Biden Insider Michael LaRosa Tells All
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Hi, I'm Tara Palmieri. I'm Puck's senior political correspondent, and this is Somebody's Gotta Win. I've got a really juicy episode for you all about the Biden administration. There's a new book that's about to come out. It's called Original Sin. It's been written by Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson. They claim in their book that they have an unflinching and explosive account of Biden's campaign and the desperate attempts to try to hide his deterioration.

Well, I just so happen to be holding a seminar for the Science Institute at American University, where I'm a fellow, with a Biden insider, Michael LaRosa. He has been working for the Biden family for many, many years. He no longer works for them, but he worked for Jill Biden in the White House and on the campaign trail. And I got to ask him about a lot of the allegations in the book and whether there was a real attempt to

to hide Joe Biden and his condition and get him to run. And I've got to say, Michael is very candid and admits that Biden's press team was essentially gaslighting the media. Definitely hang around and listen to this conversation. Unfortunately, it is shorter than I would have liked because we lost audio in the middle of the seminar. But I'm putting up clips

that I got from people who were taking videos of the seminar on their phones. And I'm putting them up on YouTube at Tara Palmieri. That's at T-A-R-A-P-A-L-M-E-R-I. I'm putting them on Instagram and I'm putting them on TikTok, but you can follow me anywhere at Tara Palmieri. That's at T-A-R-A-P-A-L-M-E-R-I. And I'd love to hear what you think about this interview. It is a juicy one. But before we get into that,

I just want to give you an update about what the vibe is like in Washington right now. After Elon Musk sent out that email last weekend, please respond with the five things you did last week or be fired. I can confidently say that everyone in Washington, D.C. is pretty much frozen in fear. My phone has been blowing up all week with officials from across the government, and it's always the same story. They're not sure what to do, and the stress is making them actually less efficient at work.

Go figure. And it all sounds the same. Oh, my God, am I going to get fired? Do I respond to this Elon Musk email? And it's because the department heads, the cabinet secretaries that Donald Trump picked, his closest allies like FBI Director Kash Patel, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth,

They've all told them not to respond because what they're working on could be possibly classified or CCing their managers would expose the entire org chart to hackers and scammers. And the Chinese were trying to figure out who reports to who so they can mine the system. It's a national security threat, so they're not sure what to do. But at the same time, they're getting a follow up from Elon Musk saying respond or be fired at the Health and Human Services Department website.

Now, this didn't come from RFK Jr., but an administrator warned, don't respond with any of the drugs, studies, or trials that you're working on. Keep it vague and assume that the email will be hacked. Yeah, because it's one email and it all goes back to one place, the Office of Personnel and Management, a place that has actually been hacked before, as recently as 2015.

And so basically there are these 22 year old doge heads that are calling around and to the departments and everyone is scared for their job. And one of these people said to me, we're not supposed to say this is a Gestapo, but it surely feels like it. So there's a lot of fear. And I know there's not a lot of sympathy for government workers, but these are not deep state bureaucrats. These are people that have jobs and they just want to know, do I respond to this email or do I not? Am I going to get fired for not doing it? What do I do?

Now, I also want to talk about the publicity stunt that happened on Thursday. Pam Bondi, the attorney general, decides to hand out a bunch of

binders that supposedly have classified documents on Jeffrey Epstein. Now, I have been covering the Jeffrey Epstein story for many, many years. As some of you remember, I hosted two investigative Jeffrey Epstein podcasts, Power of the Maxwells and Broken Jeffrey Epstein, which I suggest you check out. They're great crime binges. But I've been covering this story for a long time, and I know who's released the flight logs. One pilot, Larry Vesosky, who testified in the Maxwell case. And I know who's

He released his flight logs. And then there's another pilot who didn't release his. And it's unclear if they even exist. Now, if they do exist, the FBI would have them. But I was just very surprised to hear that the FBI had more documents that they would actually be releasing at this point. And lo and behold, it becomes apparent that this is all re-released information.

None of it's new. It's all in the public domain. And it's caused a lot of backlash on the right. Anna Paulina Luna, you know, that conservative congresswoman, she's saying this is not what we wanted. We wanted more. And even the National Pulse editor, right?

Rahim Kassam. He writes for a right-leaning news site and he said, it's embarrassing for the White House. And it was a failed attempt to curry social media favor by Attorney General Pam Bondi. Yeah, smoke and mirrors is just not going to work on the Epstein story. I can't imagine that they're going to pursue this even further considering how much egg has already gotten on Pam Bondi. But what was sort of interesting because they basically just re-relisted Jeffrey Epstein's little black book is that

Donald Trump's name was in it. As we know, Trump was friends with Jeffrey Epstein. Epstein used to go to Mar-a-Lago. They once fought over real estate, and that was the reason that their friendship broke up. In fact, Donald Trump had been quoted saying that Epstein liked his girls young. So yeah,

this is exactly the place you want to be going. Obviously, there are a lot of Democrats on those fight logs like Bill Clinton. So it certainly doesn't make the Democratic Party look very good. But there were a lot of people in Jeffrey Epstein's little black book. After all, he prided himself on being very well connected. And now on to Michael LaRosa on how the Biden team tried frantically to keep his deterioration away from the public.

Thank you all for joining me. We are actually doing a live podcast taping on my election podcast, Somebody's Gotta Win, which has evolved into more of a political show. But I think it's another good time to look back on how much podcasts really drove the message this election cycle. And Michael obviously has been involved in media strategy for decades now, so he's got a lot of insight. But first, I've got to ask him some news-breaking questions because there's a new book that just came out

It is called Original Sin. It's by Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson. And the book...

premise is that it's an unsparing look at Biden's, quote, decline, its cover up and his disastrous choice to run again. That led to a campaign of, quote, gaslighting and denial. And they call it a Greek tragedy that sealed the fate of the 2024 election. And it basically creates the impression that there was a cabal of insiders around them that were covering this all up from the American people.

I've got to ask you, because you work so closely with the family and Jill Biden, do you think this is an accurate representation of what happened in 2024? Well, I haven't read the book yet. OK, but based on the the preview. Well, the title, I mean, the title, what I just read. Yeah, those are a couple of things, I think.

There are many things that are true in my view. Cover up to me is a little hard, a little harsh, a little probably exaggerated, I would say. Okay.

Look, every politician, everybody, every human being tries to cover up age. We all do. We all wear, you know, we wear makeup on TV.

politicians, John Kennedy wore makeup for the first time in a TV debate, which was iconic. And his opponent, Richard Nixon, was actually chastised because he didn't wear makeup. And if you listened to that presidential debate in 1960 on the radio, most people thought Nixon won the debate, but because Kennedy didn't.

television and image. He looked better when he was younger. He wasn't sweaty. He went tanning. He got tan. He went to his home in Florida and in Palm Beach a couple days before. He just presented and looked well. Okay, so back to body. Okay, makeup and cognitive decline are very different. We were always, from day one, cognizant that age was going to be

Age was an issue. Always. From the moment I joined the campaign in the fall of 2019, when we were broke and had no money and we were getting our butts kicked in debates and we had roommates.

it was always a problem. And I was quoted in the lead graph of the Wall Street Journal, that piece that Annie Alinsky wrote a couple weeks ago. And I love Annie Alinsky and she's wonderful. She's a good reporter. I felt like a little bit like my quote may have been misconstrued because it was a lead and it was me saying, you know, that I was asked to walk back.

something I confirmed to a journalist in Iowa, a local TV or a local, um, print reporter for the Des Moines register was doing a profile piece on, uh, Jill Biden, who I worked for. I was her traveling press secretary. And he asked me a question. Um, I believe I just confirmed the number of counties that she had visited. Uh, and, uh,

When I mentioned that in the car to not Jill's in the car, but my my my boss, the chief of staff, he wasn't happy because they were hyper aware that making you know, if she was going to more counties than he was, that it would.

sort of provoke more discussion about his age. So she just looked like she had more stamina, essentially. Yeah. And that she was the one campaigning. Yeah. And look, the spouse is a supporting actor. I was not thinking about the boys team. I was thinking about my only, like my, my job was to, you know, promote my boss, but

But I was still, you know, at the time learning that this is a supporting. I worked for a senator, a speaker's office and a congresswoman, two senators and a congresswoman. And I'm used to sort of like working for promote everything the principal is doing. In this case, the principal was the spouse, who, by the way, will probably be.

and this book will probably make it very clear, I think, that she will go down as one of the most influential spouses, first ladies we've ever had because of the age thing. Well, that's exactly what, you know, the story was with Reagan, FDR. There have always been stories of the aging president. The wife has to swoop in, and that's obviously where there's concern. And then you have...

Dr. Jill Biden sitting there at a cabinet meeting. And it was funny because I've compared Elon Musk to a presidential spouse just because there is such a bond between them. And, you know, he's there at the cabinet meeting. And who was the last person who was at a cabinet meeting? It was Jill Biden. To be clear, though, for accuracy. Uh-huh.

Jill was at that cabinet meeting because she was speaking on behalf of her initiative, the Women Health Initiative. But you get the optics. I do. But it was actually Rosalind Carter who actually did make it routine to sit in on cabinet meetings. And when I heard an interview with Rosalind Carter about why she did that, it was because she...

She wanted to know how her husband was talking about things and how his secretaries were talking about things because she would go out on the road and stump for him. And it made sense. And also that's kind of the model we adapted. She didn't sit in on cabinet meetings, but we were. Yeah, but now you can definitely look at. We were an integrated part of the West Wing because we.

We didn't have our own agenda. We went and championed his agenda all around the country. And unlike Hillary, unlike other previous first ladies, she, her, her only, the only issue that she wanted to work on was giving credit to her husband.

Okay. So that's a long, a long way around your question is to say that the coverup is probably a little too harsh. Okay. What they say, and I'm going to quote another line from the preview, Biden, his family and his team let their self-interest and fear of another Trump term justify trying to put in at times addled old man in the white, in the oval office for four more years. Would you say it was solved? There are some things that are true. I mean, like the gaslighting, there was a lot of, uh,

denial of the polling, all of the polling in 2023, in the spring of 2023, and then the fall of 2023, all of the polling showed that there was no real significant depth of support from his own party, let alone independents and Republicans. And he had been tied or within the margin of error of Trump, who had by that point been

you know, how many court hearings do you have or how many indictments? I don't know. But the fact that he was so close, it was always a problem, but they were kind of in denial or they,

or at least they, and I will use the term gaslight because that's what they were doing. The campaign, former colleagues, the message to everybody was to make sure that you tell people it's too early. It's too early. These polls don't mean anything. Well, it became too early and these polls don't mean anything for about a year and a half. The polls, so the numbers never moved. Right. And, yeah,

by denying the data that was out there publicly, by denying the really insightful journalism that, that, um, the New York times, you, the access, there was no access. Well, they were not only not providing access, but that's another whole topic, but didn't that by denying and undermining all of the journalism, the free press, um, and, um,

They were actually demeaning a lot of the people. But it was the data denial that really bothered me because we loved polling when we were running because we were always ahead. All of a sudden, because they're always behind, the polls are meaningless and we're attacking the New York Times and we're attacking... And then we attack the New York Times coverage because, oh, well, we're going to go on Howard Stern.

We're not going to talk to the New York Times. Well, okay, they were doing it out of spite. But what they didn't understand and what they still don't get is that, and we'll get to this topic, is that it has to be all. It can't be either or. You can't choose to alienate

certain constituencies and certain audiences just for the sake of pandering to another one? The answer is podcasts. Yes. Local media. Yes, absolutely. Legacy media like the New York Times and NBC News or broadcast. Absolutely. And call your daddy or it's not the podcast that she would call her daddy. Call her daddy. Sorry.

you know, new untraditional unconventional media, digital TV shows. Uh, by the way, in some digital TV shows and YouTube shows have more viewers than cable or broadcast or legacy media. Anyway, the point is that, that, um, they did do a lot of gaslighting of people. And I think, um, if you were watching MSNBC, you probably believed them. And, um,

We're probably pretty shocked. But if you were if you were consuming information, consuming data and looking at it objectively and trying to interpret it and process it objectively, then none of it was surprising. OK, can I just ask you bluntly? Sorry, I'm not concerned about him running for reelection in 2020. Yes. And I'll say this.

When I got to the White House on day one, it became pretty clear to me. You know, I think I went in, first of all, I was just happy to be there, excited. I was in this great job where I was just traveling all over with the First Lady and the President. And it was amazing. I was starry-eyed. I had wanted to work in the White House since I was probably five years old when I memorized the President's from a placemat.

And it was incredible to be there. I used to drive my boss home every night, my chief of staff, because we lived in the same building. And I remember him saying something about, oh, well, that's after the reelect. That's after, that's a second term thing. I said, wait, what?

You believed the bridge. Well, it wasn't that I believed the bridge. It was just that I just assumed, kind of like Barack Obama probably assumed he was picking Biden knowing or thinking he wasn't going to run again. I kind of thought, you know, in 2020, 2021, that this was going to be like, okay, we're going to pass the torch to another generation of Democrats and let them handle a Trump 2.0 campaign. But I was...

I was, you know, brought to reality pretty fast. Like, why not? Why wouldn't you run? Yeah. Why? Why not? It was why wouldn't you? I'm like, well, because it felt like in 2020 that we barely won the nomination, that Democrats were kind of

Not yearning for Joe Biden. They were kind of either stuck with him or they were eating their vegetables and saying, he's our best shot, not a socialist from Vermont. He's our best shot. We're comfortable with him. He's competent. He's earned a lot of goodwill. And ultimately, the problem with deciding to run for reelection again was a misread of our mandate.

That was another episode of Somebody's Gotta Win. I'm your host, Tara Palmieri. If you like this podcast, please subscribe, rate it, share it with your friends. If you like my reporting, please go to puck.news slash Tara Palmieri and sign up for my newsletter, the best and the brightest. You can use the discount code Tara20 for 20% off subscription at Puck. That's uppercase T-A-R-A 20. I'll be back again next week.