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Visit Shopify.com to upgrade your selling today. That our strength is our diversity. We've been talking about this for years as a country of immigrants, and we let them define the issue on immigration. We let them define the issue on DNI, DEI, and we let them define what woke is. We got ourselves in this mess because we weren't bold enough to stand up and say, you damn right we're proud of these policies.
We're going to put them in and we're going to execute them. So every higher up in the Democratic Party just passed out and having heard that because it looks like Tim Walz has learned nothing from the election as if it was just an aberration. Everything would have went great except for they lost and ran on the wrong stuff. Go figure. Joining us now to discuss this and so much more, the inside story with what happened in the last election fight inside the wildest battle for the White House, Jonathan Allen and Amy Parnes join us. Welcome, guys. Hey, Brian. Hey, Brian.
Hey, Jonathan, I guess I'll start with you. Your thoughts. Did Tim Walz write, we should have just ran more on DEI? Is that the issue? Is that your takeaway after you finished the book?
No, that's insane. I think one of the big contrasts in this election is that Donald Trump understood that Americans, particularly those swing voters that were out there, were worried about their physical security in terms of crime, in terms of immigration. They were worried about their economic security in terms of inflation and again, immigration. And the Democrats don't even understand the connection between immigration and the economy and immigration. They don't talk like they understand that. And then you've got the Democrats over there and they were talking about all kinds of other issues. They're talking about their belief that the democracy is going to end if Trump is elected. They're talking about abortion. They're talking about DEI. And they've got their heads in the sand and Tim Walz still has his head in the sand.
And as long as they keep their heads in the sand, they're going to keep getting their butts kicked. Amy, how did he get picked? Can you bring us inside that, that, uh, that poor process? So I think Kamala Harris really wanted someone who was a loyalist, someone who she connected with. And I think that she felt the most comfortable with him. Um, I think Josh Shapiro, a lot of Democrats wanted Shapiro to run, but I also think that he was problematic. He has his own, she was worried about his own political aspirations.
And then let's not forget Israel. And, um, you know, the concerns about the left, they were already, the party was already kind of in shambles. They were trying to galvanize and come together.
And that a lot of people were saying that would have been the wrong pick for the moment. So my takeaway, and you guys can both answer this, my takeaway from this and I'm got, I got through maybe 120 pages of it. I just, uh, downloaded myself. So it's going to increase your sales guys. Thank you very much.
I did not wait for my free copy. I'm going to San Antonio this weekend for the final four. And I'm going to, I'm going to read your book on the Alamo on my, on the plane, on the way to, uh, I think that's the least you could do, John.
All right. Uh, so my, my takeaway is that Joe Biden couldn't do the job and wasn't doing the job and that people were concerned behind the scenes and they, uh, judging by some of the descriptions here, I'm surprised he survived the four years. What was your takeaway as you began to research what was going on? Because John, I saw you in the hall yesterday and I said, what was the reaction when people would point out to the white house that Joe Biden seems to be failing, doesn't know how to leave a stage, walk up steps, uh, and, and he doesn't seem engaged. They would be angry at you. Oh yeah, absolutely. Every time, uh, any of us and Amy and I both experienced this, anytime any of us wrote, uh, anything about his mental acuity and, and even about his age, even about the physical parts, not, you know, let alone the mental parts, we just get reamed by white house staffers.
It's like they had a gaslighting machine and they had a fan in front of it and they just keep pouring that gas light at us. Um, and, and it made it difficult. I think some of us were able to get at pieces of it, but nobody, you know, they hit Joe Biden. He was not available to the press. He was not available to people who weren't friendly to him.
And over time, the cocoon around him, uh, shrunk and shrunk and shrunk. And what we were able to do in this book, and I hope folks will, uh, will read it because there's a real danger to the country in this kind of behavior, um, that I think, uh, has been a little undersold, uh, out there in the, in the sort of public sphere, which is, uh, the president of the United States is in decline. He's the most powerful man in the world and the people around him who see the decline are the last people in the world that are going to blow a whistle. Uh, they owe their jobs to him. Uh, they have invested in him, you know, their entire careers.
They have, they have a nice deal as it goes. And they know that if they tell him something he doesn't want to hear, particularly with Biden, um, it's true, a lot, a lot of presidents, but particularly with Biden, if they say something to him, he doesn't want to hear, they're going to get cast out of the inner circle. So they, they protect, uh, and, uh, in this case, what we saw on debate night between Trump and Biden, even if that was the worst moment and who knows if it was that Joe Biden never had, I think it was scary to the American people, regardless of party, that the leader of the free world, the man with his finger on the nuclear button, uh, had, uh, you know, such problems with cogency, such problems with coherence, uh, and the white house, uh, you know, the folks in the white house did everything they could to make it unclear, uh, to model that, to make it seem like Joe Biden was in control of his faculties when he clearly, at least at times was not. And as we report in the book, you can see this evidence there.
Um, you know, there he, he's met with a makeup artist when he travels, that's his first order of business every day. You know, he comes to, he, uh, he invites members of Congress to the congressional picnic a year before the debate and he can't recognize Eric Swalwell, a guy he ran against for president in 2020. So we document all of this in the book. Were you writing the book then? Were you writing this book before the debate? No, I, we, we weren't even going to do another election book. And you know, we, we wrote shattered as you've read. We, we wrote another book called lucky about the 2020 race.
We weren't going to do one. And then our publisher said, you have to do one. Um, this race is just too, um, explosive and, and it really was. So we jumped in right away and we dug in and we, we started talking to people and people started opening up to us for this book, just how bad it was for Biden. And Brian, if I could just jump in here, we're going to see some, some other books come out about this and, and what we've seen in some of the excerpts, um, are the people who were involved in this really covering their own butts.
So I think that, uh, you know, I mean, this is the book that we're, where you're going to see, you know, what really happened, how the Democrats cannibalized themselves in, uh, you know, in real time. And, and we dug into that, you know, starting shortly after the debate and, and got to talk to pretty much everyone we wanted to, uh, in the Harris, Biden and Trump orbits. Well, maybe we'll even pull up the clip on Joe Scarborough, but I want you to hear Mike LaRosa who did communications for the first lady. He brought us behind the scenes here.
Let's listen. President's team was scared to death, uh, impromptu, unscripted, uh, unrehearsed, unpracticed, unchoreographed, anything. They couldn't compete for the detention economy. They just couldn't do it. They didn't have any idea. And they didn't have the vessel either in Biden, uh, by the way, who would have done anything.
He loves, he loves doing stuff. It was the orbit that did not trust their candidate. They couldn't trust their candidate. They couldn't trust the president.
He likes being in the center of attention, but they couldn't put him out there. So they knew, they knew the country was at risk. They didn't care.
Yeah. I mean, and we do tell this in our, in our other book, lucky in 2020. I mean, they started this campaign by that campaign by kind of hiding him in his basement.
He, they built him a studio there, so he didn't need a campaign. In this book, you see how it got even worse. You know, how he, how people were, um, noticing things even way, way, way ahead of the debate. So I want, and by the way, uh, before I move on, John, you mentioned that people are writing books to cover their butts.
Are you talking about Jake Tapper? I'm not, I didn't name a single person there, Brian. I would just say that this is the book that is, um, absolutely. And I know I'm not talking about the author.
Let me be clear. I'm not talking about the off author covering their butt. I'm talking about all of the sources. You're going to see stuff from the Obama camp, from the, you know, from the various other principles camps, from the Biden camp where people are telling authors things that cover their own butts. They're coming after us right now saying we didn't fact check. We're not there to, you know, fact check stuff with the Biden campaign, the Biden people. The Biden people wanted us to, to send them a manuscript and then let them tell us what was true and what was not. When in fact we were talking to Biden people that on, on background, not with their names attached to it, actually told us what was going on.
And we felt that was more important for the historical record than letting a white house that gaslit the country decide which things were true and which weren't in our manuscript. I'm Ben Domenech, Fox news contributor, editor at large at the spectator and editor of the transom.com daily newsletter. I'm inviting you to join in depth conversations every week on the Ben Domenech podcast. Listen and follow now at Fox news podcast.com. I mean, the one thing that's pretty clear in 2016 that Joe Biden never got over not being tapped to run. He tapped Hillary Clinton. Did Barack Obama to replace him? Not, uh, not him and his Hunter had just died at that. Then he said they thought he was mourning. So he tapped the secretary, former secretary of state. Biden never got over that.
But I'm also looking at this one story that you guys Chronicle. And I remember Jackie, uh, I think her name is, uh, uh, were, were, uh, uh, right. So she passes away and was working on a hunger bill. He forgets that she's dead and asked for her in the audience. And he says a couple of days earlier, he had searched a crowd for an Indiana Congresswoman to credit her for the co-sponsoring legislation, creating a conference, a conference on hunger. Hey Jackie, are you here?
You right. Where's Jackie. Now she had died.
He felt bad. So he invites the family to the white house. Enter Kevin McCarthy. So, so you Chronicle this story. I guess Kevin told you, it says the white house minority leader tagged along as Biden led the tour group down to the white house swimming pool and to the, to the changing rooms.
What the blank is going on? McCarthy thought. What could he be so interesting about the locker room? Biden tried the door. It was locked. He needed a secret service agent to unlock it inside. There was nothing more exciting than two dressing rooms. McCarthy thinking had just become a temporary staff minder for the present prompted buying to head back into the white house. The tour continued to a small office. Biden had set up next to the oval office, a chair and a valet, a wrinkled blue shirt hung in the valet.
He pointed out a painting that he liked. He said, wow, this president is not with it. Can you imagine this? All of a sudden Kevin McCarthy has got to save the president from a tour into a locker room. All of a sudden the speaker of the house thinks he's got to, you know, to, to, you know, in the interest of the country, or at least in the interest of the moment, act as a staffer to the president of the United States, who given this, this historical building of the white house decides the best place to show Jackie Wolorski's family are the changing rooms outside the white house pool. And Jill Biden's like, please don't do that.
Please don't go there. It's like an episode of The Office. So, and you said, uh, Hey Kevin, you go, Kevin, ask, ask me why I paint, uh, I have a painting on Lincoln. Biden said before answering the, his own question is because we've never been at a time like this since the, uh, since the civil war. And then McCarthy thinks to himself, this guy literally has lost his mind.
So I guess he, he helped you out. You also write Ari Emanuel confronted claim about the president's fitness. He says it's grossly irresponsible for someone of Biden's age is already clearly slowing down to run for president again.
Guys, this is unbelievable. Well, this is already going on. This is Ari Emanuel who, uh, folks might remember the TV show entourage. The agent Ari is based on Ari Emanuel, but what's most important about this is Ari Emanuel is the brother of Rahm Emanuel, the sitting ambassador to Japan under Biden. Uh, look, I am certain those brothers talk, uh, I am and Rahm Emanuel was certainly not in a position to tell Ron claim that, uh, at least publicly that Biden shouldn't run, but Ari Emanuel sure did, uh, at this Aspen festival, uh, that, uh, this, uh, gathering that Ari Emanuel runs every year. And, um, you know, it's, uh, they were getting, the white house was getting pushed back from other Democrats who didn't see Biden all the time, but saw enough, just like the rest of the country, saw enough to know that the president, uh, had more than lost his fastball, was struggling to find a changeup. And Brian, we also, we also detail, um, you know, he's at events, he's at a fundraising event and people, and you know, he trails off and he forgets what he's going to say. And one of the attendees at the fundraiser says, I don't know if he's going to make it, he's going to die.
So, but you gave him money anyway, and you let him continue to run. Uh, guys, what, what is the situation right now with, between Barack Obama and Joe Biden and what is behind George Clooney's editorial? Who told them to write that? I mean, their relationship is not good right now, Brian. Um, we report in the book also Nancy Pelosi. He, he's so angry at her.
He'll never forgive her for what she did here. But Barack Obama and Joe Biden have had a pretty contentious relationship, especially in the post-presidency for Obama. Um, you know, he was the guy who he, he chose Hillary Clinton obviously to run over, to run in 2016. He didn't think he could win in 2020. And then in this race, he had his, he had his fingerprints all over, you know, trying to get him out and trying to lobby behind the scenes, trying to feel out what other lawmakers were thinking.
Um, this is something that, um, obviously will continue to fracture their relationship. So I want you to hear what Newt Gingrich said, and this is how I feel in reading your book and hearing these stories, uh, cut 23. Both the House and the Senate should impanel special committees to just focus on this issue. Who was the president? Who lied about the president? Who made the decisions as though they were president? And what is the constitutional implication of having people who are not the president making these kinds of decisions?
I mean, I think this is a very serious, profound, historic moment, not a political moment. We know how to be a truly bipartisan committee, truly bipartisan effort, because all of us ought to have an interest as Americans in knowing what happened and how could we have been lied to for a minimum of two or two and a half years? We were being consistently, systematically lied to. Do you agree? I mean, would you, I mean, that's not your decision in Congress, but would you like to see an investigation?
Yes, I think that it is important. I think the speaker's absolutely right. I think it's important to understand exactly what was going on in the White House.
And the best way for the public to understand that is to have, uh, is to have people on the record under oath talking about what happened. And the reason that I say that Brian, and I think, you know, look at speaker Gingrich, uh, says it's a nonpartisan, should be bipartisan. And we know speaker Gingrich is, is, uh, a former Republican speaker of the house. He is, but I, he's right about that, that both parties and everybody in America should be concerned about what was actually going on at the White House. I don't know if it's scarier, if other people were making decisions or if Joe Biden was making the decisions.
Lastly, we're with guys before I let you go, because we're up against a break. What was behind the Clooney? Who was behind the Clooney editorial? Who told him to write that? Well, there was a lot of suspicion that the Obama folks are behind it.
Um, and it sounds a lot like Obama's voice and people that talk to us kind of hinted at that. Um, but you know, they tried to kill it and we detailed that in the book. They, they, they, Jeffrey Katzenberg, the Biden people tried to kill it and went after him really hard.
Jeffrey Katzenberg, uh, leading that charge and they weren't successful, obviously. Right. Uh, there was no winners, right? I mean, there's just no winners. I guess, uh, Trump is a winner, but, uh, our country definitely did not have a president guys. Great job.
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