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The fallout from Joe Biden's disastrous debate performance is still consuming Washington. It's all anyone can talk about from the White House Press briefing room as.
The President being treated for Parkinson's No, is he being treated for Parkinson's No.
To congressional hearings with the US treasure Secretary in chair of the Federal Reserve.
I'm Secretary, Have there been any discussions among cabinet secretaries about invoking the twenty fifth Amendment?
No?
In your meetings with the president, have you noticed any mental or cognitive decline?
No.
Despite all those no's, the party's support for Biden looks like it's starting to crumble. On Wednesday morning, on MSNBC, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi seemed to be threading the needle. She didn't directly support Biden's bid. She basically said he needs to make up his mind himself.
It's up to the president suicide if he is going to run. We're all encouraging him to make that decision because time is running short.
To the untrained ear this might not sound like a big deal, but reporters in Washington who have covered her for years say that Pelosi speaks carefully. If she had wanted to give a full throated endorsement to Biden, she would have. And while Pelosi said that Biden should quickly decide what he wants to do, she also had a word of caution for her Democratic colleagues. Keep the debate
in the family. She asked folks to air their concerns privately, at least until this week's NATO summit in Washington ends and the thirty one world leaders visiting have left town. Not everyone is listening. A handful of House lawmakers have gone on the record to call for Biden to drop out, and on Wednesday night, Vermont's Peter Welch became the first sitting Senator to directly endorse replacing Biden. Where are the donors?
And all of this? Reports suggest their concern earned and George Clooney, a lifelong Democrat and heavy hitting fundraiser for Biden, wrote a guest essay in The New York Times the headline, I love Joe Biden, but we need a new nominee. So the question remains, are we at a will he won't he? Moment? In terms of Biden dropping out of the race, or is the narrative about to become? When
will he drop out? And how? Today on the show, can Biden and Democrats resolved the party's biggest public fight in decades and get back in the game to beat Donald Trump? I unpack what the President has done so far to prove himself to critics and supporters During another high stakes week in Washington, I sit down with Jordan Fabian, who covers the White House and national politics for Bloomberg and has been tracing the fallout from Bloomberg's Washington bureau.
This is the Big Take DC Podcast. I'm Salaamosen.
Look here you're walking into well can accurately be described as a make or break weekend for Joe Biden As we enter a new week with many questions about the direction of this campaign.
President Biden started this week with a full court press on his viability to serve a second term. On Monday, he sent a two page letter to congressional Democrats saying it's time to stop talking of swapping in a different candidate. Moments after he released that letter, he called into MSNBC's Morning Joe. He expressed frustration that anyone dared to question him as the party's legitimate nominee.
If anything's die, I don't think I should run against me.
Announced for president, challenge man to convention. It's been another critical week for Biden, set to end with a high stakes press conference Thursday evening as the NATO summit wraps in DC. To peel back the curtain on all of this, I spoke with Bloomberg White House reporter Jordan Fabian. What's the narrative that you're seeing from the White House on Biden's position in the race.
The White House is saying that President Biden is staying in the race. He said that himself on multiple occasions to lawmakers, to donors, on phone calls, and in television interviews.
I don't think anybody's more qualified to be president or win this race than May.
The bottom line here is that we're not going anywhere.
He said that he's moving forward because he believes he is the one to defeat Donald Trump, and so they're digging in their heels. While this groundswell of opposition among Democrats is continuing to mount.
Biden is making his case, and on Monday, he sent a two page letter addressed to congressional Democrats doubling down on his commitment to a second term. Can you tell me, Jordan if his attempts to reassure them worked.
I would say, to an extent yes, and also to an extent no. It's a bit of a combat answer. But on the yes front, you've seen Democratic leaders like Chuck Schumer and other key Democrats like the chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus, the chairman of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, Alexandria Cassio Cortez, the leader of the Progressive Squad in the House, all come out and support of Joe Biden.
And so this damn of support has kind of stopped the flood of defections that we've seen in the first week after that debate. But that being said, there's still a lot of discontent among members on Capitol Hill, donors and party officials. There was a meeting on Tuesday of House Democrats, and the members that came out of that meeting were just very dour, very depressed about what's happening.
It's almost as if they know that Joe Biden doesn't really stand a chance to win November, but they're powerless to do anything about it.
Why is there still pushback. Considering what Biden has been trying to get across in the last two weeks.
Democratic lawmakers in some ways are just like us. They're looking at the polls. They're seeing number both nationally and in battleground states showing President Biden trailing Donald Trump even more than he was before that debate, and so they're worried that he's going to lose the November election to Donald Trump, and that would represent Democrats' worst nightmare.
So what I'm hearing is that there's a theme here of a lack of unity. What's its stake for the Democratic Party? If they're not able to unite behind Joe Biden.
It could be their future as a governing party for the next decade or so. You have a Republican Party that, despite all of Donald Trump's laws, being a convicted felon, saying a lot of nasty things about minorities, immigrants, etc. They've united around Donald Trump and the Republican Party at
this point, and so they're moving forward in lockstep. It's not like Trump's first term, and there were still a lot of anti Trump Republicans in the fold and key positions in the House of the Senate, now you have a much more consolidated Republican Party. Meanwhile, the Democratic side, you have all these divisions over whether Joe Biden should be the standard bearer. And that's why I think you've
heard this angry reaction from Joe Biden. He's saying, Look, the mission should be to beat Donald Trump in November. If you're not going to pose a challenge to me, either at the convention or you know, drive down Pennsylvania Avenue and ask me to get out of the race, then you need to stop all the talk and focus your attention on beating Donald Trump.
Jordan, you follow Biden around the country the world as a White House reporter, Can you explain what is behind him holding firm on running.
It's a great question, Seleyah, And it's in some way it's tough to answer because Joe Biden doesn't talk a lot about his thinking with the press so much anymore. But what we know about Joe Biden is that he is a stubborn guy. He is someone who is hard to move off of his beliefs, and his belief is that he is the only one in the Democratic Party
that can beat Donald Trump. And not to mention, he is a real personal distaste for Donald Trump, and so I think all of the reaction after the debate asking him to get out and then seeing Trump glowed about that, and there were some leaked videos online about Trump kind of dunking on Joe Biden that certainly rubbed him the
wrong way. He also has family members and longtime aids who you know, surrounded him for decades, and they have tended in recent years to only present Joe Biden with a lot of good news versus bad news, and so he might not be getting the full picture either of the depth of the crisis surrounding his presidency, and so he's continuing to soldier on.
Let's talk about those aids and family members who were close to Biden, the people who make up his inner circle, his wife Jill, his sister Valerie, a couple of lawmakers, and aids. What do we know about the conversations that are happening in that inner circle? Do we know anything about what they're doing and talking about.
There's been a lot floating out there. I think in Biden's inner circle, there's been a lot of recriminations about how that debate went. You've heard about family members like Joe Biden's son Hunter and Joe Biden blaming some aids for how that debate performance went. Some of the aids that have come under fire are Anita Dunn, who is the president's communications guru, and her husband Bob Bauer, who was also the president's personal lawyer, who was involved in
debate prep. And so there's been a lot of blame being cast about. But you haven't heard anyone really in Biden's in her circle really say Joe, You've had a great career. You helped kick Donald Trump out of the White House, but it's time to go. No one in the Biden family or the inner circle saying that the messages, let's put this past us and move on.
There's one name we haven't mentioned, Kamala Harris. Where is she and all of this.
She's been very close by the president's sign and all of this, even as there has been talk in the Democratic Party about how she could be a great replacement for Joe Biden if he were to step aside. But the party rank and file is really coalesced on Kamala Harris. That being said, she's not really saying, hey, pick me, She's being the loyal soldier up here. Alongside Biden at July fourth celebration and at some other events and telling media and donors, I'm at Joe Biden's side, I'm as
running mate. We after lect Joe, so she's staying very close to the vest as all of this plays out.
After the break, what all of this means for Biden as he steps onto the world stage At the NATO Summit on Tuesday night, President Biden took the podium in a room full of power, thirty one of America's allies that make up NATO, meeting in an era when Europe seems to be coming apart.
The Secretary General, leaders of NATO countries.
The eyes of world leaders from each of these member nations were glued to him as he kicked off three days of meetings, even as European officials privately expressed growing doubts that he can beat Donald Trump.
Welcome to the twenty twenty four NATO Summit.
The general consensus was that Biden did okay. He was direct enforce fall and he was reading from a teleprompter. The fact that we're talking about his performance rather than his words is revealing. There's a lot at stake for Biden. The Democratic Party and the country's allies who need a US president with a strong mandate to lead. I spoke about this and what comes after it with Jordan. So this week a major NATO summit started in DC, and there's a couple of things that we're watching out for.
What were the goals before Biden's debate performance, Let's start there, Yeah.
Great question going into the summit. Before the debate, the big goals were to display alliance wide unity about Ukraine and get more aid to Kiev, especially air defenses as they're continuing to suffer real big damage from Russian bombing campaigns,
and so that's kind of the major goal. And also again to shore up the alliance given the leadership changes on the other side of the Atlantic, where you've had an election in France that saw the left wing Alliance come to power in the Assembly and also the new UK Prime Minister, Kier Starmer taking over a new government there as well. So it's really the first time that everyone's coming together since those elections.
So those are the goals before the debate performance. What are the goals of this week in the NATO summit?
Now, I mean, the US is really the center of the NATO alliance, And so with a leadership crisis like we're seeing the surrounding Joe Biden, a lot of foreign leaders are very nervous about the state of US leadership, not only in the short term. With Joe Biden's state, I'm sure they're looking to see can he still do
the job? Is he still capable of leading the most powerful nation in the world, but also looking forward if you're to be reelected to do the job for another four years, or is Donald Trump coming in and going to completely disrupt the NATO alliance? And he threatened to withdraw when he was president. He harangued NATO members who weren't meeting the commitment to spend two percent of GDP on defense, and so a lot of leaders in NATO are dreading that possibility and also what it might mean
for Ukraine. Donald Trump has talked about Zelenski and Putin should just sit down and get a deal. There were worried that Donald Trump could takeway leverage from Ukraine. So all these issues are on the minds of leaders this week.
Last week everyone said that that was the crucial week for Biden. This week, everyone has been saying that this is the crucial week for Biden. Is this a goalpost that's just going to be moved every week again and again until we get to November.
You very well could be. It seems like Biden has sort of somewhat passed the first key test, which was to get past these first few days where lawmakers were back in Washington. There hasn't been a concerted effort by leaders in the House and the Senate to push him out. It's been quite the opposite that they're still divided amongst themselves about whether to do that. Looking to the rest of the week, he has the press conference at NATO
on Thursday. If there's a major blunder at that press conference, that's going to pour more gasoline on the fire about these concerns about his age, fitness, and acuity.
So next week is the Republican National Convention. We're going to hear a lot from the Trump campaign and Trump himself these last few days, and this week, Trump has been pretty quiet. Do you think that next week we're going to see the focus shift away from Biden and this narrative.
I think you'll see it shift a bit. Yes, I'm not sure it's going to completely wipe it off. The agenda, but the fact that Donald Trump is staging the Republican Convention in Milwaukee. That's usually a time when the nominee wants to take center stage and explain his policies to the nation and get his base riled up to vote for him in the fall. And so you'll have a full week to do that. There'll be a lot of
media coverage of it. And look, Donald Trump has been disciplined for the most part of the last couple of weeks, but he's someone slayh as you know from covering that administration. He does not like to give up the spotlight and he is often gonna make mistakes and say crazy stuff. And I would not be surprised if that took place next week. And so that's what makes us race so volatile, is that you have both these candidates was major questions surrounding them.
Thanks for listening to The Big Take DC podcast from Bloomberg News. I'm Salaijamosen. This episode was produced by Julia Press. It was mixed by Blake Maples. It was edited by Aaron Edwards and Wendy Benjaminson, who provides editorial direction, with Elizabeth Ponso, Naomi Shaven and Kim Gettleson are our senior producers. Nicole biamsterbor is our executive producer. Sage Bauman is Bloomberg's head of podcasts. Please follow and review The Big Take
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