How Biden Can Handle the Age Thing

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Joe Biden and the Democratic Party wrestle with concerns about the President's age in the wake of the Special Counsel's report calling him "a well-meaning elderly man with a poor memory." Donald Trump pops up at a rally in South Carolina to remind everyone that he's an elderly man with a poor memory who doesn't mean well at all. And later, former Representative Mondaire Jones stops by the studio to talk about disfunction in Congress, how control of the House might hinge on New York races like his, and today's big special election to replace George Santos.

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Speaker 1 Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm John Favreau.

Speaker 2 I'm John Lovitt.

Speaker 3 I'm Tommy Vuitor.

Speaker 1 On today's show, Joe Biden and the Democratic Party wrestle with concerns about the president's age in the wake of the special counsel's report.

Speaker 1 And later, former Representative Mondeer Jones stops by the studio to talk about the dysfunctional Congress he's trying to get back to, how control of the House might hinge on New York races like his, and tomorrow's big special election to replace George Santos.

Speaker 1 But first, just as the president was dealing with the follow-up from Robert Herr's characterization of him as a well-meaning elderly man with a poor memory, Donald Trump popped up at a rally in South Carolina to remind everyone that he's an elderly man with a poor memory who doesn't mean well at all.

Speaker 1 And that right now, it looks like the choice in this election is between old versus crazy.

Speaker 4 And I've called for cognitive tests. I actually think anybody running for president should have tests.
I think, and I pass them every time. Dr.
Ronnie Jackson gave me the first one.

Speaker 4 Where's her husband? Oh, he's away. He's away.
What happened to her husband? What happened to her husband?

Speaker 4 Where is he? He's gone. He knew.

Speaker 4 They asked me that question. One of the presidents of a big country stood up, said, Well, sir, if we don't pay and we're attacked by Russia, will you protect us? I said, no, I would not protect you.

Speaker 4 In fact, I would encourage them to do whatever the hell they want. You got to pay.

Speaker 1 Sir, sir, could you imagine the meeting where a president of another country said, sir, sir? Sir, Mr. Trump, sir? Yeah, it definitely happened.

Speaker 3 It definitely happened. It definitely happened, just like that.

Speaker 1 Trump was, when she was saying she there, he was referring to, of course, to Nikki Haley. She's mocking her husband, who was deployed.

Speaker 1 And then he was telling this story about NATO. Tommy, this isn't the first time Trump has threatened to abandon our allies.
It sure seems like the most alarming comments he's made on this.

Speaker 1 Can you help people understand the history of his beef with NATO? Can't believe I'm saying that phrase. And why what he said in South Carolina is such a big deal.

Speaker 3 It's classic beef. What? East Coast, West Coast.

Speaker 3 Okay, a little quick and dirty on NATO spending. So there's a small, like, common budget for NATO that pays for headquarters and stuff, but that's like $3 billion.

Speaker 3 That's not what Trump is talking about. Trump has been going on and on for years about an agreement among the Allies to spend 2% of GDP on their own defense by 2024.

Speaker 3 The idea is to make a significant but consistent investment in all these countries into your own defense, but is one that is proportional to your own capacity.

Speaker 3 So, but here the key part to understand is this is countries, let's say France agreeing to spend 2% of GDP on its own military, on its own troops, on its own tanks, on its own baguettes, whatever they do over there.

Speaker 1 However, they defend themselves. That's up to them, right? Just

Speaker 2 with a sharp and kind of mean comment.

Speaker 3 that's usually the way in a nice uniform don't think of this as a big nato group dinner where the bill comes and then luxembourg and belgium are like i forgot my wallet like here's 20 bucks think of it as a nato potluck where everyone is bringing but there's not like there's not natural nato dues there's not like a nato kitty everyone's like putting the putting the money in the nato kitty you're bringing you're each bringing two percent of gdp to the potluck and then there's more aggregate spending or sorry defense capacity so uh the u.s we're the largest economy in the world we spend well over two percent of gdp on defense that's a political decision.

Speaker 3 Obviously, it all doesn't go towards defense in Europe, but we are the heart of NATO.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 3 the second beef he's had with NATO is around something called Article 5, which is the collective defense principle.

Speaker 3 It's the backbone of NATO, which says an attack on one NATO ally is an attack on all.

Speaker 3 NATO has invoked Article V only one time. That was after 9-11 in our defense.
So in 2016 and 17, Trump was out there calling NATO obsolete.

Speaker 3 He suggested that Article 5 was conditional, meaning that only countries that had hit their defense spending targets would get help were they to be attacked.

Speaker 3 Since then, a lot has changed. Russia, as you've invaded Ukraine, a debate that kind of felt like an esoteric theoretical conversation got really real.

Speaker 3 And so in this South Carolina speech, Trump is telling this totally

Speaker 3 real story. It felt like a transcript at times.

Speaker 3 But he added that not only would he,

Speaker 3 you know, not only is he yelling at countries for not spending enough on defense, he said he would encourage Russia to invade countries that don't spend 2% of GDP on defense.

Speaker 3 So that is what's new from this event in South Carolina. It's not at all funny to countries in Eastern Europe who think that in a couple of years, Russia will probably test a NATO country.

Speaker 3 And they are also very nervously watching Russia ramp up their own military spending. They're getting weapons from North Korea.
They're getting weapons from Iran.

Speaker 3 So this is very real for a bunch of folks in Europe.

Speaker 1 Sir, sir, I just,

Speaker 1 before I ask my question, I just want to say you're the greatest president of the United States that's ever been.

Speaker 1 You're the best leader the world has ever seen. Now, I do have a comment about NATO.

Speaker 2 And you don't stand weird.

Speaker 2 There's nothing weird about the way you stand.

Speaker 2 But now to my comment about, you know.

Speaker 1 So it is, it's incredibly dangerous because I think if you're Vladimir Putin and Trump wins and you're trying to decide whether to invade Poland or the Baltic states,

Speaker 1 Trump's statement would make you think, eh, it's a lot less likely the U.S. will jump in.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 You know, I was trying to think. It was like Article 5 is a bit like a defibrillator.

Speaker 2 You know, you're glad it's there on the wall, but if if you're using it, something's gone terribly wrong.

Speaker 1 That's exactly right.

Speaker 2 And it does like the, there have been, we're going to talk about it, but like people trying to play this down, oh, this is just Trump. This is just how Trump talks.

Speaker 2 How you talk about this is really important. It is really important that the president show resolve in this, in part to avoid a conflict.

Speaker 3 But deterrence. And wars have started over less obvious miscommunications.
I mean, I don't know if this is a miscommunication. This is Trump saying he doesn't care if you invade Russia.

Speaker 1 Well, most Republicans have been typically silent on this. And those who have spoken up have defended Trump.
One of the people who said it's just the way he talks, Marco Rubio. Let's listen.

Speaker 6 Donald Trump is not a member of the Council of Foreign Relations. He doesn't talk like a traditional politician.
And we've already been through this. Now, you'd think people had figured it out by now.

Speaker 6 What he's basically saying is:

Speaker 6 if you see the comments, he said NATO was broke or busted until he took over because people weren't paying their dues.

Speaker 6 And then he told the story about how he used leverage to get people to step up to the plate and become more active in NATO. He's not the first American president.

Speaker 6 In fact, virtually every American president at some point in some way has complained about other countries in NATO not doing enough.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I mean, that's true that other presidents have complained, but other presidents haven't said, hey, Russia, do whatever you want to the deadbeats, to the NATO deadbeats.

Speaker 2 I think the fact that Trump doesn't talk like a politician will be a comfort to the people of Vilnius as the Russians pass by their window on their way to Warsaw.

Speaker 1 Look, he's not a member of the Council on Foreign Relations in case

Speaker 1 we're confused.

Speaker 2 He's got some pointy-headed.

Speaker 1 That's fucking Richard Haas over here

Speaker 2 look and look there's one thing we all agree left and right donald trump is no richard haas

Speaker 1 yeah look though that kind of line worked in 2016 he was president four years you don't get to play the oh he's just kind of green he's not an expert he talks like a working man card at this point marco rubio got a law passed with tim kaine that prevents presidents from pulling out of nato without senate approval why do you think they needed to pass that law why do you think they tried to pass that law Do you think it was because of Barack Obama or George Bush or any other president?

Speaker 1 No, they were worried about fucking Donald Trump. And then he goes out there and says that.

Speaker 2 I also do feel like sometimes when I see someone like Marco Rubio saying like this, I was like, but was the Trump, were the Trump years some kind of a dream I had?

Speaker 1 And I had this like, we were talking about it earlier this morning.

Speaker 2 I was like, there's something, I feel like I saw the Rubio comments and one of the points he makes is it's not like Donald Trump removed troops from Europe.

Speaker 2 And it's like, but wait, I think he might have.

Speaker 2 And then you go back and read that in June and 20, June of 2020, he announces that we are going to withdraw, starting 10,000 troops out of Germany, which was universally criticized by the foreign policy, by foreign policy experts.

Speaker 2 Richard Haas. Richard Haas, probably, and Republicans and Democrats.
And it was reversed by Joe Biden when he takes office.

Speaker 1 It's like a morning Joe panel right here

Speaker 1 without the gravity touch.

Speaker 2 Get him in here.

Speaker 1 Richard.

Speaker 2 I have a surprise for everybody. Richard Haas is here today.

Speaker 3 Zig New Bruce.

Speaker 3 Here's what I want to say to Marco Rubio. Just quit politics.

Speaker 1 Okay. He He wants to be VP.
He's a little bit.

Speaker 3 You tried to quit the Senate. You clearly hate being there.

Speaker 1 Just quit. Veep tryout.
Go do something else. I don't know.
I keep seeing that Marco Rubio is on the shortlist for VP and they're going to vet him. No way.

Speaker 1 He lives in Florida, and so does Donald Trump. The Constitution.
Pretty clear on that point. The president and the VP can't be from the same state.

Speaker 2 Well, it all says the Constitution says a lot of things we don't care about anymore.

Speaker 1 So much for the insurrection. Yeah, point.
Love it.

Speaker 3 But look, Marco Rubio, he's tried to reinvent himself as a foreign policy guy, but he's like yada, yada, yadaing the giving up on NATO. He's not fighting for Ukraine funding.

Speaker 3 He's allowing the Senate to tank the immigration reform bill he's supposedly working on for a decade of his career. I mean, go do something else.

Speaker 1 You're a sad coward. Donald Trump wanted to pull out of NATO.
in his first term. A bunch of his advisors stopped him from doing that.
Even though they're terrible, they're not as bad as him.

Speaker 1 So they stopped him from doing that.

Speaker 1 On the campaign website right now, on Trump's campaign website, it says, we have to finish the process we began under my administration of fundamentally reevaluating NATO's purpose and NATO's mission.

Speaker 1 When reporters asked him what that meant, asked the campaign what that meant, they would not say.

Speaker 1 So, Nikki Haley, proving that she hasn't yet become a Marco Rubio, hit Trump pretty hard on both denigrating her husband's military service, I hope so, and on his NATO comments. Let's listen.

Speaker 7 He said that NATO,

Speaker 7 that if any of those countries aren't paying their fair share, that not only would he not defend them, but that he would encourage Putin to take over them. Putin kills his opponents.

Speaker 7 He just put every military member at risk and every one of our allies at risk just by saying something at a rally like that. That's the danger.

Speaker 7 And then he goes and mocks my husband's military service. But when he did that, it was a pattern.
It started with the fact that he has continued to call military members suckers and losers.

Speaker 7 He went to Arlington National National Cemetery and said, why did they do this? What was in it for them? You can't have a commander-in-chief that doesn't understand

Speaker 7 what made this country great.

Speaker 1 So, what do you guys make of Haley's response? Is she

Speaker 1 veering towards 2016 Chris Christie or 2024 Chris Christie? How's she going to end up here?

Speaker 3 I think she's on Ben Labolt's Talkers.

Speaker 1 Do you think she's on the Talkers list?

Speaker 3 Talking points.

Speaker 1 Do you think she's been RTing the

Speaker 1 Biden-Harris HQ account?

Speaker 3 I mean, the Suckers and Losers thing is like a verbatim Biden line. I like it.
Like, good response from Haley. She's appealing to the military families who might be offended.

Speaker 3 You know, the traditional Republicans who want a muscular foreign policy, people who think Trump is not temperamentally fit for the job.

Speaker 1 I like it.

Speaker 2 I just can't tell. Is she...

Speaker 2 I definitely think some of the ships are on fire, right?

Speaker 1 She's definitely burning the boats.

Speaker 2 But is there one last seaworthy vessel that could take her home to Trump? I'm not sure.

Speaker 1 I think so. I mean, I'm not sure.

Speaker 2 I'm really not.

Speaker 1 Prediction is hard because, again, Marco Rubio did say, I do not trust Donald Trump with the nuclear code. Still his position, technically.

Speaker 1 Still his position, and yet he's out there now being like, yeah, he didn't mean it.

Speaker 1 He's not a dweeb on the Council on Foreign Relations. He's a real guy.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 who knows? But I would say like... He's a real guy.

Speaker 1 Trump has already, she should. She should decline to endorse him.
I don't expect her to endorse Joe Biden. Here's why she should decline to endorse Donald Trump.

Speaker 1 He has already said she's banned from the MAGA camp. She's already getting swatted death threats.
Like, she doesn't have a future in this Trump Republican Party.

Speaker 1 And I'm not sure that her endorsing Trump is going to change that. So it's like.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 2 there's a podcast at the Bulwark with her name on it.

Speaker 1 There is.

Speaker 3 Come on. Yeah, Tim Miller can't record all of them.

Speaker 1 Speaking of the Council on Foreign Relations, that's a cushy spot. Come on.

Speaker 3 Let's just be clear what Trump's where's her husband comments mean. He's suggesting that there was infidelity in the relationship and that he had to go over to the Horn of Africa to get away from him.

Speaker 3 That is the not-so-sub-subtext of those comments.

Speaker 3 So yeah, I mean, look, I don't think this kind of messaging from Nikki Haley is going to win her the nomination, but if she keeps it up, she might be able to convince the small sliver of like Haley supporting Republicans to stay home in the general election.

Speaker 3 And I love that.

Speaker 2 The truth will set you free. Look at Marco Rubio.
He's fucking dead inside. He is.
You think he's happy? He's a broken, disgusting male little urchin running around.

Speaker 1 A wraith. Also, he's like a wraith.
He's out there denigrating her husband. But then we, of course, we remember what he said about Ted Cruz's wife.

Speaker 2 And is that the company you keep, Nikki Haley?

Speaker 1 Ted Cruz. You and Ted Cruz.
Ted Cruz is back on board, too. Hey, Nikki Haley, don't be Ted Cruz.
Don't be Marco Ruby.

Speaker 1 Just don't do it.

Speaker 2 You don't have to. You don't have to.
Come on.

Speaker 1 You don't have to.

Speaker 2 You do a pod called like,

Speaker 2 you know, no boundaries.

Speaker 3 The duty to fight.

Speaker 1 No boundaries.

Speaker 2 The duty to fight. I couldn't remember something.

Speaker 3 Fighting for duty. Yeah.

Speaker 1 So the White House called Trump's comments unhinged.

Speaker 1 Biden released a statement calling them appalling and dangerous, though, as of right now, I don't think we've heard the president speak about it directly.

Speaker 1 How much do you guys think that Biden and the campaign should focus on this?

Speaker 3 I mean, I think they should focus on it a lot in R because it was a bizarre, new, and newsworthy comment. It also

Speaker 3 was big enough to distract attention from the next thing we're going to cover.

Speaker 1 What are you talking about? We'll get there. I forgot.
Which is part of it. I was looking up some polling.

Speaker 3 There's some Pew polling. 62% of Americans view NATO favorably and 91% of them view Russia unfavorably.

Speaker 3 So this is Trump's position here is not a popular one, saying, hey, Russia, come steamroll, you know, Belgium.

Speaker 1 Can I give you a poll that was probably juiced because it's from the Chicago Council on Global Affairs? But in my audience,

Speaker 2 that's Richard Haas' territory.

Speaker 1 Because my first thought was, you know, sadly, Americans are not as favorable towards foreign aid as we might hope, especially the world is among us. Correct.

Speaker 1 But poll from a year and a half ago, September of 22, 81% of Americans say the U.S. should maintain or increase its commitment to NATO.

Speaker 1 It was the highest level of support recorded from that poll from from the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, and that includes 75% of Republicans, 78% of Independents.

Speaker 1 By now, I, of course, would expect that number among Republicans to go down. But it's good to see that.
It was September of 22.

Speaker 2 Yeah,

Speaker 2 my view on it is I do think that like... I think Donald Trump gets applause when he says these kinds of things, his rallies.

Speaker 2 I think he's happier talking about trying to get Europe to pay more for NATO than he is certainly talking about his various and sundry indictments or abortion.

Speaker 2 But I do think it's like a proof point of Trump's chaos and danger and just a reminder that this is the kind of unhinged shit you get from him

Speaker 2 because I do think our big challenge is, especially for people not paying that close attention, is it's very easy to kind of forget the details of what it was like to live under four years of this kind of chaos.

Speaker 3 Trevor Burrus, yeah, look,

Speaker 3 I'm concerned about the counter argument, which is, you know, Trump will just say, oh, he was just trying to tell a story about pressuring NATO countries to spend more.

Speaker 3 And by the way, Trump won't get us into foreign wars. Biden has.
I also am with you that, like, I don't think people love foreign aid. I do think that

Speaker 3 they probably slot support for NATO to a different category of like deterrence.

Speaker 3 But I think beyond that kind of meta-national narrative, I know the Biden campaign is going to try to drive the story in swing states with big Eastern European populations or people with Eastern European ancestry.

Speaker 3 The hope is that someone who has, you know, a bunch of family in Poland will care more about this than your average voter. So hopefully that works.

Speaker 3 It also kind of folds into Biden's defense or response at least to attacks on his age, which are like, I took this, you know, train ride into Ukraine. I took this trip to Israel.
So I don't know.

Speaker 3 I think they want to fight on this ground.

Speaker 1 Also, it's like, this isn't just verbal diarrhea from Donald Trump. It's verbal diarrhea that has life or death consequences, which is what usually what you get from Donald Trump, right?

Speaker 1 He is a crazy narcissist who says stupid shit that puts everyone else at risk, and he will screw over anyone, like his voters, the country, his allies. Like, he doesn't care.

Speaker 1 He will, people who've worked for him, he throws everyone under the bus because all he cares cares about is himself and he's a crazy narcissist. That's it.
And Haley nailed the message.

Speaker 1 Yeah, she's good.

Speaker 3 She's good.

Speaker 1 I'm surprised. We always like Nikki Haley.

Speaker 1 Biden should go out there and just pop off on this one. I would, yeah, sure.

Speaker 3 I would also, if I were the Biden campaign, I might cut an ad with her comments and run that into the states.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

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Speaker 1 All right, so right now, Biden and the rest of the Democratic Party are spending much more time than they'd like dealing with the follow-up from Special Counsel Robert Hurr's report on the president's possession of classified documents while he was out of office.

Speaker 1 Hurr concluded that, quote, no criminal charges are warranted, but also claimed that Biden couldn't remember details like when he was vice president or when his son Bo died, which led to Biden holding a press conference on Thursday night where he became understandably emotional and angry.

Speaker 1 Let's listen.

Speaker 18 I know there's some attention paid to some language in the report about my recollection of events. There's even reference that I don't remember when my son died.

Speaker 2 How in the hell dare he raise that?

Speaker 18 Frankly, when I was asked the question, I thought to myself, it wasn't any of their damn business.

Speaker 1 President Biden, something the special counsel said in his report is that one of the reasons you were not charged is because, in his description you are a well-meaning elderly man with a poor memory.

Speaker 18 I'm well-meaning and I'm an elderly man and I know what the hell I'm doing. I've been president and I put this country back on its feet.
I don't need his recommendation. It's totally.

Speaker 18 My memory is so bad I let you speak.

Speaker 1 Mr.

Speaker 19 President, for months when you were asked about your age, you would respond with the words, watch me. While many American people have been watching and they have expressed concerns about your age.

Speaker 20 That is your judgment.

Speaker 20 That is your judgment.

Speaker 20 That is not the judgment of the press.

Speaker 19 They express concerns about your mental acuity. They say that you are too old.
Mr. President, in December, you told me that you believe there are many other Democrats who could defeat Donald Trump.

Speaker 19 So why does it have to be you now? What is your answer to that?

Speaker 18 I was the most qualified person in this country to be president of the United States and finish the job I started.

Speaker 1 Okay. So

Speaker 1 before we get to the press conference, what's your take on the report itself? Dan and I talked about this just very briefly on Thursday, right after it was released.

Speaker 3 I mean, it's one of those annoying times when two things can both be true. One, the report was unfair.

Speaker 3 It screwed Biden in ways that seemed quite partisan and intentional to me, including overemphasizing suggestions that Biden might have willfully retained classified information while burying specifics about the lack of evidence for those allegations or more innocent explanations.

Speaker 3 There was also all the commentary about the age and Biden's memory, which seemed unfair or ad hominem at worst.

Speaker 3 And then second, there is a debate about Biden's age and fitness for office that was already happening.

Speaker 3 This just kicked it up and focused the media's attention on it in a very damaging way via this DOJ report.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I mean, it's a

Speaker 2 Biden cleared by DOJ. Huge disaster for Joe Biden.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 2 here, I agree with what Tommy said,

Speaker 2 but I was struck because you see the coverage coverage and the coverage is really just about the documents, which is vaguely mischaracterizing and certainly not covering, I think, the parts of the report that say, like, when he found documents that classified markings, he immediately returned them.

Speaker 2 It is actually surprising, like, how patronizing the report is. Like, on the whole, even the parts that people haven't been talking about, there's one that jumped out at me, which is, it says, Mr.

Speaker 2 Biden has long seen himself as a historical figure. He considered running for president as early as 1980.
He believed his record during decades in the Senate made him worthy of the presidency.

Speaker 2 He kept records to quote, cite as evidence that he was a man of presidential timber. And look, it doesn't matter.
You know, this report is more personal than what the report should have been.

Speaker 2 But like, it is a particularly patronizing.

Speaker 1 He is a historic figure. He's the fucking president of the United States and he was vice president before that.
And does he hold himself in high regard? Yeah.

Speaker 1 Everyone who fucking served in the Senate does. They're all like this.
Yeah, they're all there. And they're all like this.
That's why half of them ran in 2008.

Speaker 2 That's right.

Speaker 1 You find someone who doesn't think, oh, let me tell you about my Senate floor speech in 1975.

Speaker 3 They all fucking think that. That passage was so patronizing.

Speaker 2 It's so patronizing and insulting.

Speaker 2 And then you sort of get to the reason why, which is Donald Trump would not have been charged if he had cooperated with investigators and not been sort of a stubborn and lawless freak about it.

Speaker 2 But also, I don't think this report exists in a world where Donald Trump hasn't been charged because it's a 15-month investigation to come to the conclusion that basically when a vice president or president leaves office, it is very difficult to prevent at least something.

Speaker 2 Like

Speaker 2 that in good faith, it should be afforded these people the opportunity to return these kinds of things, which is why Mike Pence wasn't charged, which which is why Joe Biden wasn't charged. And so

Speaker 2 you get to the end of this long document and you end up with a bunch of kind of aspersions about him as a person.

Speaker 2 So that's my sort of way of describing the whole report, which is incredibly damaging because those aspersions hit the biggest vulnerability he has as a person, not just politically, but like his legitimate concern about his age.

Speaker 1 Yeah. So like let's so Trump.
So Robert Hur, who is a Trump appointee, let's say he's not wearing a red MAGA hat, right?

Speaker 1 Let's just give him him the benefit of the doubt.

Speaker 3 Just pretend that was a rankquist clerk. Right.

Speaker 1 He has a ranked sorry. Let's just pretend.
Clearly, he's the first special counsel ever to not finish an investigation without bringing charges. So he's the first one to not bring charges ever done.

Speaker 1 And he realizes, like you said, that there's all this pressure, right? Because Trump was charged and blah, blah, blah. And so what he ends up doing is he pulls like a reverse Bill Barr.

Speaker 1 Remember, Bill Barr takes the Mueller report, and even though the Mueller report is incredibly damning for Donald Trump, he writes this summary at the front that's like fully exonerated.

Speaker 1 Hurd does the opposite.

Speaker 1 And he does a quote at the beginning that's like, you know, he's, and this is the quote that most media outlets ran with, in addition to the memory parts, was that evidence that Biden willfully retained and disclosed classified materials.

Speaker 1 But the report also says that there was not sufficient evidence of that, that there was also evidence Biden did not retain or disclose classified info willfully or intentionally, and that, quote, in addition to the shortage of evidence, there are other innocent explanations for the documents.

Speaker 1 So, like, that we cannot refute. And over and over again in the report, you keep going, the evidence does not show that when Mr.

Speaker 1 Biden shared certain info with his ghostwriter, that he knew it was classified. The evidence does not establish that Mr.
Biden willfully disclosed national defense information to his ghostwriter.

Speaker 1 Over and over and over, it says this. Yeah.

Speaker 2 So, I mean, my overall takeaway from this thing is

Speaker 2 that we are that in part because the report says that no charges should be brought and no charges will be brought. And I I think Biden saying it's closed is his way of kind of trying to

Speaker 2 end this conversation. Like the document retention policies, I don't think are nearly as important as what he wrote about memory.
That's what we'll end up being stuck with.

Speaker 2 The report also goes, spends a fair amount of time talking about the ways in which what Donald Trump and Joe Biden did were different.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Which I also think is really important.

Speaker 1 All right. So document stuff aside.
Clearly, the press conference was an attempt to rebut Herr's characterizations of his memory, especially, not just his

Speaker 1 culpability. How do you think it went?

Speaker 3 I think feisty infighting is the right tone. I can't even imagine how pissed off and offended and just

Speaker 3 hurt I would be if someone suggested that I forgot the date of my son's death.

Speaker 3 So I totally understand and wanting to push back on that. That said, I think the overall performance was a mixed bag.

Speaker 3 It was good to drive the message of exoneration because the initial coverage was very confusing and misleading.

Speaker 3 It sounded like Biden did something wrong and willfully held onto this classified information.

Speaker 3 The righteous indignation around Beau's death, I think, was powerful, but some of it was just kind of chippy and angry and not great.

Speaker 3 Like the response to Peter Doocy's follow-up question that we heard just now, and Biden says, my memory is so bad, I let you speak. Funny line.
I like that.

Speaker 3 We chuckled, the press corps chuckled, but I don't think most, you know, that's like the most insider of insiders response.

Speaker 3 I don't think most people understand what he's talking about if you're watching. He gives a lot of kind of clipped, angry sounding answers to fair questions like about his age.

Speaker 1 His answer to the last question there, not Ducey's question, but the question I believe was Washington Post reporter, is really, I think, was bad.

Speaker 3 Like screaming, that is your judgment. I don't know what you're talking about.

Speaker 1 It's not her judgment.

Speaker 1 And I don't understand what's going on here because it's like, these are not new polls for now.

Speaker 1 For the better part of two years, the number one concern that people have had about Joe Biden is his age. Those concerns have predated Robert Hur.

Speaker 1 They have predated anything Trump has said, Republicans have said. It is not just about people who see like out-of-context clips that the Republicans put out or crazy TikToks or whatever else.

Speaker 1 If you watch Joe Biden speak, oftentimes he sounds frail and he sounds more frail than he used to, even in 2019 and 2020.

Speaker 1 Now, that may, and I think doesn't, have anything to do with how sharp he is mentally, but the voice sounds frail and he shuffles more because of the arthritis in his back.

Speaker 1 So, for most people in the country who are just watching him be president, what do they see when they turn on the television?

Speaker 1 They see him shuffle and they hear him and he is, he's swallowing a lot more of his words. Now, obviously, he's had a stutter, but it doesn't sound like the stutter did even in 2020.

Speaker 1 He's just soft-spoken and quiet. Every once in a while, he's feisty, like he was in the press conference, and he's sharp.
He like sat down. I remember that interview with John Harwood that he did.

Speaker 1 He sat down for a long time. He was very sharp in that interview too.
But I don't know if it's when he gets tired or not. It is he is mumbly.

Speaker 1 And I think that has an effect on people that is apart from whatever the media says, whatever Republicans say, if everyone, if the New York Times and everyone else stopped covering this issue tomorrow and never mentioned his age again, I guarantee you the concerns would still be there among people because they have been for the last several years.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I think

Speaker 2 angrily dismissing the concern will not make the concern go away. He has to actively be engaging the concern.
My take on the press conference was that it was a win, but not a blowout. Why?

Speaker 2 Because I think he made some good points and important points he had to make. Even people characterizing the joke he made to Deucey was better than how he made the joke himself.

Speaker 2 You know, it, he, even in that moment, seems quite old. And my view on this right now is like, he's got to be out there.
He's got to be out there more.

Speaker 2 But these are not going to be clean wins because he's going to, I think, reassure some people while at the same time, his age is showing even on his best days.

Speaker 2 There was a moment, I don't know if we have the clip, but there was a moment he made a joke about it, I think today.

Speaker 2 And to me, this is, he's made a joke like this in the past. This to me is the most reassuring and best version of Joe Biden talking about this.

Speaker 1 Did we have that clip? But I didn't realize, and I've been around, I know I don't look like it, but I've been around a while.

Speaker 1 I do remember that.

Speaker 1 It's great. It's great.

Speaker 3 It was great. I think a version of a joke that's like, I know I'm old.
I know I look old, but I can do the job. Like, acknowledge these are relevant.

Speaker 3 Like, 86% of people in an ABC News poll are concerned that Biden might be too old to serve another term. You can't just brush past that.

Speaker 1 In the last NBC poll, more people were concerned about Biden's age than Trump's fucking 91 felony counts, which is beyond me. But like, and that's one poll, but every single poll, the numbers are

Speaker 1 how concerned are you about Joe Biden's age? It's up in the 80s, okay? And it's more than half of Democrats.

Speaker 1 So I really think that it is the reason that the spin and the fury from people that this is like a media concoction and it's Hillary's emails all over again just really and I understand why people think that because it's PTSD.

Speaker 1 I'm getting the PTSD from 2016 for sure, but it's different. Like when Hillary first ran for office, 80% of voters didn't express concerns about her document retention policies, right?

Speaker 1 When Joe Biden decided he was going to run for president again after saying in the first campaign that he was going to be a bridge to the next generation, polls from then on showed that people were concerned about his age.

Speaker 1 And that was before any coverage about the age. Trevor Burrus, Jr.: Yeah.

Speaker 2 And I do, you know, now in those same polls that show some 80% have concerns about Biden's age, you still find in those polls, 60%

Speaker 2 or so have concerns about Trump's age. Most, the majority has concerns about both of their ages.

Speaker 2 Now, the part that's, I think, a double-edged sword is those polls also show that most people worry that Joe Biden is ineffective as president. I think that

Speaker 2 that is a stand-in for age. It is also a stand-in for not really knowing how much he's gotten done.

Speaker 2 So that when Joe Biden says, you know, watch me, or I've, you know, why, why is it, why am I running again? I'm running because I got, did a lot of good. My competence is revealed by

Speaker 2 my presidency and I've earned a second term to finish the job.

Speaker 2 That argument is easier to make when the country is educated about your achievements.

Speaker 1 Well, and also to your point about it,

Speaker 1 it's conflated with him being an effective president. And when I say frail, of course, Trump is running on strength and he's trying to paint Biden as weak.

Speaker 1 And when did his approval ratings start going south? He was, even though he was an older president when he took office, his approval ratings were pretty damn good until Afghanistan. Yeah,

Speaker 1 and Afghanistan was the first thing.

Speaker 1 And then since Afghanistan, it's been a string of, as the world starts spinning out of control, they think, does this guy have what it takes to make sure that we are safe and secure and the economy, like all that kind of stuff?

Speaker 1 And that, and so when world events seem like they are overtaking him and he's not out there enough forcefully, that's what's getting people to you.

Speaker 3 I'll come crawling back to the world.

Speaker 3 One thing I just want to make about this with memory descriptions in this report. So we don't have access to the transcript of these five hours worth of interviews that Biden did with DOJ.

Speaker 3 We have characterizations of them by the prosecutors. It doesn't seem like Biden's team wants to release them yet.
I know that news outlets are going to sue for them. Republicans want them.

Speaker 3 Congress wants them. Congress wants them.

Speaker 1 And get ready for the Robert Hur testifying before Congress thing. That's going to happen.
The public's going to call him in. Yeah.

Speaker 3 So we'll see if these things are released and we'll have a better sense of when and why he said, I do not recall.

Speaker 3 But the one thing everyone should know about these kinds of interviews, like depositions or, you know, law enforcement interviews, and I've had to sit through a couple of them thanks to getting to work in government.

Speaker 3 You get to get questioned by the FBI occasionally.

Speaker 1 What did Tommy forget? You never know. You got a book with it.

Speaker 3 But the number one rule that your lawyer will drill into you is if you don't remember something exactly, you do not speculate. Right.
There's no like, I think I said this. I think I put the document.

Speaker 3 Absolutely. No, if you don't remember, you say you don't remember.
And if you want to have a good time, YouTube, the TMZ video of Lil Wayne's deposition from 2012, it's a classic.

Speaker 3 But so it's hard to tell for me to tell, not having read the transcripts, whether Biden actually wasn't remembering things or this is a prosecutor.

Speaker 3 fucking him for saying, I don't recall, I don't recall a bunch.

Speaker 1 I mean, I also think it could be a little bit of both. Keep in mind that the memory issues were around what year something happened, years of vice presidency, year that Bo died.

Speaker 1 And as he did in the press conference, he said, because Bo died around Memorial Day. And he said, every Memorial Day, I remember going to the cemetery.
So of course he remembers.

Speaker 1 It's around Memorial Day, his son served. He knows the date.
The report says that he forgot the year. How many times, like, do you guys remember exactly when we started Cricket Media? What year?

Speaker 1 What year, I guess? Like, how long have we been doing it? Like, years are tough.

Speaker 1 Years are not, not to like excuse the whole thing, but again, I don't think, I personally do not think Biden's problems are that he's forgetting things, right?

Speaker 1 Like everyone around him says he's super sharp, says that like he's totally with it. I've had that experience in the last couple of years, the time that I saw him.
Like, I get it.

Speaker 1 The problem is, we keep hearing this from people who know him and have worked with him. Even Republicans are saying that he's still sharp, right?

Speaker 1 There's a quote from Kevin McCarthy saying he was super sharp. Everyone's saying that, but then when people see him on television, they're seeing something different.

Speaker 1 So it's up to him to close that gap.

Speaker 2 This report is not how we found out that Joe Biden has a memory problem. This report feeds into a perception.
That perception could cost us our democracy. But it absolutely could.

Speaker 3 But it's a super weaponized perception, right?

Speaker 3 Like this, Robert Hur is using the imprimatur of the Department of Justice to put his own subjective characterizations of a man's memory and age into this non-charging document.

Speaker 1 It's an outrageous thing to do.

Speaker 2 I agree. It's a sort of, I think the way, like,

Speaker 2 it's a frustrating debate in part because I feel like we are all very concerned. We see how this manifests in the polling.
It is his biggest liability.

Speaker 2 And,

Speaker 2 you know,

Speaker 2 two things can be true. One being that

Speaker 2 Joe Biden is, while not as, his days are not as long and he's, has not as much energy as he used to have, fit to continue being president by all accounts of people who work with him day in and day out, while seeming too old and frail for the job.

Speaker 2 And Donald Trump is the opposite. He is more energetic and he is

Speaker 2 loud and

Speaker 2 seems

Speaker 3 up to, you know, his brain is getting cored by a worm like an apple. He's crazier than he's ever been.

Speaker 2 But like the air, like the air at the last second of a balloon,

Speaker 2 he's found his stride. Meanwhile, he's mentally and emotionally and psychologically unfit.

Speaker 1 He's literally running to stay out of prison. Absolutely.

Speaker 3 Hey, Zempic and Ronnie Jackson.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 a potential going to prison sharpens the mind.

Speaker 1 I think the other,

Speaker 1 what's frustrating so many Democrats, everyone, is that the only person who can ultimately do something about this is Joe Biden.

Speaker 1 right and there's two choices joe biden could make joe biden could decide to step aside and at this late late stage, which is very late, and

Speaker 1 have the Democratic Party figure out another nominee, which would involve a convention fight and just a very, like a couple months for everyone to figure out a new candidate.

Speaker 1 And there would be, as much as we all think, oh, well, if only Josh Shapiro or Gretchen Whitmer or whatever, first of all, none of them are polling better than Joe Biden against Donald Trump.

Speaker 1 There hasn't been that many polls. And maybe that's because people don't know them yet.
Very possible. But again, it is not like the alternative path is without risks right now.

Speaker 1 So that's going through Joe Biden's mind. So he could either, he could either step aside.
If he does not, then it is up to him to prove to people day in and day out that he is as sharp as ever.

Speaker 1 And that means doing every interview. That means going out there and speaking more.
It's just like they, the Super Bowl interview thing, I get it. They were going to do like a

Speaker 1 short four minute.

Speaker 3 Now we know why they didn't do it. They knew it would be entirely about this report.

Speaker 1 They would, but also it's like, what an opportunity. They're saying, oh, well, you know, at the Super Bowl, people didn't want to listen to politics.

Speaker 1 They just wanted to, you know, eat food and watch the football. Well, what a great opportunity to make a funny joke about his age when they ask him about the special counsel report.

Speaker 1 Like, he's just, it is extremely tough to communicate in this media environment and get in front of people all the time, especially when there are clips of you going around that are just taking the worst parts of you.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 1 that's why it's more incumbent upon him to go out there as much as possible and be in people's face all the time.

Speaker 2 Even if going out there and if going out there, look,

Speaker 2 I'm sure if going out there more means more missteps like confusing Mexico and Egypt, I would say that was not a win.

Speaker 2 You know, more gaffes that start circulating. But if you don't view Biden being out there more as a net positive, then the argument he shouldn't be running is right.

Speaker 3 Biden should have gone to the game, gone to the club, got drunk with Travis Kelsey. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Just a line straight from a Grammy onto a Super Bowl.

Speaker 1 Yeah, Ice. How would that be? Ice Spice, Taylor, Biden.

Speaker 3 Biden. That would have been.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Yeah. No prop bets on that.

Speaker 3 I think they were all parting with Marshmallow. You could see Joe up there.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 he should be out there more.

Speaker 1 Any other advice

Speaker 1 what he and the campaign should be doing about this?

Speaker 3 I do. I mean, I do think.
Look, I'll be honest. I don't know.

Speaker 3 I think it's the right recommendation to say he should do more interviews, more events, more speeches, and show, not tell that he has the vagor and vitality to do the job.

Speaker 3 But, you know, so much of people's impressions are based on little tiny snippets and sound bites and snap takeaways from something they saw on TV or social media.

Speaker 3 That it's hard to tell how much of this is fixable. Like once you've decided that someone is too old for something, does that impression change? I don't know.
We're all going to find out.

Speaker 3 But so that's, you know, there's a question of whether you can kind of assuage people's concerns about it.

Speaker 3 One thing you probably can do is make another set of issues more salient to them as voters when they go into the voting booth.

Speaker 3 And I think that's about talking about your record, talking about the economy, talking about what you do in a second term.

Speaker 3 I don't think a lot of the focus from Democrats right now is on this sort of what about ism Trump is old too. Trump forgets shit too.

Speaker 3 And I do think the Biden folks have done a good job of surfacing Trump's verbal gaffes. Times he's looked and sounding confused.
The South Carolina event that we led the show with.

Speaker 3 But I think you have to be careful that you're not making the debate feel like two bad choices only. You have to be sure to be pushing sort of the affirmative message for Biden's second term.

Speaker 1 I get why they started doing it because everyone was making fun of Joe Biden for gaffes or whatever and forgetting things. And they're like, look, Donald Trump screws up things all the time too.
Fine.

Speaker 1 But like, the biggest problem with Donald Trump is not that he's old and forgetful, it's that he is crazy and dangerous.

Speaker 1 And that is what people already believe about him, even the people who voted for him and then decided not to vote for him.

Speaker 1 When you ask why they didn't, it wasn't because, oh, he was getting on in years and flubbing things.

Speaker 1 It was, oh, because he said crazy shit like the NATO comment that could really put us all in danger.

Speaker 1 And so when Donald Trump says something in an event, I'd rather the response be like, and this is what this could mean for the American people if he becomes president again, than, oh, see,

Speaker 1 he's old too. He forgets too.
I agree. I agree with that.

Speaker 2 I will say, look, I was thinking about this over the weekend, which is I agree with that right now,

Speaker 1 but

Speaker 1 that

Speaker 2 uninterrupted stream in which he is confusing Nancy Pelosi and Nikki Haley wasn't just a gap. It was probably, I think, the most

Speaker 2 kind of

Speaker 2 like mentally unwell

Speaker 2 I've seen someone be running for president like ever. I mean, it's not a mistake.
It's an ongoing confusion he does not resolve.

Speaker 1 I mean, he's a deeply deranged narcissist and has been for many years. It's just, that's who he is, you know? But I also think it's great that he's joking about it.

Speaker 1 He should, Biden should continue to joke about his age. They're equating it with wisdom and experience.
I think that's good too. I think he has to acknowledge people's concerns.

Speaker 1 I think you have to really and stop being defensive. Like, I think they need to stop making it about like

Speaker 1 Biden versus the media, Biden versus the people who've underestimated him, Biden, even Biden versus Trump.

Speaker 1 It is about his vision versus Trump's vision, what he wants to do for people, and what Trump would do to people, right?

Speaker 1 And if the race just becomes Biden versus Trump and two old men going back and forth at each other and yelling at each other, like it's it's it's not only going to uh hurt Biden's cause, it's going to like help the cause of a third party.

Speaker 1 It's got every day he's out there, he's got to be talking about like people, why he's trying to fight for people. He's got to be angry on behalf of people and not on behalf of himself.

Speaker 1 And I just like the yelling at the media, yelling at like people underestimating. It's just, I don't think it's effective.
It might be warranted for sure. I would do it.

Speaker 1 I'd be frustrated, but it's not effective.

Speaker 2 I think, I think that to me, like it's the, it's connecting people's perceptions that he's ineffective with his perception of age.

Speaker 2 And what that means is you can't be angrily defending yourself because even if you're making a good argument about you're up for the job, you're also making an argument that you've been in some way overtaken by events.

Speaker 2 And to me, like, that's why what he did today was so excellent. He seems, first of all, he looks good.
He's confident. He's, he's back on his heel.

Speaker 2 He's not, he's not leaning forward, kind of pointing at a reporter.

Speaker 1 And Trump has this problem too. There was the Trump speech after Iowa when we were like, uh-oh, we don't like that Trump.
He's like gracious and he's saying nicely.

Speaker 1 And then there was Trump after New Hampshire when he was being angry and defensive and yelling about Nikki Haley. And it was bad for him.
It was bad for him.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I would bet that Joe Biden himself really wanted to go out the other night and do that press conference.

Speaker 3 But it's always challenging to look like you have it under control when it's kind of an unruly gaggle of reporters screaming at you, interrupting you, talking over you, shouting back at them.

Speaker 3 Like it's got to be a little more methodical and sort of orderly feeling. It was wild.

Speaker 1 I don't know how you, I mean, like,

Speaker 1 they're all screaming. They're all yelling.
It was, yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2 And look,

Speaker 2 I am also sympathetic.

Speaker 1 Like, Joe Biden, you know.

Speaker 2 You can say that there's people having a freak out and they're saying, oh, we need a new nominee, people going through another one of these cycles.

Speaker 2 And you look at what this report says, and I am sure there are bad news cycles to come based on this report, for sure.

Speaker 2 But do I think this report like fundamentally changes the dynamic of the race or do I think it highlights a liability everyone is very concerned about? I think it's the latter.

Speaker 3 For sure.

Speaker 2 And so. The logic for Joe Biden to pursue re-election has not changed.
You didn't persuade him to not seek re-election two years ago. You're not going to persuade him after this report.

Speaker 1 In fact, as we're getting closer and he's starting to win votes and delegates, even.

Speaker 2 And it actually does the opposite because Joe Biden believes he has been underestimated. That's where the defense of this comes from.
I think that he's right that he was underestimated in the past.

Speaker 2 And so, you know, he is looking at this as a time in which he is being underestimated as part of a story in which he is going to help rebuild the coalition that put him into office once and that will put him into office again.

Speaker 2 Now, there may be another story that we're currently watching unfold, which is all of that could have been true, but age was just too big of a liability for him to surmount.

Speaker 2 And we will look back on this moment and say, wow, it sure was obvious. That's what the polls were saying.

Speaker 2 It's Joe Biden's job to prove those polls wrong, even if he has a legitimate frustration with the way in which he is constantly surrounded by an unhelpful panic.

Speaker 1 And by the way, the idea that, like, you know, and the Democratic Party rigged the whole thing so that no one else would run. Like, the Democratic Party, first of all, can barely organize itself.

Speaker 1 Second,

Speaker 1 in order for someone else to be there, someone else would have had to step up, and they did not step up. Dean Phillips stepped up way too late.
Marianne. Mayor N.
Sorry. Oh, my gosh.

Speaker 1 Who dropped out of the radio? We haven't even said. Oh, well, that's a C-block.

Speaker 1 Marianne Williams. RFK.
Yeah, so

Speaker 1 they stood up, and it didn't go well for them, right? But the people who would have been real contenders could have been real contenders at Joshua Perry, Greggian Ward, they didn't run.

Speaker 1 So I don't know, like, what else was going to happen?

Speaker 1 Anyway. So that's where we are.

Speaker 3 Quit politics, Marco Rubio. That's what I want to call you.
Quit politics.

Speaker 1 Do we think?

Speaker 2 Does Travis ever get to be Little Spoon? Kelsey? Yeah. Or

Speaker 2 is that just for women and fags?

Speaker 1 Whoa, geez. I was just thinking about after the Super Bowl.

Speaker 1 Do you get to be Little Spoon after you won the Super Bowl?

Speaker 3 Do I get to be offended on behalf of straights? Why not? Let's try. Everyone likes to be cuddled every now and again.

Speaker 1 No, that's my question.

Speaker 2 I'm actually, you know, obviously I'm saying it with

Speaker 2 some negativity in my voice, but I wonder,

Speaker 2 is Travis ever Little Spoon?

Speaker 1 I'm sure. I bet he is.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 You made a stroke on a text chain earlier today, and

Speaker 1 I was wondering about it.

Speaker 2 I actually don't know your culture.

Speaker 1 I've never been there. I was curious.
Huh. I was curious.

Speaker 1 They looked like they were having a good time afterwards.

Speaker 1 they were

Speaker 1 dancing a love story at the club afterwards.

Speaker 2 If you don't have a good time after winning the Super Bowl

Speaker 2 while your girlfriend Taylor Swift watches from the box,

Speaker 1 that's a cool night.

Speaker 2 That should be a VR experience. Put that in the Vision Pro.

Speaker 3 It's very, like, it's one thing to be a celebrity that starts dating a professional athlete. To date a professional athlete who then goes to win the Super Bowl

Speaker 3 is wild. Do you think it's cool for her to be at a club and have the chain smokers throwing on her songs over over and over again? Are you just like, we get it, dude?

Speaker 1 Like, play something else.

Speaker 1 I would lean towards weird.

Speaker 3 She has to pretend to be like, oh, I'm singing along.

Speaker 2 I think she likes those songs.

Speaker 1 I think she's probably tired.

Speaker 1 She did her show in Tokyo, flew to Vegas. Like, when did she sleep? Those guys are going to party till Tuesday.
That's what I'm saying. I hope so.
I hope so.

Speaker 2 She's not in Premium Economy. I think there's a bet on the plane.
I think she's fine.

Speaker 1 I think she's fine. There's a bet on the plane.
You don't think she's in Premium Economy? No. No.

Speaker 1 Do you think she got the Southwest flight from L.A. to Vegas?

Speaker 2 I don't think she's doing the Air New Zealand Skybench.

Speaker 3 I got B.

Speaker 1 No, she fades for that.

Speaker 2 I'm sorry, I'm B11. Are you B10?

Speaker 1 Oh, no, you're behind me, actually.

Speaker 2 I'm B11.

Speaker 1 Oh, my friend ICE.

Speaker 2 She's actually B10.

Speaker 1 So you're behind me.

Speaker 1 Ms. Spice we're boarding.
Anyway, are we done? Okay. Before we go to break, a few quick notes.

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Tommy has a show with Brian Tyler Cohen called Liberal Tears.

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Speaker 1 Joining us here in studio to talk about New York politics, the 2024 campaign, and his own race for Congress, former representative and current candidate Mondair Jones. Welcome back.

Speaker 5 Thanks for having me. It's great to be in the stew.

Speaker 1 Yeah, good to have you here. So we've been talking about every Democrat's favorite topic right now, Joe Biden's age.
You're on the campaign trail right now. Are voters asking you about it?

Speaker 5 They're not asking me about it so much as they're talking about it.

Speaker 5 It is something that gets discussed a lot on television, gets written about. And obviously people have their own opinions.

Speaker 5 And so it's also the case that when we have these discussions, it's usually in the context of, I really hope he wins because the threats to our democracy are of an existential nature.

Speaker 1 What's your level of concern?

Speaker 5 Zero.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 5 With respect to the president's age, I have no concerns because he has been the most accomplished president in modern history despite his age.

Speaker 5 And I know that he can continue to do the job because he's already been doing it. I happen to have worked very closely with him on a number of matters.

Speaker 5 And I got to tell you, man, it's been really frustrating to see

Speaker 1 media,

Speaker 5 which are just wholly unprepared as far as I can tell to meet this moment, focus on his age, which is not very different from that of Donald Trump, by the way,

Speaker 5 over all of the crazy shit that Donald Trump does and says every single day into the threats that he and the extreme MAGA Republicans who have taken over this Republican Party pose

Speaker 5 to this country in this most important election of our lifetimes that we're approaching.

Speaker 2 Yeah, so it sometimes feels as though Biden's age seems like a liability, but people people that have worked closely with him say he's up to the job.

Speaker 2 Donald Trump seems more energetic, but by all accounts is emotionally, psychologically, mentally unfit.

Speaker 2 You say you have no concerns about it, but politically, a lot of voters do, right? We just saw another poll that shows the vast majority of voters believe it is a huge liability.

Speaker 2 It's a really big concern. So how do you think we should be addressing it? How should the Biden campaign be addressing it?

Speaker 5 Look, I think this election is about Donald Trump, whether folks want to accept that or not.

Speaker 5 And the more that people see Donald Trump on the stump, whether it is the 91 felony counts, recently his comments about abandoning our allies abroad, his instruction

Speaker 5 that Republicans not cooperate on a bipartisan solution to secure our border,

Speaker 5 and so on and so forth, it is clear that by November, all of the people who have not yet grappled with the fact that Donald Trump will be the Republican nominee are going to

Speaker 5 rally behind this president, a decent man with a record of accomplishment, someone who rescued the economy from collapse at the height of COVID-19.

Speaker 5 Again, I'm proud to have been part of that as part of the most productive Congress in modern history, that being the 117th Congress, whereas these guys can barely keep the lights on these days in the 118th with Mike Johnson and the extreme MAG Republicans in control.

Speaker 1 Is there a reason you want to go back there? It doesn't seem to seem the last couple weeks. I like a good hang, right?

Speaker 1 You can tell us. No one will hear this.

Speaker 5 Man,

Speaker 5 I want to build upon the work that we started last term, and we did remarkable things.

Speaker 5 The work is unfinished, obviously, and I could tick through a whole list of stuff that we still need to do. Chief among them,

Speaker 5 saving democracy itself here in America.

Speaker 5 But we did make strides economically. We rescued the economy from collapse.
We cut child poverty in half for a time.

Speaker 5 And we just got data a few months ago showing yet again that child poverty is a policy choice. We kept our small businesses open.

Speaker 5 I was a freshman member of Congress and I was able to bring hundreds of millions of dollars for schools, housing, and health care to the 17th congressional district of New York.

Speaker 5 And then again, as a freshman member of Congress, I was able to bring progressives and conservative Democrats together and we passed the bipartisan infrastructure bill that is now law and now tens of billions of dollars are coming to my home state of New York.

Speaker 5 So it was really cool to be able to be part of a functioning majority of people who actually cared about government working for the people and who, unlike our Republican colleagues, are not there to dismantle the government and maybe have it work only to the extent that they're cutting taxes for very wealthy people.

Speaker 5 Trevor Burrus

Speaker 3 You mentioned how you guys got a lot done and did it with very slim majorities. On the Republican side, it's whether it's McCarthy or Johnson, it does not seem to be going well.

Speaker 3 Very quickly, they get themselves into political trouble. People start talking about potentially taking them out.
Do you think there's, I mean, you know, these guys, you spend time with them.

Speaker 5 I serve with Mike Johnson on the Judiciary Committee.

Speaker 3 He seems like a fun guy. Good hang.

Speaker 1 Good to hang.

Speaker 3 Is there anyone who could put a tent on this circus?

Speaker 2 Is this job like unmanageable?

Speaker 3 What do you make of his challenges?

Speaker 1 Well, look, he is incompetent,

Speaker 5 but he is not unique among his colleagues in the House Republican Conference. This is what happens when you elect people to Congress who are not there to make government work.

Speaker 5 I mean, they view the government as a threat to the American people.

Speaker 5 And so the dysfunction and the chaos and the extremism

Speaker 1 is a feature.

Speaker 5 I mean, they would rather that than, for example, build upon the work of lowering the cost of prescription drugs, which we did, Democrats did under the Inflation Reduction Act.

Speaker 5 It's why, by the way, they don't talk about economics when they're running for office. They use fear tactics.
They talk about the border and they talk about crime.

Speaker 5 They don't want to talk about their deeply unpopular economic policies.

Speaker 5 I mean, imagine if folks found out that my Republican opponent, Mike Lawler, would rather raise prescription drug prices for people on Medicare, like my grandmother, rather than lower them, which is exactly what his position is as an opponent of the Inflation Reduction Act.

Speaker 5 These are people who also obviously want to pass a national abortion ban.

Speaker 5 And frankly, to the extent that people are concerned that Joe Biden's not going to hold on to the White House, it's even more important that we take back the House in Congress so that we can be a check on Donald Trump.

Speaker 1 So Trump killed the border deal. And now it looks like the Senate is on the verge of passing a supplemental that includes aid for Ukraine, Israel, Taiwan.

Speaker 5 And humanitarian aid.

Speaker 1 And humanitarian assistance as well for Palestinians and Ukrainians. So it goes over to the House.

Speaker 1 Mike Turner, who's chair of the Intel Committee, said he thinks that if Mike Johnson allows Ukraine funding to get a vote, Democrats will protect him from a motion to vacate. Do you think they will?

Speaker 1 And do you think they should?

Speaker 5 Well, look, I don't think that Democrats

Speaker 5 should be in the business of doing any political favors for Republicans who are trying to make life harder for the American people and for our allies abroad.

Speaker 5 You're talking to a guy who cares very deeply about international issues. I traveled the world

Speaker 5 in the spring of 2022 to rally support among our allies for the free people of Ukraine. And that was a successful trip.
And to see

Speaker 5 Republicans unify nearly in in their opposition to helping Ukrainians beat back the ambitions of a madman

Speaker 1 who would

Speaker 5 basically restore the Soviet order and who is very hostile to us here in America

Speaker 5 and whose victory would embolden even more significant threats to America like China. It has been distressing, to put it mildly.

Speaker 5 I mean this is supposed to have been the party of national security, but it's not a

Speaker 1 a cult, right?

Speaker 5 There's nothing conservative about the shit that they do. It is, you know,

Speaker 5 if that were the case, they would be accepting and working in good faith to pass now bipartisan border security legislation that they had been clamoring for for the past year until Donald Trump said, you know, never mind, I want to use the border crisis in the fall campaign.

Speaker 1 But if it comes down to, okay, we don't want to do political favors for Republicans unnecessarily, but if this political favor will also help Ukraine get funding, would we want to do it?

Speaker 5 Look, I think every Democrat, just like I think every Republican in Congress, should be voting for this security supplemental.

Speaker 5 We have to support our allies.

Speaker 5 To me, that is non-negotiable. I'm horrified that anyone would not do that.
I would defer to Hakeem Jeffries as the minority leader who has a better pulse on things

Speaker 5 than I do

Speaker 5 from this vantage point about what will be required in order to get that security package across the finish line.

Speaker 2 So speaking of Akeem Jeffries, one of the reasons he's not the speaker right now is not because of what happened in, say, Wisconsin or Michigan.

Speaker 2 It's actually because we weren't able to win some seats in California and New York. A lot of frustrations with the New York Democratic Party after what happened in 2022.

Speaker 2 Has anything changed? Are there things you'd like to see changed? The New York Democratic Party got its act together. What's happening?

Speaker 5 Hell yeah. The biggest change for me is I'm running in my own district.
There we go. I mean, I would never have lost that seat, not to re-litigate the past, but

Speaker 5 just in the nick of time, you've got folks like Tom Swazi, who I believe is going to win back.

Speaker 5 I don't want to call it the Santos seat because before it was the Santos seat, it was the Swazi seat for many years.

Speaker 5 So he's going to win back his seat, I think, in the third congressional district of New York. I'm going to win back my seat in the 17th congressional district with the help of

Speaker 5 anyone of good conscience, I think, who wants to see us protect basic freedoms in this country, continue to cut costs, and yes, save democracy itself.

Speaker 5 And we've got great candidates throughout the Hudson Valley and elsewhere on Long Island and in New York State. And

Speaker 1 look,

Speaker 5 I expect that whatever polling folks are seeing today is not going to be predictive of the environment in November.

Speaker 5 I'm smart enough to know that the next nine months will be like 18 different lifetimes

Speaker 5 in politics.

Speaker 5 And so I know that folks are really down on the polling when it comes to the current president versus the former twice impeached, seriously indicted, former president.

Speaker 5 But I just don't think that that's helpful beyond saying get out there, knock on doors, communicate with people, and explain the stakes in this election.

Speaker 1 A lot of the coverage of the race to replace Santos has focused on voter concerns about immigration and crime. You were just talking about that.

Speaker 1 Do you think those are the big issues driving this race?

Speaker 5 Look, I think today, top of mind for folks are the price of goods. You know,

Speaker 5 how painful is it when you go to the grocery store?

Speaker 5 Obviously, public safety. Immigration, yes.
And not just among Republicans, but Democrats and independents.

Speaker 5 I actually think that It has been a strategic era for Democrats who care about border security and who care about, yes, creating a pathway to citizenship for otherwise law-abiding 11 million-plus undocumented people here in America.

Speaker 5 I think that it has been a strategic error for a lot of folks who have appointed themselves spokespersons on this issue to not talk more about the need to secure the border.

Speaker 5 It is intuitive to the average person that we ought to have a secure border.

Speaker 3 How much of the increased political interest in New York politics around immigration do you think is the result of concerted efforts to bust migrants to New York from places like Texas by Governor Greg Abbott and others?

Speaker 5 Aaron Powell, you know,

Speaker 5 it's such a cynical move for Republicans like my opponent, Mike Lawler, to talk about the migrant crisis impacting New York State in particular when it was the Republican governors of Texas and

Speaker 5 Florida who visited that upon us. But the fact is,

Speaker 5 it is now, I think, more proximate to people both literally and mentally,

Speaker 5 given the constraints

Speaker 5 that cities and states like New York and New York City have. The federal government has to solve this issue.

Speaker 5 And part of that, of course, is making sure that my home state of New York has the resources, the financial resources to deal with this migrant crisis. But that's a band-aid solution.

Speaker 5 We have to do comprehensive immigration reform if we're going to stop seeing ultimately the kind of

Speaker 5 just the volume, the volume, frankly, of folks illegally crossing the border who are not eligible for asylum.

Speaker 1 Your opponent, Mike Lawler,

Speaker 1 has a lot of vulnerabilities, I'm sure.

Speaker 1 Which is top of mind for you? What do you...

Speaker 5 What's the race about?

Speaker 1 Well, Mike Lawler, I think,

Speaker 5 has the greatest vulnerability that any House Republican in this environment would have, and that is he is, like everyone else in his party, in Congress, an enabler of MAGA extremism.

Speaker 5 I mean, he'll get on television, he'll try to present himself as somewhat of a reasonable person.

Speaker 5 But when you look at his actual voting record, he is locked up with the most egregious members of his conference.

Speaker 5 I mean, this is someone who has voted against abortion without exception for rape or incest.

Speaker 5 He has voted against a gun regulation intended to keep us all safer from this uniquely American problem of mass shootings, even as he complains about public safety, which is so hypocritical.

Speaker 5 He opposes an assault weapons ban and of course would never vote for a Speaker of the House who would bring a universal background checks bill to the floor.

Speaker 5 He is a career political operative who has worked to elect not just once but twice Donald Trump and who has recently said that he would be supporting him again in the general election if he's the nominee.

Speaker 5 Well, guess what? Donald Trump's going to be the nominee.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 folks both need to know about that, and when they hear about it, they are appalled. And this is a district that Joe Biden won by 10 points.

Speaker 5 I think he'll win by an even larger margin because Donald Trump is even more unhinged and dangerous than he was the last time he ran

Speaker 5 for the presidency.

Speaker 5 And I will say just in the nick of time, because

Speaker 5 we are going to need to come together as a nation, not just a party, but as people of good conscience.

Speaker 5 And I mean Republicans

Speaker 5 who are recognizing that this is not going to be the party that it once was

Speaker 5 and that

Speaker 5 President Biden is the safer, more responsible choice in the November election.

Speaker 2 Let's talk about bringing people together. You're running to represent parts of Westchester, Rockland, and Putnam.

Speaker 5 I grew up in a sliver of duchess.

Speaker 2 A sliver of duchess. And who doesn't love a sliver of duchess?

Speaker 2 I'm from Nassau County. I know.
I'm from Tom Suazi's district.

Speaker 2 You think you're better than us?

Speaker 1 I cannot, the fucking attitude

Speaker 2 that you get from Westchester and like upstate people, if someone even deigns to suggest they're from Long Island. I'm not from Long Island.

Speaker 5 I would never

Speaker 5 intentionally hurt you.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 5 the lower Hudson Valley is a special place.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 2 And the Hudson. That's nice.

Speaker 5 And, you know, we don't have some of the challenges that y'all have out there. I mean, this election should not even be close in the third congressional district.

Speaker 1 They got a Republican candidate who won't even do interviews with people.

Speaker 5 Her record is so bad and her beliefs so extreme.

Speaker 5 By the way, I do think Tom Suise is going to crush it.

Speaker 1 Even with the snow.

Speaker 2 You're not worried about the snow? Yeah, what about the snow?

Speaker 5 You know, look, we're not Texas, right?

Speaker 1 I mean,

Speaker 5 we can deal with the snow in New York.

Speaker 3 L.A. and the rain.
Can you assure us that George Santos is rock bottom for New York politics for like this decade, at least?

Speaker 5 At least in the Republican Party. We'll see, man.
I mean, you know, folks thought that if Donald Trump went away, that that would be, you know, the salvaging of the Republican Party.

Speaker 5 But then you got Ron DeSantis. Nikki Haley, you know, has to be reminded that slavery caused the Civil War.

Speaker 1 It's really bad.

Speaker 5 And that's the argument, by the way. It's like, to the extent there are

Speaker 5 a handful of people who even pretend to be moderate in the House Republican Conference, they are clearly unable to rein in the extremism of their party.

Speaker 5 And the most important decision that one makes, in this case multiple times last year,

Speaker 5 in a caucus or a conference, as they say on the Republican side in the House, is to vote for Speaker. And

Speaker 5 you have a Speaker of the House who is the most extreme radical speaker in the history of American government who wants to do all of these crazy things.

Speaker 5 And he now seems to be like the average sort of median

Speaker 5 House Republican, Senate Republican in terms of the extremism of his views.

Speaker 1 Yeah, they're not getting better than Mike Johnson, that's for sure.

Speaker 1 It's Mike Johnson or worse. They weren't getting better than Kevin McCarthy.
It just keeps getting worse. So, Mondir Jones, thank you so much for stopping by and good luck in the race.

Speaker 5 Thanks so much. And, of course, folks can stop by MondeerForCongress.com to find out more and to donate.

Speaker 5 I don't take money from corporations unlike people like Mike Lawler, who is a former oil and gas lobbyist. So we need grassroots folks to empower this.

Speaker 1 That's an odd message. I love it.

Speaker 1 More like like lawless.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 That's not bad.

Speaker 1 That's not bad.

Speaker 5 It's like a Long Island style job.

Speaker 1 You'd be bad. Listen.

Speaker 1 Listen. Listen.
Here's the thing.

Speaker 1 You'd be Long Island.

Speaker 2 People in Long Island are mad because it's very, it's a long, slender piece of land with the two highways. All right.
And that sucks.

Speaker 3 Finish him, Mondair. Finish him.

Speaker 5 Love Long Island. Yeah.
All right.

Speaker 1 And have a lot of support out there.

Speaker 1 Thanks again. Take care.
Thanks.

Speaker 1 Thanks, Mondar Jones, for joining us, and we'll have another episode for you on Wednesday.

Speaker 1 If you want to get ad-free episodes, exclusive content, and more, consider joining our Friends of the Pod subscription community at crooked.com slash friends.

Speaker 1 And if you're already doom scrolling, don't forget to follow us at Pod Save America on Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube for access to full episodes, bonus content, and more.

Speaker 1 Plus, if you're as opinionated as we are, consider dropping us a review. Pod Save America is a crooked media production.
Our show is produced by Olivia Martinez and David Toledo.

Speaker 1 Our associate producers are Saul Rubin and Farah Safari. Kira Wakeem is our senior producer.
Reed Sherlin is our executive producer. The show is mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick.

Speaker 1 Jordan Cantor is our sound engineer, with audio support from Kyle Seglin and Charlotte Landis. Writing support by Hallie Kiefer.
Madeline Herringer is our head of news and programming.

Speaker 1 Matt DeGroat is our head of production. Andy Taff is our executive assistant.
Thanks to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Haley Jones, Mia Kelman, David Toles, Kirill Pelavieve, and Molly Lobel.

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Speaker 11 From infamous killers and unsolved mysteries to haunted places and strange legends, we cover it all with research, empathy, humor, and a few creative expletives.

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