| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
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unidentified
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We see Maryland's Chris Van Hollen on the floor now. | |
| The budget proposal would raise the U.S. debt limit by $5 trillion to avoid a financial default this summer and would make the tax cuts passed under President Trump's first term permanent. | ||
| A series of amendment votes to the measure are expected today called a voterama that could extend into the weekend, ending with a final vote. | ||
| Our live coverage of the Senate is over on C-SPAN 2. | ||
| We're not incurring this debt to fight a pandemic or a recession. | ||
|
unidentified
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We want to welcome to the program this morning, Amy Parnes. | |
| She's senior political correspondent with The Hill and co-author of the book Fight Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House. | ||
|
unidentified
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She's co-author with NBC News political reporter Jonathan Allen. | |
| Amy Parnes, thanks for being here. | ||
| Let's start with the opening scene of your book, a behind-the-scenes look at the June 27th, 2024 presidential debate. | ||
| What do you describe as the inner circle of the Democratic Party watches President Biden's performance? | ||
|
unidentified
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Well, Greta, we open up, and good morning, thanks for having me. | |
| We open up with Nancy Pelosi, the former House Speaker, in her living room watching the debate. | ||
| And we did that intentionally, obviously, because Nancy Pelosi had such, played such a major part of this period of time with Joe Biden and getting him out of the race. | ||
| Her fingerprints are all over this. | ||
| And so we have her set inside her living room alone, watching the debate. | ||
| And we talk about her reaction. | ||
| At the same time, we take you inside Jim Clyburn's living room. | ||
| He's having a drink. | ||
| We take you to Al Sharpton. | ||
| He's alone. | ||
| And we did this intentionally to show that all these people, you know, normally during these sorts of events, they gather together. | ||
| It's a social kind of thing. | ||
| They're all sitting there watching the debate alone. | ||
| It's almost as if they knew what was about to unfold. | ||
| And what was their reaction in real time? | ||
| It was not good. | ||
| I mean, we show you Nancy Pelosi's cell phone and she's getting a lot of incoming from donors and from lawmakers. | ||
| Same across the board. | ||
| My phone was blowing up. | ||
| I think everyone who was watching the debate, who has a part in politics, was watching and couldn't believe what they were watching. | ||
| But this is the first time I think we really reveal, we take you really, we do a play-by-play and show you exactly what people were hearing. | ||
| There's a funny moment, an anecdote where Nancy Pelosi is hearing from one donor, John Morgan, and she's listening to what he has to say. | ||
| And he's essentially saying it's a disaster playing before everyone's eyes. | ||
| And she thinks she's responding, she thinks she's texting her husband, but in reality, she's texting John Morgan back and saying, this is what John Morgan thinks. | ||
| He thinks it's a disaster. | ||
| So clearly she is watching and in a moment of panic as well. | ||
| And was the consensus that very night that they needed to make an effort as a group to convince the president to leave the race? | ||
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unidentified
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Or how did that come about? | |
| They knew something had to happen. | ||
| It wasn't clear at that moment what had to happen, but I think that was the moment where the wheels started to spin and everything was in motion after that. | ||
| And, you know, a lot of people thought, including Nancy Pelosi, they didn't want her, they didn't want Joe Biden pushed out very quickly because they sensed that Kamala Harris would come in and there was a weird reaction about that as well. | ||
| So they kind of wanted to take the temperature of lawmakers and other Democratic operatives and see what was going on. | ||
| And so you see how it sort of unravels from there. | ||
| And at the time, there were reports that the former speaker was playing a pivotal role in convincing the president to exit the race. | ||
|
unidentified
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What did you find out about the role she was playing? | |
| And what roles did the former president Barack Obama play and George Clooney, et cetera, the people that we heard about at the time? | ||
| Yeah, I mean, they played a lot of, they had very big roles. | ||
| I mean, I know that everyone thought that Barack Obama was involved. | ||
| He clearly was involved. | ||
| We have two calls, at least two calls between himself and the former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. | ||
| They were talking about what to do. | ||
| A lot of people thought that there was still time for a mini primary or an open convention. | ||
| And so they were sort of testing the waters there and feeling out what some people were thinking. | ||
| And I think that a lot of people were kind of open to other options. | ||
| And we report for the first time in this book that, you know, Nancy Pelosi was listening. | ||
| She was on kind of a listening tour, listening to a lot of her colleagues. | ||
| Barack Obama was doing the same thing. | ||
| And they were trying to figure out what to do next. | ||
| But the money, you know, the money was being taken away from Biden. | ||
| It was a really bad, chaotic scene. | ||
| And what we do is we play out those 24 days. | ||
| We take you inside what was happening and how everything evolved in real time. | ||
| Let's talk about his opponent's reaction. | ||
| The candidate, President Trump, his thinking at the time, you write about in the book how he and his campaign maneuvered, but what he was thinking when he's on the debate stage with him, Trump couldn't believe it. | ||
|
unidentified
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You're right. | |
| It took him some time to adjust to the idea that he had been right about Biden. | ||
| His attacks went unanswered. | ||
| Biden absorbed blows and didn't punch back. | ||
| How do I keep hitting him without coming off as an asshole, Trump thought? | ||
| And if I stop hitting him, will viewers lose interest? | ||
| He suddenly became acutely aware of the optics of bullying a sitting president of the United States. | ||
|
unidentified
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He could go too far. | |
| They all think I'm going to go off the rails, Trump thought. | ||
| Instead, he drew back. | ||
| Yeah, a very kind of untrumpy response, if you will. | ||
| A lot of people thought that he could seize that moment and kind of, you know, they knew going into the debate that they would win against President Biden, but they didn't know just how bad he would be. | ||
| And so he kind of had to tweak his response. | ||
| I think a lot of people around him were saying, you know, you don't want to go too far. | ||
| You don't want to hammer this home. | ||
| This was before they knew what was going to happen. | ||
| And so he had to kind of tweak his game plan and scale it back a little bit. | ||
| And a lot of people think, when we talked to them, they said, you know, that was sort of the counter response that we expected from the president. | ||
| But you could kind of see Greta in that moment where he says, I don't even, you know, Biden talks about, he goes off the rails and talks about Medicaid. | ||
| And the former president says, I don't even think he knows what he's talking about. | ||
| Amy Parnes is the co-author of the book, Fight Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House, authoring this with NBC News political reporter Jonathan Allen. | ||
|
unidentified
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And she's our guest here this morning. | |
| She'll take your questions and your comments about her reporting. | ||
|
unidentified
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Here's how you can join the conversation. | |
| Republicans 202-748-8001. | ||
| Democrats 202-748-8000. | ||
|
unidentified
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Independents 202-748-8002. | |
| And we'll take your text messages if you prefer that at 202-748-8003. | ||
|
unidentified
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Include your first name, city, and state. | |
| Annie Parnes, you report on several episodes that signaled former President Biden's cognitive decline. | ||
|
unidentified
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What are some examples? | |
| Well, for starters, about a year before the debate, there's a congressional picnic held at the White House. | ||
| The president comes face to face with Representative Swalwell of California, and Swalwell has to kind of remind him who he is. | ||
| And he thinks that this is a little odd because this is someone who he ran against in 2020, but he has to kind of remind the president who he is. | ||
| In another episode, he goes, he's taking around a tour of folks who are visiting the White House. | ||
| And he kind of, you know, he wants to take them outside. | ||
| He leads them into a locker room. | ||
| Kevin McCarthy, the former House speaker, is along for this ride and this tour, so to speak. | ||
| And he's watching him and he can tell that the president is sort of not with it. | ||
| Jill Biden, the first lady, is kind of trying to stop him from doing this tour at one point, but he keeps going. | ||
| And there are other examples too, you know, where aides notice that when he travels overseas, he was met with a makeup artist. | ||
| That was the first order of business each day. | ||
| And that would sometimes cause him to miss a meeting or two because they were so focused on sort of the optics of what he would look like. | ||
| And, you know, people also told us that they noticed that he wasn't present during certain times. | ||
| We document all of this in the book. | ||
| I think this was the first time that people felt a little bit of liberty, a little liberated, if you will, to kind of talk at length about what they were seeing. | ||
| I think when he was still the president, they felt like they couldn't really talk and be as candid with us. | ||
| And so it was an interesting glimpse at what even his advisors and aides were seeing and obviously lawmakers who came into contact with him. | ||
| How do you respond to viewers who we've heard say this was a cover-up by the Biden administration officials who knew they should have come forward and they should have said something to the American people because he was not capable of doing the job? | ||
|
unidentified
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Well, to their defense, they say, you know, he had good moments. | |
| They point to the State of the Union address, for example, last year, where the president was, you know, responding to people in real time and he delivered an incredible speech, they say. | ||
| They thought that he would have a similar moment during the debate. | ||
| They wanted to change the trajectory of the race, and that's why they did the debate. | ||
| But there certainly is that feeling among Democrats, Greta, that there was a bit of a cover-up and that his aides were not being candid with them about the president's cognitive, his mental acuity. | ||
| And there is this sense that they should have been more candid, and that could have led to someone else coming into the race earlier. | ||
| If not Kamala Harris, they could have had an open primary or a mini primary. | ||
| And so there is a lot of anger towards the Biden team right now. | ||
| And there isn't as much anger guided at the former vice president, Kamala Harris. | ||
| It's more directed at the president and his team. | ||
| What about the role of the media in not talking about some people critical of the media? | ||
| And how do you respond to that of not reporting on the president's mental condition? | ||
| I don't think you can loop all of us and put us all in a basket. | ||
| I certainly had reported in great length about the president's age and his mental acuity. | ||
| I know a lot of other journalists have. | ||
| The White House would often get a little agitated with reporters for asking those questions and would threaten to cut off access. | ||
| And I think that that was in play. | ||
| But I think that as a whole, I think a lot of journalists were covering the story. | ||
| But you can only get so far, obviously, when the White House is sort of denying what we're all seeing before our eyes. | ||
| Let's go to calls. | ||
| Bob in Baldwinville, Massachusetts, Republican. | ||
| Morning, Bob. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| There's so much here. | ||
| It's just so hard to touch. | ||
| Joe Biden, when he first ran for president, and everybody in every state across the country, mostly Democrats, were changing all the voting laws. | ||
| And we had 20 million people that never voted before vote. | ||
| Now, in every election in the last 20 years, there hasn't been as many voters as that one time. | ||
| You'll never reproduce it because it was a lie. | ||
| And nobody can explain that. | ||
| It is statistically impossible to get 20 million people to come and vote, and then they don't come back and vote again. | ||
| And for Joe Biden, they knew the entire, from the day that he started running for president till the day he left office that he was mentally incapacitated. | ||
| All right, Bob, let's take that point. | ||
| Amy Parnes, was it known from the day he started running that he did not have the mental cognitive condition to run and to be president? | ||
|
unidentified
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I think that the president and his team, I mean, his team certainly felt like he had the ability. | |
| They thought that he had a successful first term and that's why he should run again. | ||
| They would often get annoyed at operatives or lawmakers who would suggest otherwise, who would say that the president should step down. | ||
| They saw him more as, I think a lot of people saw him as a transitional president, someone who could step in. | ||
| He defeated Donald Trump, someone who could sort of pass the torch on to another Democrat. | ||
| And I think some people were taken aback when they realized that he was going to run again. | ||
| And that's when questions started to arise about his cognitive ability and whether a man who was well into his 80s could perform and continue to perform as president. | ||
| And so there was certainly that doubt there. | ||
| And that's why you're seeing a lot of frustration and anger directed at his advisors who a lot of people felt should have convinced him. | ||
| But the president himself, I think, was pretty stubborn and wanted to remain in office, thought that he had done a good job and was kind of ignored everything around him, including the polling numbers that showed otherwise. | ||
| And what role did his wife play? | ||
| I think his wife really wanted Jill Biden, Dr. Jill Biden. | ||
| She wanted him to continue to run and was one of his closest advisors in his first term. | ||
| And I think was frustrated by the mounting pressure in the final days of, you know, from Democrats to have him leave the race. | ||
| I think she felt like it was unwarranted. | ||
| And there's still a lot of animosity there from the Biden, from the Biden family toward Barack Obama and toward Nancy Pelosi and other Democrats who were trying to push him out. | ||
| And we have a scene in the book where the president is on the plane with people like Jim Clyburn, the congressman, and Al Sharpton, and he thanks them for being there for him. | ||
| This is sort of after the switch happens. | ||
| But he says, you know, the one person that I won't ever forgive is Nancy Pelosi. | ||
| Nick in Trenton, Michigan, Democratic caller. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| Thank you so much, Amy, for answering these questions. | ||
| So I was a strong, you know, Biden, you know, second-term supporter. | ||
| I felt like after all of his accomplishments, he deserved it. | ||
| But like most Americans watching June 27th, I was mortified. | ||
| My question is: what was Kamala Harris's actual reaction to the debate? | ||
| I remember watching her on, I think it was Rachel Maddow after, and she acknowledged that it wasn't a great performance. | ||
| I think he was sick. | ||
| But what was her actual feeling for those 24 days? | ||
| Like, did she feel like it was time for him to step down? | ||
| All right, Nick. | ||
| Amy Parnes. | ||
| That's a very good question. | ||
| She's watching the debate like everyone else in real time. | ||
| She was in Los Angeles, and so she was watching it in a hotel conference room. | ||
| And we take you inside that room to find out her reaction. | ||
| But, you know, I think she was trying to be a loyal foot soldier, obviously, in the days that he was still at the top of the ticket. | ||
| But she also was caught in a weird position where she had to plan. | ||
| And, you know, they were secretly, they were saying publicly, obviously, and this is the first time we were hearing about this. | ||
| We're reporting in the book that her aides, her closest advisors, were in fact planning the what if, what if Joe Biden leaves the race? | ||
| What do we do? | ||
| How do we suddenly, how do we get the Democrats together and galvanize the party quickly behind her? | ||
| And there was a meeting that we talk about that was happening the day that Sunday that Joe Biden does drop out. | ||
| She has a meeting in her pool house at the Naval Observatory with it. | ||
| She's not involved in the meeting, but her closest advisors are involved in this meeting, the what-if meeting. | ||
| They think that it's going to happen in the next few days, and they're trying to plan what would happen, how they would get the delegates, what they would do in terms of fundraising and all of that. | ||
| And that's happening right as the switch happens, right as the president is calling to tell her that he's going to drop out of the race. | ||
| And so it's an interesting thing. | ||
| It hasn't been reported until now, and it's in this book. | ||
| Mike in Baltimore Independent. | ||
| Mike, the book is Fight Inside the White Wildest Battle for the White House. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Go ahead, Mike. | |
| Yes, good morning, and thanks for taking my call. | ||
| We knew this in 2019, depending on where you get your sources from. | ||
| And we teach that in schools and stuff, being reliable sources. | ||
| And the media itself knew this in 2019. | ||
| They hit them in the basement. | ||
| New York Post, Fox News, Newsmax, and all the above put this out there, but they put them in conspiracy theorists and stuff like that. | ||
| Now, Americans only want, they don't trust the media, NPR, MSNBC, and stuff like that, because they hid that. | ||
| I think you should throw stuff out there and let people decide for themselves and what they see. | ||
| And then from there, you know, then people can make the decisions. | ||
| But we shouldn't lie to people. | ||
| We shouldn't hide things from people with the good, the bad, and the ugly. | ||
| All right, Mike. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Amy Parnes. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, and to be honest, Mike, we wrote another book about the election called Lucky in 2020, where we talked at great length about how Joe Biden was sort of how his advisors did sort of hide him in his basement, so to speak, during the pandemic. | ||
| And yeah, that was very much something that they did. | ||
| And at the time, it worked for him. | ||
| It worked to his favor. | ||
| He won in 2020. | ||
| And, you know, it just, he couldn't continue to do that. | ||
| His advisors did sort of, he didn't do as many press interviews. | ||
| You're seeing President Trump right now and how available he is to media. | ||
| He was really, Biden was knocked at the time for not coming out, for not sitting with network anchors, for not doing podcasts. | ||
| And so I think all of this hurt him in the end. | ||
| Summer in Jonesboro, Tennessee, Democratic caller. | ||
| Welcome, Summer. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
| Yeah, I'd just say I knew for a long time that he was in cognitive decline. | ||
| There was no doubt about it. | ||
| I would have voted for a potato before I would have voted for Donald Trump. | ||
| In no other election would I have voted for Joe Biden. | ||
| That's the point for Kamala. | ||
| I am so tired of being screwed by the DNC. | ||
| It's ridiculous. | ||
| They screwed us during Hillary. | ||
| She bought her way in there. | ||
| We could have had Bernie. | ||
| And they screwed us this time at the primary. | ||
| We all knew he was in cognitive decline. | ||
| We would have voted for him anyway. | ||
| I voted for Kamala. | ||
| I voted for her the last time she ran. | ||
| I had no problem with Kamala, but we should have been given a choice. | ||
| And that's all I got to say. | ||
| All right, Summer, let's take that point. | ||
| Amy Parnes. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, I think a lot of people, there is frustration at the Democratic Party right now. | ||
| We're seeing that play out before our eyes. | ||
| I think a lot of people think that, you know, they blame the president, President Biden at the time for not, as I said earlier, for not stepping aside sooner. | ||
| They thought that an open primary would be in their best interest or a mini primary. | ||
| So there is this frustration. | ||
| And I think the Democratic Party right now is trying to figure out how to rebuild and how to, what to do, because I think there's a sense from a lot of people that they have lost their way and that many of these Trump voters should really be Democrats and how to connect to these voters again. | ||
| And I think a lot of people look at messaging, you know, the lack of messaging. | ||
| In 2016, the same thing, my co-author and I wrote about this in our book Shattered, how Hillary Clinton wasn't able to properly connect in the moment, how she didn't understand the populist movement that was happening at the time. | ||
| And so there is that same sense this time that Democrats didn't connect and weren't speaking about the issues that voters care about, including the economy and inflation. | ||
| And, you know, they have to find their way back. | ||
| And I think they're trying to right now, but I think it might take a cycle or two until they figure out who they are and what they want to be. | ||
| And there's the sense that they have to sort of almost accept what happened and admit what happened and admit that they, you know, were kind of asleep at the switch with Biden. | ||
| And all of that is, there's a reckoning happening right now. | ||
| I just think it's going to take a long time for Democrats and the party to figure out who they are and who they want to be. | ||
| And who is the leader of the Democratic Party right now? | ||
| That's the other big question, Greta. | ||
| I think people are trying to figure that out. | ||
| And that's why you're seeing lots of people, you know, doing interesting things. | ||
| Gavin Newsom has a podcast. | ||
| Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are on the road doing these rallies. | ||
| People are trying to make a name for themselves right now. | ||
| And they're trying to kind of stand up and be the leader of the Democratic Party because there is this huge void right now. | ||
| And the party feels leaderless and rudderless. | ||
| Would you put Corey Booker in that category as well? | ||
| A lot of Democrats were really impressed with what he did this week. | ||
| I just don't know if, you know, it was, a lot of people also say it was a stunt and how memorable will this be. | ||
| But I think right now Democrats are looking for someone who will be that fighter, who will kind of step into that role. | ||
| And I think Corey Booker certainly got a lot of attention this week for his filibuster. | ||
| Sylvia, Etlin, Virginia, Independent. | ||
| Yes, thank you. | ||
| I was wondering about his doctors. | ||
| When they were asked, they said he was cognically fit. | ||
| Were they being paid big money to say that? | ||
| I mean, we still don't know what, there's many kinds of dementias. | ||
| We still don't know what is wrong with President Biden. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Yeah, I think a lot of people feel that way. | ||
| I mean, certainly his doctors came out and said that he's able to handle the office of the presidency more than able to. | ||
| And so there is this big question. | ||
| Obviously, you know, that's why journalists like myself were trying to really figure out what was going on, but we're also not doctors. | ||
| And so we can't say what a doctor can say. | ||
| But, you know, I think in looking at him, some people say, you know, people with these cognitive abilities or decline, they have good days and bad days. | ||
| And I think we saw one of the bad days play out in that debate in June. | ||
| Going back to your argument about not connecting, you write this in the book, and I'm wondering if this was related to that. |