You earlier explained confidence in your vice president. Yes. If your team came back and showed you data that she would fare better against former President Donald Trump, would you reconsider your decision to stay in the race?
No, unless they came back and said there's no way you can win. Me. No one's saying that.
No poll says that. It is so weird. I wish someone would tell them to stop that. It doesn't do anything except flip people out and creep people out.
But now you know the signal. David Axelrod came out and tweeted right after that. I don't know what he used his social media as a tool, but after he heard that, he had a very good statement. He said, if what he said at the end of his press conference is true, it sounds like Biden's team has not been very candid with him about what data is actually showing.
The age issue is a huge and potentially insurmountable concern, and his odds of victory are very, very slim. Matt Taibbi joins us now. Matt Taibbi has cut his own wake on Substack. He's got a new article out talking about maybe another match between Hillary and Trump, too. Matt, welcome back.
Thanks for having me, Brian. So first off, crazy audio. I mean, what is the whispering thing? I mean, people should tell them that that doesn't sound effective.
I don't know what you're talking about. But last night, did he do enough to quell some of the concerns? So most of the reactions that I've seen from people in kind of the Democratic media seem to think that last night was the worst case scenario because he did just well enough to make an argument that he could possibly make it all the way through.
But there were just enough crazy moments that they'll be viral and they'll never stop being a news issue. So, you know, between the thing where he talked about having Vice President Trump, you know, and how she's done a great job for him and all that and the whispering, it's very strange. He's like he's having an internal monologue with himself with the whole country watching. Right. And he keeps on also making us believe what we pretty much know now.
He is not in charge. Listen to this. Cut five. With that, I'll take your questions. I've been given a list of people to call on here.
Reuters, Jeff Mason. All right. You're going to listen. Come on.
He keeps saying that. I got to shut up. I'm going to get mad.
I'm going to get myself in trouble. I mean, I don't know why people aren't more upset about that. I mean, on top of everything else, we have a right to know who's actually making the decisions.
I mean, the missiles launch tomorrow. Who's going to get that phone call? And they just keep deflecting these questions or they're just not asking them at all.
It's clearly not him. And this is something that I tried to raise when I covered Biden on the campaign trail in 2020. And, you know, sort of other people in the press court didn't want to hear it. But it's an incredibly important issue, don't you think? Absolutely. So, Matt, what did you pick up in 2020? Do you see a big difference? You're really not covering him every day from what he is in 2024? Yeah, he's much worse now. But there were very serious signs back in 2020.
And I had covered him in 2008 as well. So, you know, he had a lot of problems, especially when dealing with audience members. You know, when you would go on the campaign trail in places like Iowa, people would ask him relatively harmless questions, and he would lose his temper. He would poke them in the chest. He would, you know, challenge them to push up contests, to insult them.
You know, he would forget what state he was in. His emotional affect was all over the place. And then I think the biggest sign was that he would he would misrepresent or lie about his positions about things like the war in Iraq. But it was now clear that he didn't know that he was doing that. Whereas before it seemed intentional. And I think that was the big hint that there was something something very bad happening.
So I always think about a guy like you who's just calling balls and strikes. You were watching Jake Tapper actually act like Sean Hannity, pulling up clips, finding stories. In fact, Eric, I hate to do this to you, but is there the Chuck Todd from yesterday? All of a sudden, all these media members are finding all the problems with the presentation that President Biden is giving. And now we're behind the scenes that his staff is afraid of him, afraid to tell him any bad news.
And then I listen to Chuck Todd say this and think this is going to make him look good. Listen, I had a cabinet secretary two years ago. Right. OK, two years ago.
All out of the blue asked me. Do you really think he's got he can't run again like he can't run again like this? And I said, well, you have more interaction with him than I do. And they said. I don't have a lot of interaction with him. This is a pretty senior cabinet secretary. So and this was two years ago.
Two years ago, he held on to the story. He was host of Meet the Press on Sunday. You think he would have been able to squeeze that in the anti-Trump rhetoric to January six questions?
By the way, something of concern, an esteemed member of the cabinet told me that the president doesn't meet with them and doesn't really is failing to the point where he doesn't think he could run for reelection. Is that astounding that he's not aware enough to know how bad he looks? It is astounding, but it's incredibly revealing, isn't it?
I mean, I think I think they've been out of the business of being actual journalists for so long that they don't realize how that sounds to ordinary audiences. You have an obligation as soon as somebody tells you something like that, you've either got to find a way to get that story out, even if your source doesn't want you to do it. You can't just let that go and then bring it up two years later. That's absolutely crazy.
Now, you're just as responsible as anyone else is. And the fact that they're all turning on him now and, you know, doing these aggressive interviews, which they never did before. Right.
What is that? I mean, it's incredible that they don't know. At least Biden has an excuse. He's losing his mind, you know, whereas these folks don't.
Right. But, you know, the whole thing is astounding. They want to pretend as if we didn't pick up the change in tone. I watched Jake Tapper. I mean, he was I thoroughly thought I wrote this. I said I think he stole Sean Hannity's teleprompter because there was no difference in their openings, except for it was a different time of day. And I was struck by this Washington Post op ed today.
I'm sure you were, too, written by Megan McArdle. He said she said, quote, We should do this is the name is how the media sleepwalked into Biden's debate disaster. And she calls for more diversity in the newsroom. And I know you're thinking more Asians, more Hispanics, more women, no more conservatives.
Interesting. She said, We should not do this for the benefit of conservative journalists or politicians, but for the benefit of our readers. When our newsrooms lap silently support one party, our readers miss much of the story.
In this case, nearly all of it. We need conservatives inside this building helping us overcome our natural biases instead of outside complaining about them. We owe our readers. We owe our country nothing less.
Sounds like you. Yeah, yeah, that absolutely makes sense. She's she's absolutely right.
Megan and I used to argue about financing 15 years ago, but she's she's she's completely right here. And it's not an issue of ideology. It's an issue of fact. If you go back to 2016, the New York Times was under tremendous criticism after the election because they miss called it because they told their their readers over and over again, there's no way this is ever going to happen.
Donald Trump will never get elected. They miss called the nomination. And their response was to hire Brett Stevens, but they never really made structural changes. And again, it's not about making your readers more or less happy about the tone of the report of the reports. It's about being, you know, being correctly informed.
And they just they missed that story and this story because they just aren't they don't know anybody who cares enough about it. Matt, would there be a freedom, a free press if Barry Weiss didn't get so fed up with The New York Times? She went and did her own thing because if she brought up questions like that and she is not a conservative, she was basically ostracized. I mean, this remember the Tom Cotton story where they asked him what he would do with the rioters.
He said, I would call in the National Guard and they a lot of people walked out. They had an insurrection because how dare you let Tom Cotton, a sitting senator, write a conservative column? And that's really the ripple effect gave us the free press, right? Well, right. And what happened there in that in that particular incident was really important because now editors are afraid.
You know, once they saw what happened to James Bennett, who lost his job after the Tom Cotton episode, now they all know what the score is. They all know that if they cross their own staff and the staff doesn't like the things that they publish, that they may lose their jobs and somebody is going to backdoor them and go and go to the publisher and they're going to end up being fired. And you can't have that situation.
This is why editors are put in charge is precisely to make these tough calls and to defy sometimes your reporters and force them to report on what's true and maybe what they don't like. And that's that system got broken down in the last six or seven years. That is the sound of an expensive car repair about to happen. And to prevent breaking the bank with your out of warranty vehicle, you should call CarShield, America's number one automotive protection company. CarShield has helped save drivers big dollars on car repairs.
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That's 8002040239. So I feel terrible for this black talk show host at the small station that President Biden called into. Evidently, they gave her eight questions to choose from.
She chose four and asked the questions. Now, you wouldn't have done that. I wouldn't have done that.
But you'd picture this. The city reporter host has gets a call from the White House. The president wants to come on, made bad judgment.
She got fired. I don't know if the president called and apologized for using the questions, but the White House try and manipulate a small station. And then we find out this Wisconsin radio station was asked to scrub and edit two parts of an interview that they did on delayed tape, one of which talked, screwed up the story about Donald Trump and the Central Park Five. And the other one said he's had more than double black cabinet members than anybody else in history. And they said both those things were, well, don't make the president look good.
So get rid of them. And they did. What about that pressure for the White House? And what about what they are insisting of, especially a time when the scrutiny is so great?
You just can't have that situation at all. One of the things, the big things that's changed in the business, and Brian, I'm sure you're aware of this, too, is that in the past, when the White House or a powerful member of Congress, when they were upset about an article, they might call, but they would be very polite. They would say, we think you got this wrong.
Would you consider making this correction? Now they call up and they give orders. And there's been a dramatic kind of change in tone because there's constant communication between, you know, the White House and the senior editors at big newspapers. And they really act like they have a right to come in and tell you editorially what to do. The only time they should ever be calling at all is when there's an issue of fact. And even then, they only get to ask. They don't get to tell you what to do, you know. And these media outlets, they've lost all sense of independence. They don't understand that that's where all their power comes from, is the ability to tell these institutions no. And that is a tragic thing for the whole business.
There is. Today, and this, Philip, feeds into your column. It turns out Hillary Clinton, at a closed door fundraiser with a venture capitalist, she mocked the fact that Joe Biden's old and addled, said it reminds me of when a senior citizen, you just got to take away their car keys. And ultimately, then everyone laughed. And ultimately she said it's going to be up to people closest to him or their family to decide to push Joe Biden out. But that's her view of Joe Biden. You write, could this be a Hillary Trump too?
Do you really believe that? So very quietly, we've started to see her name appear in news stories. Politico published a poll by a firm called Bendison and Amandie that showed her outperforming really any of the rumored possible replacements for Biden. She actually leads Trump by two points in one poll they conducted.
The Hilda story on that as well. So even though she's kind of been kept out of the news, I think probably some editors didn't want to scare the public with the idea that she would be returning to the lineup. But the fact is that she leads one of the two main power centers in the Democratic Party, the other being led by Barack Obama.
And she's the candidate who probably has the most name recognition of anybody in America, which is going to be crucial when there's only four months left. So I think it's a real possibility. I don't have any inside information on that, but I would be shocked if that's not considered, at least. Wow. Here's Howard Enten of CNN.
Listen to this. Cut 17. Vice president is polling better against Donald Trump than Joe Biden is. Look, overall, what do we see? We see versus Biden. We see that Donald Trump is ahead by three points.
But against Harris, this is nationally, we see a tie. Among independents, Donald Trump leads Joe Biden by six points. But among independents, the vice president is ahead by a point over Donald Trump. So she does better in the center of the electorate.
She does better overall. Your thoughts about that match up, which if Trump if if Biden does step aside, you got to think it's going to be her. Well, I think there's a strong argument to be made that the delegates that belong to Joe Biden would belong to Kamala Harris if he were to step aside. So she would if she wants to, she could probably be the nominee if he steps aside.
But I saw Harris, but the vice president Harris on the campaign trail in 2019 and 2020. There were several different moments where the press kind of threw their weight behind her and seemingly in the hope that she would become the front runner. And rotors on the Democratic side overwhelmingly rejected her each time she was completely non viable as a national candidate. She's really not good at that. She's good at debating, but not at campaigning.
I just can't see them winning. She might run, but I don't I don't see that she would be a candidate. Right. And but if she goes and grabs a Governor Shapiro or Governor Whitmer in a battleground state in the Midwest, you wonder if it makes it more formidable. I talked to Trump the other day and he just said, I'm worried about the issues. He goes, I'm running against the issues, not against a person. And when you think about what's happening in Eastern Europe and the Middle East, what's happening at the border, what's happening with inflation, that's what he wants to run against.
So sure. Yeah. But she would be kind of a perfect candidate for him, I think, as well, though. I mean, she's kind of a continent party insider. You know, she's wearing a five thousand dollar suit on BET talking about how she's out there in these streets. I mean, come on. No, she's she's she's the sort of insider that is perfect for Trump.
And that's why I think they would they would do better to nominate. And Matt Taibio is perfect for the show. Thanks so much, Matt. Have a great weekend. All right. You too, Brian.
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