The FRONTLINE Interviews
Michael LaRosa
Press Secretary to Jill Biden
Michael LaRosa served as press secretary to First Lady Jill Biden and special assistant to President Joe Biden. He is currently a partner at the Washington-based government relations and lobbying firm, Ballard Partners.
Following are transcripts of two interviews. The first was conducted by the Kirk Documentary Group’s Mike Wiser for FRONTLINE on May 3, 2024, prior to Joe Biden’s withdrawal from the presidential race. The second was conducted by Michael Kirk on July 24, 2024, after Biden's withdrawal. Both have been edited for clarity and length.
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Going to Work for the Bidens
Let me just start at the beginning.When do you first come across Joe and Jill Biden?Where are you?What's that moment?
I was a TV producer for a long time, and I had covered several presidential elections, and I knew that I wanted to be on the other side of it in 2020.So early, I think right after 2016, I went to go work on Capitol Hill, to kind of take my experience in television and see how it translates to strategic communications.Then in 2018, I was at the 2018 Human Rights Campaign annual gala, their dinner, and Biden, former Vice President Biden, and his wife, Dr.Jill Biden, were the keynote speakers.
I had actually seen one of Biden's speeches before, in 2015, I believe.But this speech was different.And part of it was the energy in the room, the hunger for change by that point.But the speech was about bullies and being bullied, which Biden had personal experience with growing up with a stutter, being the butt of jokes, being bullied by grade school, high school classmates, and even, the story goes, the nun who his mother came in and essentially told off.
Dr.Biden, I'll never forget, she said, “I hate bullies.I hate how they use their power to make other people feel small.” For some reason, it caught my attention, and I think just because I was a child and a teenager who was bullied, and I had never really thought about Biden's experience and never related to him that way.And they kept talking about it.Biden was speaking it felt like directly to me, almost.It was almost like, this guy gets it, talking about erasing homophobia, and this is a guy of—both of them are of a different generation.
But the fact that they spoke the language of the people in the room, and could—at one point, Biden was telling the story about a kid named Seth, and this almost moved me to tears.But Biden was telling the story about how his parents didn't want him and tried to put him through conversion therapy, and his father even beat and abused him.And as Biden was telling the story, he stopped and cut himself off and said, “You know, that son of a—,” and he stopped himself.But it was so—it was almost like Biden was feeling fatherly for this kid who was tormented.
And I think everybody in the room, at the Human Rights Campaign gala, just, there was some appreciation for not only what the kid went through, the story Biden was telling, but an appreciation for the personal defensiveness that Biden had for the LGBT community in the room.And it was like this guy had—it doesn't even matter how old this guy is.I want him to run because he has my back.And he's talking not as a politician, but as a father and a grandfather.
And I think at that point, I knew I wanted to go work for him, not only because I also thought he could beat Donald Trump, but that moment was significant for me.It was still before the cycle began, and I just knew I wanted to find every way I could to go work for the Biden campaign, if there was one.And I, at that point, hoped there would be.
Why Biden Runs for President
… [One of the questions we have is] why he was running in 2020.He's run in '87, he's run in 2008, and he had talked about running multiple times.Do you know why he decided to run in 2020?
Yeah.I think there's a couple reasons.First of all—and forgive me if I go on a tangent.This has some history to it.I think once you run for president once, I don't know if you ever get that out of your system if you're not successful.And if you really examine Joe Biden's life and political career, he was this bright new hope for the Democratic Party in the '80s, and he was young, good-looking, had this youthful energy and glow about him.He was a passionate speaker.His passion was exuded through really gifted oratory at the time in major speeches that he gave at some conventions, but also a really famous exchange he had with [Secretary of State] George Shultz in a Foreign [Relations] Committee hearing on apartheid in 1986, where his passion just blows people away.Like I said, just a really talented public figure.
And he was the future of the Democratic Party.He was put on a pedestal from the time that he was elected in 1972, which on paper is one of the—when you achieve an upset like that, when you prove the critics wrong in a way that just stuns the political world, to beat a two-term incumbent senator, former two-term governor, former two-term congressman from Delaware, which is a very small state, where incumbency is extremely powerful in a small state where you know everybody.I think he was 28 [sic] at the time.This 28-year-old [sic] novice county councilman out of nowhere wins.I wasn't around for it, but I've studied it, and it's just one of those upsets that is historic in a down-ballot Senate contest.
And to do that, you achieve fame, and—but being struck by tragedy, his youth, his potential, all of that played a role on the pedestal that he was standing on for several decades.He passed on running in '84, and people kept coming to them and saying, “Joe, you’ve got to run.You’ve got to run.You're the future of the party,” almost as if it was expected that this guy is going to be the next Jack Kennedy.At some point, he's just got to do it and run.They had a two-year-old daughter in '87, still a young family.They'd only been married for eight years.There were a lot of reasons.And he was running for reelection, so he couldn't give up the seat in '84.Timing didn't seem right.
By the time 1987 came around, it was like—and I got a lot of this from her.It felt like a snowball effect.It just somehow happened.It wasn't like they said, “We have this purpose and this mission, and we're going to do this because I'm the right man for the moment.” It was as if he was expected to run in this field, in this cycle that was—you know, the Democrats couldn't afford to lose another national election in 1988.So Biden would be one of the front-runners, and so it was just kind of like expected.The party—donors and party officials kept coming up to him, and eventually, as she puts it, “One day we are just announcing; we're doing [it].We're just going to do this,” almost matter-of-factly.
So in '87, it really was sort of this sad death by a thousand cuts that ended that campaign, and it was shocking for them.I think they were shocked to their core, because this guy had been the golden child of Delaware for the last 15 years.They had only been married for 10.But they had never come under political or public assault before by the press or other Democrats.He didn't have tough reelections in Delaware after he made history.
So this was a different kind of campaign for them.It was going to test them in ways that they had not been tested before.And it definitely did.Like I said, he was seen as this next great hope, and when Gary Hart was knocked out, he was sort of it.He was the guy.He was the front-runner, essentially, and for the first time in his short career, he had a target on his back.So they were not used to the media spotlight focused on them.
And I know Dr.B.feels this way, but it almost, after Hart was kind of pushed out of the race and dropped out, they were friends of the Bidens in the Senate; Lee [Hart] and Joe were friends.It was difficult to see friends go through something so painful.In their view, in hindsight, it looked like the press really turned their focus and their target on the next shiny object, which was Biden.
It was an Iowa debate of the candidates, and it was in—I believe it was in his closing, in a closing that he was giving in the debate, and he forgot to cite the words from a British Labour leader, Neil Kinnock, who he had paraphrased several times before, and reporters who covered him knew that.And I think it was four or five times he had paraphrased Neil Kinnock, because Biden felt sort of a connection to the bio, the first-in-the-generation-going-to-college kind of thing.And in that instance, he did not.An opposing campaign, rival campaign leaked it to the press and Des Moines Register and Maureen Dowd in the New York Times, and it kind of snowballed from there.It had this sort of domino effect, that once the Kinnock tape emerged, reporters started just digging in from every angle.And then there was a Hubert Humphrey quote and a Bobby Kennedy quote, and then there was the failure to use citations of a quote in the Syracuse Law Review journal.
All of those things in totality really made it difficult for the campaign to go forward.In isolation, none of those things would have ended a campaign, even that campaign, but it was in totality that all of those failures to attribute and cite led to this narrative that Biden was this sort of empty vessel and not smart, or a risk in a year that Democrats did not want to take a risk.And as a candidate, the worst thing that can happen is becoming—you don't want to be risky to voters, and he became a risky choice, and I think that that forced him out.
But it set the groundwork for a lot of [the] chip on his shoulder, to sort of prove to people, and prove to a lot of people, and maybe it was there at the time, but going forward, that he would have to prove that he could—even though he wasn't an Ivy Leaguer, that he could—he was going to show his skill in legislating and public policy, and that wasn't going to hurt him.
But the point is that these narratives took shape, and he was forced from the race.And it was really painful for Dr.Biden especially, because, like I said, she had never ever seen his integrity or his character questioned, and now he was leaving the race with his character and his integrity left in doubt.And it was so painful for her.She was not particularly interested in politics; she was interested in supporting him, and that's always been the case.But this really was a shock to her system, and very jarring.She cried one night, shut the door of her bedroom and just cried, and was just devastated by it.
And watching her—I went back to watch her in the press conference that September, in the Kennedy Caucus Room in the Senate.And I think the New York Times described it as this face of “dejection.” She just looked at the cameras, and you could just hear all the cameras clicking, and the lights, and she just had this blank stare on her face.
What I got to know and understand about her is that I think a lot of her mistrust of not the—I think she developed sort of a long-term mistrust of the press as a result of that race.And if it's not a mistrust, it definitely steeled her and made her a much more guarded political spouse going forward.And of course he didn't run for president for another 20 years.It was an invaluable life lesson and political lesson for them, that I feel like there's still scars from that campaign today that they carry with them, because it was such a jarring experience for them.
As you said, it's this question of integrity.And there’s also this question about his intelligence and about his law school grades.And there's a video of him where he's confronting the guy in New Hampshire, and he's sort of insisting that he is smarter.Here’s a kid who had a stutter and was bullied, as you talked about in the beginning.
Yeah.And it's also, going back to that speech from the Human Rights Campaign, I think when you are devalued, and others bully you and use their power to kind of make you feel small, the way Dr.Biden said, I think you develop these vulnerabilities and insecurities, and you always want to impress and invalidate the worst things you fear about yourself that were impressions forced upon you by others.And I think it developed, I don't think an unhealthy but a healthy chip on his shoulder.And, like you said, you see it in that video when he's in New Hampshire and telling that guy how smart his IQ is.In 2019, he was saying, “I can do probably more push-ups than you can, pal,” when somebody was questioning if he's physically fit or not.Ironically, that guy from New Hampshire ended up endorsing him in 2019 and said he was going to vote for him, which was kind of funny.
Biden’s Childhood
Did he talk about his childhood, or did she talk about his childhood much?…
Yeah, yeah, she did, and he did.And he does often.And she wrote—actually, during the campaign, she wrote a children's book called Joey, which was about his childhood and how he developed the confidence to stand up to bullies and fight them and stick up for other people who were being bullied, too.And that was also a big part of what his family would say about him, is that this is a guy who has your back, because he knows what it's like to be vulnerable and to be ridiculed and the butt of jokes.And he'll stand up to bullies like Donald Trump.He'll stand up to bullies like Putin.
There was that theme there that they were able to build on and capitalize on in a smart way, but in a very authentic way, because this is the story of his life, and he talks about his—I think he loves talking about childhood and family and where he came from, a little bit north of where I'm from in northeastern Pennsylvania, in Scranton.And his family didn't come from means.
So you get the sense, and he communicates, he understands what it's like to struggle as a family.That's why his dad ultimately moved ahead to Wilmington for a new job, and the family followed soon thereafter.He grew up very humbly, and I think his inner being still relates to people who are struggling either with loss or financial hardship, because I think he's experienced both in his life.
It's so interesting, too, when you talk about bullying and the sense of being up against bullies, there's also some sense of—there's something about family that we're trying to figure out.His dad has this downward trajectory, has money and loses it.And there's this sense of a family against the world that continues on even into the time that you know him, that the family is—do you have a sense of where that comes from, or did you see that?
Well, I see it—yes.First of all, yes, it's there.I think there is that sense of the Biden clan, and he'll say, “I swear.I give my word as a Biden.” And I think that comes from what we just talked about, those roots of his dad losing his job or losing money and having to work hard to put the family back on the financial track; the stuttering; the being counted out from the Senate race.Even Ted Kaufman, I think, said, “You're not going to win, but I'll help you,” right?Nobody thought the guy could win, being counted out.Not one but two brain aneurysms erupting in his brain and surgery.The guy nearly had the last rites delivered to him if it wasn't for his wife.1987; Anita Hill; every—he was always doubted, and there was always a feeling like the wagons were circling them.
And I think part of why— then you go on, 2007, he runs again.They put everything they have into that race for an entire year, and it just wasn't his time.But it wasn't—it was equally as devastating, because they worked really hard for a year.And then I think there was a sense that he wasn't seen as the natural heir apparent to Barack Obama, and so there were doubts about whether he could run or should run in 2016.For a variety of reasons, he didn't.But it was very clear, early on, that he was not the heir apparent to his own president, and there was a feeling of the wagons were circling again, right?
And so now you go to 2019, getting ready for 2020, and I think there is a lot of doubt whether he should run because of his age.Is he too old?Is the Democratic Party going to elect an old white man?And there was so much younger talent and more progressive talent that matched maybe the mood of the party, that there were a lot of questions about whether Biden should be doing this.Not could he, but should he?And that made them just want to prove people wrong again.There's a constant theme of being doubted and wanting to prove those doubters wrong.And most of the time, he's really exceeded the expectations set for him, and I think he thrives on that.
And I think, truly, after—while I was there, there was never a feeling that he wasn't going to run for reelection.It was always a discussion you would hear.“That's after the reelect,” or, “That's a second-term project,” or, “That's a trip we take during the second term.” There was no doubt that it was—he was always going to run for reelection.The doubt came from everybody else, again, from the media, Democrats in the party, Republicans.People kept talking about it.
… The more doubts and questions that came bubbling to the surface in political conversations, in Washington, New York and in the media, the more entrenched they get.When I think that their backs are pushed into a corner, they double down as a family.And look, they don't make decisions like that unless everyone's on board, and I think it's a unique Biden thing.They will double down if they are doubted, and they will try to prove everyone wrong.And it's not just him.I think there's a competitiveness that—and a competitiveness and a disdain for the doubters that eats away at even Dr.Biden and will force her to double down.She probably wants to prove these people wrong more than anybody.
So I think the midterms had to play a really big part in that decision, because I think it validated his performance as a president and his abilities, and there was no reason for him not to run for reelection.
The Death of Biden’s First Wife, Nelia
… Well, let me just ask you about just another big flag drop at the moment, which is the accident that kills his first wife and daughter, and the injuries to the kids.Does that affect him still?How does that moment shape him?
Yeah.I remember, I'm three months into my time in this new Biden world, and it was Dec.18.And I remember, I was getting ready—we were going on a trip together with his team and her team.We were getting on one plane and flying to California for one of the Democratic debates, and somebody, I think it was my chief of staff who texted me and said, “Given the day, we’ve got to keep everything as calm and drama-free as possible,” or something to that effect.And I was like, “Wait.What's today?” I'm like, “What am I missing?” And then it was explained to me: It was Dec.18.This is a day for them that they honor every year as a family.I didn't have any insight into that, really, prior to being there.And it was a very—I just remember the flight out there was a very stoic, very quiet flight.
She gave a stump speech throughout the primary that we called “Neilia.” It was the Neilia speech, and it was her talking about her husband and his character and how they met, a very, very biographical kind of stump speech she would give to give voters a sense of the kind of man he is.The speech was called “Neilia” because she talked about, what does she owe the spouse?She would often think about what did she owe the spouse that came before her?And could he ever love her enough, or could he ever love her as much as he loved Neilia?
I think what she discovered, and the reason why it took five times to get her to marry him, I think she learned through that courtship that if there was enough room in his heart for him to love both of them, then she was fine with that.But it was something that was a theme, you know: Would she be able to live up to the sort of pedestal that he put his first wife on because it was his first wife?He was in love with her, and it was a tragedy.But Jill really helped healed heal him and put their family back together.And they would have to kind of rally several times in their lives to keep their family back together, or put it back together, because of loss and tragedy.
Probably the hardest thing to hear him talk about is when he says, “You don't have to be crazy to want to commit suicide,” because he talks about that time, losing a baby and your wife, and the love of your life, I can't imagine, right?And I can't imagine how you even go on to be a focused father and a present father after you experience that kind of heartbreak.
But he did live to tell about it, and he has invaluable lessons about grief and loss to offer so many people.And I think part of his superpower is the fact that he is able to share his grief with others and help people in their own grief survive it and recover, or at least find purpose, which is how he describes it.It's never going to go away.It might not ever heal, but he had to find purpose.And I think over time he was able to do that, but I don't think he's ever truly healed from that.And I know Dr.Biden is not healed from the loss of their son Beau.She'll never be healed from that.
And that's some of the context for Beau's death and for Hunter's problems, is that those are the two boys who survived that accident.And as he tells the story, he was thinking about not even taking the job in the Senate because of them.
Yeah.And he's talked about this a few times, about the people who really came to him and really said, “Just give us six months,” Mike Mansfield in particular, and I think Teddy Kennedy as well.So when he came to the Senate, times were so different.There was so much—there was a different kind of civility that existed, and collegialness from both sides.And I think he was really warmly embraced.And that helped.It didn't solve everything, and he was still going home every night, but the Senate was a place of humanness at the time, where his colleagues sort of embraced him and tried to help him, and then embraced her when he married Jill.And the Senate spouses, they really did embrace her almost like a little sister, and somebody—I know she has told me that they were so happy to see him fall in love and be happy after seeing how he came to the Senate.To see him get married and fall in love with Jill was, I think it was heartwarming for a lot of the Senate spouses and fellow senators at the time, from what I've discussed with her.
Biden’s Senate Years
One of the contradictions about Joe Biden is he has decades in the Senate, leads the Foreign Relations Committee, he is friends with the other senators, and yet it seems that he sees himself as outside of Washington, that he sees himself as more from Scranton than an elite, and that he sees Ivy Leaguers in Washington.Can you help me understand that seeming contradiction?
I've thought about it a lot over time, because I would wonder how these people remained remarkably normal despite decades in public office and in public life.And I really think Jill is a big part of that, specifically because when he was married to Neilia, I think their plans were to live in D.C.… The accident made him determined to be home every night, and that is the context in which he met Jill, that he, when she was 24 at the University of Delaware, they were dating, they didn't just date each other; she dated him and the boys.And that's how it would always be.
But one of the things that I think gives him his superpowers is that despite the longevity in Washington, being in Washington as a senator, he came home every night, and Dr.B.had her own career and her own independent life outside of politics; that their life was in Wilmington, in Greenville, in Delaware.Their kids went to school there.A lot of other senators' kids went to school in Washington.
Their life was in Delaware.And so when you spend those 36 years you think he's in Washington, he's in Delaware for 36 years.Their lives are there, their friends, their kids, her career.And even when he became vice president, they would still go home every weekend the way they very much do now.I think that has been what has provided him this degree of I call it the normalness factor, the ability to relate, because he wasn't living in Washington even though he was working in the Senate.
And there is a difference.Their lives were raising their family in Delaware, very different from a lot of other senators and politicians.So I think that has something to do with it, and I think—and maybe it's not a credit to Jill.Maybe it is a credit—I think part of it is because he had a wife that had her own career, right, so their lives were—she was pursuing her own career and raising their family in Delaware, so he had no choice but to be home.The accident was the backdrop for that, because he was always going to be coming home.But the fact that he had a wife with her own career, it all kind of blends together, and I think the fact that they were so rooted there, they never let Washington become home.
… As you said, there's this period where he doesn't run again after that [the 1987 failed campaign], where he's rebuilding, if that’s what he's doing.… He does throw his hat in the ring in 2007, and it doesn't take off for 2008.
I would just say real quick, to rewind back to '87, in that moment when he's withdrawing from the race, there's a moment when they're walking out of that press conference and into the committee anteroom, the Judiciary Committee room, where they were going to be starting the next round of hearings for Robert Bork, and he turned to one of his aides, Mark Gitenstein, and said, “At least I can just focus on doing a good job in these hearings.” And before Gitenstein started to say something or respond to the boss, Jill did something she had not really done before and just abruptly cut Gitenstein off and I think put her hands on Biden's shoulders and said, “Good job.” What's going through her mind is, we just went through this excruciating experience.And for her, seeing his integrity and his character questioned, and seeing this political defeat, they were stepping off of one stage and he was literally walking right back into another high-pressure, high-stakes, nationally televised hearings, she knew that this—you might have three minutes to breathe, pal, but your political rehab starts now.She was thinking about his future in that moment, because he was—of course he was going to run for president again.This wasn't the end of Joe Biden.But the next chapter begins three minutes after dropping out in that hearing, and she knew that, so she just said, “Good job?No, you’d better go effing win.Win.”
And I thought about it over time, and it's just like, that's why I think some of the competitiveness and wanting to prove the doubters wrong, you see it in various flashpoints in these moments in his career, and I think that was one of them.And I think she developed a really—it's probably when she really became a Biden, right, being able to say, “We're not going to let them—we're not going to let this happen to us again.And you're going to go out there, and you're going to win.” And that's just another example, I think, in his career.
Biden as Vice President
… I think that's a good background, which is that he tries again, and it really goes nowhere.And then he's offered the VP job, and I guess it's a tough decision in some ways, because it almost is an admission of defeat.And the family is involved.Do you think it was hard for him to take that position?
Well, Jill told him to grow up.He was like, “I don't know.” I think the way she writes about it in her book is that, like—I think he drove her home from the dentist.She was at the dentist, and he went and picked her up, and he was like, “I don't know if I—I got the call from Obama.I don't know if I'm going to do this.I've never been—I've always been my own man.I've always been the guy in charge.I don't know if I'm going to—” He questioned whether he was going to make a good No.2 and be a good second fiddle, and she was just like, “Joe, grow up.How can can you say no to this?”
And in her eyes—she's not a political animal the way he is.She's just—she's his wife, so she's his support system.So she thinks, God, given what we've been through in the last 30 years, you deserve this.And it's not—it's not that he deserved the prize, but in her eyes, he had gone through so many highs and lows, and had worked so hard, succeeding legislatively as a senator and trying to get to the top of the mountain but couldn't, and that's OK.But here you are, being offered the next best job, you're not going to do it?And I think her—Dr.B.and the kids were unanimously in support, and ultimately, who says no to the vice presidency?No one.
But I think it was an adjustment to being a No.2, for sure.
It must have been hard for him to adjust to that, and there's the stories at the time of some of the other aides being a little dismissive of him, and the “Uncle Joe.” It must have been—
Yeah.Look, Biden has been around a long time, and he's been successful.But here we are.The Obama campaign had just defeated the Clinton machine, David versus Goliath.And there—they wanted him on the ticket, but they didn't want his counsel on where they should be traveling and what states they should be in and what he should be focusing on here.I think that the Obama campaign felt very confident in their abilities to navigate through that election.They wanted him to go stump for the boss, and that was probably a rough transition for him.
Even in the White House, the stories are that he's telling personal stories—“I met this leader” and “I got this insight on the policy,” or whatever—and that some of the aides see him as a sort of dinosaur, that his relationship with Obama improves over the years, but there's tension.
Yeah, I think he was persona non grata for a little bit, after the Meet the Press interview in 2012, getting ahead of the president on gay marriage.And that was probably a tough moment in their relationship.This is just based off of what I've heard from folks.As he'll tell you, he always told Obama that he, if asked, he was always going to say—actually, I forget what he actually said now.But what that did was, the vice president got ahead of the president, and of course staff will always, they'll harbor resentment about stuff like that.
I think he probably did feel a little—yeah, probably felt a little dismissed.
And then in the middle of it, in the middle of his vice presidency is Beau's illness, and—
Yeah.Well, and this—this all kind of connects.There's like an interplay here to something you just mentioned about him saying, “I have these relationships,” and blah, blah, blah.If you look at Obama's short list, the three guys he was considering, Biden, [Evan] Bayh and Tim Kaine, two of those guys would have been implicitly working to ultimately be promoted as a No.1.In their eyes, they probably assumed, like the Dick Cheney appointment, that his ambitions were no longer to be the No.1, and so the smart move for Obama is to pick the guy who's run twice and probably too old to do it again.And he's going to be a great No.2 because he's not going to be looking to advance.And it's a much easier relationship to have with your vice president, and as a White House, when you're not—when there aren't two competing political modes of survival; there's just one.
And after 2012, I think it became very clear, at least in D.C.circles and I think within that relationship, that Obama was going to start blessing over a lot of his reelection operation to the Clinton folks, once she was getting her book off the ground, after secretary of state, and they started looking at the next four years and his heir apparent.
And I don't think that's been lost on the Bidens.I think it's probably—it was probably, again, feeling a little dismissed.I don't know if it's because Obama saw Hillary as the natural heir apparent—now it's time for the woman candidate to win and break a barrier—or if it was just he didn't think Biden was ever going to run again, like so many people actually did.…
They assumed, that conventional wisdom assumed, or even Obama personally, that this guy was not going to run again, that they had picked somebody who wouldn't have the problem of two campaigns inside the White House.Was that a misunderstanding of Joe Biden, the conventional wisdom that thinking in 2016 that this guy is done, and his ambitions are—
Picking him in 2008 you mean?
Sorry, thank you, in 2008, that his ambitions were done?Was that a mistake of the conventional wisdom in Obama, if he believed that?
Absolutely.That's why I brought up that.I was thinking about it recently, and thinking about that short list.The other two, what they had in common was that they were still ambitious, at least at the time.And political circumstances have changed the trajectories of Tim Kaine and Evan Bayh, but at the time, they were on the short list for VP because they were the future of the party.And Biden was an experienced hand who had these relationships around the world, and goodwill, and was going to be an invaluable mentor and resource to Obama.But I don't think Obama saw him as the future.And I think there was an assumption within the D.C.ecochamber that—and it wasn't a pejorative or a dismissive assumption about Biden's abilities.It was, OK, he's run twice; he's been around forever; there's no way he's going to run again.This was a Dick Cheney pick, where Bush was going with somebody who was not going to try to elevate to the No.2 spot, and that they could run a very cohesive, unified White House, where one political future is the only thing that that White House is focused on.
And they were mistaken, because he was going to run before Beau died.I strongly believe that he was going to run, based on the reporting I did at the time as a producer and talking to folks from the vice president's office then, who were sources.…
Hunter Biden
Can you help me understand the family dynamics around Hunter when he's vice president?Because one of the questions is, some of the aides say, yeah, it would have been good if Hunter wasn't doing this other business.And the question we had is, why wouldn't he just say, “Knock it off”?Why does he create a sort of firewall or not?Do you have a sense of that?
Yeah.I feel strongly about this, and I've written about this actually.Hunter wasn't doing anything that was out of the realm of the world children of politicians live in.He deregistered as a lobbyist in 2008, when his father was picked.He was in business with another son of a politician, stepson, John Kerry, John Kerry's stepson.They were in business together.
Nobody really cared at the time, if you remember, because again, no one thought Biden was the threat here.So Congress had—the Republicans had the Senate and the House for the last two years of the Obama administration.They didn't care.But like everybody else, nobody thought of Biden as the threat to the Republican Party in those waning years.
And so there only became this obsession with Hunter when it became clear that Trump's biggest political threat was Joe Biden, and rightfully so.But that was the only reason why any of this became significant.Hunter didn't pursue anything untoward or illegal or anything different from anybody else in any other family.And I do think it's opened up a door for political warfare and combat that is now acceptable because of the Republicans going after the children of candidates and presidents and how they make their money, which makes families fair game, and tracking what senators' kids are working on, what boards, or who has what clients if they're lawyers, or where this chairman's son is—his company is making money from overseas.It's just opened up a huge can of worms now that had nothing to do with anything legal, could be seen as unseemly.And these are conversations that can be had about trading off of your last name, but it's been happening for as long as we've had a democracy.…
You can have this discussion and whether it's unseemly, but it's certainly not unethical or illegal for children of politicians to sit on boards.Hunter was a Yale-educated lawyer who was appointed by a Republican president to sit on the board of the nation's largest rail system, head of the World Food Program, leading the effort to feed millions of families, and a businessman.And I don't think he's unique to working in the private sector and wanting to make money as an investor and a businessman—certainly not unique from the Bush family or any of the Kennedys or a child of a politician who gets a TV show.As we know, there are quite a few of those.
And it's not all political scandal.At the end of the campaign, and by the time we get into the Biden administration, his son's personal photographs, the voicemail that he left for him, the descent into addiction, all becomes part of it.How does that affect the family?
Well, those are all—they affect the family deeply, because they're so personal, right?And this family was not used to a time in politics—they raised their family in the political world at a time when there was civility in politics, where families were not in play.Dr.Biden will tell you, you can attack Joe Biden all you want; you can say whatever you want about Joe Biden.But he's the candidate.He's accountable to the taxpayer.My son is not.My son's accountable to me, but he's also an adult, a 50-year-old adult, and can make his decisions, as adults do.
And Hunter, there was never a denial that Hunter experienced personal pain and addiction issues.Many Americans do.Many families have to deal with the impacts of someone with addiction, battling addiction and that disease, in their family.And they had to handle that as a family.Unfortunately, it was weaponized against the family, and that was the sad part.
And they were not—she will tell you, they could argue until they were blue in the face, Joe Biden and John McCain, but the four of them—Jill, Joe, John and Cindy—would go out to dinner at night.There's none of that anymore.But what's changed is families of politicians becoming targets for political purposes, for weaponization.We don't know.Would Hunter— would the charges by DOJ have been pursued if it wasn't political, if his name was Hunter Smith?Would that minor gun charge or that first-time tax offense that was paid back in full, with interest, the way millions of Americans who owe back taxes are penalized, would they have faced federal charges if it were not for a political pursuit?I tend to believe that Hunter would not have been facing federal charges were it not for politics.
But because of his vulnerabilities, I think Republicans weaponized a lot of that.That's my feeling.I don't know if Hunter would have faced a federal investigation were his father not running for president.And I thought it was—spoke a lot of the integrity and respect for the rule of law that the father of Hunter, the president, kept the same investigator appointed by his predecessor to keep investigating his son.We know what the predecessor did in office when his family and his friends were being investigated by U.S.attorneys.He fired them and replaced them.This president did not.He kept the same prosecutor who was investigating his own son, appointed by his vanquished, defeated opponent.So I think that says something about Joe Biden's respect for institutions, and fairness.…
So I think politics can be a blood sport.But this had a great effect on his parents and running for president.We couldn't prepare for an interview without preparing her for deeply personal and embarrassing questions that could be asked of her about her son and his private life or the impeachment that was rooted in trying to find incriminating information about her son and their family.That was all part of the context of the campaign.That was part of the backdrop, was, while they're running, the guy they're running to try to replace was actively pursuing trying to bribe or blackmail a federal—a foreign ally who our Congress had authorized taxpayer aid for, and tried to withhold that aid to try to get incriminating information about a potential front-runner, his potential opponent's son.
It was a crazy time.But these were all things that they always had to be prepared to talk about and discuss, and they weren't always comfortable conversations to have.…
Biden’s 2020 Presidential Campaign
So let me ask you about the choice of Kamala Harris, because the thing that stands out, of course, is that debate, the primary debate, where she challenges him on—can you help me understand that moment?… Do you know why she was chosen, what the reason was that she stood out, that Harris stood out in the end?
Well, yeah.Despite her campaign that did not make it to the TV caucus and primary competitions, she was still seen by many as a rising star in the party and a political talent who could rally and energize young people and women in a way that Biden could not.She was a prosecutor, which he liked.She had a special relationship, friendship with their son.I don't think he ever forgot that.But she was a talented United States senator, and there was just a consensus that she would be a smart choice for his running mate because she was the future of the party.She represented a lot of change, and she brought things that he didn't and that others didn't.
It takes skill, it takes talent to become the first Black female senator from the state of California and attorney general of California and the first Black female district attorney from San Francisco.It's not like this woman had not been tested before.It's the world's fifth largest economy.And she was and is a political athlete with a lot of skill and talent, and it was recognized.And there was a lot of—she had a lot of supporters pushing for her, Jim Clyburn among some.And remember, Jim Clyburn had just won us the South Carolina primary, which changed the entire trajectory of history.We can talk about the campaign or the primary at some point and that period of time, if you want to.At some point we can go back to that.Eric Garcetti, who was from California, also on the Selection Committee as well.So she had supporters.
We won't go into depth, probably not as much depth as we did last time, into the primary, into all the details of the primary.But it is interesting, because it's another moment where he's written off.He's really written off in a pretty significant way, and even in the results as the votes are coming in, it seems like it's over.
Yeah.Yeah.We lived in Iowa for the last month.The campaign had put everything into Iowa.I think there was an expectation that there would be a strong finish in Iowa, and it would—we could live off some momentum going into New Hampshire.That's why there was a huge bus tour around the state, the No Malarkey Bus Tour.We put a lot of resources into bus tours and advertising and staffing and foot soldiers on the ground.The entire almost—I think the majority of the entire Philadelphia staff had moved out to Iowa.
The campaign was fully focused on trying to win Iowa, and as somebody who was on the ground and implementing the crazy schedule we ran as if we were trying to win Iowa, that's for sure, and to get fourth was crushing.And New Hampshire just—everything about New Hampshire just felt bad.And coming in fifth was a shock.They must have known throughout the day that it was going to be bad because we left New Hampshire and headed to South Carolina for the results of the New Hampshire primary.
And there's something about that experience that must shape him now, that must shape him, and the fact that he had been written off that he would be president so many times, and then he ends up not only getting the nomination, but getting the presidency.
It's not just him, but it is the sort of MO of the entire White House and Biden campaign.It was like, nobody thought he could win the nomination.Nobody thought he could probably beat an incumbent president, which is very hard to do.Nobody thought he could bring back bipartisanship.Nobody thought Democrats would overperform in the midterms.And all of these sort of doubts and skepticism have kind of fueled not just him and the family, but also sort of a very prominent theme that sort of runs through the electricity of that entire world is being underestimated and thriving on trying to prove them wrong, if that makes sense.
You can tell me a better story from when the election is called and when they arrive in the White House, but Joe Biden, as some people say, wanted to be president since he was 7.He's run for president all of these times, and finally he wins the election, and he is the president.What is that moment like for him and for the family after all of those decades of quest for this?
… It must have been the most fulfilling feeling for them.… The entire family had gathered I think two or three weeks before the election, because they all had to quarantine for a certain amount of time in order to be with them on Election Day and election night.So Hunter and Melissa lived in California, and they had not met their grandchild yet, baby Beau.They'd only seen him over Zoom, so the first time they actually would see little Beau would be towards the election because that is when the whole family, the grandkids who lived in various parts of the Northeast, and Ashley and her husband, would all have to quarantine in Delaware for the remainder of the final few weeks.
And then, of course that night, election night becomes—goes into overtime.So Tuesday turned into Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday morning in Delaware, around 11:00 a.m., was just the most gorgeous, probably 75 degrees, 77-degree day.And I was down the street where I was staying, but they were all together when it was called.And so she and him happened to be sitting in Adirondack chairs in the back of their house.They have a large lake.They call their house the “Lake [House],” and they have a little dock, and they have Adirondack chairs on that dock, and they were sitting there having coffee when they heard the screams up—the house kind of slopes upward and towards the deck.I think the grandkids and everyone, just—you heard this palpable intense shout and cheers.
And I think she turned to him, and they embraced and hugged, and she just said, “Congratulations, Mr.President.” And for those two, you know, they've been together 47 years, and he ran for president three times.So I can't imagine what it's like to see—to have that feeling of fulfillment.But it wasn't just the fact that there was a sense that he had earned it, but it was a sense that the time was so dangerous and so scary for the rest of the country that they really did feel like this was meant for Joe Biden, that he was meant to help heal a broken country the way he had to heal a broken family not once but twice, and bring a country that was mourning the loss of tens of thousands, and going to be hundreds of thousands of people.It was a really scary time, and a serious time.So there was joy for a couple days, but the task ahead would be daunting and scary and full of surprises over the next couple of weeks and months, for sure.
The Afghanistan Withdrawal
… The big crisis in that first year, Afghanistan, was there a personal component to his understanding of the withdrawal, and Beau had been in the military, and—?
Yeah.Look, those were some dark weeks.Yeah.Yes.The answer to your question is yes.But Beau served—and this family—the Bidens care deeply about not only the men and women who serve and sacrifice, but also the families and caregivers who support them and help them and take care of them.And so it was really painful for the president.It was painful for the first lady, because it not only, again, called into question his motives and his actions as commander in chief, but he was criticized a lot for bringing his own grief over the loss of his son into a context that some didn't think belonged, because his son did not pass away or die in the military he served, and he died of cancer.And so some thought that they shouldn't be linked, and Biden shouldn't be comparing the loss and grief of those who lost folks, the soldiers, and the young, young Marines at Abbey Gate should not be comparing the loss and tragedy and grief of losing his son to what those families were feeling.
So there was a lot of—it was a tough time.And obviously, visuals of what was happening in Afghanistan was kind of this slow-walking car crash that led to what happened at Abbey Gate, and ultimately, the really sad day that they went to Dover to be with the families, which was a tough day for both of them.
It must have been, because he—they both knew what it was like to deal with grief, to deal with loss and how raw those emotions must be for those families.
Yeah, absolutely they did.And the president has experienced so much grief and so much tragedy, so much loss, it doesn't matter the context to him.He just knows, when someone is hurting and grieving, he only knows how to relate, because he has been there.And his compassion and his empathy is so raw and so real because he's been through more than any human being I know in experiencing loss and tragedy, and in the most awful and cruelest of ways.
So his inclination is to grieve with them and to try to not only help them honor and find purpose, but to show that there is sort of light at the end of a really dark tunnel that you don't see right away.He's trying to say, “I have survived, and I know you can survive, too, and it won't be easy, and it will never—the pain will never go way.But you can find purpose.” And he is grieving with them, but I think there was some resentment that he tried to.And sometimes I think that's unfortunately just a misread of his heart and his intentions, because the man would never do anything to offend anybody grieving the loss of a loved one.He's been through more than anybody I know.
He had done it hundreds of times, but it is for the first time that he's the president; that in the other places, he's coming as a third party.Here he's coming and meeting with people who say, “You were responsible.”
The difference is, they feel their loved ones were no longer with us because of decisions he made, and in that moment, what is earnest and sincere and compassionate attempts to console were not received in the manner that they were intended by some of the families—some—and they made their feelings known on partisan media channels after.
Messaging Biden’s Legislative Actions
If you look at the polls for that year, the administration gets sort of high marks in the going up to that moment.And there's a bunch of things that are happening at the same time.There's different variants of COVID are coming out; there's supply chain problems; there's inflation; and there's Afghanistan.Does it feel inside like things are starting to turn, that there's all these crises, that you're under attack?How does it feel inside the White House as those first six months, as things change?
Yeah.I think there was such a team effort to not only administer the vaccines to the country effectively, but do it efficiently and as fast as possible, and we exceeded expectations.And I think people really felt like we were doing a good job because we had gotten the virus under control; we were getting shots into arms.And it was the largest vaccination effort in American history, and we did it.The team did it with in a historic sort of production, but also very effectively, that helped vaccinate the entire country.But it reopened the economy; it put children back into classrooms, even if it took too long; and it reopened small businesses.And yet there was sort of this polarization of COVID that started to take place and this resentment for Biden and Democrats wanting to be health-conscious or follow the sort of guidelines for COVID, It became so polarized and weaponized in a really tribal, ugly kind of way.There was that.
And then we sort of got ahead of ourselves by declaring around, I think it was Fourth of July, that we had turned a corner only for really bad variants to come, like you had mentioned, and we had to kind of reinstate, and even corporate America joined us in reinstating these mask mandates, and that was a couple weeks after Afghanistan.
And then the supply chain issues, like you said, and the border, the crisis at the border, inflation, it all was being sort of characterized as this really incompetent inefficiencies of government.And we were there to sort of make the case that, actually we're competent, we're adults, and we can make government work.We were trying to do that under extraordinary and historic circumstances, but that was our case, and these sort of events sort of challenged that narrative, and that, in the public eye, the public reaction to all that was showcasing itself in the polls.The public was communicating through the polls that they were not happy with supply chain, with inflation, with high prices, with Afghanistan, with masks, with mask mandates and quarantine again or not being able to travel again because of variants.
And so, yeah, there was a—it was a rough feeling, for sure, absolutely.But I think there was a perseverance with this president and his team, that we were going to stay the course in terms of our economic program and pushing for the Build Back Better effort, which would ultimately become the IRA [Inflation Reduction Act].But they were going to keep moving forward, because the American Rescue Plan was the right thing to do early on.And it helped reopen the country, and so we're going to keep moving forward with our economic policies.
And I think they feel vindicated about, on paper, where the economy has gone.Now there's another argument about prices and inflation, and that's another argument.
… Some people say of Biden that he has a belief that if you do the right policy, the politics will follow from that.And I guess one of the big questions of this election is, is that a misguided belief?Is there is too much faith on President Biden's part that the politics will follow the policy in the world we live in?Was that a debate inside the White House?Did you see that tension?
Well, it's kind of funny given the conversation we're having, because in '87, he was accused of just being all style and no substance, and now he’s considered to be almost all substance and challenged in the performance aspect of politics, whereas Trump thrives on performance, and performance in a superficial sense, not performance of your record, but how you appear in front of a camera and how you energize the crowd in front of you.
Biden is a steward of the people who not only voted for him but the people who didn't vote for him, so he feels an obligation to run a government and manage this government, and that is what he does.That is what he's known his whole life, is legislating, compromising and trying to yield results from what he's doing.
… There's also a question of, since this is a biography of the Biden before the presidency, the loquacious, sometimes gaffe-prone, but always constantly present, always talking politician, and then, [as] the president, who, with some exceptions but not that many, appears to be much more—you can tell me what it is.… Is it himself or is it the people around him?What changes [have there been for] the president from the politician we've been watching?
Well, and I only knew him as an observer, like you.I thought this was the most accessible guy in politics when I started working, going into this.I learned very quickly that there is an impulse to sort of shield him and protect him.A lot of political staffers are sort of raised in their careers now by treating the press as a hazard rather than an opportunity, and when you approach the press that way, it engenders a lot of mistrust on both sides.It just perpetuates mistrust and skepticism from either side when you treat each other like a hazard, or if the president and his team feel like the media has bad intentions when they don't always have bad intentions.If you treat the media as an opportunity to get your message out, you might be able to change the image people have of you today, or for better or, inadvertently, for worse.But that's part of using the media as an opportunity.…
But I noticed, it was a couple days before the Iowa caucus, and we were in the car, Dr.Biden and I, and our chief of staff, and I was reading off the list of candidates who were doing all the Sunday shows.Pete [Buttigieg] was doing, like, I don't know, all four or five.Amy [Klobuchar] was doing three.Bernie [Sanders] was doing two.And she said, “Well, why isn't Joe doing any Sunday shows?Why doesn't he ever do any Sunday shows?” Now, this was a man who was doing Meet the Press when his house was on fire back in Delaware.He was doing Sunday shows his entire life, and all of a sudden, it's been 10 months he's been running for president and hasn't done a single Sunday show?
Not that Sunday shows are game-changers, but they are, when you are running behind, when you are out of resources, and you need to get your message out, and the stakes couldn't be higher for your campaign and your political fate, and you're avoiding television interviews, something was wrong.But I think her instinct is to always get him in front of people because he's his best asset, and his biggest skill set is being able to connect with people, and you can't do that by not engaging the media.
And so the very next weekend, he was booked on his first Sunday show of the campaign, which is surprising that it took that long, but it's an example of sort of that transition to a very hibernated, very safeguarded approach to his availability.And it was very, very clear.I don't know—I personally don't believe it does him any favors.I think he connects with people when he's able to grieve with people, emote with people, expose his own vulnerabilities, because the voter is looking to the candidate and thinking, does this person get me?Does he relate to me?Who is more like me, you know?
With Bush it was the president I could drink a beer with.There's not a ton of complexity to identifying with a candidate.It is all about relatability.Nobody is more relatable than Joe and Jill Biden, so why is he not in front of as many people as possible making the case for himself and delivering his message?And that always confused me.
[Second Interview with Michael LaRosa, July 24, 2024] Joe Biden’s Debate Performance
So, Michael, what are the stakes when Joe Biden walks on that set for the debate?
The stakes were incredibly high on the president for several reasons.Well, they decided to have the debate early, and they got the debate on their terms.It was the earliest I think a presidential debate had ever been held.And I was actually pleasantly surprised, because they did something they don't usually do, and that's take risks.And here I am, thinking, oh, they won the news cycle, and this is great.They actually want everybody to be paying attention before Fourth of July, before early voting starts, which was a really big deal, I thought.
And to me, it seemed like they had the confidence that they knew our guy was going to just mop the floor with Trump, and to start provoking more public attention and inspiring more interest in this campaign that had been a little bit sort of lacking in excitement.Trump was always in court, and there had been some dissatisfaction with Biden's candidacy, for his decision to run again.And the stakes just couldn't have been higher, because he had to prove that not only that he was agile and that he was quick-witted and sharp and quick on his feet, that he could demonstrate all of his fantastic qualities that people love about him, that he's authentic and real and relatable.The biggest thing he had to do was he had to show strength, because the election was turning into a referendum on him, and the question for him was about strength.And unfortunately, he just couldn't make that case.It's not that he couldn't make the case; it's that he didn't.He did not meet the bar, or clear it, and I don't think anybody would deny that at this point.It was devastating to watch.
What did Americans see, Michael?
Americans saw something that really concerned them.They saw something that concerned them, that shocked them.But they also saw something that confirmed suspicions that they already had.Some were hoping those suspicions were never confirmed and that he was going to go up there like the State of the Union, the previous State of the Union a few months before and the State of the Union two years ago.I mean, consecutively, the guy has done an incredible job at goading Republicans and outworking them legislatively, but also just sort of outmaneuvering them rhetorically.He's so comfortable and at home in the well of the House and in the Capitol, behind the debate stage.He had done probably over 100 debates in his lifetime, whether it was in the Senate or the number of presidential campaigns that he debated in, and Senate campaigns.He's totally at home and comfortable.He has always showed up to play and to win these public performances.
And I was brimming with confidence going into it.I went on Fox News, and I said, “Oh, he's going to mop the floor with Donald Trump on domestic policy, on foreign policy, on contrasting their records.” Nothing he would probably love to do more than contrast the records and call out the lies and myths from the other side.
The only pressure, the only thing he needed to prepare for was preparing not to debate his opponent, but preparing to debate Donald Trump.And that preparation involves thinking creatively, thinking out of the box about how to force an 81-year-old candidate who has essentially had a career in public service through five decades of rather what we would consider normalcy, or where the rules of civility and decorum were very different, how can we prepare this very experienced debater, very skilled politician and legislator, how can we prepare him to expect the unexpected and to engage with Donald Trump without getting into the mud, without looking juvenile, but looking like an adult statesman, while prosecuting the case against him?… Your supporters are looking for that level of energy, that level of fight, fighting spirit, to demonstrate that you will punch this guy rhetorically in the face when you have to; you will defend your record, and you will prosecute his record.That's what people were looking for.And all of those expectations would hopefully, at the end, confirm that Joe Biden is a strong candidate.And he's not only a strong candidate; he's strong personally.Everything I ever doubted was just sort of right-wing conspiracy theories.
And so I think the American people, what they saw was, I've heard people say sad, concerned, depressing.Some people were angry, resentful.I have to say, as soon as he walked out, I thought, this won't be good.
Why?
He looked pale.He looked very pale.He wasn't smiling the way I thought he would.He wasn't—I didn't see the energy that I think people were expecting.And, you know, he's an older candidate; no one's going to deny that.He's older, and he presented older when he walked out on that stage.
Response to the Debate
And how was the world reacting?How bad was it?How bad was the reaction?
It was as bad as it could possibly be.There's no simple way to sugarcoat how bad it was, because for a year, or over a year—well, let's go back a little bit.There was always—I think the American people, I think voters made a deal with Joe Biden in 2020, and it was, get rid of this guy, one term, and pass the torch.And he wasn't able to do—he didn't do either.At least that was what he was intending.And there was so much apathy and disaffection for his campaign when it looked like not only was he going to run, but no one was going to challenge him.There's such a huge bench of talented leaders in the Democratic Party that people were so excited about, and I think that people parked their frustrations through these bad poll numbers that we have been seeing for well over a year.And people and voters have been speaking to the president.They have been speaking through polling for over a year now.And it must have been frustrating, because age was a centralized issue.
And it doesn't matter what—most voters will always say the economy matters to them.Of course the economy matters to everybody, but elections are not always that complicated.And it's kind of funny.Like this debate, that one thing going in that was so, so important and so almost determinative about how the results should be was all depending on performance, presentation and the cosmetic stuff, not the substance.Nobody doubted Biden.Biden knows policy.Biden knows substance.He didn't need to practice substance or policy or his record.His record is transformational, his record.
But it's funny how things haven't changed since 1960, because that debate, that first debate, that first impression, it turned out to be all about cosmetics.
'60 was Kennedy and Nixon?
Yeah.Because Kennedy was tanned and looked healthy, whereas Nixon was sweating, didn't wear makeup.Five o'clock shadow was unhealthy.And I think [everyone] thought that he was going to run circles around Kennedy on public policy and substance.And really, the outcome of the debate was determined by cosmetic issues, superficial.Politics is not terribly different than, like, student council popularity contests, because 99% of voters aren't living and breathing politics the way we do here in Washington or the Beltway, and relatability is just the—it's not measured in polling but in a voter's gut.They're not going to vote for someone they simply do not trust or do not like.
And they don't even know.Most voters will never get to know the candidate, so their only point of reference is through the media.And if you can't visually please your audience, and you're not consistently using the media platform to show off your humanity, to show off your relatability, which only comes by exposing, yes, your mistakes, your weaknesses, but also your intelligence, your command of the issues, your competence—and for a long time, they decided to forfeit a really large part of the presidency, which is the bully pulpit and the use of the modern media, by avoiding it.And you can't run a campaign for president by duck-and-cover or running out the clock.It was unsustainable to, even prior to the debate, to run a campaign that way, by not doing press conferences, by not doing one-on-one interviews, by not showing that agility and command of the issues with volleying back and forth with reporters every day, which we know he loves to do and can do.
But why didn't he then?Why didn't they let him?
I don't know.I truly—you'll have to ask them.Nobody knows the answer.Nobody knows why his—the qualities that people love about him, the vulnerability, even the imperfections that he's always had with public speaking.People love that kind of authenticity, and they crave that.Trump made that very—made that rewarding in politics.Trump made being yourself a positive and rewarding for politicians.It's the one good thing I think he did in terms of political communication, is show that being yourself can pay off.And the more President Biden is able to communicate on his own—unscripted, yes, of course he's going to make mistakes.Donald Trump makes mistakes every day, but he's also doesn't pass up the opportunity to speak to a microphone or a camera.
So he's a flop.And the response by the party is, by some members of the party—soon, many members of the party, Pelosi, even George Clooney, start to desert him.
Well, there's a phase before that, too, all right?So we were talking about—we've been talking a little bit about the immediate shock after the debate, and we have talked a little bit about what brought us to having to change horses in unprecedented fashion.
Yeah.
So there's probably actually more to say about that, but I'll let you determine the questions.But the next part is what I think really killed them, and it was the response to the debate.And they violated every possible basic tenet of crisis communications.They didn't even—it didn't even look as if they knew they had a problem.I'm sure they did, but to the rest of the world, it didn't look like that.You can't have a crisis of that magnitude and ignore it publicly for eight days.He didn't give an interview to address what happened, to address the elephant in the room for the entire country.He just didn't talk about it for eight days.He didn't communicate with the people he needs to vote for him for eight days by answering questions, which is what the concern was.The concern wasn't that he couldn't give a scripted speech reading from a teleprompter.That wasn't anybody's concern.It was, can you answer questions without reading from a teleprompter?Or can you just—can you talk?Can you communicate?Can you have a conversation with somebody about what took place?And he didn't do that for eight days.
Why?
Well, again, I have no idea of why they make a lot of the communication decisions that they choose to make, but I thought that certainly, if nothing else, I don't know what would warrant a crisis [of] confidence in your communications staff, your public relations staff.What corporate communications or public affairs professional would ever advise a CEO in a crisis or in a humiliating situation to wait eight days while the rest of the world talks about only that?Because if you're not telling your story, somebody else will.And a vacuum of information gets filled.… They are now putting everything over the last year, every action, every step, every choreographed moment, under a microscope.And it is just relentless, story after story after story for three weeks.And the press put their foot on the gas, and they just didn't let up.And it doesn't look like it would have stopped anytime soon, because they were breaking—there's been incredible, remarkable journalism and reporting about things that even his team, the president's team, and the White House were denying, constantly dismissing.And then you had the White House in the daily briefings refusing to answer questions or denying giving answers that were denials only to come back later in statements, overnight, to walk those back and provide new information.
Just death by a thousand political cuts, all—all now, since the debate, at the hands of the people who communicate on his behalf to the press, which is the main vehicle to the American people and the people who they're asking for votes from.How is the press or the American people supposed to trust anything they say?And the press didn't, and the press doesn't.So they just steamrolled over the White House press shop and the campaign press shop and just, unfortunately, just led to just an embarrassment of negative publicity over the last three weeks that did not improve the environment for the president or the health of his campaign.
You could watch a videotape of him deteriorating, slowly but surely, over the year, year-and-a-half time period.… I think that's probably what was happening to him.And he had a bad day; that's for damn sure.
Yeah.But then there were days like the State of the Union, and there were other days where he was completely reactive to reporters and really gave you the confidence that he's still a political fighter.So I think that a lot of us who want to believe that they were doing this because he could really do it and wanted it, that he was in a condition to physically do it, a physical condition to do it—but you can't run for president by hiding from the voters, by ducking and cover and by running out the clock, by getting by, by not engaging with the public and the media, or only doing scripted teleprompter speeches.It was unsustainable in a modern media environment, where public opinion is formed from the electronic and broadcast media, where it's so influenced by modern media, that they thought they could actually—I don't want to believe they're that stupid to think that they could defy not even political gravity, but to defy just reality like that.
Democratic Party Intervention
Yeah.What do you think Schumer, Pelosi, Hakeem Jeffries, what do you think they—what was that all about?Was it just a power play?Did they really care?Were they really assessing who he was?Because it felt like he was losing them.The more they saw him, the more they felt kind of certain that maybe the emperor has no clothes here.
Those first two weeks, that first week, that first two weeks, it was just—you couldn't have harmed the guy more with the decisions that they made, from a public relations standpoint.And then when they tried to do interviews, it was learned that they were scripting the questions for some of the journalists who would be interviewing him.Well, I don't know what could destroy your credibility even more after that.When the people around you don't trust their own candidate enough to answer questions without parameters or without guardrails, it's so insulting to the man's own—to his own aptitude that they'd do that, to, I guess, protect him, because they don't trust him.If you don't trust your principal, you shouldn't be working for him.He's been doing this for 50 years, and he's been pretty successful at it.And he didn't get this far by dodging interviews or reading from a teleprompter for 50 years.That is not what made people fall in love with Joe Biden.And the more that they just kept doing that, the more people resisted.If you're not going to let him be him, people are like, “Fine.No thanks.Expiration date if you don't let him just be himself.” But they didn't do that.
And so all these things kept snowballing, and the media was relentless.And then, I think, well, House Democrats started seeing polling return, and usually House members don't poll this early in the summer.They can't afford to.These are different kinds of races than Senate races, where there's more money and public polling in contentious Senate races.But in House races, they were encouraged to put polls in the field very early, as opposed to right before Labor Day.And what they were getting back was really alarming and really concerning, because there has been a general consensus that the White House, in 2024, was a toss-up; that the Senate probably, if you had to put money on it, was going to go to the Republicans, but that the House was totally winnable.And then when you get all these alarming numbers after the debate, and the avalanche of bad media the Biden team was getting and the president was suffering, it prompted the most epic political intervention that I've ever seen.
Can you describe it for me, Michael?What was this epic political intervention?
Well, it was clearly strategic and intentional on the part of the leaders of the party.Well, the leader of the party is Joe Biden, but this was strategic and intentional from congressional leaders, who, even though they are of age themselves, they are still the party apparatus.They are still raising the money, and they're recruiting for the party.And they are still the party present and future, whether they're at that age or not.
Biden, President Biden, his future is behind him.He is the leader of the party, but he has to also lead the party and grow the party, and if the party can't be successful with him at the top, then he was going to be put in a position to do what's right for the party, not for Joe Biden.
His family has Joe Biden's interest in mind.Joe Biden has Joe Biden's interest in mind.But President Biden needs to have the best interest of the Democratic Party in mind.And Speaker Pelosi, Leader Jeffries, Leader Schumer clearly saw data that alarmed them.It was alarming to former President Obama, from the reports out there.And again, I think there was a—there seems to be, in the way it all worked out, a strategic and intentional approach to have these conversations with the president's staff and the president.
Now again, going back to everything that harmed him up to this point, the president didn't communicate with members of Congress for several days.That was concerning to them.They had not heard from his leadership or him directly.Eventually they did.Some members of Congress had to call multiple times before they had a call returned.Outreach to the Democratic Caucus did not begin for several days.Members were offended.…
So I don't blame the leadership for believing that he wasn't keeping the party's best interest in mind by his actions, by his rhetoric and his tone in these interviews.They didn't think he was connecting to political reality, so they took matters into their own hands and individually met with the president, communicated their concerns and the concerns of members of Congress who are running on the ballot with the president.
And they did so in three separate meetings.I think Chuck Schumer even drove all the way out to Rehoboth to do it.I think Pelosi's was over the phone.From what I've heard reported, the leaders felt like their concerns fell on deaf ears and [were] dismissed by the president or the president's team.So what you saw one week was forcing the president's hand through coordinated leaks and design to turn the volume up on the president, say, “OK, you're going to ignore us.You don't believe us.Fine.We're going to send a signal to the rest of the country that we are concerned, and we're going to let people know, one by one, on the same day, yeah, that we expressed our concerns to the president about going forward.”
And that's embarrassing for the president, to have the public know that the leaders of the party are concerned about the leader of the party at the top of the ticket.And so those leaks were the only thing standing in between Pelosi, Schumer, Jeffries, who knows who else, from going public.It was designed—I mean, they happened—those leaks happened on the same day.They were about meetings that took place at different periods over the last week or two, separately.And the office has never denied that those meetings took place, but somehow, the public became aware, all on the same day, that several of these meetings occurred.
So there was an effort to pressure the president publicly through the leaks.And then you saw just a never-ending sort of, what would you call—there's been so many idioms used—I guess the dam breaking of Democrats coming out and saying he needed to pass the torch.And that Friday—was it the Friday morning?I think it was the Friday before he announced he was passing the torch, he—or the campaign chair went on Morning Joe.Jen O'Malley Dillon went on Morning Joe, gave a rare TV appearance and was incredibly firm that the president was running for reelection, continuing on, sidestepping concerns.
The campaign put out a statement from the president that same day saying he's all in.They were sending signals by showing his schedule, where he's going for fundraisers the next couple weeks; this is what he's doing.Aggressive pushback.And at the end of that day, at the end of all that, Sharrod Brown, the senator from Ohio, still comes out and says he needs to go.And then you just saw a flood of Democrats over the weekend and throughout the day Friday.
And that was Pelosi's way of saying one thing to the president.“This is not going to stop.This is not going to stop.We will now do this publicly.We have tried to express our concerns and subtly encourage you to do the right thing in private.But this isn't going to stop.” … I don't think any type of political intervention has ever taken place like that in modern, or ever, in American political history that I can think of, that has had the significant impact of the situation we find ourselves in today, which is an incumbent president deciding, three months before early voting starts, a month before the convention, to drop out.It's never happened before.I mean, it is surreal.What she—what she put her mind to, and did, was—it was truly takes a lot of guts to do that, and political skill.
So tonight he's going to speak.What's left for Joe Biden?… What of the old Joe Biden, the “You can't get me down” Joe Biden, that guy?What's left of him?
I don't know.It's hard.I mean, I don't know.I'm worried about his—how he's going to be.I think he's going to be treated by history much better than his contemporaries are treating him.However, if Donald Trump returns to the White House, I don't know how he gets around the blame for it.I just don't know.How can you blame his vice president by giving her four months to campaign against somebody who's been campaigning for four years?Donald Trump declared his candidacy essentially the day he left the White House.Kamala Harris is getting four months, if that.I mean, voting technically starts in September in a lot of places.So she's not much—this is truly probably the worst kind of circumstances to have to run a compressed campaign, and I don't know how Biden escapes responsibility from that.And that makes me really—it breaks my heart, because he doesn't deserve it.
He deserved so much better and so much more, because he's not only been a transformational president in terms of accomplishment, effectiveness, productiveness, and the good, I believe, as a Democrat, the good in what he did, and his intentions, but he's also just a good human being.And it really hurts me.And it's painful to think about that he may only be remembered for what could go down as a very selfish decision to prevent competition, to prevent a small “d” democratic process from taking place to replace him, or to pass the torch, and only giving the new ticket three months to make their case.
As the old saying [goes], Michael, you feel his strength, his resilience.His fight is “Never give up.” “Never give up.Get up; keep fighting” is also his weakness.And it's possible that, in this circumstance, he was refusing to admit the weakness.… It has to be one of the most existential—it's a Shakespearean tragedy right before your eyes.
It is, because all these comebacks were designed to get him to this point.At this point, he is the leader of the party; he's no longer the future of the party.So he has an entire party to think about.It's not just about his future anymore, because that future is behind him.And it's been remarkably successful and celebrated.And that's just where he is.He reached the mountaintop.And so part of the responsibility of the leader of a party is to know when to leave the stage.
Somebody has to tell you, though.
And that's exactly what happened.Unfortunately, he didn't get to leave on his own terms, and he didn't get to end his political career on his own terms.It had to be like—a lot of political decisions that I saw made over the last three years, they had to try everything wrong before getting to the right decision.And they had their hands forced by the press and the Congress.They didn't do this on their own terms.And, you know, as Democrats, we are optimistic because we have to be, but we're in a really extraordinary circumstance, and we can only look to one place.It defies logic otherwise.
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