J.T.: There are a couple of other things to unpack with that. One is that the issues that animated Joe Biden the most in his Presidency were national-security issues—NATO, the Middle East, Ukraine-Russia. And so I don’t doubt that he was most engaged [with Blinken], and also that those meetings, when they scheduled them, were in peak-performance time—noon, one o’clock. But the other thing that Blinken says—
Well, hang on, Jake. Peak-performance time, you’re suggesting, was just a couple of hours in the middle of the day? It was that brief?
J.T.: Not a couple, but ten to four o’clock is what Alex’s reporting was. And I think that is generous, even, because he was not in the Oval Office every day from ten to four.
What was he doing?
A.T.: He spent a lot of time in the residence. And he would be on the phone, right? But we have months of the internal calendar, which is called the block calendar, which shows how much his schedule, especially beginning in late 2023, when he was not travelling, was restricted. There were some days when he would go to the residence, have dinner, and be down at 4:30 P.M.
J.T.: You hear this argument a lot, from not just “the Politburo,” which is what some of the Administration came to calling Tom Donilon and Steve Ricchetti, the two top aides, and not just the First Family’s eyes and ears, Anthony Bernal and Annie Tomasini. But what others would say is, “Oh, his decision-making was always fine.” But the job of the President is not just decision-making—
It’s also communicating to the population.
J.T.: One top aide said to us, “The job is making hard decisions and communicating them to the American people.” And this aide said, “He was always able to do No. 1. No. 2 was a struggle—and it got worse throughout his Presidency.” But No. 2 is huge. Yes, you want the person to be able to make good decisions, but they also need to persuade. The American people need to have faith in this person. Western leaders need to have faith in this person. And he lost a lot of that.
And presumably you have to campaign for the Presidency when that moment comes.
J.T.: Yeah. If it hadn’t been for COVID, who knows if that would’ve even worked in 2020. COVID, as one aide told us, was a huge tragedy and disaster for the American people, but a gift to Biden in 2020, because it enabled him to basically have a very inactive campaign schedule that was largely dependent on him doing Zoom calls.
Alex, you write in the book about Cabinet meetings during Biden’s Presidency. Those meetings seemed almost entirely scripted. Were they really?
A.T.: Very much so. And this is something that came to us after the election—members of the Cabinet told us that they found the Cabinet meetings disturbing and frustrating. The White House would ask them, “Well, what are you going to ask? If he asks a certain question, what is your answer going to be?” And it wasn’t just when cameras or the press were brought in for a brief photo op. It was afterward, even. They described there being literal scripts, where the Cabinet meeting was a very scripted affair. And members of the Cabinet afterward came away feeling a little disturbed. And this was as early as 2021, but it became worse over time.
Did they ask pointed questions, Jake? Did they press the issue?
J.T.: No. In fact, in October, 2023, was the last Cabinet meeting, I think, until September, 2024. And that period begins what one Cabinet secretary of several we spoke with described as the “weird period,” where they were kept at bay. They didn’t get a chance to interact with the President. There were exceptions to this—Blinken, the Secretary of State, and [Lloyd] Austin, the Secretary of Defense. But, for the most part, a lot of these secretaries were just completely kept at arm’s length. One of them said that during that period—spring of 2024—the secretary did have a meeting with Biden, and he was mumbly and incoherent and difficult to understand, and this Cabinet secretary left that meeting upset and disturbed.
But no one came forward. When they would complain internally, they were told, “He’s fine, be quiet.” And this is a larger topic, one we all need to reckon with when it comes to the American Presidency today, and the degree to which one person is bestowed with so much power and surrounded by individuals whose own power depends on that person maintaining power, regardless of whether or not it’s good for the White House, the Party, or the country.
Robert Hur came forward, did his job. He wasn’t able to get a job for months. [The former congressman] Dean Phillips came forward, said, “Joe Biden should be challenged in the primaries. He’s not up to this.” He was essentially defenestrated. There was a real price to pay for coming forward.
Were the scripted Cabinet meetings, as you call them, the case from the very beginning of the Presidency? Or did that become more noticeable late in the Presidency?
A.T.: It started at the beginning, but it became more and more scripted throughout.
J.T.: Every White House—indeed any successful person—is surrounded by people who help make them look as good as possible. So a lot of those tools—note cards and teleprompter, etc.—that were put there innocently enough for a seventy-nine-year-old President at the beginning of his term became crutches, and, ultimately, tools of the coverup, by the end. Because if you are a President—if you’re eighty-one years old and you’re not able to go into a room full of donors and speak extemporaneously for ten minutes—then there’s something wrong. And that was happening in 2023. Bill Daley, former chief of staff under Obama, went to one of those, and he was distressed. He tried to get other Democrats to run in the primary against Joe Biden. He reached out to [Illinois Governor J. B.] Pritzker, he reached out to [Michigan Governor Gretchen] Whitmer, he reached out to [California Governor Gavin] Newsom or [Kentucky Governor Andy] Beshear, and nobody would do it. It’s a fool’s errand to take on an incumbent President in a primary, generally speaking. But people saw this and they were disturbed. So again, some things might start off, like, Look, we’re just trying to help the President. He wants a teleprompter, no big deal. All of a sudden, he can’t answer questions at a fund-raiser in 2023.