The Daily - Biden Leaves the Stage

Episode Date: August 20, 2024

On the first night of the Democratic National Convention, the stage belonged to the man who chose to give it up.Katie Rogers and Peter Baker, White House correspondents for The Times, discuss President Biden’s private pain since stepping aside, and his public message in Chicago.Guest: Katie Rogers, a White House correspondent for The New York Times.Peter Baker, the chief White House correspondent for The New York Times.Background reading: Biden defended his record and endorsed Kamala Harris: “America, I gave my best to you.”Analysis: The speech Biden never wanted to give.For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.

I'm Sabrina Tavernisi, and this is The Daily. On the first night of the Democratic National Convention, the stage belonged to the man who chose to give it up. Today, I spoke with my colleagues Katie Rogers and Peter Baker about Joe Biden's private pain since stepping aside and his public message here in Chicago. It's Tuesday, August 20th. Is this the line we need to get on? This is the line. Oh, gosh.

I'd say we're going to be here 45 minutes or so. Woof! My goodness. At least nice birds and flowers here. Little butterfly. Oh, there it is. I can see the United Center now. See, it's through the... Yeah, but can you see the front of the line?

No. Line, line, line. Ah. I feel like the season is passing as we're like waiting in it. There's like a cicada coming up. I see some leaves turning, yeah. You got it. Have your credentials ready? You got it. Let's do it. Oh, is this the end? Okay so we're through the line.

It was, indeed, 45 minutes as I predicted. And we are standing outside a giant building with a big blue sign on it that says Democratic National Convention. And it is Kamala Harris's convention. It is her week. But it is Joe Biden's night. Tonight he's going to take the stage, give a speech to an entire party who forced him out. And many of us know the broad story of how he decided to step aside. But the question always has been, what was the thing in the end that fundamentally made him drop out?

But my colleague Katie Rogers has gotten inside the final few days for Biden in making that decision. So we're gonna go talk to her about what ultimately drove Biden to make this decision to leave the race. Okay, big New York Times area. Maybe seeing a lot of other people I know. Here she is. Katie. Hi. Are you Here she is. Katie.

Hi, how are you? Are you ready? Yes. Welcome. We're so glad to have you. So, Katie, just to start, I wonder if you could reflect for a moment about what this convention was supposed to be up until a month ago. Right. I mean, this is something that

President Biden had been looking forward to. He had been workshopping a big convention speech. You know, this is something that Biden didn't get in 2020. If you remember, we were in the middle of a pandemic. This was all done virtually for him. This would have been the very first time in his career that he was the presidential nominee at a huge 50,000 person strong convention. You know, you get the balloons,

you get the big banners with your Bidenisms broadcast everywhere. It was a moment this president doesn't really ever get to have. I mean, it's been a moment he's wanted for decades, right? So many people cheering for him and choosing him in a way. It's the validation.

He has wanted the validation of being that choice and will not get that now. Instead of this moment where he gets to, you know, lay the groundwork for a second term, he is ending his political career in Chicago on stage. Katie, you and our colleagues have been reporting on why he decided to give up something he wanted so badly. Mm-hmm.

Tell us about what you found. Right, so it starts almost exactly a month ago. The president is campaigning and comes down with COVID and is rushed home on Air Force One to his beach home in Rehoboth in Delaware. There he is joined by his wife, Jill Biden, the First Lady, and there are two other aides who are very close to him. Another key advisor was in Rehoboth at the time, sort of on standby, named Steve Reschetti. He's the keeper of the president's political relationships.

So a lot of the party leaders were funneling their alarm and their worry and their unhappiness through Steve Reschetti. So Friday, the president was sick and didn't really get out of bed much. He read the papers by the pool. The next day though, he gets on the phone, calls Steve Reschetti and says,

"'I need you and Mike at the house.'" And Mike is Mike Donilon, the president's most senior strategist, the writer of his speeches, really the keeper of the Biden flame, if you will. Biden, Reschetti and Donilon go over the polling, go over what people in the party are saying, and essentially say to the president, look, if you want to do this, we can get you there.

We have been around all of us long enough to know that the polling can be wrong. We can get you there. It's sort of a cultural belief in the Biden circle to not discount polls, but to look at them and say, well, we have been here before, but it is going to be a climb and you are going to do it alone without the support of Democratic Party leaders. He will be ripping apart his party if he wants to do this. Finally, Biden, who is still sick and weakened with COVID, says to them, well, what would we tell the American people? Meaning, if we were to drop out. Exactly. What would we say? And that's really the first moment that Biden wants to see something on paper

that is an announcement that he would be leaving the race. The president says to them that he wants to sleep on it and they let him go upstairs. He's sleeping in a spare bedroom because he has COVID. So he's alone. He's alone on one of the most important nights of his life. And, you know, people close enough to him to know his thinking in this moment have told me that it was not decided, but everybody sort of knew where he was going.

The next morning he gets up, the letter gets finalized, and it is published on X exactly one minute after he calls into a senior staff meeting and is reading the letter to them telling them that he is leaving the race. So it sounds like the calculations for him are not about winning or losing, but really about the party and party unity and not wanting to, as you say, rip it apart. Exactly. What do we know about how he's been feeling

about that decision since then? That was a month ago, as we said. Right, so in the moment, you know, it's been described to me as peace, a sense of understanding that he was not willing to do what would have been required of him politically to keep going. And I think in the week since,

I think he has experienced a mixture of emotions. The president, it should be noted, I think is a pretty proud person. There was a really big day a few weeks ago where three American hostages were released from Russian custody as part of a really complicated seven nation prisoner swap. That is, you know, as Jake Sullivan,

the president's national security advisor, was fighting back, tears talking to us that day, saying, this is vintage Joe Biden. This is what he's best at. Complicated foreign policy. That was a moment for somebody like Biden to say, hey, I'm still the president. And I was on the tarmac at, you know, midnight when those hostages came off and was talking about the importance of allies, the importance of diplomatic relationships,

essentially saying the importance of my experience is this. And if you know how he approaches politics, you know that he is saying in that moment, I have value. This is what I bring. This is what I am good at. And he wants the chances to be able to say that. It's like he's sending a message to the people who pushed him out. Totally. Yes.

Yes. And speaking of the people who pushed him out, you know, I think there are people close to the president who, you know, have told me as much saying this party will have to reconcile with what it did to a sitting president who the voters had chosen. And you know, I think that there is definite resentment, frustration, distrust. Former President Obama was somebody who was making a lot of calls to party leaders, including, you know, he was in touch with the vice president in the days before the president decided to drop out.

There is definitely a sense of resentment toward Nancy Pelosi, the former House speaker, for saying things like, well, you know, if he does drop out, I think we should have an open convention, basically before he's even made the decision to say, well, here's how it could look in what I think. Right. Right. He just sort of is pushed out, right?

Right. So one of the things he did is saying, I fully support the vice president as the person to carry on my legacy and to win this election and prevent another term for Trump. And it really shut down talk of other people jumping into this race. She locked it up. There's got to be a land speed record for that.

You know, there were these conversations about, we don't want it to be a coordination, but, you know, it was pretty close. And that is because Biden made the strongest case he could for her at a moment where the Democratic Party had leaders saying, well, let's do this, or I would like this, or maybe this person. And Biden all but said, well, no, we're going with my person.

We're going with the vice president I picked. So again, he doesn't want to see this party infighting. He endorses her so that there's not this nasty public battle, right? Exactly. Again, unity. It was a unity play, and it was, again, a fear of his that this would happen,

should he not really make a strong case for her. And, you know, it's interesting, because, you know, the reporting we had leading up was also that he privately did not necessarily believe that Harris could win and got to this point by the time he decided to leave the race that he clearly believed that she was the one who could. Yeah.

So in a way, one way of looking at this convention is that it's not his convention, but he did have a big hand in making it her convention. — I think that's right. It's definitely not his big event to headline anymore, you know? He's coming in as not the change candidate that so many Democrats are seeing in Harris now, but as sort of this throwback figure almost that is passing the baton to her. And I think he sees the vice president

as somebody who is best positioned to carry forward his legacy. She's taking the baton from me. I save democracy, she will preserve it. ["The New York Times"] You know, and inside the United Center where we are, delegates who are arriving are getting little coffee bean packets that say, Cup of Joe on them, and the digital banners will say, Spread the Faith and a couple other Bidenisms. And then they go dark when he's done and they flip over to Harris Walls and the sort of messages

associated with her campaign. So there's a lot of talk of gratitude for him. The thing is though, is that Joe Biden has been around long enough to understand that the second beat to thank you so much is thank you so much for dropping a campaign that Democratic voters did not believe in. Thank you so much for getting off the stage. And for somebody like him, that has got to be very bittersweet and a tough moment to get through. Katie, thank you. Thank you for having me.

So right now we're at the arena and we are about to go inside to talk to delegates. These are people who will formalize Kamala Harris's nomination. And we are going to talk to them about Joe Biden. How are people seeing him in this moment? Oh my God, hi. Are you a delegate? I am a delegate.

Where are you from? Michigan. Michigan! The great state of Michigan. Okay, my name is Sabrina. Hi Sabrina. Hi Bob. Nice to meet you.

Well, his name is Rob, actually. Oh, Rob. I'll take Bob next time. Bob Rob. Yeah, whatever. Nob. So, question for you. One word to describe Joe Biden.

If you had one word, what would it be? Heroic. Dedicated. Honorable. Courageous. Delawarean. He is an American patriot. He has been such an incredible leader for our nation.

For years. He's been such an incredible leader for our nation for years. He's been an amazing public servant. I'm a little misty. I have such affection for him. I was sad, very sad to see him make the decision he made, but he made the right decision for the country. In some ways, does part of you wish he was the nominee still? No. No. Because the election has turned on a dime. It's going in the right direction.

That was going in a very bad direction for her. I mean, in less than a month, she's turned over this campaign. She's brought people together in just incredible ways. Now, that's not to take away from Joe Biden or to say, I mean, I love Joe Biden. How is he going to feel tonight watching him speak? I don't know, but I brought Kleenex. I think we're all here to give him his flowers, to say thank you. We're going to be proud for him.

It's a valedictory, and he's deserved it and earned it. I think that there's going to be an incredible outpouring of love, respect and honor for him. I'm not sad for him. I'm proud of him. I'm just, I'm like, I'm in awe of him, really. I am, and I think we're living history right now. I mean, we're living history tonight.

I think the history is going to show, wow, what an incredible gift that Joe Biden has given us. We'll be right back. So we are walking to the arena from the press center. I'm walking with my friend and admired colleague, Peter Baker. I'm an admirer of you. And we are first gonna have a conversation and then we're gonna go in to watch Biden's speech together.

Okay, so we're gonna talk to Peter about what he expects from the speech tonight. What do you expect, Peter? Oh, well, look, it's a really fascinating moment, right? Because Joe Biden has been coming to conventions like this since 1972. He's given a lot of speeches. But this is the first one where he has to basically give a speech saying, I'm done. And it's something he's always resisted.

His whole thesis of his political career, his whole life really if you're knocked down you get back up well now he's gonna say okay this is the end for me after more than 50 years on the public stage so he's speaking a couple different audiences one of course in the audience here in the hall and the national audience watching on television he's gonna try to frame his accomplishments and pass the torch to Kamala Harris and the second audience he's talking to really is history. He's trying to say, who is Joe Biden? What did it matter that he was president for four years?

Where does he fit in our national story? And it's gonna be a really fascinating speech to watch. And what do you make of the fact that it's happening on Monday, the first day of the convention, but this is the day they've chosen for him? Yeah, Monday is of course a demotion, right? He expected to give his speech on Thursday

when he was going to accept the nomination. That's the big night. That's the night you want to give a speech. He's been demoted to Monday, which is usually the night for the former's. And you can already see in the last few weeks, if you go to the White House every day or you watch him give his public presentations, what few he's done, you can feel the energy and the power and the attention drifting away from him. And it's a palpable thing

when a president becomes a lame duck, and you really have seen it these last few weeks. And now tonight, he'll get up there, he'll give his speech, and then he's gonna get on a plane later tonight, and he's gonna head off to California, and he won't be here for the rest of the convention. He's gonna literally see the stage of Kamala Harris.

And it's the symbolic way the Democratic Party's gonna say, we're moving on. All right, the Joe Biden era is essentially over now, and we're moving on to the Kamala Harris era, and he will be on vacation. You won't see him in public really again until Labor Day. I guess, Peter, you know, it is really a fundamentally human moment

that we're going to see here, right? I mean, this is a man who had all of these years in public service, and the one thing he wanted most in the world was this, that he's now giving up. And that feels really just in the sweep of history pretty remarkable and a very human moment. Yeah, it really is. In some ways, it's the most human story.

It's actually all of our story, because all of us eventually are gonna run out of time, right? He has been in public life for a half century, more than any other president before him by the way. He has been running for president since a lot of people in this arena were children. His first campaign was in 1987, his second one of course was in 2008. He didn't win either time. Finally he wins in 2020. And so to say, okay I'm going to give it up after spending a lifetime of trying to get there

It goes against the grain. It just is completely against everything that he sees in himself His life has been full of tragedy and setback followed by Comeback and resilience and here is the first time he is not bouncing back So he's done the one thing that he prided himself on never doing. But at some point you cannot outrace time, you cannot outrace the impact of age, and as much as he wanted to stay on the stage, his time has come. And he's had to accept that. And it's not an easy thing to do, but tonight kind of brings that to the fore in a very

public way. And he's, I think, going gonna use this opportunity to frame that exit. Okay, let's watch that speech. Let's watch. ["The Last Supper"] So we're sitting at the very top row in the arena, and you can really see everything from here. It's pretty amazing.

Thousands and thousands of delegates and this huge TV screen. ["The New York Times"] And now I would like to introduce my father, your 46th president of the United States, Joe Biden! So he's smiling, he's looking up into the crowd, he's putting his hand over his eyes. Thank you. I love you.

They're chanting, thank you, Joe. Thank you, Joe. His eyes are tearing up. He's always been an emotional politician, not afraid to show emotion in public. This has got to be one of the most emotional moments of his political career. He's always been an emotional politician, not afraid to show emotion in public. This has got to be one of the most emotional moments of his political career. My fellow Americans, nearly four years ago, in winter, on the steps of the Capitol on a cold January day, I raised my right hand and I swore an oath to you and to God to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution and to faithfully execute the office of the President of the

United States. In front of me, in front of me was the city surrounded by the National Guard. Behind me, a capital that, two weeks before, had been overrun by a violent mob. But I knew then, from the bottom of my heart, that I knew now, there is no place in America for political violence. None. Biden's presidency has been rooted in that January 6th attack and the aftermath basically

for four years. In a way, Kamala Harris is going to run a different campaign because rather than talk about the past, she's trying to say that she's about the future. As important as January 6th is, a lot of Americans want to move on, and the difference between his approach to it and hers is rather striking. I stand before you now on this August night

to report that democracy has prevailed. Yeah! Democracy has prevailed is the line he used in his inauguration dress in January 2021. And now democracy must be preserved. This was the reason he gave it to run, right? This is the reason he gave it to run in 2020. It's the same narrative and it's the same, you know, evaluation of where we are as a country in effect.

He's trying to say this is the battle that we have to wage. And even though he's not going to be the one waging it now going forward, he's telling these Democrats that they have to continue the fight. I also ran to rebuild the backbone of America, the middle class. So here he's moving onto legacy? To rebuild the backbone of America, the middle class. So here he's moving on to legacy? Yeah, yeah, he's moving on to legacy. He wants to talk about what he has done in these last three years

on legislation, on foreign policy presumably, on domestic policy. We have done that. In many of those jobs, the so-called fabs, the building that makes the chips that's being constructed now. And guess what? The average salary in those fabs, size of a football field,

will be over $100,000 a year, and you don't need a college degree. That's been a big thing for him, a big priority the last four years, talking about jobs, people who don't have a college degree, trying to move Democrats away from the idea that they're elites and that they only care about people who are highly educated. And it's come at a time when the demographics have changed. The Republicans have become the party of the less educated voters and the Democrats have become the party of the less educated voters, and the Democrats have become the party of the more educated voters. And he's trying to recapture that old Democratic appeal to working-class Americans.

And those are his roots, in fact. Those are his roots, right? Scranton Joe, as he conceives himself. Meanwhile, we made the largest investment, Kamala and I, in public safety ever. Now, the murder rate is... So he does mention Kamala and I, but here we are about half an hour into this speech, and he really hasn't gotten around to talking about her yet. He's made a couple of passing references to her,

but he hasn't yet given us the torch passing part of the speech. Kamala and I are committed to strengthening legal immigration, including protecting dreamers and more. I get in reference to Kamala, but kind of as a subsidiary. But again in passing, yeah, as a subsidiary, right? Kamala and I, and then Mouzane. There's not, we haven't yet heard him talk about who she is, what she's done as vice president.

He's not giving us a pitch. No, he presumably will before it's over, but this is not a speech yet about Kamala. The brave service members who gave their lives in this country, he called them suckers and losers. Who in the hell does he think he is? Who does he think he is? There's no words for a person. They are not the words of a person not worthy of being the commander-in-chief, period.

Not then, not now, and not ever. I mean that. I mean that from the bottom of my heart. He's talked more about Trump tonight so far than he has about Kamala Harris. Because I think he expected to give a speech tonight making the case against Trump, right? That he wanted to make that case himself for his own candidacy. In that sense, a lot of the speeches, the speech he might have given a month ago,

except that one key line. I accept your nomination. I mean it. Folks, I've got five months left in my presidency. I've got a lot to do. I intend to get it done. I spend the honor of my lifetime to serve as your president. I love the job, but I love my country more. I love my country more.

From all this talk about how I'm angry, all those people said I should step down. That's not true. I love my country more, and we need to preserve our democracy. In 2024, we need you to vote. We need you to keep the Senate. We need you to win back the House of Representatives. And above all, we need you to beat Donald Trump. This was his case, right? This was the case he made for himself. Kamala and Tim!

To let Kamala and Tim, he's endorsing them, he's supporting them, but he hasn't really talked about them. We've made incredible progress, we have more work to do, and Kamala and Tim will continue to take on corporate greed and bring down cost of food. Peter, is he actually passing the torch? Well, he has changed the subject of the sentence from I will to they will. And the rest of it is a lot of what he would have said otherwise. Exactly. They will continue my policy.

Exactly, exactly. He's outlining what he would have done in effect by saying Kamala and Tim will be the ones to carry it out. Selecting Kamala was the very first decision I made when I became our nominee. All right, we're talking a little bit about it now. That was the best decision I made my whole career. Okay. I said it was the best decision he ever made

in picking Kamala Harris as his vice president. And you could say it's a line, but obviously he understands right now that in some ways, she's the most important thing to his legacy. Because if she wins, he will be remembered for what he accomplished and for sacrificing and stepping aside. And if she loses, people will say, he hung on too long through hubris or stubbornness or pride,

and he didn't set the Democrats up for success. In other words, his legacy is entirely dependent on her and what becomes of her in the next couple of months. Absolutely right. Ten weeks, we'll decide it. America! America! I gave my best to you! So this is the final moment. The book ends in an extraordinary political career, whether you support him or not. It's an American story. We're the United States of America! This is the line he always uses to finish his speeches.

And there's nothing we cannot do when we do it together. God bless you all, and may God protect our troops. The crowd is roaring. He turns around, looks behind him. For about 48 minutes. Long speech. It's now well after midnight in the East. But you know the crowd here was appreciative even if some of them began to drift away. Behind him and behind Jill are graphics saying thank you Joe and we love Joe. Here's Kamala Harris. Kamala and her husband Doug are joining them. They're embracing.

I love you so much, she just said. Kamala Harris, you can see her lips. I love you so much, she said and gave him a hug. And then she just said, I love you again. This is effectively the torch being passed. In effect, sending the signal to this call to the country and the world that he sees her as his successor and it's her party now. If she can win in November, it'll be her White House. So he's clearing the stage. The next three nights of this convention, all in prime time,

will all be Kamala Harris and the people who are promoting Kamala Harris. Joe Biden won't be here anymore and it won't be his convention. Oh, and he's leaving the stage, Peter. Now he's leaving the stage. Literally and you can argue politically. That's it. He's gone.

That's it. He's gone. That's it. We'll be right back. Here's what else you should know today. In a very constructive meeting with Prime Minister Netanyahu today, he confirmed to me that Israel accepts the bridging proposal, that he supports it. Israel accepted an important proposal put forward by international mediators, including the U.S., who were trying to broker a last-ditch plan for a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas. The proposal was described as a bridge toward a larger peace agreement, and Israel's support

prompted American Secretary of State Antony Blinken to call on Hamas to back the proposal as well. The next important step is for Hamas to say yes, and then in the coming days for all of the expert negotiators to get together to work on clear understandings on implementing the agreement. But it's unclear whether Hamas will back the bridge proposal. Hamas has repeatedly claimed that the ceasefire negotiations have been slanted toward Israel.

And in a sign of its skepticism, the group's military wing carried out a provocative suicide bombing in Tel Aviv on Sunday night. Today's episode was produced by Rob Zipko, Lindsay Garrison, Carlos Prieto, Stella Tan, and Jessica Chung. It was edited by Rachel Quester and Paige Cowitt, contains original music by Marian Lozano, Dan Powell, Corey Schrupple, and Rowan Niemesto, and was engineered by Chris Wood. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsvark of Wonderly.

That's it for the Daily. I'm Sabrina Tavernese. See you tomorrow.