How Biden’s Inner Circle Protected Him, With Alex Thompson
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Hi, I'm Tara Palmieri. I'm Puck's senior political correspondent, and this is Somebody's Gotta Win. I am dropping in from vacation again. I know I said I'd be off until July 8th, but alas, wild times we are in right now. So I was lucky enough to get Alex Thompson on the line from Axios. He has been way ahead of the

Biden age story. He has broken stories like on the fact that he has to change his shoes. This is a while back that now we know, you know, Biden wears soft heeled shoes and he has to use the short stairs to get on Air Force One. I mean, it's just for a while. Alex has really been pointing out to the public that, you

He has a lot of difficulties and that we aren't seeing that because we haven't gotten a lot of access to Biden in the press, the public. And Alex has some more great reporting after this debate that has the entire party talking about whether Biden is even capable of running for reelection and frankly, running the country. So Alex, thanks for coming on the show.

But first, I want to ask, can we officially retire the word bedwetters? I sure hope so. I don't think the Biden White House will do it. But I think people will finally just roll their eyes and ignore them when they say it. Yeah, so bedwetting is like a term that they use to dismiss Democrats who are worried about Biden's abilities, right? When they voice concern that, hey, he's been tied in the polls against a convicted felon for about a year. Hey, he...

was looking off into space. He needed to be aided by Obama onto the stage or, hey, there's some things that are a little weird. Like why is he using a teleprompter during a dinner with donors? Why isn't he doing the Super Bowl interview? I wrote a piece about it a while back and I called it the old man in the scene. But Washington for a long time, members of Congress who have had exposure to him, lawmakers and donors and lobbies, they've been quietly saying,

Wait a minute. Are we going to go down with the ship? But now it's louder and louder, but it's not unjustified. I think that's what we all saw this past week. Yeah. And they rationalized it. You know, the last year is just a story of Democrats rationalizing that they weren't seeing what they thought they were seeing or that it wasn't as bad. You know, and part of that is is.

Because the White House keeps a very close inner circle around Biden. There are not many people that see him on a regular, consistent basis every day. So if you see Joe Biden and he has a little bit of a brain fart, like one person told me that he said, oh, I'm going to call this congresswoman's mom. And then the person was like, you called her two weeks ago.

And if you just see him once every month, you can completely rationalize that like, oh, anyone could do that, right? He's doing so many calls every day, every week. And we probably just forgot. And so that has meant that nobody outside that core is seeing him every day. And even though Democrats were nervous, they would just sort of be like, well, it's fine, it's fine. And even after the Robert Herr report came out,

in the transcript of the interview that did show repeated mental lapses. Biden during one of the only like really, in my opinion, tough interviews he's ever done in his entire presidency. You know, they still found a way to rationalize it and think of it as a political hit job. Oh, they villainized Robert Herr because he said that he wouldn't have prosecuted him because he thought that a jury would just see him as an older man who has a bad memory. But before that, Robert

Kerr was considered a pretty solid prosecutor. Both the Democratic senators from Maryland praised him when he was nominated to be U.S. attorney. And I think anyone that watches congressional testimony would see that he was like a pretty serious guy. Now, I think there was probably like some unnecessary snark in his special counsel that seemed maybe a bit gratuitous. But he also had the president on tape.

saying like a few weeks after he left the White House that he had all the classified stuff downstairs. He got it. He could have prosecuted. He's going to prosecute Trump, by the way. His case is still open. Yeah. I mean, Trump's conduct, by the way, is like of a different degree than Joe Biden's. Because he obstructed justice. Yeah. And he like refused to turn over the documents, everything else. But this being said, it's like, you know, I think the White House was very good at

at basically spinning this. There's nothing to see here. This was the first time that Joe Biden was behind a podium with no teleprompter for 90 minutes in a very long time. And

you know, they were going to get what they got. So, you know, Democrats really have no one to blame but themselves because now they have only bad options. Right. You wrote about this actually in Axios. You wrote an entire story about how his close aides have shielded him from people inside and outside of the White House.

since day one. And I thought it was pretty interesting that you have this quote from the deputy photographer Chandler West. He wrote on his Instagram, it's time for Joe to go. I know many of these people and how the White House operates. They will say he has a cold or just experienced a bad night. But for weeks and months in private, they have all said what we saw last night. Joe is not as strong as he was just a couple of years ago, Westbrook. So can you just talk to me about how they've been able to

I mean, it's easy to shield the president, right? He's in the Oval Office. Younger aides aren't going to have access. But it beats into the conspiracy theories that there's like a cabal of lanyards around him that are running the country. Because when they see him, they know that those people knew all along. And they're the ones that are defending, deflecting, calling people bedwetters, essentially gaslighting the press, gaslighting the public. And then they see the president. They're like, wait, what?

You've been saying all along that he works harder than everyone else, that he's sharper than a tack. And in a way, you've like ceded the honesty argument to the Republicans in some ways. There were varying levels of sadness and rage after Thursday night. Sadness, you know, on behalf of people that have known Joe Biden for a long time, that have worked for him going back decades, there was a deep sadness about someone that a lot of them like love and seeing him humiliated.

like that on stage. There was also sadness from political operatives and campaigns because it was like, shit, are we going to get our asses kicked in November because we stuck with this guy? And then there was rage. I was getting a lot of text messages from lawmakers about that. Worried.

because he's been pulling behind the Senate. A lot of these members were up for election in the Senate and in the House. So he was already dragging the party. Yeah, and we don't know yet, but, you know, and I'm not a political strategist, I'm a reporter, but I think when, at least the most recent poll showed that

75 to 80% of the country doesn't think you have the mental capacity to do the job you're running for is probably not a good sign for your election prospects. But the other emotion that I detected, and it was especially acute among some White House officials, was rage.

And in some ways, it's sort of a feeling of being betrayed or lied to because they've been working their asses off for this guy. In some cases, they've been flacking and insisting to all their friends when they go home, is the president with there? And then they've been a validator in their own communities about the president's great. He's completely on top of it. And they see him on Thursday night. I think there was this feeling of like,

Whoa, that's scary. Like beyond, beyond like what's going on in the election, like, is he okay? And why didn't we know? And, you know, that to me, and the reason they didn't know is because of this sort of inner circle that has, uh,

you know, protects them. How do they do it? Okay. So there's, there's sort of like tiers of circles, but I'd say they've been in some of this was, was not like ill-intentioned sort of, you know, conspiratorial. A lot of these habits began during COVID and,

So when they get into the White House, you can only really see, only have a few people in the same room with the president at the same time. But after COVID eased, a lot of those habits continued. That's like the more innocent explanation. But another part of the explanation is that there were a few aides, in particular, Jill Biden's top aide, Anthony Bernal, and one of the other top aides in the White House, Annie Tomasini, who's sort of

A little bit of like not as deputy, but sort of like a wing woman of sorts. And they exercise an incredible amount of control over who the president sees. And that even goes up to the entire, you know, just the normal staff, resident staff in the White House, the people that sort of make the beds and clean the sheets and everything else.

They were so keen on keeping a protective barrier around Joe Biden that they even basically kept the resident staff at arm's length. Essentially, they could be disloyal or weren't to be trusted. They often would send a resident staff home early. They would not let them come up to the rooms. And their one resident staff official said,

basically said there was a deep division between the resident staff and the White House staff, which was really propelled by Anthony. And you've seen a decent amount of people leave the resident staff as a result of that. Wow. Also, let

Let's note that he's given fewer press conferences than any president in modern history. He hasn't allowed the New York Times to have a one-on-one interview with him, which almost every president in modern history has done. Having covered at the Trump White House, we had a ton of access. Sure, we were shouted fake news, abused, and lied to, but there was always access, probably unprecedented amount of access. I mean, from talking to my friends that cover the White House day-to-day,

They don't have that. They might see him coming and going. They shout some questions at him. He sometimes just yells at them certain things. But because there's always a noise behind him, whether it's a helicopter or it's Air Force One, I've been down there before. You really have to listen hard and you can just ignore the press and pretend you're not hearing them at all. So I think there is a moment right now that's happening in Washington where

At least in Washington, people are blaming the aides around him. They're angry, like you said. They're angry at Anita Dunn, Mike Donilon, Steve Ruschetti, Ron Klain, Jill Biden, even his sister Anita, just feeling like they had access to him all along. And they've been reassuring everyone he's vital. He's vigorous. He works harder than I do. And then I read your reporting about how, you know, his day is basically a nine to four. Ten to four.

10 to four, sorry. I had heard this a few years ago from a source. I had a hard time standing it up, but I had heard similarly that like at night, he just watches golf.

And he calls the family. It's not a late night, up all night on the phone with friends. It's really just like a calm evening. They try to keep him as calm as possible and as relaxed and rested, which is something you should be, a state you should be in if you are running the free world. But still, it's not really what you would expect from the top executive in our country. One thing about that is just the 10 to 4 thing. He does do events regularly.

outside his range, but it's very rarely on camera. And part of the reason is, and you just go look at the transcripts, a lot of his sort of worst gaffes, the things that he said that are just sort of head scratching are after 4pm or late into the evening. I remember one of the ones that was really

sort of stunning was just last September, he was at a fundraiser and he was telling the classic story he does about Charlottesville and how it got him interested in running. And then a few minutes later, he repeated the story almost word for word. And people there were a bit shaken.

And then there was just one last month after he did the commencement speech at Morehouse, he flew to Detroit and gave a late night speech. And the White House Transcription Service had to correct him nine times, including weird ones like calling the insurrectionists erectionists.

and all these other things. Should they be changing the transcripts? This is history. They have the original. They do a strikethrough. Okay. So they're not hiding it. In fact, I actually think in this case, it's fairly transparent.

And to your other point about, you know, not doing interviews. I mean, it's not just the New York Times. This president has not done an interview with the New York Times, with Reuters, with Washington Post, with the Wall Street Journal. They've probably given sit-down interviews to maybe five people. It's more than that, but it's not many. Let's talk about Camp David. This was supposed to be, you know, if there's going to be a moment of intervention. This was the past weekend. They're being photographed by Annie Leibovitz for Vogue, which just feels...

off. I don't know who decided that. It just seems out of touch. Is it for Vogue, not Vanity Fair? Oh, sorry. Vanity Fair. Apologies. But still, a Condon magazine, it just seals off. This should be the moment when you're doing damage control and you're putting him on a network to do an interview to prove his competency or to do a press conference to take questions from everyone to prove his competency, not to be in a bunker taking glamour shots for a magazine. Sorry, as

As a reporter, I think I can say that. But what was happening in Camp David this weekend, because I saw some leaks in The New York Times, and it seems like it's coming from the Biden family that they wanted out there, that it's Hunter that's telling him he should run. Are they throwing Hunter on the bus? No, I actually don't think so. I think they're trying to show that even the most vulnerable or the one that would probably be going through the most if Joe Biden continues to run is the one urging him on.

I thought that was the intent behind that leak. And, you know, what happened, to your point, there were former Biden aides that were shocked they did not get him on a Sunday show or on television, you know, very quickly to clean up this disastrous debate performance. Instead, to your point, they had this glamorous photo shoot for Condé Nast's Glossy, which is very...

It was very anti the Biden brand. Yes. Grant and Joe. Yeah. It's, it's very, and you saw, again, they divide it with this morning or Monday morning when, uh, Vogue dropped its August, uh, cover cover star, which is Jill Biden wearing a $5,000 tuxedo dress, which has now turned into a meme where she now has like a nurse's hat on her and they're calling her Dr. Jill Biden as if she's a nurse. I've seen some of the memes. Yeah. Um,

And, you know, I think that profile also struck many people in the Biden world as very tone deaf and odd to even if it was months in the planning, the idea that you wouldn't try to push back the digital dropping of it seemed very odd to people. So it sounds like they're dug in, though. We talked yesterday and I asked you, what do you think? What is the percentage chance that he drops out? And you said, well, tell our audience. Two percent.

And you said this week. There are a few things that are going to potentially change this. One is polling. The other is reporting. I agree with you on the polling, by the way. I think everyone wants to see how bad it is. Because snap polls don't tell you anything. Exactly. We had some early CBS polling, but there was no matchup. We'll probably get a poll or two tomorrow and Wednesday. Then the July 4th weekend sort of screws things up. Then by next week, we'll actually have a bunch of solid polls.

The other thing I say with reporting is not that like, I mean, he's, he's going to be completely dismissive of any calls to get out from editorial boards. But my feeling is that if there, and these are some of the things I've been working on, if there are stories that this is not the first time.

he has acted that way and that aides knew it and then did not say anything. I mean, and I don't know if that's the case, but I'm saying if there's reporting along those lines, which you could see as possible, then it turns into a scandal territory and then it goes to fitness. And that's

But, you know, that that in itself is going to be really interesting. I actually think it's starting to turn into a food fight already from what I've seen in some of the reporting. And the fact that you've got the family finger pointing at the aides for overworking him and loading him up with stats, which actually someone told me before the debate, like if they load him up with stats, they're going to be fucked. Like that was basically this was a Democratic operative who's worked with them before. It was like if they load him up with stats, he's not going to be able to handle this.

And then you've got the rest of the town furious at the aides and the family worried that he's going to bring down the Senate and the House. And then, you know, I just think eventually it's such a pressure cooker coming from the bottom up and the polling. Polling is key. If it doesn't move the polls at all, maybe they just stick with him. But if the polling, if he drops 10 points, I don't know how he survives this. Yeah. Yeah.

You know, I also still think that Joe Biden can still win this campaign because there are tens of millions of people in this country that would vote for him at 110 years old over Donald Trump. And, you know, that's just like the Trump polarization effect is quite real. And he has been the greatest motivator of Democratic Party voters in history. That being said, you know, from my perspective, the reason I've always been interested in this story is because

it's not really, I've never really been as interested in about how age will affect the election. I mean, I think it is a huge factor and it's like a huge factor in his weakness in the polls, but I think it's honestly a lot more about just fitness, fitness to serve. Even now there's more to being today. Yeah. Yeah. There's more to being president than not being Donald Trump. And he's asking, he's asking to do this job, you know, for four years from now. And I can tell you, even people who've known him for a long time that,

really admire him. You know, some of them don't even are starting to wonder, like, can he do it for a year? Can he do it for two years more? It's interesting to me that I know Schumer has said he supports Biden. Hakeem Jeffries has been kind of, you know, quiet. He would never say anything. And he's always sort of reserved on these things.

But Jim Clyburn, he is the head of the Congressional Black Caucus, very powerful figure in the Democratic Party. He said he's sticking with Biden. But he did say, I thought it was interesting, just the fact that he said that Kamala would be the person to take over Kamala Harris. And I think just articulating that is a big thing. Do you agree with me? Yeah, I mean, I think people are, you know, people openly talking in hypotheticals.

is even like the stuff of like, well, you know, that's up to him. That's up to Biden. You know, that, that sort of stuff is always, they're not pushing Joe off the cliff, but they're thinking about what it would be like if he fell. Right. So the bench is,

Let's just talk about the Democratic bench. Got Wes Moore. He's a governor of Maryland, charismatic, head of the Robin Hood Foundation. Gavin Newsom. Everyone knows who Gavin Newsom is, I would think at this point. Raphael Warnock. He's a senator from Atlanta. Gretchen Whitmer, who, according to Jonathan Martin at Politico's reporting, called up the campaign manager of the Biden campaign, Jen O'Malley Dillon, to say, you know, Biden has lost Michigan. Can he lose Michigan and win? I don't know. Probably not. And

And she's also on that list, the bench, J.B. Pritzker. They're all singing from the same tune. We support Biden. We're not running. Why do you think that is? I think it could be saying that they...

don't support Biden, well, first of all, would make him dig in more, don't you think? There's something to that. And I actually think the reason beyond sort of triggering him, and I think they also know, like, if J.B. Pritzker goes out there tomorrow and is like, I think Joe Biden should withdraw.

Like that doesn't get Joe Biden to withdraw. And in addition, you know, you're going to, the first one out of the door is going to get so much incoming that it could actually destroy their candidacy and its intimacy. They have to like kind of go out there together. They need the congressional leaders to make this happen. Yes.

I mean, I think you need people that Biden really respects. You need people like Nancy Pelosi. Like Chuck Schumer. I would even say Nancy Pelosi over Chuck. Just because his relationship with Nancy is just much warmer. Even people that aren't in the Senate anymore. People like Chris Dodd. People like Chuck Hagel. People that he still talks to frequently. And I would think the Clintons. I mean, yes, but I think the relationship...

especially after 2016 has never been that warm because he feels they dumped an oppo truck on him when he was still thinking about getting in the race and in the months right after he, his son Bo died. So I think the relationship is fine, but I don't know if it's one where they'd be like, where he would listen. He might think that they're just trying to do this again to him. Yeah. This episode is brought to you by vitamin water, food, entertainment, sports,

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Shop Blinds.com now for summer savings up to 40% off site-wide. Up to 40% off at Blinds.com. Blinds.com. Rules and restrictions may apply. You know, I want to just talk to you about this whole idea of like as a journalist being shamed for writing about Biden's age, right? I know from operatives, like they would never go on the record and talk about Biden's age. And what they say in the green room would be totally different than what they say on air. And

I'm sure you've taken a lot of flack. I mean, you're writing a book about Biden. I wonder if there'll be more interest in that book now. Maybe. But I remember even listening to podcasts where you had like Jen Psaki on there saying, and this is Biden's former spokesperson, even when she was no longer a spokesperson, saying it's basically inappropriate and it's ageism to talk about his age. There was a real culture in Washington where if you talked about his age,

You were shamed. I agree with that. And the White House would, black balls who strong a word, but would certainly find ways to make your life more difficult. I even remember, you know, taking my reporting on this, but recently the Wall Street Journal wrote a big story that was Biden behind the scenes. Biden is slipping.

And they left themselves open to some pushback because they only had Republicans on the record. But there was a lot of deep reporting about Biden there. And the thing that was surprising to me was not just that, like, they basically had every Democratic lawmaker dunking on them on Twitter and you had the White House also dunking on them, but also journalists participated.

in it too um you had journalists i'm not going to name names we had journalists from really big outlets basically going on you know x twitter and you know basically second guessing the reporting undermining it basically taking it with a high degree of skepticism and so you know and and the lack of access to biden makes it also very difficult to report in his age anyway so you

Covering Biden in an adversarial or aggressive way is sort of thankless. It's thankless in the opposite ways that the Trump thing was really great because you're sort of toasted by covering Trump.

really aggressively. And then you also are getting business opportunities and speaking gigs and book deals and everything else. It's just like the harder you go, the better it is. Where I think it's... In some ways...

the opposite with Biden. I 100% agree with you on that. I've been on the crosshairs. Yeah, you have. I mean, I broke the story about Hunter Biden and his gun. There's no holds or anything there. And look what happened, right? Exactly. Look what's happened. He just got convicted. But I remember when that story popped, I feel like, and I don't know if you felt it at the time, but I feel like No one followed it. No one followed it. And there was a high degree of like,

that's interesting. You know, like, huh. And then no one followed it. And it took a long time to get it published, to be honest. It took months. Really? Yeah. There's a, at times I do feel, and this isn't the case at Axios, but I have felt at times there's, in talking to other reporters, there's a higher degree of scrutiny, I guess, on stories about Joe Biden than some other people. That's interesting that it took a while to get published. I didn't know that.

Yeah, at least a few months. I went to Delaware too. I did all my cross reporting. At the time, we weren't allowed to use the laptop to substantiate our reporting because he had been texting with people about the fact that Secret Service was involved. And we even put on the headline, sources, Secret Service involved in possible cover-up or whatever we said. And it wasn't really followed. He was asked about it on TV, I think on a CBS show when he was promoting his book. And he was like,

I don't remember. I don't recall. He didn't even lie about it. And that really didn't. Oh, I forgot that. It didn't generate any news either. And yeah, that's the thing that actually ended up getting him indicted. You know, I felt the same sort of frustration with covering the age stuff and that I felt like there was very little follow that I just sort of went out there. People would be like, it's interesting. And then there was very little sort of follow up.

Well, I have followed your reporting with much admiration. I think you've shown that you have good sources. No, seriously, you've shown you had really good sources inside, which I imagine is not easy, especially when everyone is so defensive and they're all singing from the same tune. I do think also just the fact that the Biden team has so many allies in Washington and official Washington members.

And they're always out at parties. They're kind of like a part of the scene and the green rooms. And these are like the people who have been around since Obama and they have this power. But I actually think people are going to be really angry. And I worry that there's going to be a lot of anger at the press and journalists for the way they've covered him. I would never want to use the word conspiracy, but it would be a natural thing to say, why are we just learning about this now? Yeah. And I think, you know,

sort of credit, I guess, to the Biden Commons team for being very aggressive. But I think there's also some self-reflection, at least some reporters are doing, about not being curious enough about it. Katie Rogers at The Times has done some really good reporting, too. I think there's also a lot of anger at the inner circle.

They have figured out how to keep the journalists away by giving no one access essentially to him. Yep. And I worry that that's going to be the future going forward and that you can get away with it. It was a good thing that the New York Times got in a fight with the Biden administration.

But at the same time, I still feel like the Biden administration won because they still haven't gotten their interview. That's true. Although they did start doing a few more interviews after that, just not to the times. And if the times got them sort of shamed into like giving me an interview to time magazine and doing the interview with David Muir, I still think that's a little bit of a win, but yeah, I agree. We should have like,

Like, I think the report, I think reporters should have fought more. I'm going to end this on the note from the deputy White House photographer Chandler West. The debate was not the first bad day and it's not going to be the last is what he wrote. You know, someone in Trump's camp warned me too before the debate that, you know,

There would be much more of these moments. This was before the debate because I was I wrote a bit at the end about what would happen if he came off as old and senile and how it would turn into this Chernobyl like effect was what someone said to me in the party. But it was like the Trump campaign had already seen it coming in a weird way. That's interesting. I didn't know that. Trump had been saying it himself the whole time. That's true.

Sure. But he was saying that in 2020, it didn't happen. So that was why it was interesting. And the fact that he got through the State of the Union seeming coherent. Yeah. Well, Alex, keep up the good work. You can follow him at Axios and on Twitter at Alex Tomp. That's T-H-O-M-P. He's doing amazing work and, you know, getting you inside the White House, the information that we need right now to know what

what is really going on in this crazy moment in history. Thanks so much for having me on. That was another episode of Somebody's Got to Win. I'm your host, Tara Palmieri. I want to thank my producers, Christopher Sutton and Connor Nevins. If you like this show, please subscribe, rate it, share it with your friends. If you like my reporting, please go to puck.news slash Tara Palmieri and use my discount code Tara20 for 20% off.