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unidentified
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This time we're going to take our last short break here for our court reporter. | |
| The House Select Committee on Congressional Redistricting will stand at ease for five minutes. | ||
| The Texas House Select Committee on Congressional Redistricting hearing is taking a short break. | ||
| We'll return you live to live coverage when they return. | ||
| You're watching live coverage here on C-SPAN. | ||
| Author, lawyer, and presidential historian Talmadge Boston joins us now via Zoom from Dallas. | ||
| This weekend, the Dallas Morning News ran his column focusing on the post-presidential legacy of Joe Biden. | ||
| Mr. Talmadge Boston, you write in that piece that in just the last few months, Joe Biden's legacy has moved from downward spiral to full-blown free fall. | ||
| Explain why. | ||
|
unidentified
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Well, downward spiral had to do with 2024 and his decision in the first place to run for a second term when obviously he was not up to being able to run through an election, never mind, four more years. | |
| And then the delay in his withdrawal from the race meant there was no Democratic primary season. | ||
| And so there was no vetting of the candidates like you typically have in a primary season, which resulted in, of course, his vice president Kamala Harris, who turned out to be a weak candidate, lost every single swing state and thereby delivered the White House back to Donald Trump, which for Democrats anyway was the worst possible news. | ||
| For years, they had sung Biden's praises as the man who defeated Donald Trump and got him out of the White House. | ||
| And now he was essentially singularly responsible for bringing him back. | ||
| So all that was bad. | ||
| But then in 2025, what's caused the freefall is now all the information coming up about the cover-up of his cognitive decline. | ||
| Most famously, Jake Tapper's in Alex Thompson's book, Original Sin, that goes into great detail about all that was known for quite some time, and that the White House was actually run by a Politburo, not the president. | ||
| None of these people had been elected. | ||
| None of these people had been confirmed. | ||
| Of course, run by a Politburo as well as Joe Biden and possibly even Hunter Biden, who obviously stayed very close to his father. | ||
| And now we have this situation with what's coming out about the granting of pardons that were all signed by Autopen, and people were pardoned whose names Biden didn't even know. | ||
| They were screened under some criteria. | ||
| And so it's reminiscent with all this that's coming out. | ||
| And now the House Oversight Committee is investigating the cover-up and the AutoPen and some of Biden's key people, his Joe Biden's chief of staff and Joe Biden's doctor, have taken the Fifth Amendment rather than answer questions, which obviously they have a constitutional right to take the Fifth Amendment. | ||
| But it doesn't bode well for the American public's reaction to whether there really is something to this cover-up or not. | ||
| And so you put all these facts together. | ||
| And of course, the House Oversight Committee is continuing with its investigation. | ||
| It's going to call more witnesses. | ||
| It very likely may call Jill Biden. | ||
| We'll see if Jill takes the Fifth Amendment in answering questions about her husband's presidency, which should be a first in American history. | ||
| So you put all these things together, and it's made Joe Biden a pariah to the Democratic Party. | ||
| And he was never thought highly of by Republicans. | ||
| So he is now at this stage in his life, a man with essentially no supporters on either side of the aisle. | ||
| Don't we need more time before we can be talking about the legacy of a president that left office six months ago? | ||
| Is it too early to say that this is the direction that his legacy is headed? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, Harry Truman famously said that it takes 50 years for the dust to settle. | |
| And certainly Harry Truman was a beneficiary that over he left the White House with very low approval ratings and over time his stature has risen and he's now considered a top 10 president. | ||
| And so yes, you need time to let the dust settle, see how these decisions that have been made by Biden during his presidency play out over the long term. | ||
| But I don't think you're going to get past this cognitive decline. | ||
| The most enduring image of Biden's presidency is going to be that June 27, 2024 debate with Trump and the follow-up interviews where he couldn't complete his sentences. | ||
| And so those facts are not going to change. | ||
| And it's like Woodrow Wilson having a stroke and his wife took over as president and she and his doctor tried to keep everybody out of the loop. | ||
| And so we basically had 15 months with a totally physically and mentally dysfunctional president. | ||
| This cover-up associated of the decline, which is detailed in the Tapper book, is reminiscent of Nixon's cover-up of the Watergate burglary. | ||
| So the facts of the cover-up are not going to go away. | ||
| The facts that we had a president who was not able to function well with more and more evidence coming out about that and exactly who was running the country in Biden's final year and with people taking the Fifth Amendment. | ||
| So these facts are not going to go away. | ||
| So in answer to your question, yes, over time, people will change their perceptions regarding certain things that Biden did. | ||
| But what I just covered, these facts are not going to go away. | ||
| When you say Biden is a president without a base of support right now, talking about Democrats blaming him and obviously Republicans who never had a great opinion of him if they were Donald Trump supporters. | ||
| The historical perspective here, is it unusual for a president who loses reelection to be sort of in this position? | ||
| Their own party is looking for somebody to blame for the loss, and they're going to get no help from the party that takes over from them. | ||
| Certainly that party would say all the problems are because of what happened over the past four years. | ||
| It's a person you can blame, at least for some amount of time, in a new presidency. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I think the key to this is what his own party thinks. | |
| And I think most Democrats today are in a very negative, have a very negative attitude toward Biden's presidency and the results of it and what is being learned about his essentially turning over the reins of decision-making to the Politburo and his family. | ||
| And of course, they're blaming him for the 2024 election loss. | ||
| And so these are beyond atypical. | ||
| These are unique situations. | ||
| This is a unique situation. | ||
| I mean, yes, Jimmy Carter, one-term president, he loses in his bid for a second term, but people knew he was honest and always honest. | ||
| He was a man of great character. | ||
| He was a man who truly tried to do his best for the American people, was always honest, never ducked press conferences or interviews. | ||
| The Texas House Select Committee on Congressional Redistricting is returning now from a short break. | ||
| You're watching live coverage. | ||
| You're on C-SPAN. | ||
| That last year. | ||
| All right. |