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