I think he is.

Definitely decided.

I think she is trying to implore the campaign to do more outreach to the Jewish community and to the black community in Michigan.

I think that some of these ads that have come out recently, I think this is sort of a red flag to them of saying, like, I am with you, but there are people who are not.

Please do this.

Please reach out to them.

It's sort of a last-ditch effort, I think, to unify everyone behind Al-Sayed.

Nobody at the New York Times cares about affordability in Alaska.

But is there a way for the Democratic Party to separate themselves from Piker?

I mean, Hassan Piker has millions of followers on Twitch and other social streams, which is why all these Democrats, especially on the left wing of the party, are campaigning with him.

Now, maybe that works in like a very deep blue seat, congressional seat.

But in a swing state like Michigan, which is one of the key Senate races this cycle, it could be deadly, which is why You know, Mike Rogers, the Republican nominee, has really honed in on Abdul-Sayed bringing in Hasan Piker.

I was actually talking to Democrats today that feels that even though maybe Hasan Piker did rally a lot of, like, young progressives in the primary, that they felt it was a mistake in the end because he probably could have won the primary anyway.

And, you know, and now it's just become a political liability in the general election.

Why do you think he saw it that way?

Well, because I pushed him.

Um, what are you watching, Alex?

There's Democratic and Republican strategists are really watching a campaign fin- finance case which the Supreme Court could further roll back restrictions on what the big parties can spend.

And the upshot of this is that it would give the Republican National Committee a huge advantage in this midterm cycle because the RNC has a ton more money, cash on hand, than the DNC, which is still in debt.

And so you-

I-

I, I th- I think the fear with Republicans is actually much more petulant than that, in that it was a completely emotional decision by Trump because he is obsessed with the SAVE Act, and he denied his party, party wins.

And, and Republicans are basically resigned at this point that Donald, Donald Trump is just never going to be on message throughout the midterms.

He's not gonna be out front talking about specific policies to bring down prices.

So, I mean, the First Lady was not saying and the campaign was not saying the night of the debate that was so bad the First Lady thought he was having a stroke.

Uh, in fact, they said that he actually won the debate, and that Donald Trump lost the debate.

In fact, they yelled and screamed at any reporter and other potential d- Democrats that suggested otherwise.

Um, when any sort of senator, when other, you, you know, people, former Biden aides said publicly that that was concerning, they said, "No.

No, it actually wasn't." And that wasn't just, like, spin the night of the debate.

Since the 2024 election, you've had senior Biden aides go up to Capitol Hill and claim on the record before Congress that he didn't really think the debate was that bad, it was just one bad answer.

And now you have the First Lady being like, no, it wasn't one bad answer, that she thought he may have been having a stroke, and she's never ever seen him that way before.

Um, what are you hearing about Trump?

The Raines list is increasingly talked about by those who are becoming aware of the extent of satanic ritual abuse of children, handicapped adults, and animals by men and women in positions of power.

Raines is an acronym.

It stands for Ritual Abuse Information Network and Support.

Leading psychiatrist Dr. Joan Coleman compiled it carefully in the early two thousands when she noticed how many of her severe cases in therapy would name the same names, the same stately homes and other venues, the same vehicles, and the same techniques while recalling their abuse.

Only when two or more patients who did not know of each other reported the same details to Dr. Coleman would she name them on the list.

Consequently, the focus of the Raines list is on the south coast of England and on the period of the new labor government.

And

you are seeing him take even a bigger step now.

Now, to your point about private investment, the thing is that you can't even begin to see the end of the potential conflicts of interest that Jared Kushner and his private firm has with a lot of these countries that are on this board of peace.

But the fact of the matter is this is part of a larger mission of Trump trying to really go around the United Nations and trying to find a different sort of international body in order to implement his plan for Israel in the Middle East.

It is also very notable that despite some of these, what Jared Kushner was saying, the president of Israel, Isaac Herzog, is in Davos right now, and is supposed to be part of this board, but is not at that meeting right now.

if they'll issue a

prize.

I would not be shocked.

What is the White House trying to accomplish here, sending Witkoff to Moscow or to try to have that kind of meeting?

Well, they're trying to finally get, you know, Trump obviously has talked... very openly about wanting the Nobel Peace Prize.

And Donald Trump wants to end this war.

And it's not a coincidence that Jared Kushner is getting involved here, because Jared Kushner also got very, very involved in the Israel deal, especially by the end, to get it over the finish line.

Now, there is a difference here in that Jared Kushner had extensive relationships with Netanyahu and the Netanyahu government.

Also, Netanyahu had given them an opening by sort of going over their skis and attacking Qatar.

Now, Vladimir Putin is just a completely different sort of character.

So...

Republicans just need to do their job now.

Yeah, I mean, if you're the White House, you believe that you won and that the Democrats folded because you essentially reopened the government and you didn't give anything up except for the promise of doing a vote in the Senate, but no promise of actually putting up that vote in the House, and no promise that President Trump would actually sign the bill even if it did pass the House.

So if you're, I think, from the Republican perspective, the idea that you sent all of your members home, And you still ended up, in this case, winning the shutdown despite the tremendous collateral damage that you showed here before.

I think if you're the Republicans, you feel that the Democrats blink first.

on set? And

second of all, absolutely not.

The fact is that Donald Trump has been saying that his plan to replace Obamacare is coming just weeks from now, and he's been saying it for over 10 years.

And the Republicans, you know, The reason why Representative Burchett said that is they are scared of the issue because it is consistently one of the issues where Democrats outpoll Republicans and Republicans have not put forward a concrete plan of actually how, despite there are these white papers going out, Donald Trump and the Republican caucus have not put forward a plan of how they intend to actually address.

Uh, Alex, would you describe the effect of the Herr Report on Team Biden? 'Cause it, it's like a bomb going off.

It's an existential political threat, um, because the, the Biden team long knew that his age was the biggest political concern.

The thing that makes the Herr Report so interesting is that, you know, uh, some, uh, uh, a, a pretty senior member of the White House told me it was, "Herr f- Robert Herr finally said the thing, and you couldn't unsay it." And so, you know, the, the Biden team basically enlists every single member of the Democratic Party to try to slime Robert Herr and try to ruin him and his career and say that he is a right-wing hack......

um, that unnecessarily talked about Biden's age in the special counsel report, which by the way, if you read the report, uh, especially given that the DOJ was prosecuting Trump for his mishandling of classified documents, uh, Biden looks incredibly guilty.

He is on tape in 2017 saying, "There is the classified stuff in my basement." And Robert Hur did not indict him, basically saying he is not capable, like, we don't think we could get a conviction because the jury would just think he's too old to be convicted.

Um, but I think it-

They left, quote, "deeply disturbed." So they knew about it too.

too.Uh, you know, Jake did, uh, more of this reporting than, than I did.

Alex, you can start.

Well, this isn't a story a source told me but rather months of President Biden's private schedules that were given to me in 2023 and 2024, and what you can clearly see...

Now, we, uh, and as reporters saw the public schedules, and that, um, you know, he obviously didn't do many events in front of a camera after 4:00 PM, didn't do many events, um, in front of cameras before 10:00 AM, but the private schedule was also incredibly constricted.

And what it showed was that basically the White House apparatus was be-... was slowly adapting to his limitations and to his decline.

There was one day in particular, um, that always stands out, which it was, uh, October 3rd, 2023.

And it's, it's not an outlier either.

There's many days that are very similar to this, and basically his day is a few meetings from 10:00 to 1:00, about two hours of what they called POTUS time, a half hour of desk time, and then, uh, a short meeting with his chief of staff, and then dinner, and back to the residence by 4:30 PM.

Sorry about that.

And I can't believe they actually were moving forward given the situation.

um there are a lot there are a lot you know i i and i don't say this because this is the most shocking but it was one of the first you know i had one source on this before the election but i didn't report it because i wasn't good enough for one source so but i corroborated it which is um and it was just one of the first things we found out so it sticks out which is um the night of the state of the union in 2024 when it's like this huge victory lap moment um because joe biden has you know beat back the ezra climbs of the world that are saying he's not up to this and you know he's you know gives this very vibrant performance in front of everybody And then after that commanding performance, his ability to speak and talk and relate to people in meetings afterward, there was like sort of a rah-rah with small staff.

Then there was a group of sort of high school or Senate aides that had come and were really excited.

And White House officials, you know, at this point, they had really shielded him from a lot of White House staff.

This was some of the first time that some White House staff had seen him in months.

And they were shocked because the Biden that we saw on the debate stage a few months later, they were seeing that guy then.

And the fact that they were that that the very night that he was beating back these concerns about his age, just a few hours later, his own staff were like, this is crazy.

How much were we wishing it away, where it was there to see? We didn't see, obviously, everything that you guys outlined in the book, but how much of it, and I'll put myself into this category, were because of the desire to for not another Trump term, and there was not necessarily a viable alternative, were we wishing it away?

It

was not what I anticipated, in part because, you know, I'd been covering these issues for a long time.

And I think a lot of people just never wanted to have the debate because it's for the Democratic Party.

It's inconvenient.

I think also for some reporters who are and are just like outlets that are defensive about their coverage of Biden's age, it was inconvenient.

Um, so I guess like, you know, if you write a book, uh, you hope that people will talk about it.

Um, now it definitely exceeded my hopes and expectations.

Because it seems to me like getting there, whoever runs for the Democrats next time around, that there is going to have to be a sort of, if you were close to the president, there's going to have to be an acknowledgement about where you stood and what you saw and what you said.

Can you talk about that a little bit and why those feelings were still festering after he did win in 2020?

Well, from the Biden perspective, Obama never truly appreciated Biden's gifts.

Obama was a bit of a snob, Obama was a bit of, like, an intel- part of sort of the intellectual elite that Joe Biden had always resented and felt never took him seriously....

I think the fact that Obama clearly preferred Hillary over Biden to be his successor I think really wounded Biden because of what- what- what bigger slap in the face is there to say, "I think she'd be a better president than you." And, uh, Biden never got over it.

And it wasn't just Biden, it was that entire core team around him had a deep resentment of a lot of people from Obama world and Obama which, honestly, is part of the reason why despite some of, like, the insinuations that Obama was the- the puppeteer, like, trying to get Joe Biden out of the race, Obama knew that actually he had to play it very conservative because he knew if he did anything, Biden would get his back up even more.

How did Biden's infirmity impact the Biden White House's policy proposals? The withdrawal from Afghanistan or immigration reform or the Inflation Reduction Act?

I would say, um, there were members of the administration, members of the cabinet, senior democrats in the Senate and in the House that believed that his age, uh, played a significant role in a few different things.

First and foremost, the fact that Joe Biden, who had, you know, supported a constitutional amendment for a balanced budget amendment and in 1984 had signed the crime bill, was like a hawk on immigration, uh, if you look at Joe Biden's entire career and you look at how he governed the first two years, you would sort of be shocked, like, from an objective perspective, 'cause, like, Joe Biden was, like, center left, middle of the road Democrat, and there was a feeling among some members of the cabinet, some members of the administration that if he'd been 20 years younger, he would not have governed as to the left as he did.

And I thought that was, I was like, "I don't know that you guys necessarily missed the story, because there wasn't a story to get if the people who could tell the story refused to tell it."

I think...

So, a few different points on that.

I think, uh, there is a difference between...

While a lot of right-wing media was right to be skeptical, you know, of Biden's abilities, uh, there's a big difference between, uh, showing on a loop him stumbling up the stairs of Air Force One and doing behind-the-scenes reporting.

I also said I thought we missed a lot of the story in part because Jake and I had just done this book, and I was like, "Holy shit, uh, there was a lot that, that I didn't know." Now, that being said, I do think, um, in particular for reporting and reporters, a hinge moment is after Robert Hur's report in early 2024, in which, you know, he basically decides not to prosecute Joe Biden, uh, because he says the jury would not convict such an, you know, an old man with a bad memory.

And if you look at the coverage, I think the White House comms team, you know, props to them, they did a very good job.

And I asked Clooney, um, for an interview I did when we did the New Yorker excerpt, um, of the- of the book, uh, just to give like a little special something for- for The New Yorker, um, I asked, uh, Clooney to weigh in, "Why did you put that in?" Obviously George Clooney, um, played a role in all of this when he wrote his op-ed calling for Biden to drop out, and he said, "It's important that we- that we, you know, call that out too, the people vouching for Biden, because we have to speak truth to power no matter who's in power." And I said, "Well, what do you tell people who say, you know, 'What about Trump?'" He said, "How do you think we got Trump?"

Yeah, I mea- what I meant to say was congratulations and...

Yeah.

(laughs) Um, and, um, at first I was defensive, but then I was, you know, I thought about it also, you know, from your all perspective.

Especially like, the missed part, and, like, your readers, your readers that were saying, "Hey, there's a problem here." Or not, not your readers but your listeners, saying, "There's a problem here and I'm not seeing it reflected in the media." And, and after the debate happens everyone to be like, "Oh my God, there's a problem," um, I'd be pissed too, 'cause you would feel like you weren't listened to.

And that, um, and I'm sure that a lot of people felt that it was because, um, some reporters let their own personal politics get in the way.

And let's be honest, like, a lot of newsrooms in DC and New York are more liberal than not.

And they, I mean, I'll just say for myself, I think some of them let their own personal politics get in the way.

Yeah.

... to wh- what it meant to be a Progressive in, like, 1985.

Absolutely.

And so, I think, um, I think it's a combination of all the things you said, but I do think...

Well, I don't think, members of the cabinet, senior administration officials, senior White House officials do believe that it was related in some parts to his age, that if you only have a president that only has enough energy for certain powers th- uh, amount of the day, that further empowers staff.

Um, and in particular, the first two years, you know, Ron Klain, the chief of staff, um, who is to the left of the president, um, had a tremendous amount of power, not just over policy, but Capitol Hill relations and he believed that they needed to basically run as a coalition government, which meant that they did have to partner with the Progressive Caucus and give them a bunch of what they wanted.

Uh, Ron Klain also helped, you know, staff a lot of the administration with a lot of, you know, Elizabeth Warren Progressive types.

The head of the presidential personnel office was Pramila Jayapal's former chief of staff, um, after the very first one left for just a few months.

Um, so, uh, was the fear of giving it to the Kamala because they thought she'd be a terrible candidate or because they thought she'd be a terrible president or both?

Can you guys go back in time and help explain to everyone watching, and to me, when that process began?

Our reporting shows, according to people that worked for Joe Biden, that it began in 2015 with the s- death of his son, Beau.

Um, one aide at the time sort of described w- the effect it had on his psyche as pouring water onto sand.

Um, people that saw Joe Biden, you know, in 2017, 2018 felt like he had aged a decade in just two or three years.

Now, they say that he's still, you know, mostly good, but that he would meander, he would have off moments as the way he was, um, you know, being able to follow conversation was off.

You also have in our reporting that when Special Counsel Robert Hur, who we'll get into later, but he was investigating Joe Biden at this time and, and found a lot of tapes with Joe Biden's speechwriter, and they were shocked at how hard it was to, to follow him.

You also saw, you know, on the campaign trail in 2019, he would have moments when he was like, "Huh." Um, now, the people on, you know, and including, forgetting the name of his longtime political advisor, um, Mike Donilon, who'd been with him since 1981.

It's a great question.

Alex, what, uh, what has alarmed you most, um, i- i- i- is, has it been people asking, "Why now? Why are you not focusing on Trump?" Or has it been about the so- the, the, the quote-unquote, "cover-up" that people have tried to surmise that you guys have been a part of?

Honestly, none of it really surprises me because I covered Joe Biden every day for four years.

I was also covering stuff about his age back in 2021 and then especially starting aggressively in 2023.

And I have to tell you, the, "No-, you know, what about Trump," uh, chorus was 20 times louder.

I know it was for you too when, you know, you were talking about these, these issues back in 2023 as well.

So that part doesn't bother me, and, you know, I do think there's a difference between what some on the right were doing...

And listen, I mean, I think they have a r- I think they are right to feel frustrated, um, with the mainstream media's coverage of the Biden age issue.

Yup.

How have you come to think about why people wouldn't speak on the record?

Well, the reason people didn't speak on the record before is because they were scared of helping Trump, and the reason they didn't speak on the record, a lot of them, I mean, we do have some people on the record, but the reason some people didn't speak on the record afterward is because there was still fear of retaliation by the former president's camp.

But I think your point about anonymous sources is right on, and that's the reason why we talked to over 200 people, because if we were relying even on 50 or even 100 people, You know, I think we were always worried about, you know, people having motives and told you so's.

And so that's why we like, you know, in just a course of from November 6th to January 31st, we talked to over 200 people because we wanted to make sure that we got as complete a story as possible.

right now we have an administration that is not really all that forthcoming about his health,

right? That's understating it.

We don't know almost anything about Donald Trump's health.

I wrote a story in 2023 about how little he had disclosed.

On that claim, when Biden said he had cancer, i- is there any possibility here that he's known all the time he's had prostate cancer, uh, and that that stumbled out at the time, and there was some cover-up? It seems outlandish, but given that he did say it and then they had to correct it, w- what's your view about that?

Well, yeah, he'd had past bouts, I think, of melanoma, but, I mean, to, to answer your question bluntly, yeah, it's possible.

Um, and the thing is, there are more questions, the d- recent disclosure of this Stage 4 prostate cancer raises more questions than it answers, because, you know, even members of Biden's own COVID team, uh, especially Dr. Zeke Emanuel, have said that it's almost impossible that he would have just developed this cancer in the last 100 days.

It's almost certain that he had cancer while he was president.

Now, whether or not he knew, we just don't know.

So, they either missed it, uh, you know, diagnosing the most powerful person in the world, or they did know it, or some people did know it, and they didn't disclose it.

And that's why Jake and I are actually, we sort of think of this as the first draft of this story, and we've continued to report, um, after we submitted the draft.

And that's what I mean is I don't think they had to physically be in the room with him to know what was going on.

Could you describe that in the book?

Yeah, we even call it, uh, became a Biden theology.

And I'd say the first commandment of that theology is that Biden always gets back up.

Biden is always counted out and he always comes back and proves his critics wrong.

I'd say there, you know, there's also parts of that theology in the same way there are with, you know, with Camelot and with whatever, you know, I don't know if you wanna call it MAGA court or, or something, but with Trump, that there are, there are parts of the, the theology that, you know, if you take a step back, certainly ring false.

Um, and, you know, i- i- and, you know, for, for instance, one person very close to the family, they, they basically said, you know, parts of th- like, parts of the tenets of the Biden theology are, like, you know, that hunter's, you know, the, that hunter's, um, sobriety is stable, that, uh, Joe cares more about his family than his ambition, that Jill is like a very warm and nice person.

Um, and, uh, (laughs) and, and they repeat these things as if they are just obvious facts.

(laughs)

And the anecdotes and the concerns that we bring forward in this book is investigative journalism, and that is different from observational punditry.

I would also just add that, you know, and I understand the, the, the pushback that, you know, Biden's age was constantly a topic, right? And, and, you know, the Mark Leibovich story is a perfect example.

Um, but that was about sort of h- uh, in a political lens, a horse race lens.

Kamala Harris, where was she through all of this?

Well, she, after the Hur report, she became the main out-front validator for Joe Biden's fitness.

She, and she chose to do that.

And she said that the Hur report was politically motivated, used her, uh, background as a prosecutor to say it was sloppy, and she became...

You know, she basically put all of her chips in with Joe Biden.

And then, Jake, you can follow up.

You know, one thing that I, I mean, I just think, uh, is important, and I think it's even taken on increased potential importance in light of the very sad news of Biden's cancer diagnosis, is, um, how the Biden family dealt with Beau Biden's, uh, cancer in 2014, 2015.

And, uh, you know, the fact is that Beau Biden was the sitting Attorney General of Delaware.

Uh, he had been diagnosed with glioblastoma in the summer of 2013 and had had brain surgery.

And he claimed, in November of that year, that he had a clean bill of health, and then had a doctor, very well-respected doctor from MD Anderson in Houston go on the record to the local paper and claim that he had a clean bill of health.

Um, while they...

And then he spent the next year essentially as, like, a somewhat, at times, absentee, um, you know, Attorney General of Delaware, uh, as his family flew him around the country for various experimental treatments and his faculties were declining.

... that assessment of the stakes of the election.

One of the questions that I've heard in connection to this book is why is this all coming to light now, when the American public was clear, and I mean this was documented in polling throughout the campaign, that there were real questions about Joe Biden's age? And you've heard some people, mostly on the right, say all this book does is prove that the press was complicit, that the press had a, had a role to play in this perceived, this alleged cover-up.

I mean, if we knew a- all the things in the book, we would have definitely reported it before the election.

The problem was that, you know, if you're doing reporting, you need sources to be honest, and a lot of Democrats, uh, basically did not want to speak up because they feared it would hurt Joe Biden and Kamala Harris and help Donald Trump.

Uh, we didn't start this book until November 6th, the day after the election.

And finally, people that we'd been trying to reach out f- to for years, um, started talking to us, people that had previously not been candid started becoming more candid, and I think it also speaks to the fact that, uh, you know, members of the Democratic Party me- like, beyond just the politburo and the White House, they saw non-functioning Biden in the months in- before, and they didn't speak out.

All the stuff we cover every day.

Well, and I would say, I mean, we write this in the book that just because we are writing this about Joe Biden, it, it does not excuse anything Donald Trump is doing.

I'd also say if you're a Democrat wondering, you know, how did Trump come back, in some ways the central question that this book is answering is how did Trump become president again? And our belief is that, you know, Joe Biden deciding to run again was one of the critical, if not the critical part of his ability to return.

Alex Thompson telling The Megyn Kelly Show on Tuesday even Biden cabinet secretaries questioned who was making the decisions.

What happened is they closed ranks.

They had the cabinet members come in and brief senior staff, and then they, and then the senior staff would brief the president.

And one member of the cabinet put it to us this way, "Yes, the president is officially making the decision," you know, putting the sign, dotted line, but if the de- if the decision is framed in a certain way, is it really a decision, and are really they the ones making the decision? You know, some people also felt that this began, you know, as early as 2021 when, you know, the Biden administration, uh, you know, went pretty far to the left of where Joe Biden had been for a lot of his career.