0:00

It's Friday, June 28, 2024

0:02

from Peach Fish Productions. It's

0:08

the gist. I'm Mike Pesca. And

0:10

while Joe Biden didn't have the best night, I

0:12

do think it's important to focus on the fact-checking

0:15

the Washington Post did. Quoting Donald Trump,

0:17

the only thing he was right about was I gave

0:19

you the largest tax cut in history. As

0:21

the Post wrote, this is false because in

0:23

absolute terms, $2 trillion might have been the

0:25

largest, but, quote, Trump's tax cut

0:28

amounted to nearly 0.9% of

0:30

the gross domestic product, meaning it was smaller than Reagan's

0:32

tax cut in 1981, 2.89% of the GDP. And

0:37

then you have Yahoo. They list a questionable

0:40

list of claims put forth by Donald

0:42

Trump, such as portraying himself

0:44

as joining the fight in climate

0:46

change, quote, while greenhouse gas emissions

0:48

fell during Trump's term in office,

0:51

it fell even more during Barack

0:53

Obama's presidency. Okay, so maybe voters

0:55

should think about that. And

0:58

then CNN noted that though Trump

1:00

was keen to cite the Veterans

1:02

Choice Act, that was really the

1:05

2018 law, the VA

1:07

Mission Act, that modified and expanded

1:09

the eligibility criteria for the choice

1:11

program. So what I'm saying is

1:13

you add up all the lies, and that

1:16

is why Joe Biden should be

1:18

considered the winner of that debate.

1:21

No. No. I've

1:24

heard takes like that. It is not my

1:26

take. It is not the take that I will

1:29

ask you to take from this broadcast. Fact

1:32

checks. I guess you hire the guy

1:34

beforehand and he has to do them. But

1:37

they do seem to some extent to

1:39

miss the raging forest fire for not

1:41

even the trees, not even the leaves,

1:44

aphids on the leaves on the trees,

1:47

the raging forest fire. I

1:49

don't want to overstate this or catastrophize

1:51

it, but Joe Biden did

1:53

not do well. Well, let's dive into the AP's

1:56

coverage. Biden arrived

1:58

with a raspy voice and spoke.

2:00

softly, the result his campaign said

2:02

of a cold. Biden sometimes

2:05

mumbled, got tongue-tied, or lost

2:07

his train of thought. A

2:09

performance unlikely to

2:11

calm anxiety among Democrats and

2:13

many Americans about the 81-year-old

2:16

president. Yes, yes, I would say

2:19

it is in fact not

2:22

likely to calm anxiety. In the

2:24

same way that if someone were

2:26

having a raging psychotic episode releasing

2:28

a swarm of bees into their

2:30

face would be unlikely

2:32

to properly sedate them. How

2:35

did we get here? Who

2:37

are the enablers who will demand that Joe

2:40

must go? Can their

2:42

demands be met? The difference

2:44

between a panic and a sell-off

2:47

that's all in my spiel analyzing

2:50

this moment, which is, well, determined

2:53

with our next guest. Is

2:55

that disastrous, catastrophic, maybe

2:57

something worse than that? Joining

3:00

me next for debate analysis and critique

3:02

is Sarah Isger, ABC legal expert, senior

3:04

editor at The Dispatch, veteran of three

3:06

presidential campaigns, and she has also vowed

3:09

to release Evan Gurnevician and the wars

3:11

in Israel and Ukraine before the interview

3:13

is over. Sarah Isger up next. This

3:25

episode is brought to you by the Jordan Harbinger

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What I recently listened to was

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Stanley McChrystal, the general, the former

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for 40 years, he's a 63-year-old man throwing

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wife says, you know, what that picture and that man

4:01

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they got around to the point where McChrystal

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talked about that interview in Rolling Stone

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magazine that pretty much ended his career,

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where he got to the desk of

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Barack Obama, and it had McChrystal saying

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unflattering things about the war effort, and just

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5:39

So as promised, here is the

5:41

Senior Editor of the Dispatch, Sarah

5:43

Isger, she's ABC's legal expert, and

5:46

she worked in the Department

5:48

of Justice. That'll probably come up. She worked

5:50

on a bunch of presidential campaigns. We're

5:52

gonna talk about what we just saw.

5:54

Sarah, welcome to the gist. Hello, thanks

5:56

for having me. So let's

5:59

play this. Let's do this. exercise

6:01

first. I'm going to give you

6:03

descending levels of calamity from less

6:05

than optimal to completely and utterly

6:07

disastrous. Stop me when I hit

6:09

the right verbiage to describe Joe

6:11

Biden's performance last night. Okay. Got

6:14

it. Midling, uninspired,

6:16

second rate, lackluster,

6:19

inadequate, inferior, outright

6:22

bad, woeful, dreadful,

6:25

terrible, dire,

6:27

ruinous, crippling, disaster.

6:30

I liked dire. Okay. Yeah.

6:32

It is kind of a throwback word. So

6:34

does this mean you rebut the idea that

6:37

it's disastrous, catastrophic, no coming back from, that's

6:39

where I was going with my next words.

6:41

Yes. I will give a soft pushback on

6:44

that. Or at least that it has not,

6:47

that alone will not be enough

6:49

because, uh, the Democrats have two

6:51

roads are diverging in the wood.

6:53

Um, and

6:55

frankly, they've been diverging for some

6:58

time now, but right. One is

7:00

you put public pressure on Joe Biden to

7:02

step aside because they have no ability to

7:05

remove him. They have to convince him to

7:07

do it. This is the Barry Goldwater going

7:09

to Nixon situation. You have to sort of

7:11

do it publicly so that he has no

7:13

choice, but to step down and release his

7:15

delegate so that there can be a different

7:17

nominee. That is path bound and

7:20

pledge delegates. Yes. That is path one. It's

7:22

a very difficult path. It's an awkward path. It's

7:24

an embarrassing path and it's sort of a belling

7:26

the cat path, meaning if

7:28

you sort of, you know, who's coming with

7:31

me and then nobody's behind you, your political

7:34

career is over. Um, and

7:36

the white house would be pretty angry at you.

7:38

So that's path one path to is the

7:40

status quo. And let me tell you

7:43

which path people normally pick in DC.

7:45

It's why we don't have a lot of legislation coming

7:48

out of Congress. It's why I still

7:50

believe that Joe Biden will be the

7:52

nominee. It's how Donald Trump survived the

7:54

access Hollywood tape, how he survived January

7:56

6th and not being impeached because no

7:58

matter how much every Everyone wants

8:01

path one. They want

8:03

someone else to do path one. And

8:05

that means everyone's on path two. I'll

8:08

give you another prominent example of inertia

8:10

and risk aversion, Joe Biden being the

8:12

nominee at this point. Yes, exactly. And

8:15

remember, six months ago, Rob Herr

8:19

flagged this for Democrats. He wrote

8:21

an entire report under penalty of

8:23

perjury. He testified

8:25

before Congress. And he

8:27

talked about what he witnessed in his

8:30

hours in conversation with

8:32

Joe Biden. And he was

8:34

called a partisan hack and a liar

8:36

and every other name they could throw

8:38

at him. And now, six months later,

8:40

we have former

8:42

President Obama now

8:44

saying, bad debate nights happen. Trust

8:46

me, I know. But this election is still a choice

8:49

between someone who has fought for ordinary folks his entire

8:51

life, someone who only cares about himself, between someone who

8:53

tells the truth, et cetera, et cetera. Last

8:56

night didn't change that. And it's why so much is at

8:58

stake in November, i.e. Oh,

9:01

OK. It turned out Rob Herr was right.

9:03

But now it's too late. But

9:05

when Obama does the shrug emoji, it's so

9:07

much more eloquent, you know? It

9:09

is more eloquent. So we should disclose or

9:11

just say, you are a former colleague. Get

9:13

a friend of Rob Herr, yes? Yes,

9:16

I worked with Rob at the Department of Justice

9:18

and consider him a wonderful friend.

9:20

But did not prep him for

9:22

any testimony, as some were alleging.

9:25

And in this, and it's, I don't know if it's interesting

9:27

to bring him up, I thought you might. He

9:29

wrote that, and this was the cause

9:31

of consternation, calumny, and every

9:33

job in the book. He wrote that,

9:36

and this is not a horrible phrase,

9:38

especially in light of what we saw,

9:40

that President Biden is a sympathetic, well-meaning,

9:42

elderly man with a poor memory. If

9:45

that was all we saw last night,

9:47

he might have not done so ruinous,

9:49

calamitous, and dire. But the

9:52

interesting thing about that was, there

9:54

were many interesting things, many Democrats

9:56

and Democrat-leaning members of the press.

10:00

took the rebuttal of that really

10:02

far. And they, like you

10:04

said, called Rob Herr a liar. I did

10:07

extensive segments on my show where members

10:09

of my audience got very mad at

10:11

me, especially over, I said

10:14

that Eric Swalwell and Madeline Dean

10:16

were purposefully misleading the American public

10:18

when they talked about things like

10:20

him having a photographic memory. So

10:22

without getting into every detail of

10:24

that, the basic, to borrow a

10:26

phrase just of it was, he

10:28

was putting his finger on a

10:30

phenomenon that he witnessed over how

10:32

many hours of discussion? Three. Okay.

10:35

And we have very few, the

10:38

Biden administration has been very tight in

10:40

putting the president out there and even

10:42

in short press conferences, he has these

10:45

mental laps. So here's a guy who

10:47

over three hours saw the signs of

10:49

what we saw last night in an

10:51

hour and a half. And there was

10:53

not just the inability to hear what

10:55

Herr was saying, it was taken as

10:57

a sign that this must be a

10:59

Republican talking point and therefore can't be

11:02

true. What am I getting wrong? That

11:04

Herr's character was actually flawed, right? That

11:06

he was a bad person, that he

11:08

had ill intentions. I mean, I'll admit

11:11

I've gone through sort of stages of

11:13

grief about last night's debate. And

11:15

I think my grief is for the

11:17

country, for my own vote perhaps. I'm

11:20

a double hater, right? So

11:22

to watch that debate, yeah. So various

11:25

stages. One, I was simply stunned last

11:27

night. In the first 10 minutes, I

11:30

was in the ABC green room just kind

11:32

of looking around like, I don't understand. This

11:35

is so much worse than I thought it would be. I've

11:38

gone through the, you know what? We really

11:40

should be stripping the executive branch of a

11:42

lot more power. That's maybe

11:45

stage two of like bargaining, if you

11:47

will. I'm in

11:49

stage three right now. And you're just catching me in

11:51

this moment for what it's worth. I'm sure I'll be

11:53

in stage four later, whatever that'll be. But I'm

11:56

feeling really angry about it right now. I'm

11:58

angry that these are the choices. that we

12:00

have. I'm angry that both parties

12:03

had so many options for

12:05

these not to be our

12:07

two choices and

12:10

that the motivations driving

12:12

them for us to

12:14

have these two choices at this moment were

12:17

not good ones. They weren't on behalf of

12:20

the country. They weren't on behalf of what

12:22

was best for the American

12:24

people. It was selfishness,

12:27

greed, fear, insecurity,

12:30

all of these negative

12:34

character qualities. And frankly, as

12:37

our society, we simply have

12:39

lost, I think, this ability

12:41

to enforce or value virtue.

12:45

And so then everyone gets away with it and it's not even,

12:48

we're not even holding people to the

12:50

desire for our public servants to be virtuous. Just

12:53

to make some obvious points about

12:55

Biden's poor performance, when you

12:58

show up or don't show up to that

13:00

extent and you are that bad

13:02

at a debate, you

13:04

fail to make your case, right? You

13:07

fail to rebut the other guy's case.

13:09

That all seems obvious, but maybe there

13:11

are some implications of

13:14

it that we could get into. But

13:16

this is, I think, important in this

13:18

particular election where Biden was campaigning on

13:22

democracy is on the ballot

13:24

and most important election of

13:26

our lifetime. You seriously undercut

13:28

that argument by saying, and

13:31

the person that I'm asking

13:33

you, if you believe

13:35

that, to prosecute or to stand

13:37

to thwart these horrible occurrences

13:40

is me, is the guy

13:42

who acts like this in a debate stage. So

13:44

that's a little worse than just a regular debate

13:46

gone wrong, I think. Yeah,

13:48

this debate was worse than a normal

13:50

incumbent not doing well at their first

13:53

debate for several reasons. One

13:55

is that normally when we say the incumbent doesn't

13:57

do well, think Obama in 2012. to

22:00

getting Joe Biden to turn at a 90

22:02

degree angle, but for some reason they were

22:04

sweeping in the wrong direction entirely. Yes,

22:06

and thus in rapturing the American audience

22:08

with a very apt curling analogy. So

22:11

thank you for that. Everyone

22:14

plays curling here. Is it even playing? If

22:16

you can only apply it to Justin Trudeau,

22:18

you'd be the CBC's legal

22:20

analysis instead of ABC's. Let's talk about

22:22

Donald Trump. Let's say we did an

22:24

experiment where we cut out the Biden

22:26

parts and it wouldn't be

22:28

perfect because he's responding to some things even

22:31

if he wasn't interrupting. We just saw what

22:33

he said. My opinion, in the beginning he

22:35

was kind of substantive. Then he got off

22:37

message and off base. And I don't think

22:40

it was for Donald Trump

22:42

even, a particularly great performance. I've seen

22:44

him do better, very different circumstances, but

22:46

what do you think? So I

22:48

think the first 20 minutes

22:50

of the debate was the best that

22:52

I've seen from Donald Trump. And of

22:54

course the worst that we've seen from Joe

22:56

Biden. As the debate went on,

22:59

the two lines started to converge a little. Donald

23:02

Trump got worse and reverted to the mean and

23:04

Joe Biden reverted to his mean as well and

23:06

got a little bit better and a little bit

23:08

sharper. The problem was that the first 20 minutes

23:10

set the tone for the whole thing so much

23:13

that it did make, I think Donald Trump seem

23:15

better, even

23:17

toward the end of the debate because you

23:19

were starting from where you started and it

23:21

made Joe Biden seem worse. I think that

23:24

Donald Trump, though, to your point about

23:26

you can't really separate the Joe Biden part,

23:29

I think that Donald Trump, it must have occurred to him

23:32

at about the 20 minute mark. If

23:34

I can not talk for as much as possible,

23:37

this is a good thing. And so I do

23:40

think he lost some of his concentration and focus

23:42

and probably a little bit of his prep. Like

23:44

whatever they had prepped him for, it couldn't have

23:46

been that you don't prep your candidate for the

23:48

best case scenario, right? So in Donald Trump's case,

23:50

this was the best case scenario of what he's

23:52

facing with Joe Biden. They didn't prep him for

23:54

that. You're prepping him for the worst case scenario

23:57

and worse and worse and worse. And

23:59

the most likely scenario. So Donald

24:01

Trump sitting there facing the best case scenario for

24:03

Donald Trump. And so I think he

24:06

got a little comfortable and certainly the worst moment of

24:08

the whole debate. Was

24:11

the golf thing. I

24:14

tweeted it was the worst moment in presidential

24:16

history, perhaps an exaggeration, but

24:19

I was melting with shame at being

24:22

an American at that point. I mean,

24:24

I don't even know what neither one could

24:26

complete a sentence. Neither one could

24:28

explain what they were saying was coherent. I

24:30

mean, you want to talk about sort

24:33

of age on display. Frankly, both of

24:35

them seemed like they were not from

24:37

a age coherent capacity able to discharge

24:39

the duties of the president as they're

24:42

talking about. I think they're

24:44

golf handicap. But even then, frankly, there

24:46

were moments where I wasn't totally sure.

24:48

What about his abortion answer? So there

24:50

was something that he had to have

24:52

been prepped for. And he

24:55

did his typical thing with every expert

24:57

ever agrees with me, which is so

24:59

facially ridiculous. And he tried

25:01

to present the fact that the states now have

25:03

the right to make these calls

25:06

as a good thing. OK, we

25:09

know where America stands on the abortion

25:11

question. Was this as best as he

25:13

could have done with that answer? Absolutely

25:16

and obviously not. So

25:18

it's funny how one's

25:21

expectations affect their

25:23

opinion. So here I am

25:25

blaming the Biden team for their failures

25:28

to protect and prepare their principal because,

25:31

of course, in the Biden team, I see myself. This

25:33

is a principal who wants to do prep. They

25:36

are all very established,

25:38

experienced campaign operatives.

25:42

So right like that all looks very familiar

25:44

to me. Homework, that sort of thing. Yeah.

25:46

OK, so now I blame them, right? Because

25:49

I see myself. On

25:51

the Trump side, you have a candidate

25:53

who is some combination of

25:55

untrainable and doesn't want to be trained. And

25:58

you have a bunch of operatives who don't know what they're doing. because

26:00

they've never done this before. And they've

26:02

certainly never done it with disciplined principles

26:04

so that they can try to show

26:06

why one might want discipline in some

26:08

of this. And frankly, it's

26:10

worked really well for Donald Trump. So why

26:12

should he listen to those people? Frankly, when

26:14

Donald Trump's been under the

26:16

thumb of his advisors, have been some of

26:18

his bad performances, and sort of the let

26:21

Trump be Trump has worked out depressingly

26:24

well for him. So with

26:27

all that being said, very

26:30

strange that he would go with the

26:32

every legal scholar in the world wanted

26:35

to overturn Roe v. Wade

26:38

instead of, Joe, when

26:42

you were in the Senate, you

26:44

were at a Senate hearing where you said

26:46

that Roe v. Wade was not a legally

26:48

sound opinion. Do you want me to read

26:50

the quote to you? Here, I memorized it.

26:54

Why would you not say that when you're in a debate

26:56

with Joe Biden? Yeah. Do

26:58

you think it'll hurt him? I mean, maybe,

27:01

obviously, everyone watching the debate

27:03

and hearing about it is just going

27:05

to be overwhelmed with the atmospherics. And

27:07

it's a debate. It's rhetoric. There was

27:09

bad, very bad rhetoric on one side.

27:12

But in terms of the issues, this

27:14

is a big winner for Democrats. And

27:16

I don't think this will stop

27:19

being a big issue for Democrats. But do

27:21

you think the dearth

27:24

of logic or factuality

27:26

in Trump's answer will actually hurt him

27:28

even more than he would have otherwise

27:31

been hurt just by being on the

27:33

wrong side of this issue? No,

27:35

he basically didn't help himself or hurt himself

27:38

with his answer because he didn't say anything

27:40

particularly memorable. If you already didn't like the

27:43

Republicans' position on abortion

27:46

issues, that

27:48

word salad, whatever he did say, is

27:50

neither going to comfort you nor further

27:52

offend you and vice versa. I

27:55

thought it was odd. A, I would have gone

27:57

with the Biden line. And then, so I would

27:59

have pivoted from. Joe, this is really weird because

28:01

here's what you said. And look,

28:03

here's where I'm gonna break with some people in my party

28:05

and they may not like it. But I

28:07

think it should be left to the states and here's why.

28:11

And whether you actually are breaking

28:13

with the majority of your party or not, voters

28:16

seeing you say that you're breaking

28:18

with extremists in your party is

28:20

always well regarded by voters.

28:24

And I thought he actually would do something more like

28:26

that. Instead of course, what we saw was a word

28:29

salad of an answer where he actually did kind

28:31

of say that kind of at a point. He

28:33

goes, I know some people don't like that, but

28:35

then others do and that's why. And I was

28:38

like, okay, I can't untangle this.

28:41

But as you say, none of that mattered

28:44

because all of us were just holding our breath

28:46

because we knew Joe Biden would have to talk next. Explain

28:48

to me how a Republican voter

28:51

or a Republican Trump curious voter

28:53

deals with the fact that they all know

28:56

that there's a lot of hype and puffery

28:58

in what he says. Do they take different

29:00

portions? Do some voters say, well, the puffery

29:02

is that, okay, we know it wasn't the

29:04

greatest economy in the world, but some voters

29:07

say, oh, it was the greatest. And do

29:09

a certain set of voters say, oh, maybe

29:11

he will stop the wars in Ukraine and

29:13

Israel even before he's sworn in. But another

29:16

portion says, okay, that's just his hype, but

29:18

he's, and will allow it.

29:20

So that's my question. Are there some things

29:22

that he says that are obviously untrue

29:24

that no voter really believes in?

29:29

No, so Donald Trump's greatest strength is

29:31

that he has found a way to

29:33

talk to really uninformed voters

29:35

and very informed voters at the

29:37

same time. And the way to

29:39

do that, that was the old way,

29:42

was to talk to the informed voters

29:44

like they were idiots, but

29:46

to like dumb down how to talk about

29:49

social security or something. What

29:51

Donald Trump has sort of revolutionized in political

29:53

communication is like, no, the way to talk

29:55

to both of those group of voters is

29:57

to talk to the very uninformed voters and

29:59

allow. Allow the very smart voters, very informed voters

30:02

I should say, it's not that their IQs

30:04

are higher necessarily, allow the very informed voters

30:06

to simply fill in the

30:08

gaps for you. So when you say

30:10

something insane, yes, there are people absolutely

30:13

who do not think that is a

30:15

lie, who believe every single word of

30:17

it. And then the

30:19

informed voters are like, look, yeah,

30:21

his numbers, but like the point

30:23

still stands. Joe Biden caused

30:25

the inflation. Joe Biden didn't secure the

30:27

border. Joe Biden is, you know,

30:30

certainly has made the world a less safe place

30:32

because people think they can walk all over him.

30:35

And so they take the vibes

30:37

away and the uninformed voters take

30:40

the incorrect statements away. Yeah, that

30:42

is, I hadn't thought of that

30:44

and that's pretty brilliant. Sarah

30:46

Isger is so many things,

30:49

ABC legal expert, senior editor

30:51

at The Dispatch and the

30:53

co-host of Advisory Opinions.

30:55

What a podcast. Thank you so much,

30:57

Sarah. Thanks, Mike. And

31:10

now the spiel. Joe Biden was not

31:13

good last night. So bad

31:15

that immediately afterward, John King on

31:17

CNN, Joy Reid on MSNBC and

31:19

everyone on Fox were reporting

31:21

that big wig Democrats were freaking out,

31:24

looking to replace the candidate, wondering

31:26

how did we get here? Good

31:29

question. Joe Biden is

31:31

old, obviously, and he is

31:33

mentally diminished. I'll say it.

31:36

It's not a huge insult. It

31:38

is obvious. Diminished just

31:40

means less than what he

31:42

once was, not uncapable

31:45

or incapacitated. He

31:47

is lesser than what he once was. And that

31:49

was on display. He's

31:52

not so diminished that you can't ever

31:54

engage with him on a level required

31:56

of the presidency, but he

31:58

is so diminished that there are including

32:00

during the most watched make or

32:03

break moment of this campaign, where

32:05

he can't do the job, the job of

32:07

campaigner. And if you want to say, well,

32:10

campaigning isn't governing, you know,

32:12

a president does have to sell his proposals, does

32:14

have to command the bully pulpit, does have

32:17

to articulate a vision for the country, usually

32:20

has to persuade publics

32:22

domestically and internationally. Of

32:24

course he has to do all those things. Also,

32:26

the number one job of the Biden

32:29

presidency is simply to occupy the

32:31

office so Donald Trump can't. Democracy

32:33

is on the line. He keeps

32:35

telling us the downside of that

32:37

claim actually working is, if

32:39

you believed it, everyone who bought into it

32:41

is now saying, okay, democracy is

32:43

on the line and this is the spent force we've

32:46

sent to defend it. So

32:48

again, back to the question, who's to

32:50

blame? First, of course, Joe Biden himself.

32:52

It's understandable that a powerful and successful

32:54

person would have an ego and an

32:57

inflated and maybe inaccurate sense of self

32:59

and they succumb, as I talked

33:01

to with Sarah Isger, it's come

33:03

to the human tendency of crediting

33:05

the data that conforms to the

33:07

narrative. I still got it. And

33:10

discounting as blips or one-offs or

33:12

unrepresentative anytime you're tongue tied or

33:14

unable to conjure a phrase or just

33:17

not mentally all there. Next

33:19

level of blame, his inner circle, which

33:21

is to say, Dr. Jill Biden, his

33:23

wife Valerie and the three closest political

33:25

aides, Ron Klain, Mike Donnell and Ted

33:27

Kaufman, their power is tied,

33:31

not power in the technical sense, but

33:33

their importance and self-esteem and

33:37

the excitement of their life,

33:39

although power literally, as

33:41

it relates to the three men, is

33:43

tied with Joe Biden being

33:45

president and self-interest can often

33:47

overlap with self-deception. Next

33:50

level, the party bigwigs, Schumer, Pelosi, Jamie

33:52

Harrison, chair of the DNC, none

33:55

powerful enough on their own to move the president, perhaps

33:58

they could have with a united front. But

34:00

then let's expand the circle out a little. What

34:02

about every other prominent Democrat

34:04

who thought it was the best

34:06

strategy not to challenge the president?

34:09

Gavin Newsom, Josh Shapiro, Gretchen Whitmer,

34:11

JB Pritzker. They all decided to

34:13

quote, wait their turn because they

34:15

all made the calculation that there

34:17

was no dire intervention necessary. You

34:19

can excuse them. I mean, they're

34:21

not with Joe Biden every day.

34:23

They've all had interactions with him.

34:26

They are somewhat fleeting glimpses, probably

34:28

shorter interactions in which Biden probably

34:30

came off better than he did

34:33

during the debate. And

34:35

then you had the assurances of the inner circle

34:37

and all the other dynamics we're talking about so

34:39

they could have convinced themselves, oh yeah, I don't

34:41

really have to run and push the issue. But

34:43

I do blame them. They

34:45

each calculated knowing they had a lot

34:48

to lose. It turns out

34:50

the country has a lot more to

34:52

lose, partly based on those calculations. Let

34:55

us although credit this guy. In

34:58

the words of Hubert Hunker, I believe the moral test of

35:00

the government is how it treats those in the dawn of

35:02

life, the dust of life and in the shadows of life.

35:05

Hearts out. I think

35:07

that is the fundamental role of

35:09

government. You're unlikely

35:11

to place the voice that was Dean

35:13

Phillips, Biden's only challenger. That

35:15

challenge went nowhere. Maybe

35:17

the only cost to him were actual literal

35:19

costs and he's very rich. So that doesn't

35:22

matter to him. His standing is fine in

35:24

the Minnesota Democratic Party. So

35:26

his calculations are different from Gavin

35:28

Newsom's, but not

35:31

100% laudable and acting out

35:34

of something other than self-interest. But you know what?

35:36

If there were a half dozen more Dean Phillips,

35:38

we might not be in this situation. Let's

35:41

now expand things out further. I

35:43

was thinking of the Biden candidacy as a

35:45

stock. And so far,

35:47

everyone I've listed is more

35:49

of in the category

35:51

of the inside directors. Those are

35:53

company executives like the CEO and the

35:56

CFO or managers a little below them

35:58

who are responsible for approving budgets. that's

36:00

an implementing strategy and approving projects,

36:03

and also assuring shareholders and the

36:05

board of directors that everything is

36:07

in order. So

36:09

many Democrats who really believed in the Biden

36:12

presidency and got really mad if you said

36:14

that he had lost the step or some

36:16

miles on his fastball or was mentally

36:19

incapacitated, so many of those Democrat

36:21

true believers are shareholders. They want

36:23

Biden to win. They want the

36:26

tales of his mental insufficiency to

36:28

be nothing other than Republican talking

36:30

points. I guess it's a little

36:33

confusing because they were Republican talking

36:35

points. And what does a Democrat

36:37

do with Republican talking points? Refute,

36:40

refute, refute. So therefore, these

36:42

shareholders decided it must all be

36:44

bunk. Remember when special counsel Robert

36:46

Herr declined to press charges? We

36:48

talked about it with Sarah. He

36:51

said that Biden was, quote, a sympathetic,

36:53

well-meaning elderly man with a poor memory.

36:56

Seemed like an obvious insight to me.

36:58

My saying so was on the show

37:01

interpreted as, or also on social media,

37:03

was really hit back against a

37:05

lot, a calumny and inaccuracy. Those

37:07

are fighting words. I'm a right-wing

37:09

dupe. It's not about me. It

37:12

just shows that that level

37:14

of pushback and vitriol reveals

37:16

something about the shareholders in

37:18

the Biden stock. Take this

37:20

analysis from the aforementioned MSNBC's

37:22

Joy Reid, who tore into

37:24

Republicans overseeing a congressional hearing

37:26

about her. Now, let's not

37:29

forget that a major part of this

37:31

hearing was Republicans hoping to keep alive

37:33

Mr. Herr's gratuitous description of Biden in

37:35

his report as a sympathetic, well-meaning elderly

37:37

man with a poor memory and diminished

37:39

faculties. While having nothing to

37:42

do with the classified documents, Herr made

37:44

the claim in his report that during

37:46

his five-hour interview, Biden was unable to

37:48

remember key dates, including when his son,

37:51

Beau, died of cancer. Oh,

37:53

and you better believe the right-wing ran with that

37:55

claim as further proof that Biden is too

37:57

old to be commander-in-chief. Of course.

38:00

was right. A few weeks

38:02

ago, here's a similar story. The Wall

38:04

Street Journal ran a piece about Joe

38:06

Biden being something less than a dynamo,

38:08

even behind closed doors. The story came

38:10

in for a lot of criticism because

38:12

the only on the record sources were

38:14

Republicans with an interest in beating Joe

38:16

Biden. But process

38:19

wise, maybe we could

38:21

say editorially that could have used a

38:24

few more tweaks. But

38:26

so much of the vehemence, the pushback

38:28

of that story wasn't about journalistic process.

38:30

It was a how dare you repeat

38:33

a Republican talking point. Okay,

38:35

but what about the question? Is Joe

38:37

Biden behind closed doors consistently superior to

38:39

the Joe Biden we see in front

38:41

of the doors? That was

38:44

informing a lot of the ire. The

38:46

day before the debate, here was

38:48

Rick Wilson on MSNBC, a never Trump-er.

38:51

He runs the Lincoln Project, made quite

38:53

a bit of money doing so. This

38:56

was him mocking, as he typically

38:58

does Republican talking points. He doesn't

39:00

pause to consider if a disjointed

39:02

halting alarming performance was so out

39:05

of the realm of possibility, even

39:07

if it was a Republican

39:10

talking point. First off, they've said for weeks,

39:12

Joe Biden is senile. He's got dementia. You

39:14

can barely walk or talk. And Biden's as

39:16

he shows up at the State of the

39:19

Union addresses, correspondent center, NATO speeches, big things.

39:21

Biden does a good performance. If he goes

39:23

in there, it just doesn't drool on himself.

39:25

Donald Trump loses the debate. I

39:28

could collect a hundred clips from that

39:30

one network. I could collect a thousand

39:32

clips from enablers within the party on

39:35

other networks. My own inbox is filled

39:37

with voters and listeners who are really

39:39

dismissive of every attempt to make the

39:41

argument that Joe Biden has lost it.

39:44

Well, last night he'd lost it. And

39:47

by it, I mean perhaps the nomination.

39:50

If not that, perhaps the presidency.

39:52

It's not looking great. Former

39:54

Republican presidential campaign consultant

39:57

turned never Trump or Stewart Stevens to

39:59

the Senate. tweeted quote, I

40:01

was in the room when the political class wrote

40:03

that Kerry had won the race after the first

40:05

Bush debate. I was in the

40:07

room when the political class wrote that Obama

40:09

had lost the race after the first debate.

40:12

Politics doesn't work that way. There

40:14

may be a more unappealing quality than panic, but

40:17

I'll be damned if I could name it. Was

40:19

he in the room when Edmund Muskie cried? When

40:22

Jukakis wrote a tank? When Kristi Noem shot a

40:24

dog? Sometimes panic is

40:26

overblown. Sometimes it's, what's the word,

40:28

blown. Properly blown.

40:30

To extend the stock

40:33

and shareholder metaphor, you

40:35

don't want to be a panic seller, but

40:38

you do want to be able to discern

40:40

when there is an actual run on the

40:42

bank. At that moment, you

40:45

should try to get your and your clients

40:47

money out, not spend all your time bemoaning

40:50

the unfairness of it all or

40:52

talking up the bank's book. It's

40:55

a terrible position for a country to be

40:57

in and post-mortem is a weird phrase when

40:59

technically there could be a resurrection or

41:02

tales of Biden's demise. I don't know.

41:04

Perhaps they're greatly exaggerated. But

41:06

so many people were not well served

41:08

by the decisions of the few as

41:11

enabled by a pretty

41:14

wide circle. And that's

41:16

it for today's

41:19

show. Cory

41:21

Warra produces the gist. Joel Patterson's

41:24

the senior producer. Leo Baum has

41:26

been working hard. Baum! Baum, Baum,

41:28

Baum, Baum. I think from what's

41:30

happening. Just it's why I like

41:32

saying Leo Baum. Michelle

41:34

Pesca is the CTO

41:38

of Peach Fish Productions. Folks, she's

41:40

working on a credenza now. I don't

41:42

want to have to bring it up, but if you see

41:45

her, congratulate her on the credenza. The table is done. The

41:47

gist is presented in collaboration with Libsyn's AdvertiseCast

41:50

for advertising inquiries. Go to advertisecast.com

41:54

slash the gist. Oompa-doo-poo-doo-poo and thanks

41:56

for listening. Thank you. President

41:58

Biden. You can see he is

42:01

6'5 and only 223 pounds, or 235 pounds. Well,

42:06

you said 6'4, 200. Well,

42:09

anyway, that's it. Just

42:11

take a look at what he says he is and take a look

42:13

at what he is.