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Toluse Olorunnipa
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Toluse Olorunnipa
White House Bureau Chief, The Washington Post
Toluse Olorunnipa is the White House bureau chief for The Washington Post. He previously reported on politics for Bloomberg News and is the co-author of His Name is George Floyd: One Man's Life and the Struggle for Racial Justice.
The following interview was conducted by the Kirk Documentary Group’s Michael Kirk for FRONTLINE on July 24, 2024. It has been edited for clarity and length.
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Joe Biden on the Debate Stage
What are the stakes for Joe Biden as he walks on that stage at the debate last month?
Well, he needed to turn the race around.He was losing to Donald Trump, and his campaign said that having a debate early in the campaign season, much earlier than previous debates have been held, would be an opportunity to reset the race, get the country’s focus back on this presidential race and create a contrast between himself and Donald Trump.And the stakes were very high because he was losing, and he needed to turn the race around.He needed to answer questions about his age, about his mental acuity, about the concerns that voters had about whether or not he could do this job, and this was a high-profile setting for him to do that.
So he entered into that debate arena and was confident because he had all of the rules that his campaign had set for the debate—no live audience, muting of the microphones, no interruptions.Everything was set, and it was supposed to be his opportunity to showcase his forcefulness and his ability to take the fight to Donald Trump.Obviously things did not work out.But as he started to go into the debate stage, it was clear that his team felt confident that he was going to do well.
Joe Biden’s Physical Decline
Just as a small aside, you’ve been around him a lot.Were you concerned?Were you picking up their concern about his performance skills and the way things seemed to be dropping off?His voice was getting lower.He was shuffling a lot more than usual in the last year, year and a half?Had you noticed a real change in him, and were you watching for something that night when he went out on the stage?
Yes, I had noticed the physical decline of the president.He had passed 80 years old, and we’d seen the decline start to accelerate.We saw the way that he walked.He was walking more slowly.He was talking at a much lower volume.He was having trouble at times being able to speak forcefully and complete his sentences—nothing at the level that we ended up seeing at the debate, but we saw in different press conferences or we saw in different scenarios where he was not the same kind of forceful politician that he had been earlier in his career.In a lot of cases, he was reading from teleprompters or reading off of notecards.Even during press conferences at some points, he was reading his answers from notecards, and so we took note of that as reporters.And we were wondering whether or not he would be able to rise to the moment during the debate.
I have to also mention that there were moments in his presidency where he faced these kinds of questions, and he did rise to the moment.During the State of the Union, there were questions right before that about his mental acuity that were raised by the special counsel, Robert Hur, who had interviewed him for several hours earlier in the year.People were wondering whether or not Joe Biden had lost his step, whether he was a “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory,” as the special counsel wrote.
And after the State of the Union, a lot of people’s concerns were put to rest.He rose to the challenge.He gave a very forceful speech.He went off script at times and engaged the Republicans who were heckling him from the crowd.And so people thought that Joe Biden could do it.And so he had spent a lot time preparing for this debate, and there was a view that maybe he would be able to rise to the moment again.Obviously that didn’t happen.But in addition to seeing signs of decline, we saw moments where Joe Biden rose to the moment and was able to put the doubts [to] rest, and there was debate over whether or not that would happen again at the debate.
Do you think his staff was holding their breath?
Oh, for sure.Every time he goes out and does an unscripted performance, his staff was holding their breath, because he’s always been known as someone who makes gaffes, who sometimes says things that he’s not supposed to say when he is speaking off the cuff.But over the past several years or in the course of his presidency, not only had that gotten worse, his performance and the way that he came across not only as someone who was loose-lipped and was willing to say things that he wasn’t supposed to say, but he came across as someone who was more frail.And that was something that people were concerned about, that not only would he speak off the cuff and maybe have his thoughts trail off or not be able to complete his sentence, but he would look frail as he was having those gaffes.And that combination of not being able to put together a strong, cohesive argument and also looking and sounding frail is political dynamite for a politician who is trying to make their candidacy feel strong.And we saw everything blow up at the debate on June 27.
What did Americans see?
They saw their worst fears.They saw, for a lot of people, what they thought was happening behind the scenes, that people thought that Joe Biden was being shielded, that his mental decline was very much more advanced than people had been able to see because of the way people had been kept behind closed doors, kept on a teleprompter, kept on script.And so Americans saw a politician who was not only having a bad night but was in the decline of his political career, mentally and physically, someone who was struggling to complete sentences, someone who was struggling to make any kind of argument against Donald Trump, someone who was physically and mentally diminished.
And even Biden supporters were concerned and started texting one another as the debate was taking place, that this is not the person that we thought was in the presidency; this is not someone that we think can be in this job for another four years.And so the concern was not only is Joe Biden OK, but will he be able to keep up the fight for the next several months before the election?And even if he does, even if he manages to win, is he going to be able to keep this role for four years, this very demanding role of president?
And that’s why we started to see the concern start to bubble up about whether or not he was the right person to be in the presidency and the right person to be the campaign leader for Democrats going into November.
When his wife, Jill [Biden], is—it’s just a burned memory for me—is walking him down to say thank you or whatever they’re saying to Jake Tapper and Dana Bash, he’s so—he’s kind of shuffling; she’s helping him down the stairs.As that is happening on CNN, what’s happening to your phone and the phones of other reporters and everybody else’s?Is the Twitter-verse or X-verse or whatever it is called now, is it just blowing up?
Certainly.… It started even before the debate ended.After President Biden gave his first response, the texts and the tweets and the messages started coming in from people who were concerned, saying, “If this continues over the course of this debate, people are going to be calling for him to drop out of the race."And so we saw that escalate even as the debate continued and as people saw that moment of Joe Biden, ushering him off the stage, sort of gingerly, making sure he didn’t fall down as he stepped down from the stage.
People were concerned.People were worried.People were anxious.People were wondering whether or not they would be able to keep up this fight for the next several months before November or whether they should change their fighter, change the person who was going to be at the top of the ticket.We saw those calls begin in private, shortly after the debate.They became public from lawmakers in the days and hours after the debate.And it was very clear that people were concerned about whether or not Joe Biden was the best person to face Donald Trump and how much damage he had done to his campaign with the debate.That was a big question that people were asking from the very hours after the debate, all the way up until he dropped out of the race.
This is not Dr. Jill Biden’s first rodeo.She’s been around politics a long time.She knows her guy.She knows how it works.You figure she had to know and he had to know as they were standing there schmoozing with Jake and Dana.
They definitely both knew that the night had gone poorly.President Biden even said later that he talked to Jill and said, “I don't know what happened.I felt bad the whole night.I wasn’t feeling myself,” and was really trying to explain what had happened.And they both realized that it had gone poorly, that the answer where he gave where he sort of struggled to even put together a coherent message, that did not land well with the American people.And so they realized that the night had gone poorly.They realized that this was going to have a major impact on their campaign going forward.I don’t think they realized how much it would cause there to be these shockwaves of concern within the Democratic Party to the point that people were going to be calling for him to drop out of the race.They were putting it in the category of a bad night, something that he would easily be able to rebound from.
But it became very clear not long after the debate that this was different, that this was going to be something that was going to impact his ability to run this race and that people were going to be questioning his ability to be president.And so they quickly came to their realization that they were going to have to face these mounting calls for him to drop out of the race and figure out how to respond to them in a way that might be able to put people’s minds at ease, that not only could he win the race against Donald Trump, but that he could be president for another four years.
Where did you watch it?
I was in Atlanta at the press center where—we have to remember that this debate took place without any live audience, with no one else in the room basically besides Joe Biden and Donald Trump and the couple of reporters who were there.And so I was watching it from across the street in the press file, and even in that room, which is normally an off-the-record setting, but just to give a little bit of background, people were shocked.Their mouths were open.The reporters who had watched Joe Biden for years had never seen him perform this poorly, had never seen him do this badly on a public stage, and people were wondering what this would all mean for the presidential race. ...
There was this sense within the room that people had witnessed something historic; that this race had changed; that this presidential race that had already been historic, rocked by things like a presidential candidate being charged and convicted of felonies, this race had now become even more unsettled, even more unpredictable and even more historic in the way that it was playing out.
Biden’s Attempts to Reassure Voters
When the president and Dr. Biden walked out, got in a car, wherever they went, they went to get some ice cream and other things began to happen—we call this film Biden’s Decision.What was Biden’s decision?What in the end would be Biden’s decision?But really, what was he trying to decide, probably almost from the get-go, as he leaves the facility and heads for either ice cream or another rally or wherever he was going?
President Biden at this moment wants to really reassure people that what happened was just a bad night, that he was going to rebound from this the same way he had rebounded from troubled moments in his past, from low moments in his past—that he was a comeback kid, that he was a fighter.And so he went to greet some voters at the Waffle House not far from the debate site and talk to people in an off-the-cuff setting.And very quickly his campaign decided that they needed to showcase that he could be forceful, that he could speak off the cuff, that he could been seen in these various moments.
And so he went to do a rally the next day in North Carolina.It was a raucous rally with hundreds of people that were shouting and chanting for him and supporting him.And that rally, he changed his standard stump speech.He said that, “I’m not as young as I used to be.I don’t talk as well as I used to.I don’t debate as well as I used to.I don’t walk as strongly as I used to.But I know how to do the job.”And so we saw him really responding to the tough night he had at the debate by trying to reframe his message by saying that even at his advanced age, that he could still be president, that he was still a better choice than Donald Trump.
And that convinced some people.Definitely people within the room were very excited.But people within the party continued to harbor these doubts and worry that he had done damage to his campaign during the debate that could not be recovered.And so that was what he was dealing with and the decision that he was trying to make, was trying to figure out whether or not he could turn this into just a bad moment in a long campaign or whether this would be a fatal moment to his campaign.
And in the aftermath of the debate, he thought it was just a bad moment; he thought he would be able to power through and get over it.But many leaders within the party thought differently.
He had a lifetime of coming back, as you say, kind of a comeback kid.He had a lifetime of being down, way down, terrible things personally that he came back from—the death of his wife and daughter, damages to his kids.All of it—the plagiarism scandal when he runs the first time, the ridiculous things he says about Obama when he’s describing Obama the second time he runs.Yet he always seemed to come back, including his very first victory against [J. Caleb] Boggs, where he was at 19%, and he wins.
So in some ways it’s almost like the guy believes he has political magic, and maybe this was just another moment.Do you figure that’s some of what he was thinking or that’s how he was thinking about himself? ...
Yeah.And we talked about that North Carolina rally. ...During that North Carolina rally he coined another phrase what would be a part of his ethos going forward, which was, “We get knocked down, but we get back up.”And he tried to lean on that as he tried to save his candidacy. ...
His long career in Washington had begun with a moment where he was not supposed to win as a 29-year-old man against a two-term incumbent senator, who had also been governor of the state.His campaign was run by his sister.It was a very scrappy campaign.But he won, and he made it to Washington and became the youngest senator in the country.And shortly thereafter, he had this tragic moment in his life where his wife and his daughter were killed in a heinous accident.His two sons were also grievously injured.And he was going to leave Washington.He was going to go back home and try to settle his affairs with his family.But he was told by some other senators, “Just come to Washington for a short period of time, just six months.”He ended up staying for six terms.He ended up becoming a leader in the Senate despite all the odds, despite all the odds that were stacked against him.And he ran for president multiple times.Multiple times he struggled.Multiple times he stumbled.Multiple times he was counted out.But he ended up continuing to rise through the ranks.He became vice president.He became a presidential candidate in 2020, where he also faced a number of trials and tribulations.That campaign was marked by really deep struggles from the very beginning.He lost in Iowa.He lost in New Hampshire—not only lost, but lost pretty badly, and became resilient and surged into South Carolina and won, and ended up winning that race and winning the general election.And so he had all these moments throughout his career where he was counted out, where he was left for dead and where he came back and where he had this revival.
And so he was thinking about this moment after the debate in the same context, thinking that he would be able to revive his candidacy, he’d be able to comeback, he’d be able to lift himself off the floor and end up winning the campaign in a historic fashion, but that was not the way the rest of the party was seeing this.They saw his career, and they saw those highlights as a bygone era, as something that the president could not return to because he was too old to return to that level of fight and be able to turn things around.
There’s a lot of fights that you can have in politics.You can never win the fight against time.He was not going to be getting younger.His skills were not going to magically return.His forcefulness was not going to come back.And so a number of people within his party were not seeing this as another moment where he could show resilience.They were seeing this as beginning of a decline that they would not be able to turn around.
Why do you think he didn’t know that about himself?
Well, he had been chasing the presidency for decades.He finally got it in 2020, and in that, it became difficult for him to see a future in which he did not remain as president.It blinded him to a number of different things, a number of different possibilities.It blinded him to some of the poll numbers that people were pointing to for years during his presidency saying that they did not want him to run for a second term.They didn’t think a president who would be 86 at the end of a second term is what they wanted for the country.
And so that was something that he ignored, something that he downplayed, something that he wasn’t willing to listen to in part because he was in the office that he had been pursuing for a long time.He thought he was doing a great job.He was looking at his record as president, which for anybody looking at the record has to acknowledge that he did a lot of things that he said he was going to do.He did a lot of things that people said he couldn’t do.His legislative record was pretty impressive.
And so, looking at that, any president who had the record that he had would say, “I have earned a second term.I have earned at least a right to pursue a second term."And the party was lining up behind him, and so it blinded him to the fact that a lot of voters had these concerns about his age.A lot of voters had concerns about whether or not he would be able to do the job for another four years, and he was not willing to listen to that argument as he was running a presidency that, from his perspective, was very successful and deserving of a second term.
Party Support Collapses
... And how much importance do you attach to somebody like—let’s take Clooney, for example.What’s the importance of George Clooney saying, “My heart is broken.I love the guy, but I don’t think he is up to it”?
One of the important things about the calls for Joe Biden to step aside was that a lot of times he was seemingly recovering.He was seemingly getting over this hump.He was seemingly getting his campaign back together and overcoming what had been the hardest night of his political career.And just as it seemed like things were quieting down, someone else would come out and say, “I’m calling for Joe Biden to step aside.”It was George Clooney at one point.It was Nancy Pelosi at another point.
And those calls were really damaging to Joe Biden’s ability to get over this issue and get past this, this really hard moment in his political fight.And part of the reason these calls came was because people were looking at the numbers.They didn’t see a pathway in which Biden would be able to win.They didn’t see a pathway in which he’d be able to turn his campaign around.They saw that the same issues that people were worried about—his mental acuity, his ability to deliver a message—those same issues were continuing to show themselves even as he hit the campaign trail, even as he made public appearances after the debate.
They were stronger than the debate but still had their flubs, still had their gaffes.And so people were worried that there was not pathway for him to defeat Donald Trump, so they decided to keep coming out, sometimes in public, sometimes behind the scenes, sometimes in leaks to reporters.And it became sort of this untenable position where every time Joe Biden tried to right his ship and get his campaign together, someone else was coming out and expressing a vote of no confidence or being unwilling to fully endorse him or being willing to call for him to step aside.
And as those calls continued to mount, it became clear that even if he was willing to stay in the race and wanted to keep up the fight, the party was losing confidence in him and that the party was going to abandon him.And if your party abandons, then you don’t really have much of a shot at retaining the presidency.
He had to know that.Why did he keep fighting?
Well, it was standoff.It was really a standoff.It was a blinking contest, a stare-off between Joe Biden and the people who wanted him to jump out of the race.At some point a number of his advisers believed it would be too late for the party to abandon him; people would have no choice but to rally around him.And so he was thinking that he would be able to fight this and continue to fight on, and all the people who had called for him to resign would have no choice but to come back to him because it was going to be a pretty stark binary choice between him and Donald Trump on the other side.
And so Joe Biden thought he’d be able to keep it up and fight all the way through until the point where some of these people were starting to come back around, but it became clear at some point that the folks who were going to win this standoff were the people who write the checks, the donors, and also the party leaders who, when they say something, it carries a lot of weight.It influences the rest of the party.When someone like a Nancy Pelosi says, “Joe Biden needs to make a decision,” after Biden had already said he had made a decision, that opens the door for a number of other Democrats, rank-and-file Democrats, to say, “Maybe this thing is not over.Maybe there is still a chance to get Biden out of this race.”
And so that is one of the reasons that Biden was not able to come fully to grips with the fact that his campaign had no choice but to end, because he still thought he had a fighting chance if only he could get past a few weeks of turmoil, that things would turn in his favor.Ultimately that didn’t happen for him.
So he was trying to run out the clock.
Totally.Totally.And there wasn’t a very long clock for him to run out.The conventions were right around the corner.He had a number of events on the calendar that were likely to make it easier for him to run out the clock.The Republicans were going to be having their convention, which would turn the focus away from Biden onto Trump.A number of people within Biden’s orbit thought that once people were starting to focus on Trump and focus on his administration and his record, then Biden would be less of a concern.Maybe Biden was old, maybe he was not as good of a speaker as he had been in the past, but Trump was on the other side, and people needed to rally around Biden.
That was the thinking among Biden’s inner circle.They thought if they could just get through two or three weeks of this bad press that they would be able to turn the ship around.The delegates were going to be meeting pretty quickly after the debate, less than a month after the debate, to decide how they might be able to cement Biden as a candidate.And if they got to that point, then there would be no turning back.If Biden became the presumptive nominee, if he became the official nominee, then the party would have no choice but to stick with him.
And so he was hoping that he would be able to run out the clock, but it just didn’t turn out that way for him because the calls were incessant, even as he appeared to get past certain moments of turbulence and get to a place where it seemed like he was in the clear.Just then you’d hear another call from another lawmaker or another vote of no confidence from another person who was influential within the party, and the new round of speculation would begin again about whether or not Biden would stay in the race or that he would have to drop out.
The Obama-Biden Relationship
One person in particular whose name we haven’t mentioned, and that’s Barack Obama. ...
Tell me the story of Obama’s role in this rising tide against Joe in the Democratic Party.
Yeah, there is a closeness between President Obama and President Biden.They served together for eight years.But at the same time, President Obama has a bigger message, a bigger argument, and that is keeping Donald Trump out of the White House.He cares more about that than keeping Joe Biden in the White House.And so while Obama came out shortly after the debate and said, “I’ve had a poor debate night as well.Joe Biden is going to recover from this,” shortly thereafter he, behind the scenes, started pulling some strings.
It was very clear that he was not continuing to voice support for Biden in public.In private he was making the argument that Democrats had time and needed to use that time to change the race.He was looking at the same numbers that a number of people were looking at that showed that Biden had a very narrow path to victory, and he was starting to make his position known among the people close to him that he was not fully on board with Biden anymore and that he was willing to entertain the idea of another candidate.
And so as Biden was sort of twisting in the wind and struggling for his political life, it was very clear, the silence from Obama, that he was not coming to Biden’s defense.He was not publicly vouching for Biden and saying that this is a guy that we should stick with; this is our party leader; this is the person that we should support.He was being silent.And at the same time, a number of his top aides were some of the leading voices calling for Biden to drop out.A number of the speechwriters and top officials and leading figures from the Obama administration had called for Biden to drop out of the race.
And it’s also important to remember that Biden did have that chip on his shoulder, because those same people, people in Obama’s orbit, Obama himself had discouraged him from running in 2016, and those people were the people that Biden had kept him out of a race that he could have won, the race against Donald Trump in 2016 in favor of Hillary Clinton.And so Biden continued to hold that grudge against the Obama camp for nudging him out of the race in 2016 and putting their support behind Hillary Clinton, who ultimately lost to Donald Trump.And so he had a lot of regret for not running in 2016.
And when he ran in 2020, when he was trying to stay in the race in 2024, he was saying that all those same people that told me not run in 2016 are the same people telling me to drop out of the race now.And so that was one of the reasons why he was initially unwilling to step out of the race, because he had a grudge.He felt like people who were telling him not to run were the people who had gotten it wrong before, and he should not be listening to them in current moment.
Let’s go back just for a second, as long as you opened that door.Back when, back in the early days of the Obama administration, we have a scene in the movie that’s about it, where President Obama at the Correspondents’ Dinner makes a joke about Joe Biden, makes it sound like it’s his dog on a leash, but it’s really Joe he [is] trying to contain. ...Describe what was happening in the Obama White House during that time from what you have heard and maybe what you know.
Well, President Obama and President Biden, then Vice President Biden, are two very different personalities.President Obama is very cerebral, not as willing to speak off the cuff.President Biden, the vice president at the time, was someone who was often willing to kind of go off script, and sometimes he would create headaches for the Obama administration.Sometimes he would say things that he was not supposed to say or he would get ahead of the president.One example is when he endorsed and supported the idea of gay marriage at the time when President Obama hadn’t quite gotten publicly yet.So there was a long history of President Obama sort of rolling his eyes at his vice president, thinking that his vice president was not sticking to the script, not following the platform and the playbook that had been laid out by the president.And despite the fact that they were close and despite the fact that they ended up building up this rapport, when they first got together as running mates, they didn’t have a lot of history; they didn’t spend a lot of time together.
They were brought together sort of as this marriage of political convenience, where Biden offered some of the things that Obama didn’t—a lot of experience, a lot of relationships with the white working class, this idea of being “Scranton Joe.”And so Obama realized that Biden offered him things that he didn’t have and things that would help him win the election, and he brought him onto the ticket.Biden reportedly was initially reluctant to join the ticket and leave the Senate to become the vice president.He always thought of himself as a president, as a leader, not as a number two, and so he took some time to adjust to being the vice president.
And so there were moments of friction within their relationship over the course of eight years, but at the same time they were able to build up that rapport and build up that relationship and actually build up a genuine fondness for each other over the course of their time together, and a respect for one another.Even though they were different and they came from different eras, different generations, different backgrounds, they ended up really becoming partners in a historic era of American politics.And they needed one another.Obama needed relationships with the Hill; Biden needed Obama to put his stamp of history on the things that Biden always wanted to do.
And so it was clear that they were trying to be partners even though there was a lot of tension in the relationship.There were a lot of times when they had disagreements.There were a lot of times where they didn’t see eye to eye on foreign policy, on a number of different issues.And they tried to keep that private, but definitely during the Obama presidency and in the years since, some of those disagreements were able to spill into public view, and definitely at the moment where Biden was at this lowest point politically, that tension became even more important for people to consider because the one person who was the most influential leader in the Democratic Party was not coming to his rescue, and it was very obvious that that was what was happening.And there was the sense that Biden himself was personally aggrieved by the fact that Obama wasn’t coming to his rescue, and instead it seems like Obama and the Obama aides were the people that were pushing him off the cliff.
Somebody told us once — and then we sort of double-checked and found out it was a real thing — that Biden, by working with Obama — once they had successfully worked out their relationship — that Biden, one of the things that Biden received by being vice president was what this person called the “Obama halo.”You’ve been blessed by the Great One.And especially in Biden’s case, because of what happened with Anita Hill, he needed the Obama halo, especially if he had any aspirations to be president, because my sense is, and people we’ve talked to sense is, that Black Americans were not so thrilled about Joe Biden, especially after the Anita Hill moment, and once he received the Obama halo, it got a little better for him with Black voters.Talk to me about that a little bit, if you know anything about it.
Yeah, and in Delaware Biden had a strong relationship with the Black community.Delaware has a large Black community, a large portion of its state population.But nationally, there was a lot of skepticism about Joe Biden among Black voters.They were remembering not only the Anita Hill hearings, which Biden later apologized for and said that he did not handle properly, and also there was the crime bill that Biden championed in the 1990s that ended up disproportionately impacting Black people and incarcerating a number of Black people by increasing the amount of penalties that were targeted for things like nonviolent drug offenses.
And so there was a lot of skepticism about Joe Biden.He had talked favorably about spending time with segregationists in the Senate.And so he had this image as a good old boy, someone from an earlier era, someone who grew up during segregation and maybe was continuing with some of that sentiment in his own politics.Now, he did have a very strong relationship with the Black community in Delaware, and so locally, he was seen as someone who was a champion of Black voters in his state.But nationally, people were wondering whether or not he would be that same kind of champion.
And so the fact that the first Black president had appointed him to be his vice president really did a lot for Joe Biden for his standing in the Black community.And that was really important for him when he decided to mount his own presidential bid.It ended up being Black voters that saved his presidential bid in 2020 and propelled him into the presidency.Without the support from the Black community, which was very much connected to his time as vice president to the first Black president, Joe Biden would never have become president in the first place.
So why would Barack Obama want this white guy, who cuts no sway in the Black community—I guess because he already had the Black community or something.But what was it about Biden that Obama would—you’ve already sort of alluded to it about handling Congress and international stuff, and maybe it’s as simple as that.Is there any more to it than that?
Well, Obama was pretty fresh on the scene when he was running in 2008.He had only been senator for a short period of time.People didn’t know too much about him.They needed a sense of comfort, and Joe Biden was that sense of comfort for voters because he had been in the Senate for the better part of 35 years.He was someone who had a long history.He had a foreign policy record as leader of the committee focused on foreign policy in the Senate.He had a long record of dealing with other members of Congress even though President Obama, candidate Obama at the time, did not have the best relationship on Capitol Hill because he had only been there for a few years, and people saw him as this hotshot.
And if he was going to pass legislation, he needed someone who was seen as a statesman, someone who had been on Capitol Hill for a long time, someone who could appeal to the white working-class voters.Obama was doing very well with Black voters.He was assured that he was going to get a strong level of support from Black voters, but he needed more than that if he was going to win the presidency.If he was going to get 270 electoral votes, he was going to need to win in places like Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, Florida, and in order to do that, he needed not only huge outpouring of Black voters, which he ended up getting, but he needed skeptical white voters to vote for him.And Joe Biden was his best choice among a number of choices for getting that together.
We have to remember that Hillary Clinton was his biggest rival in the Democratic primary.There were some people saying that Obama should choose Hillary Clinton as his vice president because she had come in second and she had gotten millions of votes and gotten this huge level of support.But Obama realized, as a smart and shrewd political calculator, that he needed someone who was going to put the country at ease with the idea of having the first-ever Black person as president, and Joe Biden checked a lot of those boxes as an older white man, as someone who had been in the Senate for a long time, as someone who had had a history of running for president, who had introduced himself on the national stage, who had foreign policy relations and had a moderate record for the most part.
That was what Obama saw in Biden that helped him choose him as the vice president.And it ended up working out pretty well.Obama was able to win over those votes that he needed, and he was able to win the presidency, and he was able to win a second term as well.
… As you say, Obama, practical politician that he is, says, “I don’t think Joe can beat Trump.I don’t like the way the polls are going, and I certainly don’t like the way my friend Joe is acting publicly.He really seems to be deteriorating.”
It’s probably one of those moments—I don't know; you tell me—but it feels like one of those moments where you say to your parents, “I’m sorry, Dad, you can’t drive anymore.We’re going to take the keys of the car away from you.”It feels a little bit like that, but Obama doesn’t want to do it publicly, because boy, would that be the ultimate dis.
Yes.We saw a lot of Democratic leaders trying to work behind the scenes because they did not want to come out publicly against Joe Biden.Not only would that look very messy to the public, but people had admiration for Biden and his long history, his long career in politics.They saw him as a decent man.They were very appreciative of him for winning the election in 2020 and getting Trump out of office, so they didn’t want to tarnish his legacy by coming out against him very publicly.
Obama wanted to maintain that level of statesmanship, of supporting the party, supporting the president, not undermining the person who was in the presidency.Obama realized that having been in the presidency himself, having people come out against you publicly is really difficult.It makes it very hard for you to do your job.And so Obama had a certain level of respect for Biden as a person, as someone who had gone through a lot, as someone who had been loyal to him throughout his presidency, and so he didn’t want to be publicly disloyal.
But at the same time, Obama needed to be loyal to his own legacy, because if Donald Trump were to win the presidency, that would really put Obama’s legacy at risk.Trump had already said that he was going to undo much of Obama’s legacy.He was going to turn the country around and really move things in the opposite direction from where Obama wanted things to be going.And so Obama had to think about his own legacy even as he cared about Joe Biden, and he wanted to make sure at all costs that he kept Trump out of the Oval Office.And so he had to start making these pretty shrewd, pretty calculated political calculations and decide whether or not to stay with Biden or to start making behind-the-scenes moves that could get Biden out of the race.
Why do you think Black voters, especially male Black voters, were moving away from Biden, apparently moving away from Biden, at least in the polls and things you read?Maybe you know more than I do about it.But what was happening there?
Well, for decades and decades, Black voters have given Democrats very high levels of the vote.And there was a concern, specifically among Black men, that the four years of the Biden administration had not delivered on things like criminal justice reform, on things like building up the economy and keeping prices low, and people were concerned that maybe the four years of Joe Biden had not delivered what they had called for, what they had voted for, on racial issues like voting rights.On a number of different issues it seems like there was a retrogression.Things were moving backwards.Affirmative action had been eliminated essentially by the Supreme Court, things that, in many cases, were out of Joe Biden’s hands.It seemed like things were getting worse for a number of Black Americans.And Trump made a direct appeal specifically to Black men to this idea of machismo, this idea of being a rich person who was going to make everyone else rich.
Trump had a long history of being seen in the hip-hop community as someone who was emblematic of wealth, emblematic of showmanship.And so he had an opening specifically with Black men.He had a record as well.He had done things like the First Step Act while he was in office that helped to reduce the amount of incarceration; that was targeted specifically at Black men.
And so he had an opportunity to start peeling away some of the votes.It’s important to note that there is still a large, vast majority of Black voters and Black men who, in polling, support Democrats, support Joe Biden.But it did seem like Biden was slipping, and some of it had to do with his age, his perceived frailty.Trump just looked like a stronger person to a number of these voters, and that was something that was making it very difficult for Biden to turn his ship around and win over some of the voters that were starting to look the other way and look at other candidates and not stick with him after voting for him in 2020.
The Clarence Thomas Confirmation Hearings
Let’s go back just for one more second in the way-back machine to the Anita Hill hearings.What’s the criticism of what Biden did or didn’t do in those hearings that would follow him?We know about the Crime Bill.And we’ve seen the hearings.We’ve made films about it.What is it specifically from your point of view, from what you’ve learned or what you hear about what Joe Biden didn’t do in those hearings?
Well, it’s important to remember that the Anita Hill hearings happened at a very different moment in American history, but Biden later expressed regret in part because people were starting to reconsider how he managed those hearings.There were all men on the committee asking questions that were, in many cases, very direct and not seen as empathetic of what Anita Hill was going through.She was essentially a Black woman by herself in front of a panel of white men asking tough questions of her and not really allowing her to feel comfortable, not allowing her to feel like she could get her story across in a nonjudgmental place.
Joe Biden did not really seem like he wanted to offer her the full platform to be believed as someone who was making these arguments.And when Clarence Thomas, the Supreme Court nominee was also going before these hearings, he was able to put forth a pretty forceful argument in favor of his candidacy and discount the messages that Anita Hill was putting forward.And so it seemed like the entire atmosphere, the entire set-up of these hearings, seemed to lean in favor of the man in the situation, of Clarence Thomas, and against the woman who was really seen as someone who was alone, someone who was not believed.Joe Biden didn’t use his platform as a leader of that committee to stand up for Anita Hill, to say that he believed her or to even champion her rights as a woman to be there and to make her story heard.
And so when people were reexamining that moment in the era of #MeToo, in the era of the 21st century, then there was a question of whether or not Joe Biden could have done more to protect Anita Hill, to defend her, to speak up for her.And he even acknowledged that he wished that he had done more for her when she came before that committee.And so that was one of the reasons that stuck out as a key moment in his political career, because, as people were looking at it and reexamining it, it became a clear example of Biden having an opportunity to be out front and speak up for a woman who was under siege and not taking that opportunity and playing the role of a referee, a neutral observer, and not speaking up and standing up for a woman who many believe was the victim of a sexual assault.
When Clarence Thomas says “high-tech lynching” to an all-white panel, especially the Democrats, what’s the impact of that on those guys?
The term “high-tech lynching” really put a number of the Democratic senators on their heels.They saw the racial overtones of that statement.They saw how Clarence Thomas was going on offense.They saw that he was going to not take the attacks and the criticism standing down.He was going to make a forceful case for himself.And a number of the men on this committee realized that they were in a tough position.They had, on the one hand, a woman who was making these claims about sexual harassment.On the other hand, a man who was making these claims of racism, of him being targeted because he was a Black man, a Black conservative, in his words, who was willing to think for himself.
And so they were in a tough position.A lot of the senators just did not want to have to deal with this.They did not want to have to navigate the thorny politics of racial and gender dynamics that were going on in the country.And so they took the path of least resistance in many cases, which was not to grill Clarence Thomas, not to ask him any tough questions, not to come out for the defense of Anita Hill, and allow Clarence Thomas’ nomination to sail through, to vote the way they were going to vote, ultimately, but not to really prosecute the case against him in these hearings but to allow the hearings to take place and really allow Clarence Thomas to have a platform to make his case without being challenged very strongly.
And Biden’s role in that?
He was the leader of the committee, and he essentially stood up with a number of the members of the committee and also allowed this [to] go through, allowed this to go forward without a major challenge [to] Clarence Thomas.Obviously Biden voted against him, but he didn’t use his power as the leader of the committee to really put Clarence Thomas on the hot seat and really stand up for Anita Hill.And so, as the leader of the committee, he had the most level of responsibility to determine how those hearings were going to go, and he set the tone for the hearings, and the tone was one in which Clarence Thomas was able to get through it, was able to make his strong case for his own candidacy, was able to ultimately become a Supreme Court justice without facing the level of backlash that we would later see from a Supreme Court nominee, Brett Kavanaugh, who was also accused of sexual misconduct.And he faced a very, very tough Senate hearing where he was asked very tough questions decades later, and people who were thinking back on the Anita Hill hearings were wondering where that level of outrage was when she was making her claims and when Clarence Thomas was facing those accusations.And people were looking at Joe Biden because he was the one who set the tone for those hearings in the 1990s.
Isolated and Under Pressure
So now fast-forward.Here we are.Joe Biden has COVID, and he arrives in Delaware.He comes in, in the middle of the night, I think, 11:00 at night, lands.You didn’t happen to be there?You didn’t happen to see him when he got off the plane?
No. I was in Las Vegas with him where he left from, but I was watching as he arrived in Delaware as I flew separately to come back east.Yeah, it was quite the moment.We saw the images of Joe Biden shuffling into the car, looking diminished, looking unhealthy.He had announced that he had COVID.He was moving very slowly off of the plane.People were wondering, is this the end of Joe Biden’s political career?Is he going to be able to bounce back from this?
And so there was a lot of concern over whether or not he was physically able to keep running his campaign, but also whether or not, at that moment, he was more vulnerable to giving up the fight, to realizing and saying in his own mind that maybe this isn’t worth it.Now I’m unhealthy; now I’m not feeling very strong, and I’m having the fight of my political life, and it’s not clear whether or not I’ll be able to continue in this race.And so people were looking at that imagery.They’re looking at the days ahead, the weekend that was coming up as a pivotal moment in determining whether or not Biden would be able to remain as the leader of the Democratic ticket or whether he would stand down and allow someone else to take the role.
... What’s going on in his mind, do you think?He’s got a lifetime of comeback kid, as you say.But here he is, stuck in Delaware on the beach, sick with COVID of all things, and everybody is deserting him, it seems like.What do you think those days were like for Joe Biden?
One of the things about COVID-19 is that you have to self-isolate.You have to be away from other people.He was self-isolating for health reasons, but politically, he was incredibly isolated at this moment because there were mounting calls for him to drop out of the race at the very moment that he was dealing with COVID-19.And this diagnosis that kept him away from other people, kept him off the campaign trail, kept him from being able to be among the supporters that he had been relying on in the recent days to sort of make him feel better, make him feel like he had a shot at keeping his candidacy going.
And so it was very clear that he was trying to figure out a way to get out of the political doldrums that he was in.But it became clear over the course of the weekend, after several days of self-isolation and only a few aides being able to see him and spend time with him, that he realized that he was not going to be able to keep his campaign going.He was getting the message from the lawmakers on Capitol Hill who were saying, “If you don’t make a decision this weekend, we are going to come out en masse and say that we have lost confidence in you, and you are going to be a politically weakened candidate, trying to go into the convention in several weeks.”
And so he realized at that moment that it was time for him to stand down.He made the decision on Saturday night with a number of his family members and close aides around him.And just hours later, on Sunday, he put out the statement saying that he was going to end his campaign.And that was a clear moment in which things shifted, because he had been in fight mode for several weeks.He had said he was going to stick in the race.He had said there is only one way he is going to get out of the race, which was if the “Lord almighty” came down and told him that he needed to get out.He said that only if his doctors told him he was too sick, that’s the only way he would get out of the race.He had said that the elites and the millionaires were the people that were trying to push him out of the race, but the voters wanted to keep him in.He talked about the 14 million voters who had voted for him in the primary.He was defiant for several weeks.But at this moment of isolation, where he was by himself in Delaware, he had to come to grips with the fact that his presidential campaign was about to end.His bid for a second term was about to end, and he was going to go down in history as a one-term president.And that is something that he had to come to terms with.As he was alone, as he was sick, as he was struggling in Delaware, he made this decision, and he ultimately came to understand that he was going to be a one-term president.And once he came to grips with that, it was just a matter of time for him to put out the statement and try to cast this in the best light possible.And he ended up getting a lot of praise for that decision that he made.
The Biden-Harris Relationship
... When he picks Sen. Harris as his running mate back in [2020], talk about that and the importance of that and the dividend it probably pays for him now.
Joe Biden came out of a very difficult 2019–2020 Democratic primary race where people were saying that he was too old; he didn’t represent the party because he was an older white man, and the party had become more diverse and younger.So he came out and said that he was going to pick a woman as his vice president.That put a lot of people at ease that he was going to have some diversity in his ticket, and he chose Sen. Harris.And that really jolted the amount of energy in his campaign.People were excited about the idea of having the first woman on a presidential ticket, the first vice president in history that was not only a woman, but a woman of color.
And it really impacted his ability to get votes.He won in states like Georgia.He won in states like Arizona.He won in states where Democrats had not been competitive in a long time, in part because people were excited about the idea of having a Black woman on the ticket, in the White House, as vice president.And the decision became even more pivotal as people were considering what would happen if he were to step aside and not pursue a second term.And the fact that he had chosen Kamala Harris ended up being a very pivotal decision, because we saw people turn around and quickly coalesce around her as the next option, as someone who they would be excited about, as someone who would be able to take the fight against Donald Trump.The fact that she is a prosecutor and Donald Trump had all of these allegations against him and all these indictments set up a really nice contrast that people got very excited about.
And so Biden has said that Harris was ready to be president.He had basically given her his endorsement before he dropped out.When he was asked about it, whether or not he was comfortable with her being president, he said, “Yes.”He said, “That’s why I chose her.”And so that decision became ever more important as it became clear that he wasn’t going to be able to keep his political campaign going, because people wanted to see what happened next and whether or not there would be chaos in the party with all these various people trying to fight for the nomination, or whether or not it would be a smooth transition to the next option.And the fact that he chose Kamala Harris allowed there to be a smooth transition from his presidency to a new nominee, someone that people could get behind and someone that could coalesce the party and bring the party together pretty quickly.And that’s what happened with Kamala Harris.
Once again, here’s Joe Biden benefitting from his relationship with people of color.I mean, it’s amazing.If you think about it, it’s sort of an amazing cycle he’s in all the time, for a long time, for good reasons and bad reasons—the Anita Hill moments, for example, or the crime bill.It’s like a central pivot point inside of his life and his career.It’s so fascinating, isn’t it?
Absolutely.It’s very interesting that this older, white man from a state that had been segregated became someone who was a champion of Black Americans, someone who had his most loyal constituency among Black Americans, despite the fact that he didn’t necessarily have a lot in common with them.But they were the people that propelled him into the presidency.They were the people who saved his campaign in 2020, and they were the strongest people supporting him in 2024.As other voters were calling for him to drop out, all the polling showed that Black Americans still wanted him to stay in the race.
And so the fact that he had chosen a Black woman as his vice president really puts a bookend on his political career, which started off in a moment where he was serving alongside segregationists in the Senate and befriending some of them, all the way up until he becomes the vice president, the number two to the first Black president, and also, when he becomes president chooses a vice president who is a Black woman, and as president selects the first Black woman to join the Supreme Court, mentioning that the arc of his life from the Anita Hill hearings and the Clarence Thomas nomination all the way up until he appoints Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court as the first Black woman, it's very clear that Black people have had a key role in his political career.It is something he has embraced.It is something that has saved his career.It is something that has made him a historic president in a number of different ways, a historic vice president.And so it is very fascinating that Joe Biden and his relationship with the Black community was really the symbiotic relationship in which Biden needed the Black vote, Black voters ended up needing Biden, and now he has appointed a vice president who could become the first woman to be president.And at that, she could be the first Black woman to be president.And it’s all leading back to his pivotal decision in 2020 to name Kamala Harris as his vice presidential nominee.
... I guess time will tell which one people remember him, as the guy who stumbles through a debate and get annihilated by Donald Trump or a guy who really made and capitalized on some fundamental decisions about race, division and all the other things are besetting our democracy.Interesting.
Yeah. I mean, Biden often compares himself to LBJ [former President Lyndon B. Johnson].LBJ had a long record, even though he was a white man from a southern state, he ended up becoming a champion for Black Americans, signing the Civil Rights Act and really being someone who helped to bring about more equality in the country, despite the fact that he wasn’t from a Black community.But he was willing to use his presidential power to advocate for people who did not have that power.
And so Biden wanted to be seen in that same vein, wanted to be seen for making the types of choices that he’s made, including appointing the first Black woman to the Supreme Court and appointing the first Black woman to be his vice president, and basically endorsing that same person to be the next presidential nominee.He really wants to be seen as someone who, despite being from an older era, despite being from a different community, has been a champion for equality, has been a champion for civil rights, has been a champion for Black Americans to have a fair shot in the country.
And so that’s what he wants his legacy to be.Obviously, the outcome of the election could make a difference and could make an impact on that, whether or not Trump surges back into office and comes with all of the things that he has been espousing about attacking critical race theory and attacking diversity and equity and inclusion and trafficking in some racist tropes.Whether or not Biden’s presidency leads to that or whether it leads to the first, historic candidacy and presidency of a Black woman, that remains to be seen, but I think that is something that will determine how his legacy plays out.
That’s a great answer.My last question is just, it’s a simple one.How relieved do you think the White House staff and the people around him are that they don’t have to keep the secret about the president anymore?
Well, they are relieved that this infighting and chaos around Biden is coming to an end.And the fact that he has decided to make this choice has led to an outpouring of support, they’re relieved about that.I think they are also relieved that some of the things that they’ve seen behind closed doors with Joe Biden, with his declining physical abilities and his declining rhetorical abilities, they no longer have to figure out ways to try to manage that, because you had seen him really be stage-managed by his aides.He had teleprompters even in small settings, in people’s living rooms.He was not allowed to engage with the press very often because people were worried that he might say the wrong thing or come across as frail.
So now he doesn’t have those political calculations that he has to consider anymore.He can really engage with the fact that he’s old.He can engage with the fact that he’s 81 years old and that he doesn’t have the same skills that he once had.He can even talk about it openly and not worry that he’s going [to] lose votes for it because he no longer is going to have any more campaigns.He’s run his last presidential race.He’s run his last political race.More than 50 years after he entered into politics in Washington, he is bowing out and now no longer has to worry about all the political calculations.He just has to think about his legacy.He just has to think about how he will be remembered.
And for Biden, as well as for other people that worked for him, that’s a freeing phenomenon.That’s something that gives him the freedom to think about things at a broader level and not have to worry about the political impact and implication of anything that he does.They can think about how it will stand in history, how people will remember him, how this era will be remembered by historians going forward, and that really allows people to take a breath and think in a more sweeping way about what they are going to do over the next six months.
Hunter Biden
… You’re reporting from the White House.Hunter Biden. ... Biden, knowing that there is a Hunter issue, it’s either a problem, it’s a problem for Hunter.Is it a political problem for Joe?He’s going to run.Do you know anything about the calculus?What’s he thinking?What’s he doing?What’s going on about Hunter in those days when he first runs in 2020 and then wins, and the things that happen to Hunter afterward.
Give me a little Hunter inside info from you at the White House.
Yeah. President Biden is incredibly close to his family.His family has been a big part of his political life over the course of several decades, and so the fact that he was running in 2020, he had to have a meeting with his family, and they had to talk about this was the right choice.And they knew that his son, Hunter Biden, was dealing with addiction and was in the throes of addiction at the time and that that would be exposed, that would be highlighted during the presidential campaign, and it could really be difficult for Hunter Biden, because people were going to be paying attention to him like never before at the very moment he was trying to gain back his sobriety.
And so that was the calculation that President Biden and his family members made.They decided to go ahead with the campaign, realizing that not only did President Biden have one son, but he had another son in Beau Biden, who had died in 2015, and before he had passed away he had told President Biden to promise him that he would never step away from public life.And so President Biden had those two calculations to think about—the one deceased son who had called on him to basically to run for president again, and his living son who was dealing with addiction and who was trying to put that behind him.
And so he made that decision realizing that, if he ran for president, it would put his family under an intense spotlight, but also that he felt the call of history.He felt the need to answer that call of history by running for president, and in doing so, by showcasing to the American people that yes, he is a part of a family.Yes, he has dealt with troubles.Yes, his own son has dealt with addiction.But this is something that the country can get past.And so one key moment was when he was on the debate stage in 2020 facing Donald Trump, and Trump brought up Hunter Biden and his addiction, and Joe Biden stood up and said, “Yes, my son. I’m proud of my son.He has had issues in the past but he's gotten over it, and he’s fighting, and he’s getting better.”
So that was a moment that he was able to speak to the American people as someone who was dealing with an issue that many families across the country deal with.And at the end of the day, the family that Biden had ended up encouraging him to run, knowing that it would expose some things about his son, knowing that it would bring forth some of the ugly parts of his son’s business dealings, his own personal dealings, and knowing that some of those things would come to light.
But they realized the fight that they had was a bigger fight about whether or not they should get into this race and try to preserve a legacy for themselves as a family and preserve the role that Joe Biden had played in the country over the course of five decades, as someone who stood up and fought against bullies, fought against people who wanted to be dictators and fought against someone like Donald Trump.And they thought that he was uniquely positioned to defeat Donald Trump, and even if it had a negative impact on his own family, he realized that he needed to make that choice.
And so this key moment where he’s having this family meeting in 2019, deciding whether or not to get in the race, his children and his grandchildren gather together and said, “We know we are going to take some bullets.We know that we are going to be negatively impacted by a nasty campaign.But we’re ready for it, and you should jump in this race.”
And when he’s vice president, Hunter takes the job with Burisma. ... Why doesn’t he say to his son, “Buddy, this is not going to meet the smell test.We can find a way for you to get some money.Stay the hell away from Ukraine and Burisma and everything else”?Why do you think Joe didn’t step up and say that to his son?
This is a very, very intense moment in the Biden family history.At the time Beau Biden had already been diagnosed with brain cancer.The family was struggling.Beau Biden was fighting for his life.And so the fact that Hunter Biden was off doing business dealings and also dealing with addiction, it became a difficult situation for the vice president at time.He wanted to show love to his son; he wanted to show support to his son.He has a bit of a blind spot when it comes to his children who, we have to remember, almost died in this car accident in 1972.
But he was also dealing with the fact that Hunter’s best friend, Beau Biden, was dying and was on his deathbed.And so there were—a bit of difficulty putting his foot down and saying, “You know, maybe, Hunter Biden, you shouldn’t be taking this job.You shouldn’t be dealing with these foreign entities.”At the time, Joe Biden had his hands full trying to spend the last moments that he had with his other living son and also realized that his life and the life of the entire family was going to change pretty drastically when Beau died.And so this was a moment of intense difficulty for the family.And not everyone was making clear political decisions about what would be best for the future.They were really just dealing with the difficulty of the moment.
And I think in hindsight, Joe Biden and all the members of his family probably would have encouraged Hunter Biden not to take this job at the Ukrainian energy company, not to receive millions of dollars from foreign entities, but instead to think about the political impact that this could have on the family going forward and make more wise, strategic choices.But it was a very difficult moment in the family to try to be making those kinds of clear decisions.Instead, they were just fighting for their lives and trying to make it through a very difficult and trying moment.
Do you have any sense of where Hunter was during the weekend on the beach with the family?Was he part of the in-crowd advising his dad?
He was speaking to him by phone.But he was back in California at the moment.He had an opportunity to see his father in Las Vegas when the president was there shortly before he returned to Delaware and started self-isolating.So they did have a moment to talk and did have a moment to discuss.Just at the time that Biden was really under a lot of increasing political pressure to bow out of the race, Hunter Biden was someone who was encouraging the president to stay in the race, to keep fighting, to ignore all of these calls from top Democrats to bow out of the race.
But by the time that President Biden made it back to Delaware he really was isolated.He had not very many people around him, a couple of close aides.The first lady was around.But he was really isolated for health reasons, but also politically, he was by himself, and it was a moment that he had to really consider his future and to think about things deeply.And it was kind of a come-to-Jesus moment when his aides came to him on Saturday and said, “You don’t have a pathway to victory.This is not going to end up very well for you.You really need to think about your options.”And we saw on Sunday he decided to drop out of the race and start thinking about his legacy as a one-term president.
Biden’s Final Chapter
He’s going to give a speech tonight in the Oval Office.What’s it like at the White House right now?And what’s the meaning of this speech?What’s he trying to do?What will you be watching for?What will America be watching for, if America is indeed watching him?
It’s one of the rare moments where President Biden is going to deliver a prime-time speech from the Oval Office.I think there have only been three or four other times that he’s done this.And so he will have a platform to, one, explain to the American people why he made this choice, why he is deciding to drop out of the race.He wrote a letter and posted it a few days ago, but he did not say why he was stepping down.So he will be able to talk maybe about his age, talk about his abilities, talk about whether or not he lost the fight to continue this race.
He will also be able to talk about what he wants to do over the last months of his presidential term.He still has six months.He still has an opportunity to do a number of different things with executive power, on the foreign policy front, with various goals that he has for trying to end his campaign and his presidential term on a high note.And so he’ll talk about what he wants to do, but he also has to grapple with the fact that he’s a lame duck.
And I’ll be watching very closely to see how he manages that and navigates the fact that, yes, he is still the president; he is still the leader of the country; he is still the leader of the free world.But he is no longer the leader of the Democratic Party.That baton has been passed to his vice president, Kamala Harris, and he has to deal with the fact that the spotlight is not going to be on him as much.People are not going to be hanging on his every word as much, and people are going to be focusing more on his vice president who is running a presidential campaign now to lead the country for the future.
And so he’s going to be fighting for attention.He is going to be fighting for the country’s focus over the next six months and for the country not to move on past him as he continues to be president.But this is going to be one of the last moments where he has that kind of large, national audience, where people are focusing on him and seeing him as a leader and not seeing his vice president as a person to focus on and look to for guidance about where the country is going in the future.
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