All right, everybody, we have some absolutely massive breaking news which is that much anticipated or speculated about. President Joe Biden is stepping back from being the Democratic nominee withdrawing from the twenty twenty four race. He will remain as president. He is not resigning that position. I'm going to pull up for you the letter that he posted, which I'm going to be one hundred with you.
I actually haven't.
Read yet, so we're going to read it together right now in real time, because I wanted to jump on and bring you the news as much as possible, and also, obviously Ryan Grimm here with us to help us pass through what all of this means. So he says, my fellow Americans, over the past three and a half years, we have made great progress as a nation. Today, America
has the strongest economy in the world. We've made historic investments in rebuilding our nation, in luring prescription drug costs for seniors, and expanding affordable healthcare to a record number of Americans. We've provided critically needed care to a million veterans exposed to toxic subs sinces past. The first gun safety law on thirty years pointed the first African American woman to the Supreme Court and passed the most significant
climate legislation in the history of the world. America has never been better positioned to lead than we are today. I know none of this could have been done without you, the American people. Together, we overcame a once in a century pandemic and the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. We have protected and preserved our democracy, and we've revitalized and strengthened our alliances around the world. It has been the greatest honor of my life to serve as your president.
And while it has been my intention to seek reelection, I believe it is in the best interest of my party and the country for me to stand down and to focus solely on fulfilling my duties as president for the remainder of my term. I will speak to the nation later this week in more detail about my decision. For now, let me express my deepest gratitude to all those who have worked so hard to see me reelected. I want to thank Vice President Kamala Harris for being
an extraordinary partner in all this work. Let me express my heart felt appreciation to the American people for the faith and trust you have placed in me. I believe today what I always have, that there is nothing America can't do when we do it together. We just have to remember we are the United States of America, signed Joe Biden. So, Ryan, a few things that jump out at me right off the jump. First of all, the
timing is wild. The RNC just concluded obviously we are weeks away from the DNC, so just an extraordinary moment in history. Second of all, he is withdrawing from the race but remaining as president, not resigning from that position. That was a new push that Republicans in particular were starting to make, but others as well are saying, listen, if you're not fit to run for office, how are
you fit to continue to serve in the presidency? Number Three, While he expresses his gratitude to Kamala Harris, his of course, vice president, he does not endorse her or any specific process to succeed him as Democratic nominee, here, leaving an open question whether he will do any of that or just leave it open to what comes next.
So what is your initial reaction here?
Yes, all of that, thanking Kamala Harris for being a partner in the process, but not endorsing her is huge. It opens up the next several days to be a period of intense jocking Biden, as has been reported basically everywhere. Was that King lear levels of resentment and anger over the last several days as he's been being pushed to leave.
And Griffin did you say something.
Okay, there you go, Griffin says he just endorsed Kamala Harris.
So breaking news from Griffin.
That he did not endorse her in the letter but waited until afterwards to endorse her might be a way to you know, sanctify the dignity of the Oval office and not sully it with.
The political machinations of political machinims.
That's how democrats think. That is very Democrat brain.
So now you're going to see the entire Now you're going to see a contest between those who are advocating for an open convention, such as Nancy Pelosi, such as myself, I rarely agree with Nancy Pelosi, and those who say, look, it's too chaotic, it's too toxic, it's too late.
What we need to do.
Now is just rally behind Kamala Harris and just right, you know, ride to the elect ride to the general election.
So here's the Joe Biden tweet in which he endorses Kamala Harris. He says, my fellow Democrats, I've decided not to accept the nomination to focus all my energies on my duties as president for the remainder of my term. My very first decision as the party nominee in twenty twenty was to pick Kamala Harris as my vice president, and it's been the best decision I've made. Today, I want to offer my full support and endorsement for Kamala to be the nominee of our party this year. Democrats,
it's time to come together and beat Trump. Let's do this. So we'll see whether the strength of Joe Biden's endorsement of Kamala is enough to completely quiet those like Pelosi who reportedly, behind the scenes, had been pushing for an open convention process. I suspect that many of the donors
also are interested in that open convention process. The reason being that, I mean, if you look at the polling, one of the weakest candidates to run against Trump not named Joe Biden is Kamala Harris, at least according to the polling today. Now listen, none of that is set in stone. She may be sort of I think underappreciated at the moment, given the fact that she just hasn't
been in the public spotlight that much. You could see a bump just based on the fact, oh my god, she's not a thousand years old and she can string three sentences together.
This, this is incredible.
But if you're just going by the data at this point, you would look at her compared to a Gretchen Whitmer, a Pete Bootage, a Gavin Newsom, Andy Basher, a Josh Shapiro, a Roy Coo. The list goes on and on and on, and say, if you're just concerned with defeating Donald Trump, any one of these other candidates is likely to be in a stronger position. The other thing with regards to Kamala Harris, I mean, there are a few things to
mention here. Obviously, it goes without saying that her defenders will say that it is outrageous to shove aside the first female woman vice president, black woman vice president. They will also say voters in the primary, which you know, let's put aside the fact there really wasn't a primary, but they voted for Biden Harris, so she has more democratic legitimacy. This is the case that they would make for why she should be the presumptive nominee.
So there's that.
There's also the fact that she's been in the public eye, so perhaps she's better vetted than other potential candidates who
could be a wildcard. On the flip side of all of that, Ryan, you know she also we know her weaknesses, we know the negatives, and we also know based on polling that the people who are most closely associated with the Biden administration really have a weight around their neck at this point, especially because of the sense of betrayal of this administration and the level of cover up that they perpetrated on the American public visa via his health concerns.
Yea, and I think the argument that she's been vetted is one of the flimsiest, and that she's been a national figure. It's true that she was vetted during the twenty nineteen twenty twenty campaign and she absolutely withered under the heat of it. So it's not like she was vetted and then succeeded in even making it to Iowa, like she dropped out before Iowa, because once national tension
was on her, she crumbled. She was then picked by Biden, not as he says, because he thinks she'd be a great president, but because that's what he wanted to add to.
The ticket for electoral purposes.
There hasn't been a whole lot of focus on her, you know, during the Biden Harris administration, to the extent it was was about her comment do not come about immigration, or you know, her effort to do voting rights she got. She kept getting handed these really impossible tasks, which is often what presidents do. That's what Obama did to Joe Biden.
The most scrutiny she got was over her massive staff turmoil. Now, journalistically, if Kamal Harris does win, it could be delightful for reporters because you know, the vice president's office has been toxic and chaotic and filled with leaks. Less so in the last you know, six months or so, but for most of the Biden administration.
Her office was just a disaster.
Yeah, just with people rotating in and out constantly and leaving and trashing the culture there, which is exactly what happened during the campaign. Remember New York Times and Political and others did the tiktoks about her campaign talking about
how what a train wreck the entire thing was. Now, the reason I think that you're not going to end up with an open convention is because people like Pelosi can manifest the possibility of it, because they have enough power to do that, but they can't force anybody to run, and that these centrist Democratic candidates are so cowardly and cynical and calculating that I don't think, I hope I'm proven wrong here. I don't think any of them will
even challenge Kamala Harris. My understanding is that they believe that because she has establishment endorsements and she's the vice president, that she's very difficult to beat, that they will likely lose to her, that they would be seen as disloyal, and that Harris will lose in the general that they would be blamed for her loss or the fact that they challenge her, and loss would be considered their.
Shot, like hey, hey, you had your shot.
You pulled your ticket, you got your order, get in the back of line, and so everybody else. So everybody's like, Okay, let's let her lose and then we will run in twenty twenty eight, which of course flies in the face of all the Democratic arguments that they make that there won't be a twenty twenty eight elections, Like, wait a minute, which one is it here?
So I want to come back to this, but I do want to back up for a second and just talk a little bit about Joe Biden's decision making process and these extraordinary past several weeks. Obviously, this all began with that utterly disastrous debate performance, which Ryan, I want to give you an eye will pat on the back because in our pre debate coverage, I don't know if you remember this, I think we both were saying that there is a possibility that he's so bad tonight that it is not recoverable.
And I haven't said a bunch of Democrats were like secretly hoping for well.
Thing, that it would be such a disaster. That's right, and that is what unfolds now. I didn't actually expect it to be that bad. I thought it would be bad, but in the way that.
It did.
I thought it would be bad in the way that he's normally bad. But it was, you know, an extra special level of bad, and that has just sent the whole party into a total tail spin. So first you had, you know, you had some some early comments that even people like David Axerod, you had some immediate jumping on saying this can't this isn't going to work.
We got to do something else.
Then you had some lower level members of Congress predominantly come out and say, all right, it's time for him to move on. Just a handful, right, few who came out, sort of these you know, little known moderate types. Then you started to have the you had the George Clooney op ed, and you start to get leaks behind the scenes about pressure from donors, about some higher level Democratic
officials who believed that he needed to step aside. Very early on, we had reporting that Schumer was actually glad that the debate was so early because he thought that this was actually a possibility and wanted to have enough time to be able to get another candidate in there.
So this is happening behind the scenes. But Biden and his close in circle were talking Jill Hunter, his sister, Steve Ruschetti, Mike Donald, and just a few others outside of that are seemingly totally dug in and impervious to all of it and just saying absolutely not, I'm in on the nominee I'm doing these rallies. I'm going to prove it to you. I'm going to do my big boy press conference, et cetera. But and then Trump's attempted assassination occurs. It sort of quiets the talk for a while.
At that point, I thought, oh, this is over. This is the conversation is over. It's not coming back. That's it. But while the conversation was quiet, there was a lot going on behind the scenes. And when the fallout from Trump's assassination attempt quiets, then you get these more public reports and Nancy Pelosi Obama seems to be a primary mover and this as well, who decided to go more public with their views which had been largely behind the scenes.
We also had reports about the way the donor cash had just fallen off a cliff. We're talking he was bringing in twenty five percent of what he had been previously. There's donor efforts going on, and so the sense is, and then he gets his COVID diagnosis, The sense is, and you tell me your view of how this all unfolded, that while he very much wanted to stay in, his family very much wanted him to stay in, he came to a point where you just.
Realized, there is no way that I can win.
I'm going to be out here on an island with every major leader and powerbroker in the party against me. Every Democratic member of Congress and swing state Democrat is going to be running against me. I'm not going to have money to run ads, and those ads have been significantly keeping him afloat to the extent that he's even competitive at this point. There is just no way I can persist.
Yeah, and I think he could have held on with some cojin appearances after the debate, like it was on a razor's edge, Like if he would have come out and done nightly press conferences and handled them well. If he had done if he'd have done better in the Lesser Whole interview, if he'd done better in the George step Monopolis interview, if he'd have done better even at the NATO press conference where people praised them because you remember the names of the countries correctly half the time,
then he could have survived. But it's not that he was nervous, or it was in poor form or whatever.
He just couldn't.
He wasn't physically and mentally capable of delivering the kind of performance that people needed to say, Okay, you know what, you had a bad night, rather than you know, you have a degenerative neurological condition. And also the neurologists have been saying that one of the symptoms of all of these.
Different degenerative conditions, regardless of which one he.
Has, is a rapidly increased amount of stubbornness and a col apse of in executive functioning. And anybody who's dealt with family members at that stage of their life recognize that that increased stubbornness. And for some people who are already stubborn, like at Joe Biden, people might think, oh, that's just Joe Biden being Joe, but it's actually it's
beyond Joe. It's stubborness beyond him. So the amount of force that was must have been required to get him to this place is almost you know, unimaginable.
That there is.
Yeah, there was also so much behind the scenes. I'm just sort of scanning Twitter now to see what, you know, other reactions were getting in. But there was also so much behind the scenes about First of all, you had a lot of people coming forward and saying, uh, you know, with that, how he was at that debate. This was what Clooney said in his op ed, and then others came out to verify it. What he was at that debate.
That's who he is now, so you know, and then all those pieces, why didn't you do the super Bowl interview? Why was he wondering away at the G seven? Why did he forget this former Congress, this congress when Jackie who had just died weeks ago, Why did he forget that she was dead? All of these pieces come together and it's really as unseeable. The other thing that came out is just the lingering, utter bitterness that he has
towards Barack Obama, and he was really incensed that. So it's Davild Axelrod who sort of leads the charge early on the Podsave Bros who are Obama world guys through and through, are aggressively leading the charge. Then you have the Clooney op ed. Clooney also seen as being like a cipher for Barack Obama, the Obama Yeah that's exactly right.
Reporting comes out that he's in touch with Obama. And then you get reports specifically about Obama now talking to people essentially saying yeah, he needs to step aside, and Joe and Obama have always had this sort of fraught relationship because I think while it was true that they had a good working relationship while he was vice president, there was also always this sense that Joe felt he was looked down upon because you got Obama, this Ivy
League guy with the super smart brainiac crew, and Joe Biden, who's this more old school backslapping, like personal relationship type of politician. And those two styles were like oil and water, and Biden went to a state school and all of those sort of like class driven dynamics as well. So you know, the irony here, Ryan that cannot be lost is that it was Barack Obama that brings him to the dance in the first place by being his vice
like picking him his vice president. Then he really brings him to the dance in the second place by helping to clear the field for him when the whole Democratic Party establishment unites in order to defeat Bernie Sanders, and he ends up being the guy. And so for all of Joe Biden's talk recently about all the elites are trying to take me ont et cetera, et cetera, it's like, well, your entire presidency was based on the strength of the
elites in this party. So if he had some sort of a ground swell of grassroots support, if he had run through a real democratic primary process where he'd had to be on a debate stage, and where the field wasn't you know, cleared for any of the other establishment
contenders who are chomping at the bit. If he had done those things and had actual democratic support and a grassroots fundraising base, then he wouldn't have ended up in this place where he cannot go forward without the very elites who are the ones who brought him here and propped him up and hid his condition, by the way in the first place.
Yeah, nineteen eighty eight he ran, and it was a humiliating defeat. Two thousand and eight he ran slow, single digits and exactly right. Was then rescued by Obama and put on the ticket. Twenty twenty, he ran, finished fourth in Iowa, fifth in New Hampshire, absolutely clabberd in Nevada, and then brought back to life by Obama and Jim Clyburn,
right ahead of South Carolina and Super Tuesday. So as as Congress and Adam Smith said, it is extraordinarily rich for Biden to complain that elites, you know, we're orchestrating his ouster when, like you said, elites are the only reason he became either vice president or president. Right, there was there was no The American people had the opportunity to name him president multiple times before and decide not
to only when he was. You know, the alternative being Bernie is what is what got the elites.
To say they got him to focus.
All right, I guess they've got no choice. I've got a John Fetterman reaction for you, Ryan, if you'd like it, He says. This is This is from Dave Weigel's Twitter account. He says, people push down an honorable man, loving father and a great president before an absolute sleeze ball like Menendez. Congratulations. So Fetterman, Yeah, fair enough, he shouldn't be in the Senate.
That's fair.
Although it's funny because it's actually the Republicans who seemingly want to rescue Menendez because they don't like, you know, going after people for their corruption. They're afraid it looks bad on their guys. So I saw a shoot. I was just looking for. I do see a Schumer statement, But I'm not coming across it right now, but I'm sure that we'll get, you know, statements from all of
the high ranking politicians. I see Jamal Bowman here, he says, now that President Biden has suspended his campaign, vice President Kamala Harris is the most qualified and best choice to lead us forward. So that is definitely where the debate is going to head next. And you know, to go back to that. Oh, I see doctor Jill Biden tweeted out Joe's letter with just a heart emoji, so that was her reaction to his decision. Here Jon Favreau, one of the Pod Save guys, he says, a courageous and
selfless decision. The president did what he's done for the last four years. He listened to the American people, but the country's interests ahead of his own. The exact opposite of Donald Trump. Not surprised by that framing, obviously, I strenuously disagree because all of this like, oh, he's such a great man, he's so selfless, blah blah blah. Tell that to the babies who don't have limbs or their lives or food to eat in Gaza. So spare me
that one. And I do want to ask you about that, because not that I have great hopes that Kamala Harris or any one of these Democrats is going to be like, you know, shown up with a watermelon T shirt anytime soon,
or affirmatively like truly pro Palestine. But I am I am somewhat hopeful that they may be less terrible than Joe Biden has been, simply because first of all, I do think there's an age issue, you know, I think anyone younger has, at least like Barack Obama did, has at least somewhat of a different view of this conflict.
That's number one.
Number two Bibi Netanya, who has turned himself into a partisan figure, and this started in the Obama administration when he shows up speaks to Congress in order to try to block the Iranian nuclear deal, which in my opinion, was one of the greatest accomplishments of the Obama Biden administration. It's no secret that bib would rather have Donald Trump
in office. So I am somewhat hopeful that just an out of the box, normy Democrat of the sort that Kamala Harris basically is, would view this through more of a partisan lens in a way that happens to be somewhat more pro Palestine or less just like fervently pro Israel. They can do whatever they want, whenever they want. Yeah, then Joe Biden has been who is clearly ideologically dug in on this issue.
I think this is the end of an era of democratic ideological fealty that leads to one on apologetic support for Israel. I think, obviously, the the I think obviously like the Democrats, will lean heavily towards Israel. But it won't be It won't be in the Biden like Biden, It'll be Palestinians at least.
Will have a shot. Hey, our buddy Dmitri Melhorn just sent me his statement.
Remind people who's demetrious misch Melhorn was.
He was Reid Hoffman's right hand man up until they parted ways just a couple of days ago, and now he joined the Lincoln project. Read Hoffman the Lincoln billionaire. Melhorne says, Kamala Harris is the American dream personified, daughter of immigrants who met at cal She has also toughness personified, rising from my hometown of Oakland, California, to become the top prosecutor of the state was grant and Joe stepping back.
I cannot wait to help elect president Harris. That's your kind of Lincoln Project centrist community.
Gotcha.
I've got a ron Klain tweet for you here. Now that the donors and electeds have pushed out the only candidate who has ever beaten Trump run claim of course, being Biden's initial chief of staff, it's time to end the political fantasy games and unite behind the only veteran of a national campaign, our outstanding VP Kamala Harris.
Let's get real and win in November.
You also, you don't have a number of the coconut pilled lefty crew who are excited about the gabblers endorsement. I like you, Ryan, agree that it would be better listen the time to have an actually democratic process. Unfortunately they passed by Well they've got five weeks, right, but we could have had like actual primaries and a normal process if they hadn't been so committed to hiding Joe Biden's true health condition from the American people with.
His whole I'm going to be a bridge candidate one term they primary. That is going to get my.
Uber great point as well. All right, why don't you drop off and I'll wrap this up. Ryan's going to be in a studio with me tomorrow. By Ryan then, So in any cases we were saying, you know, if they had had a true primary process, then there was an opportunity to do this in actual democratic fashion. They decided to not have any debates, They decided to not
even house a primary in many states. They decided to really circle the wagon is to make sure that no establishment candidate, you know, national competitor could emerge from that process. And so now you're left with this very short time frame, just a number of weeks before the DNC convention, and so I think it is very likely at this point that you know, the wagons basically get circled around Kamala.
Ryan is probably correct that just as they decided to take a pass in the fall after the midterms, any of the larger named national establishment Democrat figures will probably also take a pass and decide it is in their personal political self interest just to get behind Kamala. That's
probably what we're going to see. So in terms of her odds for the fall, you know, I think probably tomorrow Ryan and I are gonna have to totally reschedule our show, like figure out what we're having in the show tomorrow, because we had a run down locked in that looked very nice. But now obviously that's totally different world that we're living in today. But I suspect we'll go through the polling about how she matches up Visa v. Trump, and look, she's got an uphill climb. You know, she's
starting the campaign late. Now they've sort of got the campaign in the box. They know how they want to run against Donald Trump. The public Larrety very much has feelings about Donald Trump, and those feelings are largely negative. However, she has been she has had her own weaknesses as a national candidate. She is tied to the Biden Harris administration, which is unpopular, not you know, solely because partly because of the lies and the cover up in the betrayal
of American people Visavi his health condition. So she has a lot to overcome. But you know, looking today, unless there is a major organized like Dodor revolt Nancy Pelosi at all coming out to not only push the president aside, but also push aside his vice president and the woman that he just endorsed, I think it's very likely that we are going to have Vice President Kamala Harris sliding into the top spot as the Democratic nominee, and then that raises questions about who she will pick as her
vice president contender. There has been a lot of speculation about this already. Roy Cooper, the governor of North Carolina, has been mentioned quite a bit. Andy Basher, the governor of Kentucky, who is quite popular in Kentucky even as a Democrat, one of actually the most popular governors in the country, even as a Democrat in a red state, He has been mentioned quite a bit. I'm sure there will will be other names that are added to that
potential list. I did see a report as well that donors were funding an effort to go ahead and vet some of these possible vice presidential picks. So some other things for us to take a deeper look at tomorrow. But I'll just wrap it here from now. I got a million thoughts. I could go on all day, but I want to get this video posted so I can
get it out to you all too. Bottom line, Joe Biden withdrawing from the presidential race, endorsing his vice president Kamala Harris, and we are in unprecedented Times,