April 10, 2025 • 53 mins
They couldn’t—or wouldn’t—tell Biden it was time to go. Journalist Chris Whipple reveals the human drama behind the political failure, captured in his must-read book Uncharted.
Why did no one stop Joe Biden from running again? In this eye-opening interview, Chris and Katie pull back the curtain on the 2024 election, delving into the loyalty, fear, and misjudgment that shaped the race.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Look, they knew they had a problem with Biden. I
think the key distinction here is that some of those
same people believe he could govern, He just couldn't campaign.
Everybody was shocked by that meltdown or or whatever it
was that Biden suffered during that debate, except his inner circle.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
Hi everyone, I'm Kitty Kuric, and this is Next Question.
Hi everyone for this episode of Next Question. I'm coming
to you from my daughter and son in law's home
in Los Angeles, where I'm visiting my one year old
grandson Jay. So, if you hear a baby crying or
(00:43):
gurgling in the background, that is Jay. I think I
hear him now. Or if you hear a dog barking,
that is Elist and Marx Wheaton terrier Ricky. So apologies
in advance. Meanwhile, I'm super excited to talk to Chris Whipple.
He is a historian slash journalist New York Times bestselling author.
He's written a book called Uncharted, How Trump Beat Biden,
(01:06):
Harris and the Odds, and the Wildest Campaign in History.
It's really an inside look at what was happening, primarily
in the final year or so of the Biden administration
and why despite all indications, or some indications to some people,
not to everyone. He stayed in the race so long
(01:30):
and gave Kamala Harris only one hundred and seven days,
I think, to wage her campaign against Donald Trump. It's
full of intrigue. It's really a fascinating read, not only
about the Biden administration and the inner circle, if you will,
but also what was going on in the Trump campaign.
If you're a political junkie, or if you're just wondering
(01:53):
how we got into the mess we're in right now,
this is a mustage read. Chris Whipple, Great to see you,
Welcome to next question.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
Great to be with you.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
So I found this book so fascinating. I felt like
a true fly on the wall when it came to
the inner workings of not only the Biden administration, but
also the Trump campaign at various points, as well as
the Trump presidency. But I want to start by asking
you about Joe Biden's inner circles desire to limit his
(02:30):
exposure to the public and the press leading up to
the twenty twenty four campaign. You describe it as stranger
and way more troubling than a cover up. Can you
explain to us this idea and help us understand what
was actually going on behind the scenes.
Speaker 1 (02:49):
Yeah, you know, Katie, first of all, it's great to
be with you. Thanks for having me. It was the
wildest campaign in history, as we all know just living
through it, but even wilder behind closed doors, where I
was able to go thanks to you pretty unique access
to the inner circles of Biden and Trump and Kamala
(03:10):
Harris's top advisors as well. It was to me it
was stranger and wilder and more tragic than a classic
cover up. I mean, we think when we think of
cover up in a Watergate sense, it's something that you
know to be true and you're hiding from the public.
What was different about this situation is that Joe Biden's
(03:33):
inner circle and I was able to spend time with
all of them, virtually all of them. They most of
them convinced themselves that Biden should run for reelection, that
he could win the election, and that he could govern
for another four years. Now, you know, anybody who's had
to take the keys away from an octagenarian grandfather the
(03:55):
car keys knows that Biden was really too old to
run for reelection, but they didn't believe it, and I'm
talking now about that Mike Donell on his alter ego,
Bruce Reid, Steve Roschetti, Ron Klain, who's a major player
(04:15):
in my book. As you know, Anita Done, Anita Done.
They believed what they believed instead of their lying eyes.
Speaker 2 (04:25):
Well, we'll talk about their motives later. But Obama's former
chief of Staff Bill Daily described the situation a bit
more bluntly. He said, every freaking one of them had
no balls. Do you agree?
Speaker 1 (04:42):
You know, it was a failure of leadership, as leon
Panetta put it to me too. And he's one of
the people I talked to about this. I love Daily
because he's a truth teller, the no filter. He just
tells you exactly what he's thinking. In this case, he
was referring not only to Biden's inner circle, but I
think principally he was referring to Democrats who failed to
(05:04):
step up and challenge Biden for the nomination. Those were
the ones who he said had no freaking balls. But
he also agrees that. You know, when I talked to
him about Biden's inner circle, I said, how is it
possible they knew what you were seeing? You couldn't unsee
Biden's debate performance that disaster on June twenty seventh. Why
(05:26):
did they do it? And Daily's best answer was, Look,
you're in the bubble. You've crossed the rubicon. There's no
going back. There is a kind of gravitational force when
you're in that inner circle at the highest levels of
power that is very seductive.
Speaker 2 (05:46):
The book opens at former President of Biden's debate prep
session at Camp David. It was just days before that
first presidential debate. Ron Klain, who was the former chiefs
of staff who was leading his debate prep, told you
that Biden was pretty clueless about the administration's positions on
(06:09):
a number of key issues like inflation. He didn't know
what Trump had been saying. In other words, he really
wasn't up to speed on not only what was going
on in the country, but his own administration's positions. Can
you set the scene for us and tell us about
(06:30):
ron Klain's horror at this realization.
Speaker 1 (06:35):
Yeah. You know, ron Klain, who was a really effective
White House chief of staff in my view, and I
know something about the history of White House chiefs for
the first two years, painted this devastating portrait of Biden
at Camp David. In the days immediately receding that fateful debate,
(06:55):
Biden was out of it. Clane was startled. He'd never
seen him so exhausted and and out of touch. He
didn't appear to be aware of what was going on,
and in the campaign he said v Trump. At one point,
he wanders out of Aspen Lodge the presidential cabin, goes
to the pool, collapses into an armchair and falls sound
(07:18):
to sleep, which is in the middle of a session
they were having. Claian allured him back that night and
they continued, but he really couldn't articulate what he wanted
to do in a second term. And this was fascinating me.
He was obsessed with foreign leaders and what foreign leaders
thought of him. At one point Clane said, half jokingly,
I wondered if he thought he was president of NATO
(07:40):
instead of President of the US. He was obsessed with Macron,
e Manuel Macrone of France and Olaf Schultz of Germany.
And he said, well, they think I'm a great president,
I must be a great president. I could go on
and on, but at another point Biden said I've got
an idea, and Clain said, what's that? If I looked
perplexed on camera during the debate, people will think Trump's
(08:03):
an idiot, to which Klan replied, Sir, if you look perplexed,
people are just going to think you're perplexed, and that's
our problem in this race.
Speaker 2 (08:12):
It's just unbelievable to me that Ron Klain saw this,
he knew there was trouble, and yet he never tried
to convince Joe Biden to drop out of the race.
How do you understand that disconnect?
Speaker 1 (08:28):
That's why I say that this is stranger and wilder
and more tragic than a cover up, and assess it's
really hard to reconcile the two round Klans in my book.
I mean, the first is the politically savvy former White
House chief of staff who's been around the block and
(08:49):
had prepared eight presidential candidates counta over his career, who
saw just how wobbly and out of it Joe Biden
was during the debate prep. How do you reconcile that
with the Ron Klain, who, a month later, in the
final days and final hours of Biden's being on the ticket,
(09:12):
bought a battle to save his reelection to keep him
on the ticket, believed that this wasn't, as Ron put
it to me, it wasn't about Biden's age. It was
a power grab by the elites, by the donors and
the conservative wing of the party. Ron Klain believed that.
(09:35):
I think he and the other advisers, other advisors had
different reasons. I mean, that wasn't a universal take. Claim.
Believed that somehow, if Joe Biden could rally the progressives
in the party and have them all walk out of
the White House and lawn with him, that he could
salvage his reelection, his place at the top of the ticket,
(09:57):
and win reelection evidently governed for another four years. It's
hard to reconcile the politically smart, savvy Ron Klain with
the guy who fought that battle right up until the
eleventh power.
Speaker 2 (10:11):
It's also hard to square this notion that Joe Biden
could have endured the rigors of a campaign. You know,
you write about the race. In twenty twenty they had
a reason to keep Joe Biden from traveling, from making
a lot of public appearances, and that was COVID. But
twenty twenty four obviously was a whole different ballgame. And
(10:35):
it sounds to me like even in twenty twenty. He
might not have withstood the exhaustion of a campaign, but
clearly he was in better shape then than he was
in twenty four.
Speaker 1 (10:47):
Yeah, Biden's campaign team knew that they caught a break
in twenty twenty in the form of COVID, because they
could blame it on COVID. They could have Biden campaign
from his basement and have already excuse for that. And
there's an extraordinary scene in the book in which a
campaign operative from the twenty twenty campaign comes and interviews
(11:09):
for a top position in the twenty twenty four campaign.
She's in the oval office with Biden and his top
advisors and it takes this unexpectedly candid turn when one
of them says to this applicant, this operative, listen, you know,
in twenty twenty we had COVID. We had a great
excuse to keep them in the basement. What do we
(11:29):
do now? Look, they knew they had a problem with Biden.
They knew that he was a shadow of himself on
the stump and had been for a long time, that
he couldn't really do a traditional barnstorming campaign. I think
the key distinction here is that some of those same
people believe he could govern, He just couldn't campaign.
Speaker 2 (11:58):
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want to get back to that catastrophic debate performance for
a moment, because that was I think a wake up
(12:47):
call where everyone there was a collective gas when Joe
Biden could not really articulate his views and kind of
that's when he said about, you know, saving Medicare, which
had nothing to do with the question.
Speaker 3 (13:04):
We have one thousand trillionaires in America, I mean billionaires
in America, and what's happening. They're in a situation where
they in fact pay eight point two percent in taxes.
If they just paid twenty four or twenty five percent,
either one of those numbers, they'd raised five hundred million
dollars billion dollars. I should say in a ten year period,
we'd be able to write wipe out his debt. We'd
(13:25):
be able to help make sure that all those things
we need to do, childcare, elder care, making sure that
we continue to suppreent strength in our healthcare system, making
sure that we're able to make every single solitary person
eligible for what I've been able to do with the
with the COVID, I was could be with dealing with
(13:45):
everything we have to do with Look if we finally
beat medicare.
Speaker 1 (13:54):
Thank you, President Biden, President Trump.
Speaker 2 (13:57):
I was surprised that, even after that debate performance, his
inner circle defended it, and Anita Dunn even told people
that Joe Biden had won the debate. How could she
think that in a million years, Chris completely delusional.
Speaker 1 (14:15):
I think that it's hard to explain, but you are right.
Everybody was shocked by that meltdown or or whatever it
was that Biden suffered during that debate, except his inner circle.
They were still all in. And Anita Dunn, for example,
was watching a dial a so called dial group, a
(14:36):
focused group of undecided voters who were turning a dial
one way or the other, up or down, registering their
reaction in real time, she convinced herself that because the
dials were turning down on the rest of the debate
when Trump was being outrageous, that somehow Biden had won
the debate, that they'd come out ahead. And you know
(14:58):
what other advisors said, this was just a quote unquote
bad night.
Speaker 2 (15:02):
Right. People said he had a cold, right.
Speaker 1 (15:05):
They said he was exhausted, They and they, but they
literally said it was just a bad night. In other words,
like Barack Obama's first debate against Mitt Romney, which was
not great, but nothing like this complete moment of when
when Biden lost it. It's it's a mystery, and that's
what makes I think the story so fascinating to me.
(15:27):
It's a study of you know, it's a at the
heart of it is this question which readers can try
to answer for themselves. But I invited me to pick
up the book and read ron Clan's description his words,
not mine, of Joe Biden during that debate prep and
ask themselves how that guy could believe that he could
(15:50):
run for reelection and win.
Speaker 2 (15:53):
Was it the desire of this inner circle to stay
in power? I know, during this whole chapter, people would
point to Jill Biden and say, oh, it was Jill
Biden's fault. You know, they portrayed her as kind of
a lady Macbeth, ambitious in her own right. But after
(16:15):
writing this, after talking to all these people, did you
come to any conclusion? Was it different for every person?
For Ron Klain, was it just this loyalty that couldn't
be shaken for others? Was it their desire to stay
empowered themselves? What was it?
Speaker 1 (16:32):
Well? I think there's loyalty, There's no question about it.
You could argue, if you're cynical, that it's a power grab,
that these guys the power derived from being in office
with Joe Biden. I think that's not quite That doesn't
quite answer it. Because if you talk to these guys
as I did, and including months after the debate, months
(16:53):
after Biden Withdrew, you came away I did. They were
in this fog of delusion, and Deny really convinced some
of them. I'm talking about Mike donald and Steve Erschetti,
Bruce Reid convinced that Biden would have won that re election.
You know, months later, Mike donaldan was at Harvard at
(17:13):
the Kennedy School speaking to an audience and said he
thought the party had lost its mind. It walked away
from a guy who won eighty one million votes, the
greatest vote getter in American history. So there is my
friend Jack Watson, who is Jimmy Carter's last white best
chief of staff, who should have been chief of staff
on day one. What's told me that there's a kind
(17:37):
of almost magnetic force field when you're in that rarefied
air of the White House and the Oval Office. It's
an extraordinary compulsion to protect the president at all costs.
And I think they lost their judgment here. I mean
they were delusional. These are guys who you would think.
(18:00):
I'll give you a quick example of how you know.
In nineteen eighty eight, one of the President's close friends,
Ted Kauffman, perhaps his closest friends. When Biden was ensnared
in that plagiarism scandal, was Kaufman who said, you know what, Joe,
it's time. It's over. That never happened, That never happened
this time around. And I don't know why not. They
(18:22):
were clear eyed veterans who lost their way.
Speaker 2 (18:26):
You had an inkling that this was a foot when
you were writing your first book called The Fight of
His Life. And I know that you asked to interview
Joe Biden, and this was in September twenty twenty two,
and this was about the first two years of his
presidency or first book on Biden, and they would only
(18:50):
let you interview him if you submitted the questions in
writing and he would respond in writing. So did you
not even interview Joe Biden for that book?
Speaker 1 (19:01):
I did. I interviewed him by email. I sent eight
questions in by email. I think it was eight. I
got replies back. They were obviously replies that were I
presume closely scrutinized by Ron Klain and maybe Anita Done,
who knows who else before they sent them back to me.
Speaker 2 (19:21):
And who knows if he actually answered them.
Speaker 1 (19:24):
Yeah, I'm pretty sure he answered them, because I was
talking to Ron Clay in real time and he was
describing meetings where he was going, come on, boss, you
got to do these, and so I'm pretty I'm convinced
they were his answers, but they were presumably cleaned up.
Maybe that's unfair, but that's I presume.
Speaker 2 (19:42):
I wanted to share an interesting story that happened to me, Chris,
when Joe Biden had yet to drop out of the
race for the twenty twenty four campaign. I saw him
at an event where there were a lot of stand
up to cancer supporters and I was invited, and I
had never gone to a fundraiser, and I was interested
(20:04):
in being an observer. And he did as he would
do in all these different events, including super casual events
like the Irish event you talked about, where he had
Irish politicians or politicians of Irish descent come to the
White House. He used to tell a prompter. He didn't
(20:24):
answer any questions. But he saw me, and I've known
him for decades and he said I miss you. And
I said, well, if you want to spend more time
with me, why don't you do an interview with me
and we can make up for lost time. And he
said I'd love that. After he was done giving the
(20:44):
short speech to funders, he leaned over to me again
and said, I really want to do an interview with you.
So then I approached his press people. They then told
me to call and I got the run around like
there was no tomorrow. I got relegated to some guy
(21:05):
who did was in charge of digital interviews because it
was for online and a podcast and I asked, I wrote,
Anita done personally, and I was very much stonewalled. And
now reading your book, and obviously with the benefit of hindsight,
(21:25):
I see why. And you write that he never did
interviews with the New York Times or the Washington Post.
Didn't he hold fewer press conferences than any president and history?
Speaker 1 (21:37):
Yeah, I believe that's correct.
Speaker 2 (21:38):
So do you think the White House Press Corps and
the media writ large should have been making more noise
about this?
Speaker 1 (21:49):
Well, first of all, you used the perfect word stonewalled
when describing the Biden Whitehouse us of VI the media.
I really found it to be Nixonian in its contempt.
Is too strong a word for the press, the White
House Press Corps. If you dared to suggest that Biden's
age was an issue, they went after you. If you
(22:11):
dared to write an op bed that suggested that everything
wasn't perfect, they would, they would close you down. And
and I think it. I think it came from Anita Dunne.
I think this was her. I mean, I think she
was a much more powerful figure in the Biden White
House than we realized at the time. So I would
my guess, Katie, I mean my hunch is that Biden
(22:34):
would have done that sit down with you and that done,
and the and the communications team shut that down in
a heartbeat and said, no, you know, you will not
be doing that. But that's that's the way this White
House operated.
Speaker 2 (22:49):
It is confounding that after the debate, I know Valerie
Biden was absolutely apoplectic. She was his long time like,
how come Valerie Biden didn't see the writing on the wall,
Chris Well.
Speaker 1 (23:08):
So here's here's the thing. And this is why I
say that this is different from a quote unquote cover
up in the classic sense. There were some inconvenient truths
to that theory, and one of them is the fact
that behind closed doors, more often than not, Joe Biden
governed capably. He was fine. I can tell you innumerable
(23:32):
people senators who came and met with him about Middle
Eastern policy who said he was on top of every
I and T, crossing every tee and knew it cold
and could articulate it very clearly. On the morning that
his senior advisors that fateful weekend of July twenty twenty one,
(23:54):
when his advisors came to hammer out the abdication statement
that morning, Biden was on the phone parsing the details
of one of the most complicated prisoner swaps in history,
multi nation deal. Mike Donalon, who is a senior advisor
maybe closest political advisor is alter Ego, swears up and
(24:15):
down that he never saw Joe Biden mentally diminished, said
he never saw period. Now is he lying maybe? Is
he delusional? Maybe? But that's his story and it's hard
to You can't just wish these inconvenient things away. In
arguing that it's a classic cover up, I don't think
it was.
Speaker 2 (24:35):
I also think this is a very sensitive matter, as
you described earlier, Chris. You know, when you have to
handle taking the car keys away from an elderly parent,
it is such an emotional situation, right, and you're dealing
with someone who's aging, and you don't I think you're
(24:56):
aware that you don't want to be agist, that you
don't want to accuse someone of losing their faculties. I mean,
the whole thing is just so fraught, and I think
this was a microcosm of conversations that are had every
day around the dinner table or the living room sofa
(25:18):
when you have to talk to an aging parent.
Speaker 1 (25:21):
Yeah, so no question about it exponentially magnified by the
stakes involved, not just power for the people around Biden,
but the future of the country and the fate of
the world. I mean, I'm not exaggerating. I mean those
are the stakes here. Joe Biden's legacy, the Democratic Party's future,
(25:41):
the result of the twenty twenty four election, and the
fate of the country and the world. Put all those
things together, and that's tougher than taking the car keys.
Speaker 2 (25:52):
You also write about the complicated relationship Joe Biden had
with Barack Obama. I thought that was a really interesting thing.
I'd obviously read about this and heard about it through
the years, But Joe Biden really never forgave Barack Obama
for putting his support behind Hillary Clinton in twenty sixteen,
(26:13):
before Joe Biden had truly had the time after the
death of his son Bo from brain cancer to make
a decision about whether he was in or whether he
was out. Is that accurate?
Speaker 1 (26:26):
Yes, absolutely true. Biden never forgave Barack Obama for that,
for putting his thumb on the scale for Hillary. And
it's a complicated relationship. On the one hand, they had
a genuine bond before Bo's death, actually, when Barack Obama
offered to pay for Bo's treatment and whatever he needed,
(26:47):
Obama was going to help out. They became very close,
but then again he could. He never forgave him for
twenty sixteen. And in the end, this is why the
story is so Shakespearean, because it's full of betrayals, and
one of them was Joe Biden's belief that Barack Obama
(27:09):
betrayed him, that he was working behind the scenes to
force him out. And the thing that one of Joe
Biden's closest friends told me that the thing that really
got to Biden was not so much George Clooney writing
a brutal op ed in the New York Times, maybe
with Obama's complicit consent, but it was the fact that
(27:32):
in the end, when the walls were closing in, Barack
Obama never picked up the phone and called Joe and said, hey, Joe, listen,
you sure you're up to this? He never If he
had reservations, he never shared them with Joe.
Speaker 2 (27:50):
Why do you think that was? Because if they did
have some kind of friendship, and if Barack Obama cared
about the future of the Democratic Party, I think he
would take a more active role in at least questioning
Joe Biden's decision.
Speaker 1 (28:07):
Well, my only the best guess I can give you
on that, Katie, is that there was this tension, this
conflict between the Biden and Obama camps, and perhaps Obama
felt that it would be counterproductive that the best way
to ensure that Biden stayed in the race might be
(28:28):
Obama telling him to get out. That, you know, that
might have been the thinking involved.
Speaker 2 (28:34):
Yeah. You write about how the Obama team never understood
Joe Biden's appeal and that they didn't find him to
be very sophisticated, which I felt was ironic given the
fact that the Democratic Party has lost its hold on
working class voters. And that was obviously one of Joe
(28:55):
Biden's big strong suits, the guy from Scranton, Pennsylvania, who
could talk to the average working Joe literally, and yet
people in the Obama camp didn't seem to appreciate that
and kind of we're condescending in a way that working
class voters have felt the Democratic Party had become in general.
Speaker 1 (29:19):
Right, Yeah, well, yeah, they looked down their noses at
Joe scrant and Joe they didn't think he had it
and at one point, David Pluff was dispatched to go
talk to Biden. This was around the time of the
twenty sixteen race, and Pluff sat down with Biden and
said to him, Joe, you don't want to end your
(29:39):
career in an Iowa hotel room, do you. And Biden
was just furious about this, and as one of his
aides said to me, he hates the Davids, The Davids
being plus An.
Speaker 2 (29:53):
Axel Rod interesting and David Axelrod was pretty vocal about
his thoughts at Joe Biden should bow out. Finally, it
was Nancy Pelosi who, really, I guess, put the nail
in the coffin. If you will tell us about what
you know about that conversation when she spoke to Biden
face to face and basically delivered the tough language and
(30:18):
the tough words that it was time to take away
the car keys or give up his run for reelection
in this case.
Speaker 1 (30:25):
Yeah, it's a story that I report for the first
time in Uncharted. The previous reporting had suggested that this
was a phone call that Pelosi had had with Biden.
What I learned was that she went and she had
this clandestine meeting with Joe Biden. She went to the
White House, not to the Oval Office where she might
(30:46):
be seen, but they arranged to meet in the residents.
It was July eleven, was the day the same day,
coincidentally that Nancy Pelosi went on Morning Joe and was
asked by Jonathan whether Biden should run again, and she said, oh,
it worth the effect of it's his decision. We're waiting
(31:07):
for him to decide. After Biden had already made it clear,
emphatically clear that he was running, so she and she
masterfully put the ball back in his court, knowing that
the pressure was going to be overwhelming for him eventually
to step aside. But later that day she went to
the White House and met privately, she said to a friend,
(31:28):
because nobody would confirm this meeting until Jeff Snipes finally
reluctantly confirmed it to me. She said, we had a
long talk about America, and in her inimitable way, she
went down memory Lane with the President. They talked about history,
they talked about their shared Catholic faith. They talked about
(31:51):
all kinds of things, and she said, not in a
boasting way, but she said to a friend, l thereafter,
I'm the only one who could have sent that message.
He trusts me, and she left without any kind of
Biden was still digging in, but she left thinking that
she'd gotten through to him. And it was ten days later.
(32:13):
It took another long ten days, and I tell the
whole story of the drama of those ten days before
Biden ultimately stepped aside.
Speaker 2 (32:28):
If you want to get smarter every morning with a
breakdown of the news and fascinating takes on health and
wellness and pop culture, sign up for our daily newsletter
wake Up Call by going to Katiecuric dot com. I
(32:50):
thought that Kamala Harris handled this uncertain chapter really well
because she did have to walk a delicate type robe.
You right, the vice president was navigating a political mindfield.
The slightest misstep, any hint that she was plotting to
replace the president could have been politically fatal. But while
(33:13):
Harris was lying low, her political operation was working behind
the scenes. Her chief of staff, Lorraine Bowles, had been
thinking about a contingency like this since November nineteenth, twenty
twenty one. And that was, by the way, when President Biden,
under Section three of the twenty fifth Amendment, had voluntarily
transferred his powers and duties to Harris while he underwent
(33:34):
a kolonoscopy. Gay glad he got his colonoscopy. But what
do you make of Kamala Harris's ability to continue to
support the president. She obviously knew what was going on.
I'm assuming she insisted that he was all there, that
he was fully capable, fully functioning, and yet she knew
(33:58):
that if anything to happen, there was a good chance
that she would step in his place.
Speaker 1 (34:06):
Well, as I as I wrote, as you quoted from
the book, she was really treading through a minefield. She
had to be. She had no choice other than to
be completely one hundred percent supportive. She had to be
Caesar's wife, you know, during this whole walk up to
the decision that he made. But she was clear eyed
(34:26):
enough to know that that day might be coming. She
didn't know when it would happen, and on July twenty first,
when she did get the phone call, she was ready.
They had a whole team that sprang into action around
the dining room table at the Naval Observatory, working the phones,
the laptops, reaching out to everybody across the country. They'd
(34:47):
already had operatives out very carefully and quietly with who
could not be traced to Kamala Harris. They were already
out there and they checked out the rules and you
know where the money would go and all the rest
of it. And they also were pressuring some Democratic senators
to turn on bite. But the result of all that
(35:08):
is that when that phone call came, when she was
standing in the kitchen of the Naval observatory on twenty
first of July, they were ready to go, and it
was a tour to force that. In the next forty
eight hours, she really nailed down the nomination.
Speaker 2 (35:21):
I thought she did an incredible job. And of course,
during that period of the campaign, everyone was saying this
was the Trump campaign's nightmare. They wanted Donald Trump to
run against Joe Biden, and they didn't want a more
capable candidate.
Speaker 1 (35:37):
Trump was furious and he thought it was a coup.
He thought he was being cheated. He said to Paul Manafort.
It was another strange story in this book. He said
to Paul Manifort, his disgraced ex campaign chief, who was
working with him again. He said, oh, so now I
have to win the election three times. The first time
(35:57):
in his mind was beating Biden. The second was beating
the courts. The third was now I have to beat her, and.
Speaker 2 (36:03):
She was a formidable candidate initially. Do you think if
there had been the so called many primary, which a
lot of people wondered if there was even time for
that at that point in the campaign, would have been
better and people would have felt more I guess invested
in the Democratic nominee.
Speaker 1 (36:24):
So I think the only question, Katie is would the
Democrats have been better off a year earlier or maybe
two years earlier, when there would have been time for
a real competition and a real Democratic primary. It was
too late in July of twenty twenty four. It was
impossible and to have a so called mini primary, and
(36:45):
if you looked at the rules, and I was told
by people high up in the DNC who understand this stuff,
that it couldn't have been done. It was just impossible.
The money was all going to Harris, to the person
on the It wasn't really conceivable to have a mini primary.
So the real question is why didn't Joe Biden step
(37:06):
aside a year earlier or.
Speaker 2 (37:08):
Two right, And then we get back to the beginning
of our conversation about it being hard to give up power,
not only for his inner circle, but for Joe Biden himself.
I wanted to ask you, also, Chris, about Kamala Harris's
navigation of praising her administration but also separating herself from it. Famously,
(37:33):
she was asked on the view a question that I
think haunted her throughout the campaign.
Speaker 1 (37:41):
Would you have done something differently than President Biden during
the past four years? There is done a thing that
comes to mind in terms of and I've been a
part of most of the decisions that have had impact.
Speaker 2 (37:54):
You write that Joe Biden had even given her permission
to be basically differentiate herself as a candidate. On the
other hand, that is so tricky, Chris. I feel for
her because she can't shed all over the Biden administration
of which she was a part without looking like a turncoat.
(38:16):
And you know, I think it was very difficult for
her to pick places where she could have differentiated herself.
I guess she could have said, in retrospect, we could
have done more on the border, right, But it's really
hard because anything she says is going to be twisted
and is going to be taken by the opposition as
(38:39):
being disloyal or criticizing the very deministration she was a
part of.
Speaker 1 (38:46):
Right, Well, nobody said it would be easy. But think
of again, I think I was right before Joe Biden
dropped out. I was writing a different book about presidential
campaign managers through history, and I was looking at the
nineteen sixty eight race and Hubert Humphrey broke with Lyndon
Johnson famously late in the campaign. It was in October
(39:08):
of nineteen sixty eight, and he almost caught Richard Nixon
in an election that he lost by Harris Breath. But
it was a real surge. And I think that she
could have done something like that, But nobody's saying it
would have been easy. The irony here is that not
only was she prepared to answer that question on the
(39:30):
view seven Ways to Sunday because they knew it was coming,
but Lorraine Voles, her chief of staff, and General Maley
Dillan had gone to the White House and met with
Jeff Zience, the chief of Staff, and they were going
in effect for permission to separate themselves from Biden, and
Zience and others told him, do what you have to do,
(39:50):
we get it, we understand, and Biden personally called Kamala
Harris and said, hey, go for it. If you have
to do it, you have to do it. And I'm paraphrasing,
I don't write she couldn't do it. And I'm told
by the people who know her well that what it
came down to was loyalty. That she couldn't throw Joe
Biden under the bus. So she couldn't. And what she said,
(40:12):
of course, was I can't think of a single thing
that she would have done differently, and it was devastating.
Within hours, the Trump campaign had a commercial with that
sound in it, and it was it was the death
knell for a change campaign. You know, somebody, if you
if you're trying to run on change, you can't give
(40:33):
that answer.
Speaker 2 (40:35):
What should she have said?
Speaker 1 (40:37):
Well, that's why they paid They don't pay me the
big buck. But I think she probably could have said
something to the effect of, you know, look, we've done
a B, C, and D, but you know what, we
blew it on inflation, and here's what I'm going to do.
I think it was probably too late for her to
(40:58):
convince anyone that she was going to be tough on
the border. That was probably a lost cause. But if
you had to choose one thing. In my view, it
wouldn't have been Gaza, it would have been inflation.
Speaker 2 (41:09):
But how much could they have really controlled inflation and fairness? Maybe?
I don't know. My mom used to say the president
doesn't make the economy. The economy makes the president.
Speaker 1 (41:21):
No, that's true, except when they're destroying the economy of
course with TIFFs. But anyway, I mean I think that No,
you have to be caught trying, I think is the
point at the end of the day. Even if even
if you and I know that there's very little the
president can do about that, you have to be caught trying.
Speaker 2 (41:41):
In addition to talking a lot about obviously the Biden
presidency and campaign, Chris, you also focus on Donald Trump,
the first administration and his twenty twenty four campaign chairs,
Susie Wiles and Chris la Sevida. I had forgot that
Chris los Sevita was the architect of the swift boat
(42:04):
campaign against John Kerry. Can you remind people what that
was all about?
Speaker 1 (42:10):
Yeah? This was the This was Chris los Avita's claim
to fame, this devastating ad campaign that he launched against
John Kerrey in two thousand and four. Carrie of course,
was the Democratic nominee who went to the convention and
said reporting for duty, he was running on his military record,
(42:31):
and las Avita, by rounding up people in the military
at the time who didn't like John Kerrey, managed to
turn it into a strike against him. They also they
all disputed Carrie's claims that he was, you know, of
(42:52):
his exploits in Vietnam as captain of a so called
swift boat. It was called the swift Boat Veterans for Truth,
and it was not truthful, but extremely effective, and las
Avita really became a kind of hero for having created
it within the GOP. So now fast forward to the
(43:14):
twenty twenty four campaign and suddenly there's a devastating ad
campaign about transsurgery for inmates in which Kamala is captured
in her own words advocating the right of prisoners to
have trans surgery. And with her words it was devastating.
(43:35):
Of course, ended with the tagline She's for they them,
Trump is for you. And when that happened, I know
one presidential one former winning Democratic presidential campaign manager, who
said to me off the record, their inability to answer
(43:55):
that was just crazy. Was and he called General Melli
Dyllon and her gang and said, what are you doing?
You got to answer this, and the reply he got was, well,
there is no answer for it, so we're just going
to let that go.
Speaker 2 (44:11):
You also write about Susie Wiles, who is such an
interesting figure in politics. She's the daughter Pat Summerle, the
famed sportscaster who was also an alcoholic, and that in
many ways helped her navigate Trump's aggression and his erratic moods.
(44:32):
How would you describe her relationship with Donald Trump and
why do you think she's been so effective? And he
clearly trusts her, right.
Speaker 1 (44:41):
Susie Wiles is a fascinating story, really amazing, and she
has some kind of magic with Trump. He trusts her.
There's never been any real worry that she would be
fired by Trump, and she has a kind of magic
with him. And I think part of it, without meaning
(45:02):
to sound like an armchair psychologist, I think part of
it goes back to the way she handled her alcoholic father,
who was very difficult. I think she'd be the first
to admit it. Children of alcoholics have a real sensitivity
and a kind of a kind of antenna for what
they can control and what they can't, and she has
(45:24):
found that modus operandi with Donald Trump, which she's carried
on into the White House. But of course, look, you
could argue that as White House chief of staff, she
should be picking, she should be telling the president her
truths much more often than she might be.
Speaker 2 (45:42):
You also write about how you were invited to Derek
Kushner's in avodka at Trump's home several times during Trump's
first term, which I found fascinating. How many times did
you visit with them, Chris in their home? And what
do you think they really wanted to understand? I guess
you're right that they wanted to understand the inner working
(46:04):
so the White House. How I guess they could create
some discipline in what they saw sort of the chaos.
But what do you think they were after? What did
you all talk about all the time? And how many
times again did you visit them?
Speaker 1 (46:21):
I don't know, I would say nobody. First of all,
nobody was more surprised than I to get this email
from the White House from Yvonka's assistant and then being
invited to their place. But I went many times, maybe
more than a dozen times that I visited with them,
and it was an irresisible opportunity to get some insight
(46:43):
into the Trump White House, and I think it was different.
I think in Ivanka's case, I think she was surprised
and somewhat encouraged to learn that they weren't the first
White House to have all kinds of all health breaking,
(47:04):
loose and internest scene warfare and backstabbing, and I think
she I think it helped her to put their experience
into perspective. In Jared's case, I think he was trying
to navigate this chaotic, very dangerous White House and deal
with the chiefs of staff that he had to deal with,
(47:25):
and so I think they thought they could learn something,
and I thought I could learn something from them, and
that I would get them eventually to go on the record,
and I never really did.
Speaker 2 (47:35):
Why did they decide to basically kind of separate themselves
from Trump World ultimately?
Speaker 1 (47:43):
Well, I've been told that essentially it comes down to
the success that Jared has had with his company, and
of course he's had a major infusion of funds from
the saudiast as we all know, controversially, but he's doing
quite well, thank you very much, in his business career.
(48:05):
And I think for Evoka, I think it was a
rough ride. I think the first four years or not
something she's eager to repeat. It was a I think
emotionally difficult period for her.
Speaker 2 (48:16):
Getting back to Susie Wiles, is she the only one left?
You mentioned? Maybe she should be speaking out more. Maybe
there is no one left, Chris who provides some of
the constraints that a leader like Donald Trump needs. He
got rid of all the people who challenged him in
(48:37):
his first term. He is as unrestrained as ever, it seems,
and has surrounded himself with sycophants and clearly people who
were affirming and supporting everything he does and telling him
basically what he wants to hear. I guess Susie Wiles
isn't that person. Is there anyone at all who's trying
(49:00):
to do that in this current White House?
Speaker 1 (49:04):
Very few, is my observation, although Susie Wiles claims that
she's trying and that she pushes back. And you know,
I've talked to her off and on and quite recently,
and she is trying, she says to you know, It's interesting.
She told me that one of the first people she
(49:25):
called was Jim Baker, James A. Baker, the third, Reagan's
White House chief before she took the job. Everybody does that,
and Baker always tells them the same thing. Congratulations, you've
got the worst blanking job in Washington. Multiply that by
twenty at least in her case. So she's told me
that she's pushed back on a number of major Trump initiatives.
(49:50):
She's had some success in moderating some of Trump's decisions,
and in other cases, as she put it, Ty goes
to the president. So we will see.
Speaker 2 (50:03):
You've done a deep dive into the Democratic Party from
the twenty twenty four perspective. How do you see the
party digging out of this mess? Are there people who
you're looking to Chris as the future stars of the
Democratic Party. It seems like people are desperate, desperate for
(50:24):
leadership or certainly someone who is standing up to Donald
Trump and more than that organizing the so called resistance.
Do you see anyone emerging from the pack?
Speaker 1 (50:39):
I don't know that I'd see anyone in particular emerging
at this point, but it's a really deep bench of talent.
I mean, there are really so many promising Democrats out there.
But I look, I think I would disagree with my
pal James Carville. I don't think the best strategy is
(51:01):
to lie low and let the let Trump dig himself
into a hole from which he can't climb out. I
think it's important to be out there, and I think
just look at the recent marches protests, look at Bernie
Sanders and AOC and their anti oligarchy tour. I think,
(51:22):
whatever you may think of them, they have a really clear,
understandable message, and I think other Democrats are going to
have to get out there and do the same thing.
Speaker 2 (51:34):
Well, Chris Whipple, the book is called Uncharted, How Trump
beat Biden, Harris and the odds and the wildest campaign
in history and now we're experiencing I think the ramifications
of that campaign and that election full stop. Thank you
so much for giving us the inside scoop on what
(51:56):
was happening in both campaigns. I found it a fascinating
reason and I'm so grateful you spent this time with us, Katie.
Speaker 1 (52:03):
Thanks so much. I'm grateful to you, great to be with.
Speaker 2 (52:13):
Thanks for listening. Everyone. If you have a question for me,
a subject you want us to cover, or you want
to share your thoughts about how you navigate this crazy world,
reach out send me a DM on Instagram. I would
love to hear from you. Next Question is a production
of iHeartMedia and Katie Couric Media. The executive producers are Me,
(52:34):
Katie Kuric, and Courtney Ltz. Our supervising producer is Ryan Martz,
and our producers are Adriana Fazzio and Meredith Barnes. Julian
Weller composed our theme music. For more information about today's episode,
or to sign up for my newsletter wake Up Call,
go to the description in the podcast app, or visit
(52:55):
us at Katiecuric dot com. You can also find me
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wherever you listen to your favorite shows. What if we
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(53:18):
Zuckerberg Initiative is advancing biomedical research and leveraging AI to
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Learn more at CZI dot com, That's CZI dot com
(53:39):
or follow them on social media,
Look, they knew they had a problem with Biden. I
think the key distinction here is that some of those
same people believe he could govern, He just couldn't campaign.
Everybody was shocked by that meltdown or or whatever it
was that Biden suffered during that debate, except his inner circle.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
Hi everyone, I'm Kitty Kuric, and this is Next Question.
Hi everyone for this episode of Next Question. I'm coming
to you from my daughter and son in law's home
in Los Angeles, where I'm visiting my one year old
grandson Jay. So, if you hear a baby crying or
(00:43):
gurgling in the background, that is Jay. I think I
hear him now. Or if you hear a dog barking,
that is Elist and Marx Wheaton terrier Ricky. So apologies
in advance. Meanwhile, I'm super excited to talk to Chris Whipple.
He is a historian slash journalist New York Times bestselling author.
He's written a book called Uncharted, How Trump Beat Biden,
(01:06):
Harris and the Odds, and the Wildest Campaign in History.
It's really an inside look at what was happening, primarily
in the final year or so of the Biden administration
and why despite all indications, or some indications to some people,
not to everyone. He stayed in the race so long
(01:30):
and gave Kamala Harris only one hundred and seven days,
I think, to wage her campaign against Donald Trump. It's
full of intrigue. It's really a fascinating read, not only
about the Biden administration and the inner circle, if you will,
but also what was going on in the Trump campaign.
If you're a political junkie, or if you're just wondering
(01:53):
how we got into the mess we're in right now,
this is a mustage read. Chris Whipple, Great to see you,
Welcome to next question.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
Great to be with you.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
So I found this book so fascinating. I felt like
a true fly on the wall when it came to
the inner workings of not only the Biden administration, but
also the Trump campaign at various points, as well as
the Trump presidency. But I want to start by asking
you about Joe Biden's inner circles desire to limit his
(02:30):
exposure to the public and the press leading up to
the twenty twenty four campaign. You describe it as stranger
and way more troubling than a cover up. Can you
explain to us this idea and help us understand what
was actually going on behind the scenes.
Speaker 1 (02:49):
Yeah, you know, Katie, first of all, it's great to
be with you. Thanks for having me. It was the
wildest campaign in history, as we all know just living
through it, but even wilder behind closed doors, where I
was able to go thanks to you pretty unique access
to the inner circles of Biden and Trump and Kamala
(03:10):
Harris's top advisors as well. It was to me it
was stranger and wilder and more tragic than a classic
cover up. I mean, we think when we think of
cover up in a Watergate sense, it's something that you
know to be true and you're hiding from the public.
What was different about this situation is that Joe Biden's
(03:33):
inner circle and I was able to spend time with
all of them, virtually all of them. They most of
them convinced themselves that Biden should run for reelection, that
he could win the election, and that he could govern
for another four years. Now, you know, anybody who's had
to take the keys away from an octagenarian grandfather the
(03:55):
car keys knows that Biden was really too old to
run for reelection, but they didn't believe it, and I'm
talking now about that Mike Donell on his alter ego,
Bruce Reid, Steve Roschetti, Ron Klain, who's a major player
(04:15):
in my book. As you know, Anita Done, Anita Done.
They believed what they believed instead of their lying eyes.
Speaker 2 (04:25):
Well, we'll talk about their motives later. But Obama's former
chief of Staff Bill Daily described the situation a bit
more bluntly. He said, every freaking one of them had
no balls. Do you agree?
Speaker 1 (04:42):
You know, it was a failure of leadership, as leon
Panetta put it to me too. And he's one of
the people I talked to about this. I love Daily
because he's a truth teller, the no filter. He just
tells you exactly what he's thinking. In this case, he
was referring not only to Biden's inner circle, but I
think principally he was referring to Democrats who failed to
(05:04):
step up and challenge Biden for the nomination. Those were
the ones who he said had no freaking balls. But
he also agrees that. You know, when I talked to
him about Biden's inner circle, I said, how is it
possible they knew what you were seeing? You couldn't unsee
Biden's debate performance that disaster on June twenty seventh. Why
(05:26):
did they do it? And Daily's best answer was, Look,
you're in the bubble. You've crossed the rubicon. There's no
going back. There is a kind of gravitational force when
you're in that inner circle at the highest levels of
power that is very seductive.
Speaker 2 (05:46):
The book opens at former President of Biden's debate prep
session at Camp David. It was just days before that
first presidential debate. Ron Klain, who was the former chiefs
of staff who was leading his debate prep, told you
that Biden was pretty clueless about the administration's positions on
(06:09):
a number of key issues like inflation. He didn't know
what Trump had been saying. In other words, he really
wasn't up to speed on not only what was going
on in the country, but his own administration's positions. Can
you set the scene for us and tell us about
(06:30):
ron Klain's horror at this realization.
Speaker 1 (06:35):
Yeah. You know, ron Klain, who was a really effective
White House chief of staff in my view, and I
know something about the history of White House chiefs for
the first two years, painted this devastating portrait of Biden
at Camp David. In the days immediately receding that fateful debate,
(06:55):
Biden was out of it. Clane was startled. He'd never
seen him so exhausted and and out of touch. He
didn't appear to be aware of what was going on,
and in the campaign he said v Trump. At one point,
he wanders out of Aspen Lodge the presidential cabin, goes
to the pool, collapses into an armchair and falls sound
(07:18):
to sleep, which is in the middle of a session
they were having. Claian allured him back that night and
they continued, but he really couldn't articulate what he wanted
to do in a second term. And this was fascinating me.
He was obsessed with foreign leaders and what foreign leaders
thought of him. At one point Clane said, half jokingly,
I wondered if he thought he was president of NATO
(07:40):
instead of President of the US. He was obsessed with Macron,
e Manuel Macrone of France and Olaf Schultz of Germany.
And he said, well, they think I'm a great president,
I must be a great president. I could go on
and on, but at another point Biden said I've got
an idea, and Clain said, what's that? If I looked
perplexed on camera during the debate, people will think Trump's
(08:03):
an idiot, to which Klan replied, Sir, if you look perplexed,
people are just going to think you're perplexed, and that's
our problem in this race.
Speaker 2 (08:12):
It's just unbelievable to me that Ron Klain saw this,
he knew there was trouble, and yet he never tried
to convince Joe Biden to drop out of the race.
How do you understand that disconnect?
Speaker 1 (08:28):
That's why I say that this is stranger and wilder
and more tragic than a cover up, and assess it's
really hard to reconcile the two round Klans in my book.
I mean, the first is the politically savvy former White
House chief of staff who's been around the block and
(08:49):
had prepared eight presidential candidates counta over his career, who
saw just how wobbly and out of it Joe Biden
was during the debate prep. How do you reconcile that
with the Ron Klain, who, a month later, in the
final days and final hours of Biden's being on the ticket,
(09:12):
bought a battle to save his reelection to keep him
on the ticket, believed that this wasn't, as Ron put
it to me, it wasn't about Biden's age. It was
a power grab by the elites, by the donors and
the conservative wing of the party. Ron Klain believed that.
(09:35):
I think he and the other advisers, other advisors had
different reasons. I mean, that wasn't a universal take. Claim.
Believed that somehow, if Joe Biden could rally the progressives
in the party and have them all walk out of
the White House and lawn with him, that he could
salvage his reelection, his place at the top of the ticket,
(09:57):
and win reelection evidently governed for another four years. It's
hard to reconcile the politically smart, savvy Ron Klain with
the guy who fought that battle right up until the
eleventh power.
Speaker 2 (10:11):
It's also hard to square this notion that Joe Biden
could have endured the rigors of a campaign. You know,
you write about the race. In twenty twenty they had
a reason to keep Joe Biden from traveling, from making
a lot of public appearances, and that was COVID. But
twenty twenty four obviously was a whole different ballgame. And
(10:35):
it sounds to me like even in twenty twenty. He
might not have withstood the exhaustion of a campaign, but
clearly he was in better shape then than he was
in twenty four.
Speaker 1 (10:47):
Yeah, Biden's campaign team knew that they caught a break
in twenty twenty in the form of COVID, because they
could blame it on COVID. They could have Biden campaign
from his basement and have already excuse for that. And
there's an extraordinary scene in the book in which a
campaign operative from the twenty twenty campaign comes and interviews
(11:09):
for a top position in the twenty twenty four campaign.
She's in the oval office with Biden and his top
advisors and it takes this unexpectedly candid turn when one
of them says to this applicant, this operative, listen, you know,
in twenty twenty we had COVID. We had a great
excuse to keep them in the basement. What do we
(11:29):
do now? Look, they knew they had a problem with Biden.
They knew that he was a shadow of himself on
the stump and had been for a long time, that
he couldn't really do a traditional barnstorming campaign. I think
the key distinction here is that some of those same
people believe he could govern, He just couldn't campaign.
Speaker 2 (11:58):
What if we told you it was possible to prevent,
manage your cure all disease by the end of the century.
The Chans Zuckerberg Initiative is advancing biomedical research and leveraging
AI to change medicine for decades to come. By bringing
together science, tech researchers, and engineers, they're building a better
future for everyone. Learn more at CZI dot com that's
(12:23):
CZI dot com, or follow them on social media. I
want to get back to that catastrophic debate performance for
a moment, because that was I think a wake up
(12:47):
call where everyone there was a collective gas when Joe
Biden could not really articulate his views and kind of
that's when he said about, you know, saving Medicare, which
had nothing to do with the question.
Speaker 3 (13:04):
We have one thousand trillionaires in America, I mean billionaires
in America, and what's happening. They're in a situation where
they in fact pay eight point two percent in taxes.
If they just paid twenty four or twenty five percent,
either one of those numbers, they'd raised five hundred million
dollars billion dollars. I should say in a ten year period,
we'd be able to write wipe out his debt. We'd
(13:25):
be able to help make sure that all those things
we need to do, childcare, elder care, making sure that
we continue to suppreent strength in our healthcare system, making
sure that we're able to make every single solitary person
eligible for what I've been able to do with the
with the COVID, I was could be with dealing with
(13:45):
everything we have to do with Look if we finally
beat medicare.
Speaker 1 (13:54):
Thank you, President Biden, President Trump.
Speaker 2 (13:57):
I was surprised that, even after that debate performance, his
inner circle defended it, and Anita Dunn even told people
that Joe Biden had won the debate. How could she
think that in a million years, Chris completely delusional.
Speaker 1 (14:15):
I think that it's hard to explain, but you are right.
Everybody was shocked by that meltdown or or whatever it
was that Biden suffered during that debate, except his inner circle.
They were still all in. And Anita Dunn, for example,
was watching a dial a so called dial group, a
(14:36):
focused group of undecided voters who were turning a dial
one way or the other, up or down, registering their
reaction in real time, she convinced herself that because the
dials were turning down on the rest of the debate
when Trump was being outrageous, that somehow Biden had won
the debate, that they'd come out ahead. And you know
(14:58):
what other advisors said, this was just a quote unquote
bad night.
Speaker 2 (15:02):
Right. People said he had a cold, right.
Speaker 1 (15:05):
They said he was exhausted, They and they, but they
literally said it was just a bad night. In other words,
like Barack Obama's first debate against Mitt Romney, which was
not great, but nothing like this complete moment of when
when Biden lost it. It's it's a mystery, and that's
what makes I think the story so fascinating to me.
(15:27):
It's a study of you know, it's a at the
heart of it is this question which readers can try
to answer for themselves. But I invited me to pick
up the book and read ron Clan's description his words,
not mine, of Joe Biden during that debate prep and
ask themselves how that guy could believe that he could
(15:50):
run for reelection and win.
Speaker 2 (15:53):
Was it the desire of this inner circle to stay
in power? I know, during this whole chapter, people would
point to Jill Biden and say, oh, it was Jill
Biden's fault. You know, they portrayed her as kind of
a lady Macbeth, ambitious in her own right. But after
(16:15):
writing this, after talking to all these people, did you
come to any conclusion? Was it different for every person?
For Ron Klain, was it just this loyalty that couldn't
be shaken for others? Was it their desire to stay
empowered themselves? What was it?
Speaker 1 (16:32):
Well? I think there's loyalty, There's no question about it.
You could argue, if you're cynical, that it's a power grab,
that these guys the power derived from being in office
with Joe Biden. I think that's not quite That doesn't
quite answer it. Because if you talk to these guys
as I did, and including months after the debate, months
(16:53):
after Biden Withdrew, you came away I did. They were
in this fog of delusion, and Deny really convinced some
of them. I'm talking about Mike donald and Steve Erschetti,
Bruce Reid convinced that Biden would have won that re election.
You know, months later, Mike donaldan was at Harvard at
(17:13):
the Kennedy School speaking to an audience and said he
thought the party had lost its mind. It walked away
from a guy who won eighty one million votes, the
greatest vote getter in American history. So there is my
friend Jack Watson, who is Jimmy Carter's last white best
chief of staff, who should have been chief of staff
on day one. What's told me that there's a kind
(17:37):
of almost magnetic force field when you're in that rarefied
air of the White House and the Oval Office. It's
an extraordinary compulsion to protect the president at all costs.
And I think they lost their judgment here. I mean
they were delusional. These are guys who you would think.
(18:00):
I'll give you a quick example of how you know.
In nineteen eighty eight, one of the President's close friends,
Ted Kauffman, perhaps his closest friends. When Biden was ensnared
in that plagiarism scandal, was Kaufman who said, you know what, Joe,
it's time. It's over. That never happened, That never happened
this time around. And I don't know why not. They
(18:22):
were clear eyed veterans who lost their way.
Speaker 2 (18:26):
You had an inkling that this was a foot when
you were writing your first book called The Fight of
His Life. And I know that you asked to interview
Joe Biden, and this was in September twenty twenty two,
and this was about the first two years of his
presidency or first book on Biden, and they would only
(18:50):
let you interview him if you submitted the questions in
writing and he would respond in writing. So did you
not even interview Joe Biden for that book?
Speaker 1 (19:01):
I did. I interviewed him by email. I sent eight
questions in by email. I think it was eight. I
got replies back. They were obviously replies that were I
presume closely scrutinized by Ron Klain and maybe Anita Done,
who knows who else before they sent them back to me.
Speaker 2 (19:21):
And who knows if he actually answered them.
Speaker 1 (19:24):
Yeah, I'm pretty sure he answered them, because I was
talking to Ron Clay in real time and he was
describing meetings where he was going, come on, boss, you
got to do these, and so I'm pretty I'm convinced
they were his answers, but they were presumably cleaned up.
Maybe that's unfair, but that's I presume.
Speaker 2 (19:42):
I wanted to share an interesting story that happened to me, Chris,
when Joe Biden had yet to drop out of the
race for the twenty twenty four campaign. I saw him
at an event where there were a lot of stand
up to cancer supporters and I was invited, and I
had never gone to a fundraiser, and I was interested
(20:04):
in being an observer. And he did as he would
do in all these different events, including super casual events
like the Irish event you talked about, where he had
Irish politicians or politicians of Irish descent come to the
White House. He used to tell a prompter. He didn't
(20:24):
answer any questions. But he saw me, and I've known
him for decades and he said I miss you. And
I said, well, if you want to spend more time
with me, why don't you do an interview with me
and we can make up for lost time. And he
said I'd love that. After he was done giving the
(20:44):
short speech to funders, he leaned over to me again
and said, I really want to do an interview with you.
So then I approached his press people. They then told
me to call and I got the run around like
there was no tomorrow. I got relegated to some guy
(21:05):
who did was in charge of digital interviews because it
was for online and a podcast and I asked, I wrote,
Anita done personally, and I was very much stonewalled. And
now reading your book, and obviously with the benefit of hindsight,
(21:25):
I see why. And you write that he never did
interviews with the New York Times or the Washington Post.
Didn't he hold fewer press conferences than any president and history?
Speaker 1 (21:37):
Yeah, I believe that's correct.
Speaker 2 (21:38):
So do you think the White House Press Corps and
the media writ large should have been making more noise
about this?
Speaker 1 (21:49):
Well, first of all, you used the perfect word stonewalled
when describing the Biden Whitehouse us of VI the media.
I really found it to be Nixonian in its contempt.
Is too strong a word for the press, the White
House Press Corps. If you dared to suggest that Biden's
age was an issue, they went after you. If you
(22:11):
dared to write an op bed that suggested that everything
wasn't perfect, they would, they would close you down. And
and I think it. I think it came from Anita Dunne.
I think this was her. I mean, I think she
was a much more powerful figure in the Biden White
House than we realized at the time. So I would
my guess, Katie, I mean my hunch is that Biden
(22:34):
would have done that sit down with you and that done,
and the and the communications team shut that down in
a heartbeat and said, no, you know, you will not
be doing that. But that's that's the way this White
House operated.
Speaker 2 (22:49):
It is confounding that after the debate, I know Valerie
Biden was absolutely apoplectic. She was his long time like,
how come Valerie Biden didn't see the writing on the wall,
Chris Well.
Speaker 1 (23:08):
So here's here's the thing. And this is why I
say that this is different from a quote unquote cover
up in the classic sense. There were some inconvenient truths
to that theory, and one of them is the fact
that behind closed doors, more often than not, Joe Biden
governed capably. He was fine. I can tell you innumerable
(23:32):
people senators who came and met with him about Middle
Eastern policy who said he was on top of every
I and T, crossing every tee and knew it cold
and could articulate it very clearly. On the morning that
his senior advisors that fateful weekend of July twenty twenty one,
(23:54):
when his advisors came to hammer out the abdication statement
that morning, Biden was on the phone parsing the details
of one of the most complicated prisoner swaps in history,
multi nation deal. Mike Donalon, who is a senior advisor
maybe closest political advisor is alter Ego, swears up and
(24:15):
down that he never saw Joe Biden mentally diminished, said
he never saw period. Now is he lying maybe? Is
he delusional? Maybe? But that's his story and it's hard
to You can't just wish these inconvenient things away. In
arguing that it's a classic cover up, I don't think
it was.
Speaker 2 (24:35):
I also think this is a very sensitive matter, as
you described earlier, Chris. You know, when you have to
handle taking the car keys away from an elderly parent,
it is such an emotional situation, right, and you're dealing
with someone who's aging, and you don't I think you're
(24:56):
aware that you don't want to be agist, that you
don't want to accuse someone of losing their faculties. I mean,
the whole thing is just so fraught, and I think
this was a microcosm of conversations that are had every
day around the dinner table or the living room sofa
(25:18):
when you have to talk to an aging parent.
Speaker 1 (25:21):
Yeah, so no question about it exponentially magnified by the
stakes involved, not just power for the people around Biden,
but the future of the country and the fate of
the world. I mean, I'm not exaggerating. I mean those
are the stakes here. Joe Biden's legacy, the Democratic Party's future,
(25:41):
the result of the twenty twenty four election, and the
fate of the country and the world. Put all those
things together, and that's tougher than taking the car keys.
Speaker 2 (25:52):
You also write about the complicated relationship Joe Biden had
with Barack Obama. I thought that was a really interesting thing.
I'd obviously read about this and heard about it through
the years, But Joe Biden really never forgave Barack Obama
for putting his support behind Hillary Clinton in twenty sixteen,
(26:13):
before Joe Biden had truly had the time after the
death of his son Bo from brain cancer to make
a decision about whether he was in or whether he
was out. Is that accurate?
Speaker 1 (26:26):
Yes, absolutely true. Biden never forgave Barack Obama for that,
for putting his thumb on the scale for Hillary. And
it's a complicated relationship. On the one hand, they had
a genuine bond before Bo's death, actually, when Barack Obama
offered to pay for Bo's treatment and whatever he needed,
(26:47):
Obama was going to help out. They became very close,
but then again he could. He never forgave him for
twenty sixteen. And in the end, this is why the
story is so Shakespearean, because it's full of betrayals, and
one of them was Joe Biden's belief that Barack Obama
(27:09):
betrayed him, that he was working behind the scenes to
force him out. And the thing that one of Joe
Biden's closest friends told me that the thing that really
got to Biden was not so much George Clooney writing
a brutal op ed in the New York Times, maybe
with Obama's complicit consent, but it was the fact that
(27:32):
in the end, when the walls were closing in, Barack
Obama never picked up the phone and called Joe and said, hey, Joe, listen,
you sure you're up to this? He never If he
had reservations, he never shared them with Joe.
Speaker 2 (27:50):
Why do you think that was? Because if they did
have some kind of friendship, and if Barack Obama cared
about the future of the Democratic Party, I think he
would take a more active role in at least questioning
Joe Biden's decision.
Speaker 1 (28:07):
Well, my only the best guess I can give you
on that, Katie, is that there was this tension, this
conflict between the Biden and Obama camps, and perhaps Obama
felt that it would be counterproductive that the best way
to ensure that Biden stayed in the race might be
(28:28):
Obama telling him to get out. That, you know, that
might have been the thinking involved.
Speaker 2 (28:34):
Yeah. You write about how the Obama team never understood
Joe Biden's appeal and that they didn't find him to
be very sophisticated, which I felt was ironic given the
fact that the Democratic Party has lost its hold on
working class voters. And that was obviously one of Joe
(28:55):
Biden's big strong suits, the guy from Scranton, Pennsylvania, who
could talk to the average working Joe literally, and yet
people in the Obama camp didn't seem to appreciate that
and kind of we're condescending in a way that working
class voters have felt the Democratic Party had become in general.
Speaker 1 (29:19):
Right, Yeah, well, yeah, they looked down their noses at
Joe scrant and Joe they didn't think he had it
and at one point, David Pluff was dispatched to go
talk to Biden. This was around the time of the
twenty sixteen race, and Pluff sat down with Biden and
said to him, Joe, you don't want to end your
(29:39):
career in an Iowa hotel room, do you. And Biden
was just furious about this, and as one of his
aides said to me, he hates the Davids, The Davids
being plus An.
Speaker 2 (29:53):
Axel Rod interesting and David Axelrod was pretty vocal about
his thoughts at Joe Biden should bow out. Finally, it
was Nancy Pelosi who, really, I guess, put the nail
in the coffin. If you will tell us about what
you know about that conversation when she spoke to Biden
face to face and basically delivered the tough language and
(30:18):
the tough words that it was time to take away
the car keys or give up his run for reelection
in this case.
Speaker 1 (30:25):
Yeah, it's a story that I report for the first
time in Uncharted. The previous reporting had suggested that this
was a phone call that Pelosi had had with Biden.
What I learned was that she went and she had
this clandestine meeting with Joe Biden. She went to the
White House, not to the Oval Office where she might
(30:46):
be seen, but they arranged to meet in the residents.
It was July eleven, was the day the same day,
coincidentally that Nancy Pelosi went on Morning Joe and was
asked by Jonathan whether Biden should run again, and she said, oh,
it worth the effect of it's his decision. We're waiting
(31:07):
for him to decide. After Biden had already made it clear,
emphatically clear that he was running, so she and she
masterfully put the ball back in his court, knowing that
the pressure was going to be overwhelming for him eventually
to step aside. But later that day she went to
the White House and met privately, she said to a friend,
(31:28):
because nobody would confirm this meeting until Jeff Snipes finally
reluctantly confirmed it to me. She said, we had a
long talk about America, and in her inimitable way, she
went down memory Lane with the President. They talked about history,
they talked about their shared Catholic faith. They talked about
(31:51):
all kinds of things, and she said, not in a
boasting way, but she said to a friend, l thereafter,
I'm the only one who could have sent that message.
He trusts me, and she left without any kind of
Biden was still digging in, but she left thinking that
she'd gotten through to him. And it was ten days later.
(32:13):
It took another long ten days, and I tell the
whole story of the drama of those ten days before
Biden ultimately stepped aside.
Speaker 2 (32:28):
If you want to get smarter every morning with a
breakdown of the news and fascinating takes on health and
wellness and pop culture, sign up for our daily newsletter
wake Up Call by going to Katiecuric dot com. I
(32:50):
thought that Kamala Harris handled this uncertain chapter really well
because she did have to walk a delicate type robe.
You right, the vice president was navigating a political mindfield.
The slightest misstep, any hint that she was plotting to
replace the president could have been politically fatal. But while
(33:13):
Harris was lying low, her political operation was working behind
the scenes. Her chief of staff, Lorraine Bowles, had been
thinking about a contingency like this since November nineteenth, twenty
twenty one. And that was, by the way, when President Biden,
under Section three of the twenty fifth Amendment, had voluntarily
transferred his powers and duties to Harris while he underwent
(33:34):
a kolonoscopy. Gay glad he got his colonoscopy. But what
do you make of Kamala Harris's ability to continue to
support the president. She obviously knew what was going on.
I'm assuming she insisted that he was all there, that
he was fully capable, fully functioning, and yet she knew
(33:58):
that if anything to happen, there was a good chance
that she would step in his place.
Speaker 1 (34:06):
Well, as I as I wrote, as you quoted from
the book, she was really treading through a minefield. She
had to be. She had no choice other than to
be completely one hundred percent supportive. She had to be
Caesar's wife, you know, during this whole walk up to
the decision that he made. But she was clear eyed
(34:26):
enough to know that that day might be coming. She
didn't know when it would happen, and on July twenty first,
when she did get the phone call, she was ready.
They had a whole team that sprang into action around
the dining room table at the Naval Observatory, working the phones,
the laptops, reaching out to everybody across the country. They'd
(34:47):
already had operatives out very carefully and quietly with who
could not be traced to Kamala Harris. They were already
out there and they checked out the rules and you
know where the money would go and all the rest
of it. And they also were pressuring some Democratic senators
to turn on bite. But the result of all that
(35:08):
is that when that phone call came, when she was
standing in the kitchen of the Naval observatory on twenty
first of July, they were ready to go, and it
was a tour to force that. In the next forty
eight hours, she really nailed down the nomination.
Speaker 2 (35:21):
I thought she did an incredible job. And of course,
during that period of the campaign, everyone was saying this
was the Trump campaign's nightmare. They wanted Donald Trump to
run against Joe Biden, and they didn't want a more
capable candidate.
Speaker 1 (35:37):
Trump was furious and he thought it was a coup.
He thought he was being cheated. He said to Paul Manafort.
It was another strange story in this book. He said
to Paul Manifort, his disgraced ex campaign chief, who was
working with him again. He said, oh, so now I
have to win the election three times. The first time
(35:57):
in his mind was beating Biden. The second was beating
the courts. The third was now I have to beat her, and.
Speaker 2 (36:03):
She was a formidable candidate initially. Do you think if
there had been the so called many primary, which a
lot of people wondered if there was even time for
that at that point in the campaign, would have been
better and people would have felt more I guess invested
in the Democratic nominee.
Speaker 1 (36:24):
So I think the only question, Katie is would the
Democrats have been better off a year earlier or maybe
two years earlier, when there would have been time for
a real competition and a real Democratic primary. It was
too late in July of twenty twenty four. It was
impossible and to have a so called mini primary, and
(36:45):
if you looked at the rules, and I was told
by people high up in the DNC who understand this stuff,
that it couldn't have been done. It was just impossible.
The money was all going to Harris, to the person
on the It wasn't really conceivable to have a mini primary.
So the real question is why didn't Joe Biden step
(37:06):
aside a year earlier or.
Speaker 2 (37:08):
Two right, And then we get back to the beginning
of our conversation about it being hard to give up power,
not only for his inner circle, but for Joe Biden himself.
I wanted to ask you, also, Chris, about Kamala Harris's
navigation of praising her administration but also separating herself from it. Famously,
(37:33):
she was asked on the view a question that I
think haunted her throughout the campaign.
Speaker 1 (37:41):
Would you have done something differently than President Biden during
the past four years? There is done a thing that
comes to mind in terms of and I've been a
part of most of the decisions that have had impact.
Speaker 2 (37:54):
You write that Joe Biden had even given her permission
to be basically differentiate herself as a candidate. On the
other hand, that is so tricky, Chris. I feel for
her because she can't shed all over the Biden administration
of which she was a part without looking like a turncoat.
(38:16):
And you know, I think it was very difficult for
her to pick places where she could have differentiated herself.
I guess she could have said, in retrospect, we could
have done more on the border, right, But it's really
hard because anything she says is going to be twisted
and is going to be taken by the opposition as
(38:39):
being disloyal or criticizing the very deministration she was a
part of.
Speaker 1 (38:46):
Right, Well, nobody said it would be easy. But think
of again, I think I was right before Joe Biden
dropped out. I was writing a different book about presidential
campaign managers through history, and I was looking at the
nineteen sixty eight race and Hubert Humphrey broke with Lyndon
Johnson famously late in the campaign. It was in October
(39:08):
of nineteen sixty eight, and he almost caught Richard Nixon
in an election that he lost by Harris Breath. But
it was a real surge. And I think that she
could have done something like that, But nobody's saying it
would have been easy. The irony here is that not
only was she prepared to answer that question on the
(39:30):
view seven Ways to Sunday because they knew it was coming,
but Lorraine Voles, her chief of staff, and General Maley
Dillan had gone to the White House and met with
Jeff Zience, the chief of Staff, and they were going
in effect for permission to separate themselves from Biden, and
Zience and others told him, do what you have to do,
(39:50):
we get it, we understand, and Biden personally called Kamala
Harris and said, hey, go for it. If you have
to do it, you have to do it. And I'm paraphrasing,
I don't write she couldn't do it. And I'm told
by the people who know her well that what it
came down to was loyalty. That she couldn't throw Joe
Biden under the bus. So she couldn't. And what she said,
(40:12):
of course, was I can't think of a single thing
that she would have done differently, and it was devastating.
Within hours, the Trump campaign had a commercial with that
sound in it, and it was it was the death
knell for a change campaign. You know, somebody, if you
if you're trying to run on change, you can't give
(40:33):
that answer.
Speaker 2 (40:35):
What should she have said?
Speaker 1 (40:37):
Well, that's why they paid They don't pay me the
big buck. But I think she probably could have said
something to the effect of, you know, look, we've done
a B, C, and D, but you know what, we
blew it on inflation, and here's what I'm going to do.
I think it was probably too late for her to
(40:58):
convince anyone that she was going to be tough on
the border. That was probably a lost cause. But if
you had to choose one thing. In my view, it
wouldn't have been Gaza, it would have been inflation.
Speaker 2 (41:09):
But how much could they have really controlled inflation and fairness? Maybe?
I don't know. My mom used to say the president
doesn't make the economy. The economy makes the president.
Speaker 1 (41:21):
No, that's true, except when they're destroying the economy of
course with TIFFs. But anyway, I mean I think that No,
you have to be caught trying, I think is the
point at the end of the day. Even if even
if you and I know that there's very little the
president can do about that, you have to be caught trying.
Speaker 2 (41:41):
In addition to talking a lot about obviously the Biden
presidency and campaign, Chris, you also focus on Donald Trump,
the first administration and his twenty twenty four campaign chairs,
Susie Wiles and Chris la Sevida. I had forgot that
Chris los Sevita was the architect of the swift boat
(42:04):
campaign against John Kerry. Can you remind people what that
was all about?
Speaker 1 (42:10):
Yeah? This was the This was Chris los Avita's claim
to fame, this devastating ad campaign that he launched against
John Kerrey in two thousand and four. Carrie of course,
was the Democratic nominee who went to the convention and
said reporting for duty, he was running on his military record,
(42:31):
and las Avita, by rounding up people in the military
at the time who didn't like John Kerrey, managed to
turn it into a strike against him. They also they
all disputed Carrie's claims that he was, you know, of
(42:52):
his exploits in Vietnam as captain of a so called
swift boat. It was called the swift Boat Veterans for Truth,
and it was not truthful, but extremely effective, and las
Avita really became a kind of hero for having created
it within the GOP. So now fast forward to the
(43:14):
twenty twenty four campaign and suddenly there's a devastating ad
campaign about transsurgery for inmates in which Kamala is captured
in her own words advocating the right of prisoners to
have trans surgery. And with her words it was devastating.
(43:35):
Of course, ended with the tagline She's for they them,
Trump is for you. And when that happened, I know
one presidential one former winning Democratic presidential campaign manager, who
said to me off the record, their inability to answer
(43:55):
that was just crazy. Was and he called General Melli
Dyllon and her gang and said, what are you doing?
You got to answer this, and the reply he got was, well,
there is no answer for it, so we're just going
to let that go.
Speaker 2 (44:11):
You also write about Susie Wiles, who is such an
interesting figure in politics. She's the daughter Pat Summerle, the
famed sportscaster who was also an alcoholic, and that in
many ways helped her navigate Trump's aggression and his erratic moods.
(44:32):
How would you describe her relationship with Donald Trump and
why do you think she's been so effective? And he
clearly trusts her, right.
Speaker 1 (44:41):
Susie Wiles is a fascinating story, really amazing, and she
has some kind of magic with Trump. He trusts her.
There's never been any real worry that she would be
fired by Trump, and she has a kind of magic
with him. And I think part of it, without meaning
(45:02):
to sound like an armchair psychologist, I think part of
it goes back to the way she handled her alcoholic father,
who was very difficult. I think she'd be the first
to admit it. Children of alcoholics have a real sensitivity
and a kind of a kind of antenna for what
they can control and what they can't, and she has
(45:24):
found that modus operandi with Donald Trump, which she's carried
on into the White House. But of course, look, you
could argue that as White House chief of staff, she
should be picking, she should be telling the president her
truths much more often than she might be.
Speaker 2 (45:42):
You also write about how you were invited to Derek
Kushner's in avodka at Trump's home several times during Trump's
first term, which I found fascinating. How many times did
you visit with them, Chris in their home? And what
do you think they really wanted to understand? I guess
you're right that they wanted to understand the inner working
(46:04):
so the White House. How I guess they could create
some discipline in what they saw sort of the chaos.
But what do you think they were after? What did
you all talk about all the time? And how many
times again did you visit them?
Speaker 1 (46:21):
I don't know, I would say nobody. First of all,
nobody was more surprised than I to get this email
from the White House from Yvonka's assistant and then being
invited to their place. But I went many times, maybe
more than a dozen times that I visited with them,
and it was an irresisible opportunity to get some insight
(46:43):
into the Trump White House, and I think it was different.
I think in Ivanka's case, I think she was surprised
and somewhat encouraged to learn that they weren't the first
White House to have all kinds of all health breaking,
(47:04):
loose and internest scene warfare and backstabbing, and I think
she I think it helped her to put their experience
into perspective. In Jared's case, I think he was trying
to navigate this chaotic, very dangerous White House and deal
with the chiefs of staff that he had to deal with,
(47:25):
and so I think they thought they could learn something,
and I thought I could learn something from them, and
that I would get them eventually to go on the record,
and I never really did.
Speaker 2 (47:35):
Why did they decide to basically kind of separate themselves
from Trump World ultimately?
Speaker 1 (47:43):
Well, I've been told that essentially it comes down to
the success that Jared has had with his company, and
of course he's had a major infusion of funds from
the saudiast as we all know, controversially, but he's doing
quite well, thank you very much, in his business career.
(48:05):
And I think for Evoka, I think it was a
rough ride. I think the first four years or not
something she's eager to repeat. It was a I think
emotionally difficult period for her.
Speaker 2 (48:16):
Getting back to Susie Wiles, is she the only one left?
You mentioned? Maybe she should be speaking out more. Maybe
there is no one left, Chris who provides some of
the constraints that a leader like Donald Trump needs. He
got rid of all the people who challenged him in
(48:37):
his first term. He is as unrestrained as ever, it seems,
and has surrounded himself with sycophants and clearly people who
were affirming and supporting everything he does and telling him
basically what he wants to hear. I guess Susie Wiles
isn't that person. Is there anyone at all who's trying
(49:00):
to do that in this current White House?
Speaker 1 (49:04):
Very few, is my observation, although Susie Wiles claims that
she's trying and that she pushes back. And you know,
I've talked to her off and on and quite recently,
and she is trying, she says to you know, It's interesting.
She told me that one of the first people she
(49:25):
called was Jim Baker, James A. Baker, the third, Reagan's
White House chief before she took the job. Everybody does that,
and Baker always tells them the same thing. Congratulations, you've
got the worst blanking job in Washington. Multiply that by
twenty at least in her case. So she's told me
that she's pushed back on a number of major Trump initiatives.
(49:50):
She's had some success in moderating some of Trump's decisions,
and in other cases, as she put it, Ty goes
to the president. So we will see.
Speaker 2 (50:03):
You've done a deep dive into the Democratic Party from
the twenty twenty four perspective. How do you see the
party digging out of this mess? Are there people who
you're looking to Chris as the future stars of the
Democratic Party. It seems like people are desperate, desperate for
(50:24):
leadership or certainly someone who is standing up to Donald
Trump and more than that organizing the so called resistance.
Do you see anyone emerging from the pack?
Speaker 1 (50:39):
I don't know that I'd see anyone in particular emerging
at this point, but it's a really deep bench of talent.
I mean, there are really so many promising Democrats out there.
But I look, I think I would disagree with my
pal James Carville. I don't think the best strategy is
(51:01):
to lie low and let the let Trump dig himself
into a hole from which he can't climb out. I
think it's important to be out there, and I think
just look at the recent marches protests, look at Bernie
Sanders and AOC and their anti oligarchy tour. I think,
(51:22):
whatever you may think of them, they have a really clear,
understandable message, and I think other Democrats are going to
have to get out there and do the same thing.
Speaker 2 (51:34):
Well, Chris Whipple, the book is called Uncharted, How Trump
beat Biden, Harris and the odds and the wildest campaign
in history and now we're experiencing I think the ramifications
of that campaign and that election full stop. Thank you
so much for giving us the inside scoop on what
(51:56):
was happening in both campaigns. I found it a fascinating
reason and I'm so grateful you spent this time with us, Katie.
Speaker 1 (52:03):
Thanks so much. I'm grateful to you, great to be with.
Speaker 2 (52:13):
Thanks for listening. Everyone. If you have a question for me,
a subject you want us to cover, or you want
to share your thoughts about how you navigate this crazy world,
reach out send me a DM on Instagram. I would
love to hear from you. Next Question is a production
of iHeartMedia and Katie Couric Media. The executive producers are Me,
(52:34):
Katie Kuric, and Courtney Ltz. Our supervising producer is Ryan Martz,
and our producers are Adriana Fazzio and Meredith Barnes. Julian
Weller composed our theme music. For more information about today's episode,
or to sign up for my newsletter wake Up Call,
go to the description in the podcast app, or visit
(52:55):
us at Katiecuric dot com. You can also find me
on Instagram and all my social media channels. For more
podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you listen to your favorite shows. What if we
told you it was possible to prevent, manage, your cure
all disease by the end of the century. The chan
(53:18):
Zuckerberg Initiative is advancing biomedical research and leveraging AI to
change medicine for decades to come. By bringing together science,
tech researchers, and engineers, they're building a better future for everyone.
Learn more at CZI dot com, That's CZI dot com
(53:39):
or follow them on social media,
Host
Katie Couric
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