7/21/24 BREAKING: BIDEN OUT! BACKS KAMALA!
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Hey y'all, Dr. Joy here. I invite you to join me every Wednesday on the Therapy for Black Girls podcast, a weekly chat about mental health and personal development, where my expert guests and I discuss the unique challenges and triumphs faced by Black women through the lens of self-care, pop culture, and building the best version of you. So if you're looking for more ways to incorporate wellness into your life, listen to the Therapy for Black Girls podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hi, I'm Katie Lowes. And I'm Guillermo Diaz. And we're the hosts of Unpacking the Toolbox, the Scandal Rewatch podcast where we're talking about all the best moments of the show. Mesmerizing. But also, we get to hang out with all of our old Scandal friends like Bellamy Young, Scott Foley, Tony Goldwyn, Debbie Allen, Kerry Washington. Well, suit up, gladiators. Grab your big old glass of wine and prepare yourselves for an even more behind-the-scenes Scandal.

stories with Unpacking the Toolbox. Listen to Unpacking the Toolbox on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Meet the real woman behind the tabloid headlines in a personal podcast that delves into the life of the notorious Tori Spelling as she takes us through the ups and downs of her sometimes glamorous, sometimes chaotic life in marriage. I just filed for divorce. Whoa. I said the words that I've said like in my head for like 16 years.

Listen to Misspelling on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, everybody, we have some absolutely massive breaking news, which is that much anticipated or speculated about President Joe Biden is...

stepping back from being the Democratic nominee, withdrawing from the 2024 race. He will remain as president. He is not resigning that position. I'm going to pull up for you the letter that he posted, which I'm going to be 100 with you. I actually haven't read yet. So we're going to read it together right now in real time because I wanted to jump on and bring you the news as much as possible. And also, obviously, Ryan Grimm here with us to help us parse through what all of this means. So he says, my fellow Americans, welcome.

Over the past three and a half years, we have made great progress as a nation. Today, America has the strongest economy in the world. We've made historic investments in rebuilding our nation and lowering prescription drug costs for seniors and expanding affordable health care to a record number of Americans.

We've provided critically needed care to a million veterans exposed to toxic substances, passed the first gun safety law in 30 years, pointed the first African-American woman to the Supreme Court, and passed the most significant climate legislation in the history of the world. America has never been better positioned to lead—

Thank you.

I believe it is in the best interest of my party and the country for me to stand down and to focus solely on fulfilling my duties as president for the remainder of my term. I will speak to the nation later this week in more detail about my decision. For now, let me express my deepest gratitude to all those who have worked so hard to see me reelected. I want to thank

Vice President Kamala Harris for being an extraordinary partner in all this work. And let me express my heartfelt appreciation to the American people for the faith and trust you have placed in me. I believe today what I always have, that there is nothing America can't do when we do it together. We just have to remember we are the United States of America, signed Joe Biden. So...

Ryan, a few things that jump out at me right off the jump. First of all, the timing is wild. The RNC just concluded. Obviously, we are weeks away from the DNC, so just an extraordinary moment in history.

Second of all, he is withdrawing from the race, but remaining as president, not resigning from that position. That was a new push that Republicans in particular were starting to make. But others as well are saying, listen, if you're not fit to run for office, how are you fit to continue to serve in the presidency? Number three, while he expresses his gratitude to Kamala Harris, his, of course, vice president, he does not endorse her or any specific process that

to succeed him as Democratic nominee here, leaving an open question whether he will do any of that or just leave it open to what comes next. So what is your initial reaction here?

Yes, all of that. Thanking Kamala Harris for being a partner in the process but not endorsing her is huge. It opens up the next several days to be a period of intense jockeying. Biden, as has been reported basically everywhere, was at King Lear levels of resentment and anger over the last several days as he's been being pushed to leave. And Griffin, did you say something?

OK, there you go. Griffin says he just endorsed Kamala Harris. So breaking news from Griffin that he did not endorse her in the letter, but waited until afterwards to endorse her might be a way to, you know, sanctify the dignity of the Oval Office and not sully it.

with the political machinations of political machinations. That's how Democrats think that is very Democrat brain. So now you're going to see the entire now you're going to see a contest between those who are advocating for an open convention, such as Nancy Pelosi, such as myself, rarely agree with Nancy Pelosi. And those who say, look,

it's too chaotic, it's too toxic, it's too late.

What we need to do now is just rally behind Kamala Harris and just ride to the general election with Kamala Harris. So here's the Joe Biden tweet in which he endorses Kamala Harris. He says, my fellow Democrats, I've decided not to accept the nomination to focus all my energies on my duties as president for the remainder of my term. My very first decision as the party nominee in 2020 was to pick Kamala Harris as my vice president, and it's been the best decision I've made. Today, I want to offer my full support and endorsement for

Kamala to be the nominee of our party this year. Democrats, it's time to come together and beat Trump. Let's do this. So we'll see whether the strength of Joe Biden's endorsement of Kamala is enough to completely quiet Trump.

Those like Pelosi, who reportedly behind the scenes had been pushing for an open convention process. I suspect that many of the donors also are interested in that open convention process. The reason being that, I mean, if you look at the polling, one of the weakest candidates to run against Trump, not named Joe Biden, is Kamala Harris, at least according to the polling today. Now, listen, none of that is set in stone. She may be sort of, I think,

underappreciated at the moment given the fact that she just hasn't been in the public spotlight that much you could see a bump just based on the fact oh my god she's not a thousand years old and she can string three sentences together this is incredible but if you're just going by the data at this point you

You would look at her compared to a Gretchen Whitmer, a Pete Buttigieg, a Gavin Newsom, Andy Beshear, a Josh Shapiro, a Roy Coop. The list goes on and on and on and say, if you're just concerned with defeating Donald Trump, any one of these other candidates is likely to be in a stronger position.

The other thing with regards to Kamala Harris, I mean, there are a few things to mention here. Obviously, it goes without saying that her defenders will say that it is outrageous to shove aside the first female woman vice president, black woman vice president. They will also say voters in the primary, which, you know, let's put aside the fact there really wasn't a primary, but they voted for Biden-Harris.

So she has more Democratic legitimacy. This is the case that they would make for why she should be the presumptive nominee. So there's that. There's also the fact that she's been in the public eye. So perhaps she's better vetted than other potential candidates who could be a wild card. On the flip side of all of that, Ryan, you know,

She also we know her weaknesses. We know the negatives. And we also know, based on polling, that the people who are most closely associated with the Biden administration really have a weight around their neck at this point, especially because of the sense of betrayal of this administration and the level of cover up that they perpetrated on the American public vis-a-vis his health concerns.

Yeah, and I think the argument that she's been vetted is one of the flimsiest and that she's been a national figure. It's true that she was vetted during the 2019-2020 campaign, and she absolutely withered under the heat of it. So it's not like she was vetted and then succeeded in even making it to Iowa. Like she dropped out before Iowa because once national attention was

was on her, she crumbled. She was then picked by Biden, not as he says, because he thinks she'd be a great president, but because that's what he wanted to add to the ticket for electoral purposes.

There hasn't been a whole lot of focus on her during the Biden-Harris administration to the extent it was about her comment, do not come, about immigration or her effort to do voting rights. She kept getting handed these really impossible tasks, which is often what presidents do. That's what Obama did to Joe Biden. The most scrutiny she got was over her massive staff turmoil. Now, journalistically,

If Kamala Harris does win, it could be delightful for reporters because, you know, the vice president's office has been toxic and chaotic and filled with leaks. Less so in the last six months or so, but for most of the Biden administration.

Her office was just a disaster. Yeah. Just people rotating in and out constantly and leaving and and and trashing the culture there, which is exactly what happened during the campaign. Remember, New York Times and Politico and others did the tick tocks about her campaign, talking about how

you know, what a train wreck the entire thing was. Now, the reason I think that you're not going to end up with an open convention is because people like Pelosi can manifest the possibility of it because they have enough power to do that, but they can't force anybody to run. And these centrist Democratic candidates are so cowardly and cynical and calculating that I don't think, I hope I'm proven wrong here, I don't think any of them will even challenge Kamala Harris.

My understanding is that they believe that because she has establishment endorsements and she's the vice president, that she's very difficult to beat.

that they will likely lose to her that they would be seen as disloyal and that harris will lose in the general and that they would be blamed for her loss or the fact that they challenged her and lost would be considered their shot like hey you're you had your shot you pulled your ticket you got your order get in the back of line and so everybody else so everybody's like okay let's let her lose

And then we will run in 2028, which, of course, flies in the face of all the Democratic arguments that they make that there won't be a 2028 election. So wait a minute, which which one is it here?

So I want to come back to this, but I do want to back up for a second and just talk a little bit about Joe Biden's decision making process and these extraordinary past several weeks. Obviously, this all began with that utterly disastrous debate performance, which, Ryan, I want to give you and I a little pat on the back because in our pre-debate coverage, I don't know if you remember this.

I think we both were saying that there is a possibility that he's so bad tonight that it is not recoverable. And I even I even said a bunch of Democrats were like secretly hoping for hoping that it would be such a disaster. That's right. And that is what unfolds. Now, I didn't actually expect it to be that bad.

I thought it would be bad, but in the way that... Exceeded our worst expectations. It did. I thought it would be bad in the way that he's normally bad, but it was, you know, an extra special level of bad. And that has just sent the whole party into a total tailspin. So first you had, you know, you had some early comments that evening, people like David Axelrod. You had some immediate jumping on saying, this can't, this isn't going to work. We got to do something else. Then you had some...

Lower level members of Congress predominantly come out and say, all right, it's time for him to move on. Just a handful, right? A few who came out, sort of these little known moderate types. Then you started to have the, you had the George Clooney op-ed and you start to get leaks behind the scenes about pressure from donors, right?

about some higher level Democratic officials who believe that he needed to step aside. Very early on, we had reporting that Schumer was actually glad that the debate was so early because he thought that this was actually a possibility and wanted to have enough time to be able to get another candidate in there. So this is happening behind the scenes.

But Biden and his close in circle, we're talking Jill Hunter, his sister, Steve Ruschetti, Mike Donnell, and just a few others outside of that are seemingly totally dug in and impervious to all of it. And just saying, absolutely not. I'm in. I'm the nominee. I'm doing these rallies. I'm going to prove it to you. I'm going to do my big boy press conference, etc.,

But and then Trump's attempted assassination occurs. It sort of quiets the talk for a while. At that point, I thought, oh, this is over. This is the conversation is is over. It's not coming back. That's it. But while the conversation was quiet, there was a lot going on behind the scenes. And when the fallout from Trump's assassination attempt quiets,

Then you get these more public reports. And Nancy Pelosi, Obama seems to be a primary mover in this as well, who decided to go more public with their views, which had been largely behind the scenes. We also had reports about the way the donor cash had just fallen off a cliff. We're talking he was bringing in 25 percent.

of what he had been previously. There's donor efforts going on. And so the sense is, and then he gets his COVID diagnosis. The sense is, and you tell me your view of how this all unfolded,

That while he very much wanted to stay in, his family very much wanted him to stay in, he came to a point where you just realized there is no way that I can win. I'm going to be out here on an island with every major leader and power broker in the party against me. Every Democratic member of Congress and swing state Democrat is going to be running against me.

I'm not going to have money to run ads. And those ads have been significantly keeping him afloat to the extent that he's even competitive at this point. There is just no way I can persist. Yeah, and I think he could have held on.

with some cogent appearances after the debate. Like it was on a razor's edge. Like if he would have come out and done nightly press conferences and handled them well, if he had done if he'd have done better in the Lester Holt interview, if he'd have done better in the George Stephanopoulos interview, if he'd have done better even at the NATO press conference where people praised him because he remembered the names of the countries correctly half the time.

Then he could have survived. But it's not that he was nervous or he was in poor form or whatever. He just couldn't. He wasn't physically and mentally capable of delivering the kind of performance that people needed to say, OK, you know what, that what you had a bad night rather than, you know, you have a degenerative neurological condition.

And also the neurologists have been saying that one of the symptoms of all of these different degenerative conditions, regardless of which one he has, is in a rapidly increased amount of stubbornness and a collapse of an executive functioning.

And anybody who's dealt with family members at that stage of their life recognize that increased stubbornness. And for some people who are already stubborn, like a Joe Biden, people might think, oh, that's just Joe Biden being Joe. But it's actually...

It's beyond Joe. It's stubbornness beyond him. So the amount of force that was must have been required to get him to this place is almost unimaginable that there is that he. Yeah, there was also so much behind the scenes. I'm just sort of scanning Twitter now to see what other reactions we're getting in. But there was also so much behind the scenes behind.

First of all, you had a lot of people coming forward and saying, you know, with that, how he was at that debate. This was what Clooney said in his op-ed and then others came out to verify it. What he was at that debate, that's who he is now. So, you know, and then all those pieces. Oh, why didn't he do the Super Bowl interview? Why was he wandering away at the G7? Why did he forget this former Congress, this Congresswoman Jackie who had just died weeks ago? Why did he forget that she was dead? Right.

all of these pieces come together and it really is unseeable. The other thing that came out is just the lingering utter bitterness that he has towards Barack Obama. And he was really incensed that...

So it's Dave LaDax, who sort of leads the charge early on. The pod save bros are Obama world guys through and through are aggressively leading the charge. Then you have the Clooney op ed Clooney also seen as being like a cipher for Barack Obama. And it was reported he was in touch with Obama. Yeah, that's exactly right. Reporting comes out that he's in touch with Obama. And then you get reports specifically about Obama now talking to people essentially saying, yeah, he needs to step aside. And.

Joe and Obama have always had this sort of fraught relationship because I think while it was true that they had a good working relationship while he was vice president, there was also always this sense that Joe felt he was looked down upon because you got Obama, this Ivy League guy with these super smart brainiac crew, and then you got Joe.

And Joe Biden, who's this more old school, back-slapping, like personal relationship type of politician. And those two styles were like oil and water. And Biden went to state school and all of those sort of like class-driven dynamics as well.

So, you know, the irony here, Ryan, that cannot be lost is that it was Barack Obama that brings him into the dance in the first place by being his vice president, like picking him as vice president. Then he really brings him into the dance in the second place by helping to clear the field for him when the whole Democratic Party establishment unites.

In order to defeat Bernie Sanders and he ends up being the guy. And so for all of Joe Biden's talk recently about all the elites are trying to take me on, et cetera, et cetera. It's like, well, your entire presidency was based on the strength of the elites in this party.

So if he had some sort of a groundswell of grassroots support, if he had run through a real Democratic primary process where he'd had to be on a debate stage and where the field wasn't cleared for many of the other establishment contenders who are chomping at the bit, if he had done those things and had actual Democratic support and a grassroots fundraising base,

Then he wouldn't have ended up in this place where he cannot go forward without the very elites who are the ones who brought him here and propped him up and hid his condition, by the way, in the first place. Yeah. In 1988, he ran and it was a humiliating defeat. 2008, he ran.

low single digits and exactly right, was then rescued by Obama and put on the ticket. 2020, he ran, finished fourth in Iowa, fifth in New Hampshire, absolutely clobbered in Nevada, and then brought back to life by Obama and Jim Clyburn right ahead of South Carolina and Super Tuesday. So as Congressman Adam Smith said, it is extraordinarily rich for Biden to complain that elites are

We're orchestrating his ouster when, like you said, elites are the only reason he became either vice president or president. The American people had the opportunity to name him president multiple times before and decided not to. That's right. It was only when he was-

You know, the alternative being Bernie is what is what got the elites to say, OK, got him to focus. All right. I guess I've got no choice. I've got a John Fetterman reaction for you, Ryan, if you'd like it. Sure. This is from Dave Weigel's Twitter account. He says people push down an honorable man, loving father and a great president before an absolute sleazeball like Menendez. Congratulations. So Fetterman.

I guess. Menendez. Yeah, fair enough. Menendez should not be in the Senate. He shouldn't be in the Senate. That's fair. Although it's funny because it's actually the Republicans who seemingly want to rescue Menendez because they don't like, you know, going after people for their corruption. They're afraid it looks bad on their guys.

So I saw a shoe. I was just looking for I do see a Schumer statement, but I'm not coming across it right now. But I'm sure that we'll get, you know, statements from all of the high ranking politicians. I see Jamal Bowman here. He says now that President Biden has suspended his campaign, Vice President Kamala Harris is the most qualified and best choice to lead us forward. So that is definitely where the debate is going to head next.

And, you know, to go back to that. Oh, I see Dr. Jill Biden tweeted out Joe's letter with just a heart emoji. So that was her reaction to his decision here. John Favreau, one of the pod save guys, he says a courageous and selfless decision. The president did what he's done for the last four years. He listened to the American people, put the country's interests ahead of his own, the exact opposite of Donald Trump.

Not surprised by that framing. Obviously, I strenuously disagree because all of this like, oh, he's such a great man. He's so selfless, blah, blah, blah. Tell that to the babies who don't have limbs or their lives or food to eat in Gaza. So spare me that one. And I do want to ask you about that because

Not that I have great hopes that Kamala Harris or any one of these Democrats is going to be like, you know, showing up with a watermelon T-shirt anytime soon or affirmatively like truly pro-Palestine. But I am...

I am somewhat hopeful that they may be less terrible than Joe Biden has been simply because, first of all, I do think there's an age issue. You know, I think anyone younger has at least like Barack Obama did, has at least somewhat of a different view of this conflict. That's number one. Number two is.

Bibi Netanyahu has turned himself into a partisan figure. And this started in the Obama administration when he shows up, speaks to Congress in order to try to block the Iranian nuclear deal, which in my opinion was one of the greatest accomplishments of the Obama-Biden administration.

It's no secret that Bibi would rather have Donald Trump in office. So I am somewhat hopeful that just an out-of-the-box normie Democrat of the sort that Kamala Harris basically is would view this through more of a partisan lens in a way that happens to be somewhat more pro-Palestine or less just like fervently pro-Israel. They can do whatever they want, whenever they want. Yeah, than Joe Biden has been, who is clearly...

ideologically dug in on this issue. I think this is the end of an era of

democratic ideological fealty that leads to 100 unapologetic support uh for israel i think obviously uh the um the i think obviously like the democrats will lean heavily towards israel uh but it won't be it won't be in the bite like biden it'll be palestinians at least will have a shot um

Hey, our buddy Dimitri Melhorn just sent me his statement. What you got? Remind people who Dimitri is. Dimitri Melhorn, he was Reid Hoffman's right hand man up until they parted ways just a couple of days ago. And now he joined the Lincoln Project, Reid Hoffman, the LinkedIn billionaire. Melhorn says Kamala Harris is the American dream personified daughter of immigrants and

who met at Cal. She is also toughness personified, rising from my hometown of Oakland, California to become the top prosecutor of the state. With Grant and Joe stepping back, I cannot wait to help elect President Harris. So that's your kind of Lincoln Project centrist

Gotcha. I've got a Ron Klain tweet for you here. Now that the donors and electeds have pushed out the only candidate who has ever beaten Trump, Ron Klain, of course, being Biden's initial chief of staff, it's time to end the political fantasy games and unite behind the only veteran of a national campaign, our outstanding VP Kamala Harris. Let's get real and win in November. You also have a number of the coconut-pilled lefty crew here.

We're excited about the Kamala Harris endorsement. I, like you, Ryan, agree that it would be better... Listen...

The time to have an actually democratic process, unfortunately, they passed by. Oh, they've got five weeks. Right. But we could have had like actual primaries and a normal process if they hadn't been so committed to hiding Joe Biden's true health condition from the American people. And if he would have stuck with his whole, I'm going to be a bridge candidate one term, then we could have had a primary. That is a great point. I'm going to get my Uber. Great point as well. All right. Why don't you drop off and I'll wrap this up. Ryan's going to be in the studio with me tomorrow. Bye, Ryan. See you then.

So in any case, as we were saying, you know, if they had had a true primary process, then there was an opportunity to do this in actual democratic fashion. They decided to not have any debates. They decided to not even host a primary in many states. They decided to really circle the wagons to make sure that no establishment candidate, you know, national competitor could emerge from that process.

And so now you're left with this very short timeframe, just a number of weeks before the DNC convention. And so I think it is very likely at this point that, you know, the wagons basically get circled around Kamala. Ryan is probably correct that just as they decided to take a pass around

In the fall, after the midterms, any of the larger named national establishment Democrat figures will probably also take a pass and decide it is in their personal political self-interest just to get behind Kamala. That's probably what we're going to see. So in terms of her odds for the fall, you know, I think probably tomorrow—

Ryan and I are going to have to totally reschedule our show, like figure out what we're having in the show tomorrow because we had to run down locked in. That looked very nice. But now obviously it has totally different world that we're living in today. But I suspect we'll go through the polling about how she matches up vis-a-vis Trump. And look, she's got an uphill climb. You know, she's starting the campaign late. Now they've sort of got the campaign in the box. They know how they want to run against Donald Trump. The public already very much has feelings about Donald Trump. And those feelings are largely negative.

However, she has been she has had her own weaknesses as a national candidate. She is tied to the Biden-Harris administration, which is unpopular, not solely because part partly because, you know,

of the lies and the cover-up and the betrayal of the American people vis-a-vis his health condition. So she has a lot to overcome. But looking today, unless there is a major organized like daughter revolt, Nancy Pelosi et al, coming out to not only push the president aside, but also push aside his vice president and the woman that he just endorsed, I think it's very likely that we are going to have

Vice President Kamala Harris sliding into the top spot as the Democratic nominee, and

And then that raises questions about who she will pick as her vice presidential contender. There has been a lot of speculation about this already. Roy Cooper, the governor of North Carolina, has been mentioned quite a bit. Andy Beshear, the governor of Kentucky, who is quite popular in Kentucky, even as a Democrat, one of actually the most popular governors in the country, even as a Democrat in a red state. He has been mentioned frequently.

quite a bit. I'm sure there will be other names that are added to that potential list. I did see a report as well that donors were funding an effort to go ahead and vet

some of these possible vice presidential picks. So some other things for us to take a deeper look at tomorrow, but I'll just wrap it here from now. I got a million thoughts I could go on all day, but I want to get this video posted so I can get it out to you all too. Bottom line, Joe Biden withdrawing from the presidential race, endorsing his vice president Kamala Harris, and we are in unprecedented times.

Hey y'all, Dr. Joy here. I invite you to join me every Wednesday on the Therapy for Black Girls podcast, a weekly chat about mental health and personal development, where my expert guests and I discuss the unique challenges and triumphs faced by Black women through the lens of self-care, pop culture, and building the best version of you. So if you're looking for more ways to incorporate wellness into your life, listen to the Therapy for Black Girls podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hi, I'm Katie Lowes. And I'm Guillermo Diaz. And we're the hosts of Unpacking the Toolbox, the Scandal Rewatch podcast where we're talking about all the best moments of the show. Mesmerizing. But also, we get to hang out with all of our old Scandal friends like Bellamy Young, Scott Foley, Tony Goldwyn, Debbie Allen, Kerry Washington. Well, suit up, gladiators. Grab your big old glass of wine and prepare yourselves for even more behind-the-scenes Scandal.

stories with Unpacking the Toolbox. Listen to Unpacking the Toolbox on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Meet the real woman behind the tabloid headlines in a personal podcast that delves into the life of the notorious Tori Spelling as she takes us through the ups and downs of her sometimes glamorous, sometimes chaotic life in marriage. I just filed for divorce. Whoa. I said the words that I've said like in my head for like 16 years.

wild. Listen to Misspelling on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.