Hello, everybody, good evening. We just watched President Biden's big boy press conference, as his own staffers called it, clocked in around fifty nine minutes, Crystal. He took about seven questions from the White House Press Corps. One of them doesn't count because, as I predicted, he fed one to a foreign reporter who asked perhaps one of the dumbest questions at a high stakes press conference that.
We have seen.
And yet a couple of interesting moments emerged, the first and probably most noteworthy, ironically, before the press conference even began.
Yeah, so this was a bit of an unmitigated disaster for President Biden. Before the presser, he had the not very challenging job of introducing President Zelenski of Ukraine and accidentally calls him President Putin before reversing course. Let me go ahead and share my screen because we have this very uncomfortable moment that I can show to you.
Here we go, take a listen, and now.
I want to hand over to the President of Ukraine, who has as much courage as he has determination, ladies and gentlemen, President Putin present, He's got big presidents. President Lynsky, I'm sure focused on being Putin we gotta worry about it anyway. It's president, you are a.
Hell hawk.
And uh tiger.
I don't know if you watched any of the zooman's of the world leaders that were there, but their faces not sure what to do. There was a reporter in the room who said people started calling out Zelinsky's name to help Biden catch the mistake. Now the liberal cope on this, of course, Well he fixed it right away.
But listen, as we've said before, if this quote unquote gaff had just fallen out of the coconut tree and didn't exist in the context of all of the other decline that we have seen manifested just over the past few weeks, let alone the past number of months, that would be one thing. But he consistently mixes up names, cannot complete his thoughts, seems lost, seems out of it, and this just fits very clearly into this pattern. Not to mention, you know, for liberals, Putin is the ultimate battie.
So for him to call the ultimate hero by the ultimate Batty's name, that's a tough one.
It would be one thing if it just happened once, let's say, once a quarter, it's a whole other coming fourteen days off of that press conference, and it's a whole other whenever he did it exactly three hours later, in the very first answer to the very first question, confusing the vice president, Kamala Harris calling her vice President Trump Cristle and I believe that we have that clip as well, which was I mean, I honestly gasped the same way that I think that we both did during
we beat Medicare.
I could not.
Believe to be Oh sorry, go ahead, play again. Then this is as you said. This was in response to the very first question, he gets all jumbled up and calls his own vice president. He was asked if she was fit to take over, basically asking all right, well, if you picked her, why can't she serve in your stead? And in the course of answering that you'll hear him call her vice President Trump.
I wouldn't have picked Vice President Trump to be vice president. I think she's not qualified to be president. So let's start there. Number one. I wouldn't have picked vice President Trump.
So there you go.
And by the way, didn't correct it, and didn't.
Notice didn't correct it at the very end.
A reporter from NBC News at the end when he's walking out and everybody shouting at him.
Whatever.
What the one person who was able to get through says to him, You said in the very first answer Vice President Trump, Trump himself is now using that to say you're too old, you're etc. What's your response? And Biden said something confusing. I'll just use it to him or something like him.
What I mean, Look, we don't want to cherry put too much. It was a fifty nine minute press conference. I stand corrected by the way. It was eleven questions, not seven. A couple of them were follow ups. That's why I was a little bit confused on the overall number. But in the fifty nine minutes, two of the reporters asked foreign policy questions. And I mean, look, I don't want to go too far in extending this man credit
when I say command of the facts. He seemed generally aware of what the hell was going on, which is definitely different than prior.
Now.
A lot of what he did say when his brain was firing was bragging about his Israel and Ukraine policy, which is crazy. I mean, at one point he seemed to imply that the twenty twenty four election should be a referendum on NATO, in on Ukraine, and by the way, I will take that deal every single day of the week if he wants to continue down that role. The thing is, and this is where I'm curious, and we
were talking a little bit before. Overall, he has delivered enough tonight for his most partisans who had departed a little bit away from him, to feel very comfortable. So let me give examples, people like Jennifer Rubin over at the Washington Post, one of his chief propagandas Kate Bettingfield will remember her, she's a former communications director who has not been very bullish on President Biden the last two weeks, or at the very least being like, hey, it's a
legitimate question, she says. Tonight, she's tweeting out saying that, you know, President Biden did a good job, like reassured the American people. I see enough people out there, mostly liberals, you know, who were uncomfortable, but saying he did okay. And I gotta say, I think he did okay enough
to stop the worst case scenario from falling out. And just because he also displayed his sheer arrogance, Crystal, what really struck out to me was that question where he was asked what it would take for him to drop out of the race, and he said that he was the judge of his own fitness and of whether he was doing a good job. He's like, as long as I believe I am still doing being a good job,
I'm going to stay in. So his egotism, the same that we saw on George Stephanopolos where he said only God Almighty can force me to drop out, was very much on display tonight too.
So here's what I would say, this is about what I would have expected Joe Biden's performance to be at the debate. I told this is what I thought it would be. Yes, it was rambling, it was at times incoherent. The foreign policy answers were long winded. I know people liberals were spending that as like a great command of the facts, But it was just him sort of like verbal diary ing everything that he knows about an issue and not really being responsive to the question at hand.
There was lots of coughing, There was lots of starting a sentence and then cutting himself off because he forgot the train of thought and going well anyway, there was him mixing up, you know, Vice President Harris, his own vice president WIT's trumpat So that is on par with what I expected his debate performance to be. And if that had been his debate performance, we would not be having this conversation right now. So it was not at
the level of total catastrophe that the debate performance was. However, we live in a different world now than we did prior to the debate, and my sense is that a lot and there's reporting to this effect too, from is that I don't remember if it was CBS or ABC that had the report that literally, sorry, the dog dog keeps knocking the table. Literally dozens of Democrats are prepared to open the floodgates and come out in a coordinated way and call for his resignation. And this was not
dependent on what happened in this press conference. They've already made their minds up and so now rather than looking for something to be reassuring, it's not enough for it to have met a very very low bar of It wasn't as much of a catastrophe as the debate. I don't know that there was a perfect performance even that he could have turned in tonight that would have turned the tides for him, because I think some of this
is already set. But the other thing I would say is, if you're in that camp where think of this Soger, You've drafted your statement, you've coordinated with dozens of other House Democrats, perhaps some Senate Democrats as well. You're locked and loaded. Do you look at that press conference and go, gee, I was totally wrong? No, no, no, you don't. You go yeah, this isn't great, this isn't great, and this is him like at his very best.
Yeah.
So that's why I think in a lot of ways, you know, the press conference was built up is like this is it, this is do or die. We even said that in our own show today. But as I came to think about it more and as the reporting came out, I think in a sense that die is probably already cast. And Nancy Pelosi is the one who said, you know, let's wait for the NATO leaders to go, Let's wait for them to get out of town and
then do what needs to be done. I think they took that as, you know, a real signal that once the thing was over, Okay, it's game on, and already you've had enough come out, you've had enough move in that direction, that that seems to me that you know, we're we're still headed headed that way.
I'm in two to minds. I just don't know.
I mean, on the one hand, I could see it's staving off the landslide, which is what I think it really would take to force him out of the race at this point. But to your point, I want to read here from a Congressman. Jim Hines, Democratic congressman put out a statement immediately after Biden's press conference, Joe Biden's record of public services unrivaled. His accomplishments are immense. His
legacy as great president is secure. He must not risk that legacy, those accomplishments and an American democracy to soldier on in the face of horrors promised by Donald Trump. And so he is saying, I hope that President Biden will step away from the presidential campaign. I also saw an insightful report ABC News is congressional reporter saying this my takeaway from conversations with skeptical congressional Democrats tonight. Biden has proved to them, quote he can be president, but
not necessarily that he can win two separate things. And I think now again, you know, for I think for us at least for me, he can be president is still out of the question.
But I can see.
In their you know, in their warped worldview, they're like, yeah, you know, he can handle the facts of right now, but not necessarily that he could win. And I also think there's a bad case of Washington brain here where people will say, oh, look, how amazingly he was able to talk about gold in my air in Israel and his foreign policy accomplishments, when as you and I know, because I think we're more connected with with voters just through our show, we can see what resonates with people
and what doesn't. Everyone's going to be talking about those for two clips. So we played at the beginning a lot of that natal stuff that no one's gonna care, sorry, like this, yeah, on the heels of that debate vice President Trump, that is going to be everywhere everywhere.
Trump should start selling, you know, merchandise with that on it.
So in the same way that in the Stephanopolis interview as Time war On, the most problematic part for Biden ended up being really his sort of poll denialism and sense of just complete and utter disconnect from what a dire political situation this is. There were two moments here that I think are the two that sort of linger
for Democrats. One is he gets asked, what about your limitations? Right, You're trying to serve for another four years and you're already talking about how there are limitations, and he tries to say, I don't know what limitations. There are no limitations, and then he goes on to discuss the limitations he has. So I have a little bit of that one I could pull up. The other one is very much in
line with this pole denialism. He says, if you could show me polls that show that Kamla could win and that I have zero chance of winning, then I'll get out. But there are no polls that say that. Now we both know that's preposterous. And so I think, if you're a Democratic leader looking at this, you're still seeing that level of utter and complete denial that there's even a problem here. And I think that's an issue for him.
So let me go ahead and pull up this first one, which is him responding to questions about his bedtime, which listen, frankly right now eight fifty pm. I relate to him a little bit on this one right here, but I'm also not trying to be president of the United States, and I'm not eighty fourteen years old with potentially undiagnosed Parkinson's. Let's go ahead and take a listen to what he had to say.
Thank you, mister president. Presidency is the most straining job in the world, and it's twenty four to seven. How can you say you'll be up for that next year in two years and four years given the limits you've acknowledged that you have today.
The limits I've acknowledged I have.
It has been reporting that you've acknowledged that you need to go to bed earlier and your evening around eight.
That's not true. Look what I said was instead of my every day starting at seven and going to bed at midnight, it'd be smarter for me to pace myself a little more. And I said, for example, the eight seven six steps. Instead of starting a fundraiser at nine o'clock, start at eight o'clock. People get to go home by ten o'clock. That's what I'm talking about. I'm not talking about.
And if you look at my schedule since I've since I made that stupid mistake in the campaign and the debate, I mean, my schedule has been full bore I've done. When where's trump at riding around his golf cart, fieling out a scorecard before he hits the ball. I mean, look, he's done virtually nothing, and I have I don't know how many. I don't holding to We roughly twenty major events, some of them with thousands of people showing up. And so I just think it's better. I always have an inclination,
whether I was playing sports or doing politics. Just to keep going that style, I just got to just pace myself a little bit.
Pace myself a little bit more. He also made this comment about like, I love my staff, but they just keep adding things and my wife.
Is mad at me. I had me and you're like, wait, what what was that?
Yeah.
Also, maybe your staff keeps adding things because you're president of the United States. You have a lot of responsibilities. I don't know, just spitballing. But so he acknowledged it's funny because, like I said, he gets asked about the bedtime. He's like, no, no, no, that's not real. And he's like, but it is kind of real. I am moving things up.
I'm making it so it's later. I'm trying to quote unquote pace myself which again is you are talking about serving for another five years, So how can we have any confidence that you can do the job today, let alone the job five years from now. It feels preposterous when even you are acknowledging that you're having to rein in your staff from scheduling events. There was also you probably saw as well, there's a lot of reporting about
just how much downtime his staff schedules. So in a five day foreign trip, two of those days are going to be rest days for him. That's already where he's at today, let alone four years from now.
Yeah, that's fine when I'm flying economy class, not whenever you fly in an airplane with a freaking bed dude and you get to stay in the world's most luxurious hotels. And that's the problem here, is that we're watching somebody. I mean, first of all, do you ever want to be president and say that you have any limitations on the way that you do your job. If the answer is yes, you shouldn't be in the job period. In
my opinion, that's first of all. But second is just the poll denihalism that we have to come back to really is crazy. Because he also made another comment do you remember this where he says, guys, the campaign hasn't even started yet, and it's like, dude, you're like one who agreed to a presidential debate in July. Nobody asked you to do that. In June, no one ever asked you to do that. We all said, yeah, it's the earliest modern presidential debate, and you know, it's kind of interesting.
There's a lot of different reasons why both had agreed to that, but you can't say that that reason why. If anything, By the way, I think he officially really began the twenty twenty four you know, general election season by agreeing to do that debate and becoming the biggest story in the entire world. Yeah, I mean, this is my other thing. I can't let the press corps off the hook too much here. There were no follow up questions. Obviously some of these were pre screened by the White House.
He avoided Peter Alexander of NBC News, who shouted that question there at the end. He avoided Peter Doocey at Fox News. A strong and confident president takes questions in a moment like that from the so called opposition, and he's going to go for much longer. I said this morning on the show, President Eisenhower used to go two hours. I'm not going to sit here and give a man credit for going fifty nine minutes. I'm just not. This is amasic shit for being president, and.
Lissa, it's ridiculous that we cover this in this way. Just the fact of this situation tells you everything you need to know. Right the president giving some run of the mill press conference after a NATO conference should be like, no one should even really care, you know, I.
Mean, we should care about the policy, but it should.
Be like, oh my god, can he possibly talk for fifty minutes and not call his vice president the wrong name and not introduced Zelenski?
Is pooon?
Like, is this even possible? The answer obviously is apparently no. So the fact that it's even being parsed and analyzed to this degree tells you a lot.
But you know, there was.
It really was in certain respects a very Trumpian performance in terms of the content. Yes, so the poll denihilism, right, Trump famously, you know, cat turd takes a poll on Twitter that he likes. He's going to cite that as proof that he's the greatest president of all time.
Or whatever.
He's always up in the polls, he never loses, et cetera, et cetera. Biden has taken that on. That's where he is, and I think he truly believes it in the similar way that I think Trump probably really believes it as well. But there also he gets asked a question about, Okay, you said last time you were going to be abridged to the future. What changed, and his answer was basically, well, I realize that I am the only one who can
do like with my experience in the Senate. He didn't exactly say I alone can do it, but that was the vibe my experience in the Senate and with the world in such chaos, I just I have to stay. I have to finish the job. This sense that he is the only one alone who can beat Trump, the only one alone who could pass the Infrastructure Act or whatever it is. We don't even know what he's planning on doing the second term because he never really talks about it, but that Trumpian aspect of him and his
ego really comes through. But let me go ahead and pull up this poll denialism moment that we have because, as I said, you know, for Democrats who already locked and loaded with statements saying we want you to resign. This is exactly the sort of thing that they hate to hear.
You earlier explained confidence in your vice president. If your team came back and showed you data that she would fare better against former President Donald Trump, would you reconsider your decision to stay in the race.
No, unless they came back and said there's no way you can win.
Me.
Of course. Yeah, lots of Poles say that.
Meanwhile, we do a segment on our show today how New York is in play.
Many people are, in fact saying that you.
Will enjoy this, Crystal. So.
Steve Cone of the a Democratic congressman from Tennessee, was just asked on CNN about his colleague Jim Hines calling for Biden to drop out, and he says, well, Jim Hines from Connecticut, it's a lot more white, a lot more liberal, and a lot more elitist. So now a white guy from Memphis is playing the race card. A white congressman from Memphis is playing the race card against a white congressman. We also have and this is problem.
I listened to Bakari sellers do the same thing on CNN beforehand, and it is the most It's disingenuous, shameful. And I also Owen Van Jones saying the same thing on CNN.
You know, I don't know why I.
Watch these people at all, but I like to get a sense of what the mainstream is saying about it. It just makes me sick when these people appoint themselves representatives of an entire community and pretends to speak for them. Just speak for them, You don't speak for them, and anymore than I speak for all white women. Right well, the white women of the country feel that it's time we have a women president. How about that? Van Jones
of Acari Sellers, It's Steve Cohen and whoever else. But the notion that pushing Bidenn of the race to get the first black female president is like racist, Okay, all right, like what are we doing here? And also the idea that he has this just monolithic black support is insane. This president is on track to get the lowest percent of the black vote of any Democratic president since I don't know when. So your conception of this black monolith that is so pro Biden that you can't possibly touch
him is just completely invented. And I know that they know this, right. I know that they know that this is fake and completely invented by them for holy disingenuous reasons.
One last thing, do we want to play?
I haven't watched the full thing, but I am seeing on my feed it was sent to me Rachel Maddow apparently saying I'm worried Biden is being given information about his political standing that may not be based in reality.
That seems interesting. Do you think let's.
Think, well, you know what, and I saw to that point. I saw David axe a rod because he also picked up on the pole Denihalism that I think continues to be a real problem for Democrats. At least people don't care about him or even really debating tribe.
They care about their.
Own asses on the line this fall, and so if they feel like, oh my god, he doesn't even acknowledge he's down in the polls. He doesn't even know he's down in the polls. David alts Arod tweeted, if what he being Biden said at the end of the press is true, it sounds like Biden's team has not been very candid with him about what the data is showing. The age issue is a huge and potentially insurmountable concern, and his odds of victory are very very slim. This
is also very Trumpian, the like, Oh, the aids. It's the aid's fault.
Right there.
Anything that Biden does wrong, it's not him. It's not his fault. It's the fault of the AIDS around him. Now, these AIDS deserve a lot of blame. Don't get me wrong. I think they are villains of history. I think they've lied to the American people. I think they've lied to their own staff. I think they've lied to their own party.
The more and more reporting comes out about the way every single aspect of Biden and what he does is stage managed, down to the word, so that he can't possibly be caught in an unscripted moment and show their hands, even to close in AIDS and allies of how adult he is at this point. But please, this man, there's some real responsibility, this politician of fifty years, he can't read an independent poll for himself.
Give me a break, Give.
Me a break, I thank you. I agree. That's the other thing.
Oh, they need to be more candidate or even with Matdow that's also Trumpion in terms of infantilizing him. He's a grown ass man, not grown ass. He's near death. Like he's on the other side of the Bell curve here in terms of the age distribution. He spent the vast majority of his life as a professional politician. He knows he can read the New York Times if he wants to. He can read every liberal news outlet in the country, and every single one has a pole saying you're going down.
So yeah, look, but I think I think he has convinced himself that those poles are all fake.
I agree that.
Anything that shows him and a negative light is just not true. It's the fake news, it's the biased media whatever.
I mean.
It is very trumpy, and he's constructing his own reality, and he himself is drinking the kool aid.
Quite literally, he has constructed his own reality distortion field. So yeah, thank you for joining us everybody tonight. It was certainly something, you know, for American history. He's not going anywhere, at least for today. That's all we can say.
Right now.
It's caught as far as it goes, confidently.
We can call it, you know, for today. It's nine oh five pm here on the East Coast, so there we can.
He's headed to beds as am I by the way.
Me too, Yeah, but I do want to Just the last thing I'll say is, you know, the next thing to watch is number one, was that report even true about the dozens of Democrats? Because the media gets things wrong? Lord knows. But but now what happens Friday, right? Do you see is Jim him's the only one who comes out or do you see a significant movement against him? You've got reporting pelosis moving behind the scenes. We talked about Obama moving behind the scenes during the day, so
there's there's a lot at work. And in my opinion, I don't think this performance will forestall anything that was already planned, and it appears that there were things that were already planned. So that's what we'll be watching for. And I'll be around maybe some tomorrow.
I don't know. I gotta take the kids, sticking some minion of that and whatever.
But tell people where you're going. Big mistake, We'll let that out.
But anyway, we'll be checking in and if anything major breaks, we'll make sure to bring it to you guys.
We'll be around all right, see you guys.