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- [00:01]
A
Are you an avid reader of Persuasion? Do you want to work with me? Do you want to help push Forward an ambitious magazine defending the values of a free society, defending philosophically liberal values at a time when they are under attack from many corners? Do you want to join an organization in startup mode that is trying to do a lot of interesting things to reach a lot of people and to build a more vibrant community of people who share these ideals around the world? Well, in that case, there is a big opportunity for you. After five years at the organization, our founding executive director is moving on to greener and better pastures. He has decided, perhaps oddly, to become a lawyer. Best of luck to him. But that means that we need somebody to fill his big shoes. So if you think that might be you, please go to persuasion.community p jobs and fill out a simple application that is persuasion.community p jobs. Please consider applying for this job if it's appropriate to you, or telling your smartest, most interesting, most driven, most entrepreneurial, most collegial friends about it.
- [01:32]
B
Biden, like a lot of old people, he had good hours and bad hours, good days and bad days. And you know, they were clearly managing him in a way to try to make sure when he was in public and big stakes like at the State of the Union just a few months before the debate, that he was at his best. But if you see him so often, like the first lady did, this is how someone described it to me at the time. If you see him so regularly and you think there's even a 10% chance that he is going to act that way on the debate stage, if you love him, how do you let him go out on that stage? And now the good fight with Yasha Monk.
- [02:17]
A
Do you still remember where you were on June 27, 2024, when Joe Biden debated Donald Trump? I certainly do. I had been worried about Joe Biden's mental acuity for a number of years. I'd written about this in the pages of Persuasion as early as 2022, and even so, I was flabbergasted to see how evidently Joe Biden had declined in the previous months and years. The story of his mental decline, of how an inner circle of loyalists hid that fact from much of the world, stopped access even to senior Democratic politicians who did not see Joe Biden for a year, for a year and a half, until the moment of that debate. The story of how all of this led to political disaster for the Democrats and ultimately landed Donald Trump in the White House. And the questions about what all of this means for trust in journalism, in establishment institutions, in the Democratic Party is, I think, one that we need to revisit, even as a lot of other very scary, very bad things are happening in the White House right now. And of course, the best person to talk about these questions with is Alex Thompson, a national political correspondent at Axios who has just published with Jake Tapper a book called Original Sin, President Biden's Decline, Its Cover Up Is and His Disastrous Choice to run again. In this conversation we talked about who knew what and what the motivations were. To what extent were people lying to themselves, deluding themselves, and to what extent were they consciously lying to the American people. We talked about many of the most interesting elements of this story, like the really unconscionable sliming of of Robert Herr, the special counsel who said publicly that in the opposition he took from Joe Biden, he had not seemed to be very mentally acute and was smeared as a Republican henchman as a result. We tried to delve into the motivations of Hunter Biden and of Jill Biden, why it is that they wanted their beloved family member to run again when he was clearly in cognitive decline. And finally, after the paywall reserved for paying subscribers, we talked about what happened in the weeks and months after that debate, how Kamala Harris came to be the nominee, and why it is that she never had the courage to distance herself in any way from Joe Biden's presidency and record. Why it is too that she was not able to answer questions about what her role in the COVID up of Biden's mental state had been. To listen to that part of the conversation, please go to jaschamonk.substack.com thegoodfight and become a paying subscriber for 25% off. That means that supporting this podcast and getting all of my writing on substack will cost you just about a dollar a week and will earn you my deep gratitude. That's yashamonk.substack.com thegood fight. Alex Thompson, welcome to podcast.
- [05:59]
B
Thank you so much for having me.
- [06:01]
A
I'm really looking forward to this conversation because I have many questions that I want answered, many of which are answered in your excellent book, but some of which are not. The first thing I want to ask is you're somebody who is reporting on politics very closely over the last years. What was the first moment when you grew to be concerned about Joe Biden's mental state?
- [06:22]
B
It was late 2021 and it was because and I wrote a story about it at the time that Joe Biden, people who, you know, Joe Biden has been Washington since 1973. And he was the easiest quote in town for many of those decades, to the point that reporters, when they would see Joe Biden, they would walk the other way because they knew that if they asked him a question, he would be talk for 45 minutes. And yet by the end of his first year as president, he had given fewer interviews, done fewer press conferences than any president of the modern era in many, many, many decades. And I thought that was it. It was more observational than investigative. But it was this really stunning. I think it was like by the end of the first year, he'd done just like around a dozen, maybe a little over a dozen interviews with reporters. And ultimately that would actually grow out like he is the first president maybe ever, but certainly in decades to never have done a sit down interview with reporters at the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, or even Reuters. And that, to me, was telling that they were protecting him. And then I remember still, it was this, I think, offhand moment when Press Secretary Jen Psaki mentioned in a podcast with former Obama aide David Axelrod. So I think she maybe let her guard down where she said that often they counseled him not to answer reporters questions. And I thought, okay, that's interesting. What, what shifted? So that was like, you know, one of the first stories. Clearly they saw it as a political issue. And I wrote about that a bunch, but when I actually started being like, huh, maybe like something's actually off, that this isn't just like a political strategy, because the Biden team would be like, you know, this is actually a new media strategy that, that you don't understand, you idiot.
- [08:37]
A
Don't understand the strategy of how modern technology requires you to never speak to the press in an unguarded way, ever.
- [08:46]
B
Exactly. Literally. That was their argument.
- [08:48]
A
That's how Donald Trump made it so big and why Joe Rogan is the biggest podcaster in the country.
- [08:53]
B
They were like, basically like, you don't understand that. You don't matter anymore. That was their argument.
- [08:59]
A
Which would be fair if instead of talking to Axios and cnn, they were talking to a lot of new media outlets.
- [09:06]
B
100%. Does the new York Times and ABC News matters as much as it did 30 years ago? No, it doesn't. But does it? But it wasn't like they were having him do a podcast, like three podcasts a day, either. They would occasionally have him do one to sort of sell this narrative that it was all Part of a strategy. A strategy. But. And the reality was it was because he was, he had limitations now. He could not do what he used to do. And then the obviously the other, it vacillated between this is a new media strategy or you know, he has a stutter, you know, and it's a lifelong stutter. They're sort of like sort of using basically insinuating your ableist. If you are like asking questions about this and that. Those were sort of their two main go to's. I'd say the second moment when I became concern and this was more investigative was basically in early 2023, I think, as not the inner, inner circle, but a few rung like the rungs right below it. They realized that Joe Biden was actually going to do this, that Joe Biden was going to run again. And they became concerned. And that's when the first real leaks to me started coming. Because they had been trying. They saw that like it was very difficult both publicly and privately to schedule any events outside around 10 to 4. And they were like. And it wasn't a strategy, it was his energy. And they were like these people, I still think in their heads they were like he can still be president, but like they did not believe they had, or at least they had serious concerns about him being president until January of 2029 and his ability to run really do a reelection campaign, which is exhausting. And so those were the two moments that. And now I'm giving you sort of a Joe Biden esque long answer.
- [11:10]
A
You sound a little more coherent. Don't worry. So you did write about this early on. I guess what strikes me about this whole story is the vast distance between how most voters felt and, and how insiders perceived the situation. Which is to say that even by the time that Joe Biden was running For President in 2020, it was quite obvious from his performance in debates, from his appearances on Zoom, that he wasn't the same man as he had been 20 or 10 or even four years earlier. Now that didn't mean by that point it was in any way obvious that he had very strong form of mental decline. I'm not sure that he did in 2020, but. But I think a lot of people already felt that there had been a change. By the time it was a year or two later, it had changed drastically. I remember sitting in an audience at the Aspen Ideas Festival, of all things, in what would have been the summer of perhaps 2022, and Karl Rove asking the audience, do you want Joe Biden to run. Do you like Joe Biden? Nearly all hands went up. Do you think he's doing a decent job? A lot of hands. Do you think that he's too old? Nearly all hands went up. Do you want him to run again? Nearly no hands went up. Even an audience that was very well disposed towards him had a visceral sense by at least the summer of 2022 that he just didn't have it in him for another four years and that he had whatever medical term you want to put on it and not put on it, aged in ways that made it very hard for him to be president or to continue, certainly to president for another four years. And yet sort of, the more you ascended the scale of access and the scale of prestige, the less people seemed to be talking and writing about that. You went to your local Democratic Party neighborhood association. People probably talked about it quite openly. You had a lunch with a bunch of New York Times writers. People probably didn't talk about it, or at least they. And the same within the Democratic Party. So what is it? Why did that cognitive distance emerge between ordinary people who had quite limited evidence to go on, but who largely, I think, called it correctly, and people who had more access, more ability to ask people about what was going on, more ability to be exposed to him, who somehow seem to have realized this later on?
- [13:42]
B
That's such a great question. I'm going to sort of word vomit at you because I have a few different thoughts because I saw the exact same thing in that. I remember, you know, when the Wall Street Journal published their big story and people forget, like, their big story about Biden's age. It was like three weeks before the debate and the entire, not only the entire Democratic Party publicly attacked them, but like a lot of, like, fellow reporters also, like through shade, publicly and privately. And I remember the headline on that story is something like, behind closed doors, Biden shows signs of slipping. And my reaction was like, behind closed doors. You know, And I remember, I remember saying that to other reporters. And like, I saw exactly what you're describing. Like this, like, discomfort. Like, we don't talk about that. Like what, you know, there was like, sort of embarrassment, you know, I guess I think part of it, you know, is. And I think reporters are defensive and in denial about some of this is like, it's the access game, right? Like, the closer you get to access, the more you are willing to, like, defend the people that are giving you that access or believe them. Also because they, like everyone in the Biden White House that had regular Access to him was not telling the truth. And I don't use, I intentionally don't use the word lie because I do sort of believe it's like getting into motives that you can't know. Was it self delusion? Was it like impersonal and intentional covering up? I do think it was. Regardless, I think it's fair to call it deception, even if they, given that the ways that they orchestrated him to not make him look old. I also think there is an old expression. I think it's attributed to former Senator Gary Hart, Democratic senator from Colorado, but I'm sure other people have said versions of it, which is that Washington is always the last to get the news and that voters and my entire time in Washington since 2013 has proven that to be true over and over again. And this is just like the latest example of it. Right? And the increasing, you know, as local news dies, as, like national media becomes increasingly concentrated in D.C. and New York, it does seem in some ways that the disconnect grows. But even so, even with voters obviously very concerned, I do think that the. Everyone saw that he was in decline. The extent of the decline, I do think, was fairly well hidden. If you read the book, the. The Biden that we saw on the debate stage, that was not even, that was not the first time he acted like that behind closed doors. And it was even close to the first time he acted actually like that behind closed doors. And he had moments that were similar. But I think the fact that it was still, even with voters speaking very clearly, I still think the extent of the decline was shocking.
- [17:14]
A
Well, one of the things that I found really striking in the book, which I hadn't quite understood about the story before reading it, was how few people had any kind of access to Joe Biden himself in the last two or so years of his presidency. It was obvious that the White House was limiting occasions on which Biden would appear in public. It was obvious that he wasn't performing great on those, but many of those were so scripted that beyond having just a very clear gut reaction that this is not the Joe Biden we'd seen in the past, it was hard to assess until the debate the extent of his public decline. But I guess one thing that you were thinking in the background, and I was early on the record to say that Biden should not run again and that there's very obvious problems with his mental state. But I probably underestimated the extent of a problem in part because you sort of assume, well, behind closed doors he must be meeting with all of these people. And it's interesting, even if you didn't want to write about the extent of his mental decline, that there were so few stories in the media about the average Democratic senator hasn't spoken to Joe Biden in two years. There's all of these amazing quotes you got from people who see the debate in June 2024 or have some kind of meeting with him at some point around that time, and they're gobsmacked by what he's like because they haven't laid eyes on him in two years. And these are not the chairman of a Democratic Party in some county. That only is relevant when there's an election coming up. Visa, United States senators and really powerful
- [18:53]
B
people in the party yet Cabinet members, too. We have one Cabinet member that basically said all, almost all access to members of the Cabinet was shut off beginning in late 2023. And one cabinet member told us that they had this meeting in 2024, a rare meeting, and they were stunned, you know, and that, like, they describe exactly what you saw on the debate stage. Slack job, meandering, completely off topic. Also, we had a senior White House official. And honestly, like this interview, I still remember the moment because it was, you know, when Jake Tapper and I decided to write this book. We basically, it was just on a hunch we had not done. You know, it was on November 6th. We were like, there's more to this story about. About Biden. And like, let's try. And so we pitched it, not knowing what we were going to get. And I remembered this very distinctly, this one interview where a senior White House official, one of those people that, like, I tried to talk to forever but never responded. And then this person who left in 2024, confessed that they left because they thought it was irresponsible to run for reelection, and also confessed that the top aides of the White House were intentionally shielding him not just from voters, but from senior members of the Democratic Party and senior members of his own White House administration. So they could not see the extent of the decline and would try to only show him at his very best moments, which often took place in the middle of the day.
- [20:36]
A
So one of the great things about the book is that it's a really compelling narrative and that makes it a great read. And I think you're understandably, very careful about making judgments and imputing motives to people, because that's hard to do. But it is one of the questions that any reader of a book is going to ask themselves. Presumably, we can sort of divide People up into a few categories, right? So over top of my head, one category is fully aware of the fact that Joe Biden is in serious mental decline and working to obscure that fact. The next is in denial about the extent to which that is the case, but still complicit in protecting Biden from too much public scrutiny because they're worried about it. Get to somewhat concerned about it. As much lied to as lying, as much allowing yourself to be talked into. While I sort of have a bad gut feeling, I guess everybody's telling me that it's fine, and so I guess it must be fine. And I'm going to slightly overstate my confidence in that when I'm in front of voters if I'm an elected official. But I'm basically kind of duped to the true believers who are just like, any concerns about Biden's mental health is just a Fox News conspiracy. And this is all just ridiculous, right? Who falls into which of those categories? I mean, we don't have to sort of go name by name, right? But, like, who were the people who you think did know what was going on and, you know, when they were looking in the mirror, they knew what they were doing. And who were the people who fell into some of the categories that were further in the direction of delusion, self delusion, you know, extreme naivete, whatever you want to call it.
- [22:23]
B
Honestly, I'm gonna. I'm gonna dodge your question a little bit. Not. Not because I don't have. Because I agree with what you're saying is you don't want to put intention into people's minds. But I will say, but I'm gonna try to answer it the best way I can, which is that the people that saw Joe Biden the most, and I'm gonna name their names, would be Bruce Reed, his top policy advisor, Steve Richetti, both his friend and top legislative advisor Mike Donilon, his top political advisor, Anthony Bernal, the First Lady's top political advisor, Annie Tomasini. Basically sort of like a traveling chief of staff, manages him in general. These are all people that have been with Joe Biden for a long time. These are the five most powerful people in the White House, and they are all, I think live by. And I also include Joe Biden, Jill Biden in there, and they all live and die by their loyalty to him, by his praise. If you go in the next layer out, you have people like Chief of Staff Jeff Saenz, Anita Dunn, and honestly, like, there's not many other people in that second category. And. And Maybe those are people that I think aren't. They're not like Ride or Die Biden. People like their entire political career is not connected to Joe Biden, but they still had significant access and you could argue as a result, maybe should have known better, but also didn't have the same level of influence with the principal because of the fact they aren't Ride or Die Biden. Now, I think I'll give you. To answer your question, though, there are. If you want to give people the benefit of the doubt, there is one rationale, especially for this inner, inner circle, and even like that second circle I talked about, one is if you believe that Donald Trump is an existential threat to democracy, you can rationalize anything. And that's what they were doing. They were saying Joe Biden would be a better president at 86 years old than Donald Trump would be. And if we do, if we just, if we change anything up, we are making that potentially more likely. And also, I remember somebody, and they had not talked to Jeff Zients, the chief of staff, but somebody that, that knows him was, you know, sort of said, okay, so if you're Jeff Zients, this was just theoretical. They're like, if you're Jeff Zients, what are your two options? Or what are your options? If you don't think Joe Biden should run, you could confront him privately, which I think the book very clearly shows. No, almost nobody, with the exception of Tony Blinken, really, and even his was sort of a light touch, confronted Joe Biden about running again. You could go public, but then I think that's like sort of the nuclear option. And then I don't think anyone thought they were going to change him or the family's mind about running and it was only going to hurt Biden politically and help Trump. That's like the generous version is that sort of the specter of Trump allowed people to justify putting a guy that clearly could not do the job he was running for four more years to be silent. The less general version is that they all had their own self interest and keeping Joe Biden in the White House, both monetarily and their own significance and their own power. If you're ride or die for Biden, especially then that whole crew, that was gonna be the end. That was gonna be the capstone of their career, and they were talking themselves into something, putting this guy in the Oval Office for four more years because it was in their self interest.
- [26:12]
A
A lot of the inner circles also had children and nephews and whatever else working in the administration. So there was another layer of self interest in a rather strange way. So let's think about these kind of different modes of explanation. Right. I've argued in the past, and I wonder whether you agree or disagree with that, that for a lot of journalists, this idea that Joe Biden was the only thing that's standing between us and Donald Trump was quite a powerful motivator. I worry about the extent to which many journalists have come to think of themselves as defenders of democracy. Not because I don't care about democracy or not because I don't think that as private citizens trying to stand up for and to fight for democracy as a noble cause, but because it makes it very tempting to try and frame every story in such a way that no reader of the story could possibly come to the wrong conclusion, which is to vote for somebody who is as dangerous a democracy as Donald Trump. And of course, the irony of this whole story is that that concern made much more likely the reelection of Donald Trump. That at least if you think that that is part of the motivation for what was going on with some of the journalists here, then the fact that they did not write much more openly about concerns with Joe Biden about the extent to which it was hard to get access to him, about the extent to which people in his Cabinet weren't getting access to him, is that he could try and run again for 2024. And that's what meant that we didn't have an open primary in 2024, which both meant that we got stuck with a candidate who had proven quite unpopular in the polls and didn't do very well in the 2020 primaries, and frankly, didn't have the time and the opportunity to grow into a stronger candidate, as she may have done over the course of a competitive primary system. To what extent do you think that perhaps not the beat reporters who are in the White House corps who are competing for scoops for that, maybe some of them, but the op ed writers, the news anchors, the MSNBC talking heads, all of the other kinds of people who are really influential in creating a kind of climate of opinion, were holding back because of what I think is quite a culpable sort of dereliction of professional duty. But is, as they would have thought of it in their own terms, this kind of noble goal of, you know, trying to preserve the democratic system from
- [28:38]
B
the dangers it faces, I am not getting into, because I think some people talk about the media as if it's all one big blob of things. And I think there are individual actors at all of these places that are like the best and toughest journalists around. And I worked with them. But yeah, I mean, I agree with that. I think people let the Trump of it all sort of enter into their heads and you know, it's like, I also agree that it, it's just not in my opinion, some people disagree and that's fine, but I just don't think it's the job to convince people that Trump is a threat to democracy. You report what you can and like, let voters make up their minds about it rather than sort of putting spin on the ball. I mean, if you're, you know, if you keep telling people this, this is to varying degrees and you could argue that it's much more now, so now than before. But like democracy is always under threat in America. And I just think it's way too simplistic. And I do think it affected the Biden coverage in a way that I think, as you said, like, ended up helping Trump in the end.
- [29:59]
A
Yeah. And I think the other thing, I mean, I think one, it is a dereliction of the kind of professional duties the journalists should have, which is to tell the truth. But the second thing is that I think it actually is really self undermining. I think it comes from a huge overestimation of the influence that journalists can have. It's, you know, if we don't talk about this, people are not going to care about it, they're not going to worry about it. But you know, the average voter worried about it long before the New York Times wrote about it regularly. And then obviously in the debate it all came out.
- [30:28]
B
I completely agree with this point. I completely agree. It's like if we don't talk about it, voters aren't going to know.
- [30:35]
A
Yeah, I mean, it's like the actual thing, like if we don't talk about it, people are going to stop believing us and stop trusting us, which is actually very bad for democracy. I mean, so that's one kind of level. The op ed writer who privately does worry a little bit about what's going on with Biden, but doesn't want to go there because it just somehow might help Trump in a vague sense. Let's just focus on something else. The level of deception required, or perhaps a level of self deception required for people who are close to Biden is completely different. Right. I mean, here we're talking about people who are daily in contact with him, who are very well aware of the mental lapses he has, who are putting systems in place for limiting his contact Even with allies, certainly for stage managing his public appearances. What were they thinking? To take one example that I've really been trying to get my head around, Jill Biden. She's somebody who clearly cares deeply about her husband, with whom she's been married for many decades. It's clearly a very low spouse and partner. I find it very hard to fathom how somebody who loves their husband and who observes both the extent of mental decline from which he's suffering and obviously the ways in which the immense pressures of a job like the presidency must be accelerating that decline, could possibly wish for her spouse to be subjected to that for another four years. How is it that somebody like Joe Biden cannot just justify this to the country, justify this to herself? How is it that her concern for her husband's well being doesn't take priority over, you know, whatever the motivation was for, for trying to win him another term?
- [32:27]
B
This is the question that so many people that have worked for Joe Biden and love Joe Biden still to this day have been asking themselves and raging about ever since the last debate. Because there is this feeling of how. And you know Biden, like a lot of old people, he had good hours and bad hours, good hour, good days and bad days. And you know, they were clearly managing him in a way to try to make sure when he was in public and big stakes like at the State of the Union just a few months before the debate that he was at his best. But if you see him so often like the first lady did, this is how someone described it to me at the time. If you see him so regularly and you think there's even a 10% chance that he is going to act that way on the debate stage, if you love him, how do you let him go out on that stage? And there are lots of different theories. Some I'll just sort of broaden it out and tell you what other people who know them have said. Some people think that she fell in love with the life. She had as many Vogue covers in four years as Michelle Obama had in eight. The glamour of the job. Someone put to me like she got Jackie oed. You know, she was like, oh, I can be sort of a, you know, a first lady, like an iconic first lady.
- [33:52]
A
And it is amazing how much self delusion there was in this White House, right? I mean, from the first two years of a presidency where everybody was compari comparing Joe Biden to FDR and he's completely reconstructing whatever, and then comparing Jill Biden to Jackson, Kennedy, I mean it's immense extent of self delusion.
- [34:12]
B
Sorry, no. And I think it comes from the chip on the shoulder that Joe Biden had and extended to all the people around him were all people that had felt disrespected for a long time. And once they won, they were like, we're gonna show you, you know, we're better than Obama, we're better than Clinton. We are, we are a fdr. And so, yeah, the other, the more sympathetic version is towards Jill Biden is to be clear also, she is not sort of, I think Lady Macbeth has been used as. I don't think that's right. Because Jill Biden, while she fell in love with the life never, at least in our reporting, was never like obsessed with power. Right. Like, she wasn't like scheming, she had no like policy priorities, really. Like, she may have enjoyed the trappings of power, but. But Biden, you know, don't deny him agency is what some other people have told us is like he wanted to do it. And she was the enforcer. She was. And through her top aide, Anthony Bernal, was basically enforced loyalty, quieted dissent and excommunicated naysayers or people that even raised questions. And so she is like a pivotal role. She will be go down and not. And I think the way that she wanted as one of the more consequential first ladies in American history. And her top aide will probably go down as the most powerful aid to a first lady in American history.
- [35:54]
A
One episode that really struck me at the time, we were living through it, but particularly in retrospect, reading your book, was the tragic figure of Robert Hur, you know, who was the special counsel who was supposed to investigate Joe Biden taking home some classified documents to his home in Delaware, who decided not to prosecute Joe Biden for that, which got him attacked from parts of a political right, but who, as part of explaining why he didn't want to do that, said that Joe Biden, if he was put on the defense stand in some trial, would likely say that he is a sort of elderly gentleman who doesn't fully recall everything. And that would make him a very sympathetic defendant. And he mentioned that in this deposition. Joe Biden at times didn't have full mental clarity. A lot of the White House machine attacked Robert Hurre as a liar, as somebody who was a political henchman who was just out to get Joe Biden with real career consequences for Robert Hoar. And there was a whole slew of opinion making media in the United States, from MSNBC to places Further in the center, left in the center who echoed those kind of attacks. Tell us about both what the truth of that was to set the record straight, but also about who some of the people were who were complicit in that character assassination.
- [37:36]
B
Yeah. So I mean, it's certainly just a classic story of a person who tells the truth, is punished for it. And I remember even somebody inside the White House later on they said like he said the thing and no one could unsay it. And he finally was the one with the credibility to say it. And that's why they attacked him so hard. So some background here. So Robert her so in the aftermath of the FBI raid of Mar A Lago to take back classified documents from Donald Trump, Joe Biden calls, goes on 60 Minutes and this is I think September of 2022 and says that Trump was incredibly irresponsible in his handling. And then in November, right before the midterm elections, Biden's own lawyers realized that he has a bunch of classified documents and not just in one place in like three different places, including his garage next to his like his car. Given Biden's comments about. And then also Donald Trump then runs for president, says he's going to run for president right after the midterms. So given what Biden had already said publicly about the Trump investigation and given what the facts are about Biden, Merrick Garland decides to appoint a special counsel. This is Robert Her. Robert her and his deputy eventually tracked down Joe Biden's former ghostwriter, who it's a longer, messier story, but had deleted some of the audio files in early 2023. But then they were able to restore them. But anyways, so Robert her and his deputy begin listening to Joe Biden talking to his ghostwriter in 2017 and they are stunned. They feel like this guy is out of it. This is troubling. Fast forward to October of 2023. They sit down with Joe Biden for two. It's a two part interview about five hours and they can't believe what they're seeing. The 2017 Joe Biden seems cogent in comparison to the President now that they are seeing in real life. And also Joe Biden is on tape in 2017 telling his ghostwriter, oh, I have all the classified stuff downstairs. Essentially an on the record confession that he had taken after his vice president. He had taken classified documents away from the White House and kept them for himself. And Robert her basically concludes that Joe Biden likely broke the law but is not going to recommend prosecuting him. Because he's essentially too addled to be found guilty. And the people most responsible for trying to slime and undermine Robert her, you mentioned the consequences. Man couldn't find work for a lot of months after this. I would say a combination of certainly like Anita Dunn, certainly people like Hunter Biden and Jill Biden. And the entire family that instructed, the entire family was so upset, they instructed the White House to try to go full throttle. Joe Biden, including the night after the report goes out. You know, and Robert her had said that in multiple instances Joe Biden didn't remember the year his son died. And Joe Biden goes out in front of the, in front of the public and lies. And I don't like to use that word, he lied or he was too adult to know to remember what the truth was, which is that. And Joe Biden says, you know, when Robert her brought this up, I thought it was none of his business. Robert her never brought up a Biden. Joe Biden brought it up himself. But Joe Biden used the death of his son in 2015 to try to undermine and ruin the career of Robert Hur. That's what happened. I think most the culpability lies in those top circles. There were certainly many aides that helped that along. Ian Sams, who's recently been called or asked to testify in front of the Republican led oversight Committee, was sort of leading comms underneath Anita Dunn on that issue. I also think if you look, I am a little, I'm more sympathetic to the media coverage pre her of Biden, post her. The coverage of Joe Biden's age I thought was really bad. And the ways that some of the media, if you go back and look at how they covered the her report and then also covered the release of the transcript, I just think it was, I don't think it ages well.
- [43:11]
A
So you've mentioned Beau Biden and Hunter Biden. One of the tragedies of Joe Biden's life and one of the strange tragedies of the story as a whole is that Beau Biden was the kind of chosen successor, the smart, successful, hardworking, rising politician who was the presumptive successor to Joe Biden's political career. He was kind of a golden boy who tragically passed away from a serious disease. Now one of the interesting things that you chronicle in the book is that actually Beau and Joe Biden lied about the extent of Beau Biden's disease when he was Attorney General of Delaware. So there's actually a long history in the family of trying to occlude the true extent of serious medical conditions. But Bill Biden is certainly a tragic and sympathetic figure. And the son who survives is Hunter Biden, who clearly is somebody who has many affecting qualities, who is deeply beloved by his family, but who is not the golden boy is the person who has serious substance abuse issues, who is trading on his father's name in order to make the money that he spends in a very lavish manner, who lies in his application for a gun permit about the extent of his or the existence of his drug abuse problems, etc. How does this whole sort of melodrama of Hunter Biden, you know, his obvious misdeeds and his father's inability to give up hope that he might somehow be reformed shape those years?
- [45:00]
B
You know, we talked a little bit about Jill Biden before, but Hunter Biden was one of the most consequential advisors during Joe Biden's time.
- [45:11]
A
And that's another shocking thing that I didn't realize before. I mean, I. Before that, I thought, you know, Joe Biden. The sympathetic reading is that Joe Biden is allowing himself to be used in all kinds of ways by his son. And because of a genuinely tragic nature of the Biden family story, Joe Biden is not able to tell his son, stop doing this, stop doing that, et cetera. But the extent to his Hunter Biden actually wielded influence within the White House is really shocking.
- [45:38]
B
Very much so. And again, it is similar to Jill in that it's not necessarily on policy direction, but in terms of enforcement, maintaining loyalty and direction. And I think also on what the decision to run again, I think in some ways. I'll step back for a second. So Hunter Biden, you put it very well. There was like an air and a spare quality to him and Beau Biden. And when Beau dies, Hunter wants to fill that void. He wants to become the heir. He wants to run for mayor of Wilmington. He wants to go and take care of his niece and nephew Beau's kids and the way that his aunt did for him and Beau, he wants to. He's also. He's obviously made a lot of money. He wants to sort of support the family. He wants to fill his void. And he obviously fails. Spectacular. Accurately ends up having a relationship with Beau's widow, messy divorce with his wife, does not run for mare, eventually spirals into a really, really deep crack addiction that also. And introduces Beau's widow to crack cocaine as well. And I think. And then becomes. We can. The laptop is a whole other thing, but essentially has all of the Self documentation of that spiral leaked online for all of his father's political opponents to mine through and now is also under legal like federal investigation by his dad's Justice Department. And I think, you know, the thing about Trump Hunter spiral that I don't think is like a recognized enough is that when Joe Biden ran for president in 2019, when he announced in the spring of 2019, they didn't even really know where Hunter was. He was completely off the rails. Hunter's sobriety date, as he testified, he's testified in court that this was sobriety date was literally two and a half weeks after Joe Biden officially gets in the race. Hunter's sobriety in getting himself together is completely intertwined with his father's political like presidential run and his presidential legacy. So it's not that big of a surprise that Hunter would also be completely on board with Joe Biden running again. This is part of his larger and my this is me putting him on the couch a little bit. But I've spent a little time with Hunter. Hunter saw and his dad like a chance at redemption for everything his family he'd put his family through for everything he'd done just in general. And I think he becomes an enabler of the decision to run again and also an enforcer of. Anyone that has any doubts about this should be pushed aside.
- [49:06]
A
I saw Hunter Biden speak at a very strange convening that I attended in the fall of 2024 in the run up to the presidential election. It seemed like a strange time for Hunter Biden to go in front of an audience of hundreds of people to speak about his personal story. And I have to say that I was surprised at that point by how evidently sober, cogent in some way affecting he was in talking about his personal story, given that I had a rather negative opinion of him in light of all the things we know about him. But I do wonder to what extent from Hunter Biden's perspective, his father being president was an insurance policy against going to jail. Joe Biden had not pardoned him until after he lost reelection. And it must have seemed to Hunter Biden that one reason to make sure that his father ran for office and hopefully would gain a second term is that if he really should be on the way to jail, his father could pardon him, as eventually he did, even though he did not run for reelection and was on the way out of the White House.
- [50:18]
B
Completely agree. I mean, I think this is again one of those questions of is it self interest or are they being honest about their intentions. And yeah, I think Joe Biden, I don't, I think that there was part of Joe Biden's men of, part of Joe Biden's motivation to run for president again was to make sure that Hunter didn't go to jail. Because they believed, with some reason, by the way, but they believed that if Trump won then he would throw Hunter in jail and throw members of his family in jail. And the thing about Joe Biden's political career that's been shown over and over again is at the end of the day, like I think Joe Biden has a line of like family is the beginning, the middle and the end. And they he was always going to prioritize his family over everything else. And I do think also Hunter Biden, and this gets more into sort of the manipulative behaviors of an addict, would tell Joe Biden that the Republicans and Trump are continuing to attack him in order to try to make him relapse and commit suicide. And you can't let them do that. And I think that was also a factor in this equation.
- [51:52]
A
Lowe's has the brand's pros trust to get the job done. You can now shop new Catalyst Fencing solutions and save big when you do 10% off when you buy in bulk, plus save $180 on a DeWalt 12 inch dual bevel sliding compound miter saw. Now just $449. Our best lineup is here at Lowe's. Valid through 5, 6 wall supplies. Last selection varies by location. I know that that is not the focus of your book, but one of the things I grapple with in thinking about Joe Biden and his legacy is that I think I'm instinctively drawn to a relatively sympathetic reading of him, which is that he was a devoted public servant for many decades, that he certainly would have had opportunities to make a bunch of money that he did not pursue, including after he left office in 2016, that, you know, I think he generally wanted to make the country a better place and so on. Then there's the much more cynical reading of him, which is that he at the very least was complicit in the ways in which his son and other members of the family were making money off of the Biden name. But he did joined meetings with business partners of Hunter Biden in which it was very clear that he was lending the imprimatur of the then Vice President of the United States to those enterprises that he never said to his son, I love you and I support you through whatever you do. If you take on this role as a board member of Burisma. It is very clearly going to read as an influence peddling situation, particularly since you don't have any obvious geopolitical expertise and no obvious expertise in the energy industry. And so you resign today, you're not taking the job. So what do you think the right reading of Biden's entanglement in these issues are? Was he the decent public servant who was unaware of those things? Was he the doting father who just didn't know how to say no to his son? Or do you think that there was a more selfish component to trying to make sure that his family had financial resources and profited in various ways from his name and position of influence?
- [54:13]
B
Oh man, all the above. I mean I think, I think when it comes to Biden and honestly which way I lean on those two interpretations, honestly, like it depends on the day, depends. I've just recently talked to. And it's not a dodge, honestly, it's because like I think he is like a very complicated person. The family is very complicated. Like, but I do think when it came to the family, they rationalized so much and felt it was them against the world and they were owed it and it didn't matter. And like other people get away with more. Right? That's like how a lot of people like rationalize their own behavior. It's like, well you know, there's like this fascinating. It's like the one email that comes to mind this from the laptop, but it was reported in the. I think it was reported everywhere. But the one story that comes to mind is the Washington Post is like, you know, when Obama wins, they make Hunter get rid of his lobbying practice because they're worried about appearances. And Hunter deeply resents the Obama people for this. After the 2012 election, Jim Messina, who had been the campaign manager for Obama's 2012 reelection, goes out and starts working for a bunch of like very rich companies. And Hunter has this email where he like rails against this and he's so upset because like you guys made me give up my thing but you got. But like you guys are now doing something similar. And I do think the self rationalization when it comes to family and excusing inexcusable behavior because it's them against the world. That chip on the shoulder just is omnipresent in their psyche. Yeah, I think, I think that's a big part of the story. But I also go and like I'm sometimes as far as like presidents go and like being pretty earnest and well meaning like Joe Biden's like pretty high up there. I think he, I think there, there is like an earnestness to him that, you know, then I don't. That I think is the reason why he won in general. I mean some of it's Covid and everything else, but like, I think if you go around the country, people are like, I think the majority are like, I think he's a good guy. I think polls will show that too. And I think over 50 plus years of public service, you know, I think that has come through. So sometimes, you know, I. I'm of two minds and honestly it'll be for historians to like figure it out. But I'm confused.
- [57:16]
A
So we get the famous debate end of June of 2024. It's an unmitigated disaster. Some people immediately realize 10, 15 minutes in, this guy can't possibly run for president. Other people take longer to come to that position. You tell very well in the book the story of how that debate scrambles everything in the Democratic Party leads. I think a lot of people who were trying to rationalize things to themselves, who perhaps hadn't been in a lot of contact with Biden, even though one would expect that they might have been given the kind of position they held to realize that this, the jig was really up. I'm interested. We don't need to retrace that whole story. I think people want to do that. They should read the book. But I'm interested in a few things about the weeks that follow onto that. One is that just the basic coalitional politics here. When Biden gets elected in 2020, he's a moderate candidate and he then in sort of moving towards the middle after the primary election campaign kind of moves to the left and incorporates appoints a lot of Elizabeth Warren's people and key positions in the white sort of makes nice with the left of the party in various ways that go beyond the usual consolidation of a political party usually get after a primary nominating contest. And so I guess it helps to explain part of it. But one of the really strange things about those weeks after Joe Biden does disastrous in the debate is that it's actually relatively moderate Democratic Party politicians who tend to say this is not going to work. And some of the very last people to defend him, if I'm remembering right, Bernie Sanders aoc, people in the really progressive wing of the party. And I just didn't understand that at the time. I'm not sure that I fully understand that now. They're not complicit in Biden they're not hanging out with him every day. They don't have anything to cover for. Nobody's going to tell them. Why do you lie to us about Joe Biden? Why don't they say the truth at that point and instead have this delusion that they can somehow defend Biden at that point?
- [59:21]
B
There are a few reasons. I'd say the most naked one is just self interest. Is that the reason why the Democratic Party freaks out and no one should get. I, I think very few people in the Democratic Party should get many points for courage after the debate because they weren't doing it. They weren't speaking out or raising concerns about like his fitness for the job, most of them, or about his ability to do the job in 2029. They were doing it because they were like, he can't win and he's going to bring us down with him. So part of the reason why, you know, the moderate Democrats are freaking out now, more now back then, is because they're in vulnerable seats. Right?
- [60:08]
A
So the progressives are sitting in seats that they're definitely going to win.
- [60:11]
B
So yes, yeah, so that's the bait. Like that's the most basic reason. But also your point is very well taken. Is that shocking to anybody that had observed Joe Biden, especially in the 80s and 90s, he had cultivated a real loyalty and allegiance among the Congressional Progressive Caucus and among most the progressives. And this is mostly, I mean usually candidates states, after they win the primary, they pivot to the middle. Joe Biden in 2020 was in the center in the primary and then pivoted to the left. And the theory of the case when he did that was that you don't wanna, in some ways you could argue this is like over learning past lessons is like we don't want a repeat of 2016 when they felt that the Bernie folks ended up really hurting Hillary. And then when he gets in and governs and you know, some senior administration officials, including cabinet members, believe that Joe Biden had been 20 years younger, he would have governed differently because given his, the limitations on his time and his energy, he deferred a lot to staff and very much, including Ron Klain, who comes more from the progressive wing of the party. And Ron prioritized progressive like relationships with the Progressive caucus, believing, especially with the narrow margins in Congress that you had to keep the left on board.
- [61:44]
A
Thanks so much for listening to this episode of the Good Fight. Well, the story of Biden's presidency is not yet quite done in the rest of this conversation, Alex Thompson and I talked about talk about what happened in the weeks and months after the debate, how Kamala Harris came to be the Democratic Party nominee, why she wasn't able to distance herself from Joe Biden, and what all of this means in the long run for the Democratic Party, for mainstream institutions, whether they can regain the trust that they lost over those damaging months and years, and what they would have to do in order to be worthy of that trust again. To listen to that part of the conversation, please go to yashamonk.substack.com vigotfight you will get ad free access to all episodes of this podcast on your private feed without these annoying little plugs from me. Yashamunk.substack.com TheGoodFight For 25% off I really appreciate you listening to this and I really appreciate your support. Thank you so much for listening to the Good Fight. Lots of listeners have been spreading the word about the show. If you too have been enjoying the podcast, please be like them. Rate the show on itunes, tell your friends all about it, share it on Facebook or Twitter. And finally, please mail suggestions for great guests or comments about the show to good fightpodmail.com that's goodfightpodmail.com
- [63:23]
B
this recording carries a Creative Commons 4.0 International License. Thanks to Silent Partner for their song Chess Pieces.
- [63:41]
A
Some Follow the noise, Bloomberg Follows the money.
- [63:45]
B
Whether it's the funds fueling AI or crypto's trillion dollar swings, there's a money side to every story. Get the money side of the story. Subscribe now at bloomberg.
- [63:56]
A
Com.