley, Obama's former chief of staff and others are trying to get Pritzker.

[Jake Tapper]

Whitmer, Dean Phillips is attacked. There's efforts to allow him on the ballot in certain states, Wiscon in Wisconsin. But I think there's a reason that you don't get a big primary that year. I actually had been planning to write right after the midterm election. Democrats need a primary even just to see if Biden is capable of running again. You just can't give this to him without testing his capability to campaign. But Democrats were so thrilled with how they gained some ground in the Senate in 2022. They held down losses in the House. And even though Biden hadn't been in any super significant way out there on the campaign trail, even though his approval rating was the main thing the Democrats had to get over, the sense was, oh, Biden did it again. He was underestimated by the media again. He was underestimated by the politicos again. And here he is and he led his Democratic Party to a much better midterm result than Barack Obama did in 2010, than Bill Clinton did in 1994.

[Alex Thompson]

Yep. That's what all the, that's what Richetti and Donilon would tell everybody.

[Jake Tapper]

And you just felt like all the energy out of the possibility of anybody primaring him, who is a sort of serious national figure in the party drain.

[Alex Thompson]

Right.

[Jake Tapper]

It was just gone.

[Alex Thompson]

Yeah. And I would add on the midterms, there is a lot of evidence that they went the way they went despite Biden, not because of Biden, that the two main things that Democrats had going for them were a, the Dobbs decision, the overturning of Roe v. Wade, which resulted in a lot of single issue voters very mobilized by the abortion rights issue. And then the other thing is the Republicans had less than stellar Senate candidates, Blake Masters, Herschel Walker, and in some cases, House nominees, too. And that's really one of the reasons why I think that midterm went the way it did.

[Jake Tapper]

This is one of my sliding doors moments in recent American politics. Imagine the red wave had hit. The Democrats get wiped out in the House, they get wiped out in the Senate. Biden does not look like some uncanny political genius. And also the party has to take his unpopularity seriously. So Biden is unpopular by this point. And I'm talking to his people, the same people you're talking about here after the election and asking them, okay, well, what are you taking from this? What's your read of this? And they are telling me directly that this proves that presidential approval has decoupled from election results. That the fact that Biden is low 40s, high 30s. That in this era of highly negative polarization with a Democratic Party that's highly committed to beating Donald Trump to restoring abortion rights, the fact that Biden is unpopular. Well, you just saw the midterms. Unpopularity doesn't tell you that much about how the election is going to turn out. And so there also isn't then a need to address his unpopularity, to do a kind of big center pivot in the way that Bill Clinton did after 94, in the way that Barack Obama did after 2010, a thing that annoyed liberals in both cases, but was part of them confronting the fact that voters did not seem to be buying what they were selling. That also feels like it was very, very significant.

[Alex Thompson]

Yeah, absolutely. First of all, do all your listeners know this 1990s Gwyneth Paltrow movie, Sliding Doors? Are they all familiar with it?

[Jake Tapper]

You can tell them about it.

[Alex Thompson]

Well, it's just a question about, like, she walks out of a subway and she lives one life and she stays in the subway, she lives another. It's a great movie, but I just wanted to make sure. I similarly date myself with Gen X references, and my staff is so much younger than me, they look at me blankly all the time.

[Jake Tapper]

You know, the truth is, I don't think I've ever seen the movie.

[Alex Thompson]

I don't think I have either.

[Jake Tapper]

It's just a cultural process.

[Alex Thompson]

Even though I said it's a great movie. Yeah. So it's.

[Jake Tapper]

And you can't trust the media, Jake.

[Alex Thompson]

By reputation. It's a great movie. Let me just say. Let me just say by reputation. And it's great enough that Ezra's referencing it in 2025. Yeah, I think that that is very wise. I also would say that Mike Donelan, who came up as a pollster, it is one of the most interesting things about him and his character that so much of what he does is based on gut and not data. You know, battle for a soul of America. That's gut. The numbers that support that. That was a strong argument. Are questionable. The decoupling of the presidency from midterms, I mean, there's no actual data to back up these arguments, but it's what they think. It's how they convince themselves of these arguments. He's the only one that ever beat Trump. Okay, that's true, but that doesn't mean.

[Jake Tapper]

There'S been only two general elections. Donald Trump is running at this point.

[Alex Thompson]

Yeah. I mean, and Hillary won the popular vote. That one was kind of a fluke.

[Jake Tapper]

It created this sort of distance that opened up, I think, between Democratic Party elites in the country where their view, the Democratic Party was that Biden was historically successful. And under any normal measure, one, he deserves to run for reelection and win it. But two, who are you to question him when he has been so successful? On the other hand, the country didn't feel he was being that successful. He was unpopular. People run half with his administration. They were not feeling the Bidenomics. They did not feel the world was a more stable and orderly place. And I think there's this way in which the Democratic Party just kind of got a little bit into an insular conversation with itself. Why did that happen?

[Alex Thompson]

I mean, I think your question answers itself, which is the Democratic Party was talking to itself. I would without question argue that the CHIPS act and the infrastructure bill are huge achievements. There's no question. But why did the American people not know that? Was it because you weren't talking about it? No. Was it because I wasn't talking about it? No, I was talking about it. There's nothing that Washington media loves more than bipartisan legislation passing. I mean, that is just like. That is the wet dream of every Reporter in Washington, D.C. it's bipartisan and it passed. Therefore, it must be good. But in this case, investing in infrastructure in this country is a good thing because our infrastructure is so horrible. So why weren't the American people sold? I would argue that it was his cluelessness on the inflation people were feeling and how much of that is age and how much of that is just his stubbornness? And beyond that, his inability to communicate.

[Jake Tapper]

And so then, having not been given a choice in the primary, the party then goes and says, see, the Democratic voters chose Joe Biden Right. And now you'd be betraying them.

[Alex Thompson]

Yeah.

[Jake Tapper]

Put aside everything else. This is just a party that is not in this period. Listening.

[Advertiser]

You just realized your business needed to hire someone yesterday. How can you find amazing candidates fast? Easy. Just use Indeed. Join the 3.5 million employers worldwide that use Indeed to hire great talent fast. There's no need to wait any longer. Speed up your hiring right now with Indeed and listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsor job credit. To get your jobs more visibility@ Indeed.com NYT just go to Indeed.com NYT right. And support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com NYT terms and conditions apply. Hiring Indeed is all you need.

[Alex Thompson]

USAA knows dynamic duos can save the day like superheroes and sidekicks or auto and home insurance. With USAA you can bundle your auto and home and save up to 10%. Tap the banner to learn more and get a'@usaa.com bundle restrict.

[Jake Tapper]

In your reporting what actually mattered? What took Joe Biden from the defiant Joe Biden that we heard on Morning Joe saying that the elites are trying to push him out. That Biden who is sending a letter basically threatening Democratic members of Congress to the Biden very shortly thereafter, who leaves the race. What pushes him to where so many people said he couldn't be pushed?

[Alex Thompson]

I would say that there are two reasons. One, the lack of support among senators meant a lot to him. And there is a meeting that the Senate only gets. Well, they want one with Biden, but they don't get it. And they only get one with leaders of his campaign in the White House.

[Jake Tapper]

When that was very telling, by the way, when they wouldn't send Biden to that meeting.

[Alex Thompson]

Yeah, of course. Basically it comes down TO There are five senators in a, I think it's a 51 member Senate Democratic caucus. There are only five who are standing with Biden and there are a lot of Democrats who are running for reelection who are on the bubble, who their jobs are really at risk. And then I think he kept on being told the polls say you can't win, but Biden kept saying that's not what my guys say. And he's not talking about his pollsters, but he's talking about his pollsters polls as described to him by Donilon and Rashetti, who constantly give this unrealistically optimistic view of the polling. I mean, it would have been a wipeout without question.

[Jake Tapper]

One of the things in this period when they're saying, look, he's still only three or four points behind Donald Trump. We can make it up. At that point, you had a history of him just not being able to make it up. You come out for the Robert Herr press conference, you flub the countries, you fail at the debate, you could have had more things happen. This was, to me, the crazy risk that I was watching a lot of Democrats, at least publicly say they were willing to take that this guy had not been a gametime player for a long time, with the exception of one scripted State of the Union. The idea that you're gonna get through a tough campaign where you had to make up ground, and this guy can't even do interviews.

[Alex Thompson]

The fundamental problem, the pollsters, ultimately, they were supposed to have a meeting with Biden, and then that got canceled. So they had a meeting with the politburo, a zoom meeting. And basically what they say is the fundamental reason why you're behind cannot be changed. The American people have concluded that you are too old and cannot do the job. And you are not capable of disproving that to them. And at this point, you don't have to be a political science major or highly paid operative to say, okay, he had a bad debate. Go out there, do 10 tough interviews and five town halls and settle this issue. I mean, everybody knows that. And he couldn't do it. And ultimately, the Democrats who were seeing him, giving him the benefit of the doubt, Chuck Schumer, others come to that conclusion. He can't do it. But then the other thing, the last thing that I think was decisive. Mignon Moore was in charge of the 2024 Democratic convention. Longtime Democratic operative, very respected in this town. When she got the job, she set up a thing, an unofficial group called the what if Committee. And the what if Committee was there to talk about, well, what if Biden drops out? What if the protests are so bad they shut down Chicago? Just any possible thing. One of the reasons why it wasn't as difficult in three and a half weeks, I think it was between Biden dropping out and the convention. Why it wasn't as difficult to do is because Mignon Moore had decided they were gonna have decorations in as vanilla a flavor as possible. So that if somebody else's name need to be in there, you know, it wasn't like. It wasn't like everything was in the shape of Delaware, let's put it that way. The what if Committee was in touch with all the delegates, and they were monitoring everything. And eventually, before the weekend, were Rashetty and Biden and Donil in talk and that Sunday, the 21st of July, when Biden announces he's not running anymore, the what if? Committee conveys to the Politburo, you can win at the convention, but it will be really ugly. They were losing delegates to that degree. The delegates were losing confidence in the President. They were with him 100%. But after three weeks of torture, they were out. Not all of them, but enough of them that it would have been an ugly, ugly fight, and Biden would have won, but it would have ripped the party apart. So when Biden talks about, like, he dropped out because he didn't want to have a divided party, he means it quite literally. He doesn't mean, like, emotionally undivided party. He means an ugly floor fight on the convention floor in Chicago. And it would have been nasty. And there was always the chance he would have lost. But even if he'd won, it would have been really ugly. And I think Donilon and Rachetti and Biden just ultimately concluded like, these bastards are chasing you out.

[Jake Tapper]

I want to just talk through some.

[Ezra Klein]

Of the lessons of all this.

[Jake Tapper]

One that has been on my mind is, and I wonder how much you have this experience, how much in the media, we prize inside information, and often the truth is just right in front of you. If you were asking people around Biden in 2023 and 2024, how good is he, how capable is he? You are being told, broadly speaking, he's doing great. You have a fascinating little vignette about his press people pulling members of the administration onto these phone calls to say things that they may not even believe. If you were just watching him at his public appearances, you were getting a more accurate presentation. How do you think about that? How that should make us think about the balance between. It sure seems very official when you get an anonymous senior administration source in a story. But just watch these guys and listen to them. What they do in public is what tells you what's true.

[Alex Thompson]

I think that's right. We have a senior Democrat in the book, in the first chapter, who talks about seeing what you're talking about, his inability to communicate in a way that you would want for a president. And he would call inside people, Donilon, et cetera, and they would all say, he's fine, he's fine, he's fine. And then after Biden dropped out, this Democrat went to the White House and sat down with Joe and Jill Biden, the First lady, and the President of the United States, behind closed doors, just the three people. And this Democrat told us he wasn't fucking Fine. Jill had to complete his sentences. He was losing his train of thought. He wasn't fucking fine. So, I mean, I think one of the things that. But there are a lot of failures in this book and certainly the news media, it's hard to argue that we were on top of this. Even people like you and me who were questioning this publicly, it's hard to argue that any of us in retrospect, cover this sufficiently.

[Jake Tapper]

Although there was, I want to give credit to a bunch of my newsroom colleagues here and Alex and others. There were a bunch of stories. There were great Times stories, great Wall Street Journal stories. Stories. It was harder to get people to say anything.

[Alex Thompson]

That's the point.

[Jake Tapper]

I mean, you need evidence for stories. But we were trying to crack this.

[Alex Thompson]

But that's my point, is if a president's inner circle is willing to lie, and if they don't even think they're lying, that's an incredibly dangerous thing. I wish I had, like, a solution here. The three things we need to do, and then this will never happen again. One of the things that we talk about in the book, and we have Jonathan Reiner, a doctor at GW who's an advisor to the White House Medical office, who says that he thinks the White House medical reports should be affirmed under threat of perjury and given to Congress every year. So there could be no lying or dissembling. But beyond that, what can we do? I don't know.

[Jake Tapper]

But I think there are lessons from this that are broader even than that. And honestly, to me, they reflect Trump as well as Biden. I think modern political parties have become very personality driven. They have leaders, and the structure of them is to really fall in behind the leader. That was true to some degree in the Democratic Party. It's true incredibly strongly in the Republican Party. I feel like a big difference Even between Trump 1 and Trump 2 is that in Trump 1, his own staff was willing to tell people all the time that this guy was wrong. He was making crazy arguments. They had to restrain him. Now they see him as kissed by destiny and how dare you question the sun God? And I think that recognizing as a structural mode of failure that parties have a lot of trouble saying what is just obvious to everybody in front of them is a thing to grapple with. Because I feel like Democrats would not admit what just everybody knew about Joe Biden. And now I'm watching Republicans not admit that what everybody's always knew about Donald Trump, that he's erratic, he's all over the place, that the stuff he says often doesn't make sense that he's surrounded by yes men and sycophants, that the parties have just become too weak. They can be so easily taken over by whoever leads them.

[Alex Thompson]

Yeah. It's not just the parties though, right? It's all the institutions that are supposed to structurally check. Any leader to one degree or another failed. There are any number of moments that one could point to of interviews or weird moments where let's say Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer should have marched up to the White House and said, what the fuck is this? What is going on? And they didn't. So it was on them. But then also, like donors should have been able to look at Biden any one of these moments and say, what's going on here? But the modern presidency, in addition to the weakening of the party, I mean, I'm sure you know the name of the Democratic National Committee chairman during the Biden years, but I bet 99 out of 100 of your incredibly smart listeners do not. It was Jamie Harrison from South Carolina. And we have a vignette where Biden doesn't even know Jamie Harrison's name.

[Jake Tapper]

Although you know what disturbs me so much about that vignette? There was no stronger Biden defender in this period than Harrison still to this day saying, you know, what you do is you protect your quarterback from getting sacked. Right. Treating this as if the question is loyalty as opposed to the country itself. I thought Jaime Harrison, like covered himself in dishonor in this.

[Alex Thompson]

Harrison is still out there saying that the mistake was having Biden step down from the ticket.

[Jake Tapper]

That's a little bit what I mean when I talk about this is a thing people have to begin thinking about in the structures of their parties. I mean, look, Lara Trump was co chair of the rnc. I mean, I think you're right to say Congress is probably where authority to check things like this should lie and people need to be able to speak a bit more freely. But when you look back at just what people were willing to explain away, to cover up, to talk about this as if the point of politics is your loyalty to the politician and not what the country needs from them. The number of Democrats who made arguments like Joe Biden has had our back. Now we have to have his.

[Alex Thompson]

I know, what the hell does that even mean?

[Jake Tapper]

The point of the party is to come up with a candidate who is the best person to lead the country. And if you're a Democrat, keep the country out of Donald Trump's hands. This is not some Kind of interpersonal payback for years of friendship with Joe Biden or any other president.

[Alex Thompson]

100%. I keep thinking about the Clooney fundraiser, which is in June, and Biden shows up, and the behind the scenes, behind the stage. Biden is shocking to George Clooney, to Barack Obama, to a whole bunch of people. The only one who said anything was George Clooney. But this is a room full of people who saw this. Barack Obama is one of them. I'm not blaming Barack Obama, but institutionally, there's so much deference given to a president, even by a former president, I don't think it's healthy for this country. So you're talking about the weakness of the parties, and I agree. I also think that the strength of the presidency in this regard is a problem.

[Jake Tapper]

Well, in a way, no one is saying anything because no one is saying anything. It's such an obvious dynamic that it barely bears pointing out. But people look to each other to see what is safe to say. And if you watch Dean Phillips get defenestrated by the party, if it seems clear that you'll be profoundly on the outs, and if you don't think you saying anything will do anything, even people who would privately tell me they understood how bad this problem was, what kept them from saying anything, on some level, in addition to careerism, was fatalism. Nothing's gonna change. Joe Biden's not stepping aside. It's impossible. So to say anything about it is simply to weaken him against Donald Trump. To admit what is in front of your face is to empower the other side. And that became a very powerful enforcement mechanism inside the party.

[Alex Thompson]

Right. And in this time of silos and social media, the fear of being labeled oh, Maga, Ezra or whatever, when Annie and Siobhan, the Great Wall Street Journal reporters, put out their piece about Biden behind the scenes, the degree to which Dean Phillips was defenestrated, Annie and Siobhan got kneecapped. I'm sure it wasn't pleasant when you did your things. I know it wasn't pleasant when I did mine. Alex, the same.

[Jake Tapper]

No. You felt like you were destroying all of your relationships with the White House all at once.

[Alex Thompson]

Yeah, and not just the White House, but the Democratic Party.

[Jake Tapper]

And I'm not saying it was literally that bad, but, I mean, I did. I was fairly public on this. And it was a bigger firestorm of pushback coming from, I would say, like, privately, a lot of people said, oh, you're right. In the email inbox, like, just normal people, like oh, thank God, somebody is saying something. But then people I thought of as sort of friends who were like liberally aligned pundits or people in politics proper, in public, even people I knew who believed this stuff in private were absolutely flaying me. And that was to me the most shocking part. Having people who I'd had a version of this conversation with in private then slam me in public when I said it publicly.

[Alex Thompson]

There is a Democratic operative in our book who defended Biden publicly, who says to us on background that Biden stole an election from the Democratic Party and from the American people. This person has only publicly said positive things about Joe Biden. I mean, this is where we are. We're truth telling of any sort of because we're so tribal and in camps is legitimately a career ender or at least a risk. Robert Hur could not find work after being special counsel. He finally did months later, but the word went out, don't hire him. I mean, it's nasty. Look, the same thing is going on now in terms of anybody questioning Trump, although it's more policy oriented, at least at this stage, but none of it's healthy for a republic to be able to. And I don't think, by the way, that it's like this in other democracies. I think there's much more room for debate in other democracies, whether England or France. I mean, it seems like they have more room for inter party criticism or even the notion that journalists or commentators like, are allowed to say things without like not being able to feed their families.

[Jake Tapper]

Well, it also reflects different political systems. So in a lot of the systems they're parliamentary and the party leader is chosen by the party elites and the people in Parliament. And if the person loses the confidence of his supporters or her supporters, they're out and they get, I mean we just have watched the UK go through a bunch of different party leaders in both parties in the last couple of years. And I think here the division between we choose with primaries, which is not how we've done it for most of American history. This is sort of one of the whole arguments about open conventions that like we actually did used to pick people at conventions. It's not a completely unknown thing to do. It's still how the convention is structured.

[Alex Thompson]

Yeah, but it was the backroom people.

[Jake Tapper]

Right, but that's what I mean that I think one reason in some other countries it's easier to deal with these problems if you believe it is, is it more power is still in the back room. I think we have both quite irresponsible political elites in this country, but we also have quite weak ones. And I think those two things exist in relationship to each other. That elite failures are most obvious when elite power is most degraded. I don't think elites were some grand class of hyper competent guardians of the public trust in the 1950s or the 1940s or the 1930s. But among other things, they had more privacy and they had more power.

[Alex Thompson]

The closest we got to that in the last few decades was in 2020 when the elites got involved because they feared a Bernie Sanders nomination and rallied around Joe Biden. And they didn't do it because they liked Joe Biden. They did it because they thought Joe Biden could beat Bernie and then Trump. And that was just strictly on the numbers. Who can win College educated white voters in the suburbs of Philly and also black voters in South Carolina. And there was only one person who was running who could do that, and it was Biden. And we'll never know probably the extent to which Barack Obama and others called Buttigieg and Klobuchar and Booker and Warren and all the others and encouraged them to drop out and get behind Biden. But it did happen. And that's the closest we've gotten to a smoke filled room in my lifetime.

[Jake Tapper]

I mean, I give the Democratic Party some credit here. It did in the end happen in 2024. It happened too late. But the party did something very unusual and pushed him off the ticket, did persuade him not to run.

[Alex Thompson]

Well, it's like what Churchill said about the United States. You can always count on them to do the right thing after they've exhausted every other possible option.

[Jake Tapper]

I think it's a place to end. And always our final question, what are three books you'd recommend to the audience?

[Alex Thompson]

Oh, such a great question. I assume abundance is implied. I am reading right now and this is a fun diversion if you're like me and you spend too much time lying in bed doom scrolling. Susan Morrison has a book called Lorne, which is about Lorne Michaels and the history of Saturday Live, which is great. There's a book called Hitler's People, I think it's called by Richard Evans, which is about how it came to be that the Holocaust happened in Germany. And it's kind of like a. If anybody out there read Goldhagen's Hitler's Willing Executioners, which is very damning of the German people. It's kind of building on that scholarship, like what is it about Germany that this happened there? And then just because I am also a fan of graphic novels. I will say that there is a graphic novel that is written by Andy Samberg and some others with him called the Holy Roller which is about a Jewish bowling Ohio superhero that I have started and is enjoyable and weird. And so those are my three.

[Jake Tapper]

Jake Tapper thank you very much.

[Alex Thompson]

Thank you. What a pleasure.

[Ezra Klein]

This episode of the Ezra Klein show is produced by Elias Isquith, Fact checking by Kelsey Kudak, our senior engineer as Jeff Geld with additional mixing by Amin Sahota. Our executive producer is Claire Gordon. The show's production team also includes Marie Cassillon, Annie Galvin, Michelle Harris, Rowland Hu, Marina King, Jan Kobel, Kristin lin and Jack McCordick. We have original music by Pat McCusker, audience strategy by Christina Samielewski and Shannon Busta. The director of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie Rose Strasser.

[Advertiser]

You just realized your business needed to hire someone yesterday. How can you find amazing candidates fast? Easy. Just use Indeed. Join the 3.5 million employers worldwide that use Indeed to hire great talent fast. There's no need to wait any longer. Speed up your hiring right now with Indeed and listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsor job credit. To get your jobs more visibility@ Indeed.com NYT just go to Indeed.com NYT right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com NYT terms and conditions apply. Hiring Indeed is all you need.