Biden Meets the Press, Obama & Pelosi Weigh In, Trump Team Eyes Harris
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It's Friday, July 12th, right now on CNN This Morning. I believe I'm the best qualified to govern, and I think I'm the best qualified to win. A defiant President Biden staying in the race despite more calls from Democrats for him to pass the torch. Plus...

I wouldn't have picked Vice President Trump to be vice president, but I think she's not qualified to be president. More troubling flubs from the president in his first solo press conference since last year. Plus, new CNN reporting on private discussions between Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi about what to do at the top of the Democratic ticket. And then there's the Trump campaign preparing for the possibility of a new race against Kamala Harris.

All right, 6 a.m. here in Washington, a live look at the house everyone is battling to live in. Good morning, everyone. I'm Casey Hunt. It is wonderful to have you with us on this Friday. I would say that we have made it, but this weekend is set to be potentially one of the biggest of the campaign as we head in to the Republican National Convention. But let's start with what happened last night. It could have been worse.

but it still might not be enough to stop the bleeding. That is the assessment I am hearing from Democrats as we come on the air this morning after President Biden held the most, possibly the most important press conference of his entire political career. He was trying to reassure voters that his disastrous debate performance was the outlier. But before he faced the White House press corps shortly after 7:30 p.m. Eastern time, there was this moment which played on all three evening newscasts on broadcast.

Now I want to hand it over to the president of Ukraine who has as much courage as he has determination. Ladies and gentlemen, President Putin. President Putin. He's going to beat President Putin. President Zelensky. Also easy to clip on TikTok. The president there catching his own mistake and quickly correcting it. But when he took his very first question at the news conference last night, he didn't catch himself. Look, I wouldn't have picked Vice President Trump to be vice president

that I think she was not qualified to be president. So let's start there. Vice President Trump. Democrats that I talked to did say that they felt it went uphill from that moment. For just under an hour, President Biden answered questions on everything from his own mental fitness to foreign policy, where he stressed his dozens of years of experience.

Some sources I talked to said that they were heartened by President Biden's tone in answering questions about his fitness for office, where they saw a little bit less denial and a little bit more willingness to acknowledge that he needs to do better. Still, the president insisted he was the best chance to take down Trump. If your team came back and showed you data that she would fare better against former President Donald Trump, would you reconsider your decision to stay in the race?

No, unless they came back and said, there's no way you can win. Me. No one's saying that. No poll says that. But everything last night, not enough for some Democrats. Just moments after Biden left the stage, Congressman Jim Himes, the top Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, joined the ranks of congressional Democrats, now at 17, who publicly opposed Biden's re-election bid. Himes called on Biden to, quote, make way for a new generation of leaders,

He explained his decision this way. My colleagues and I are worried about two things. One, what is plan B? That's a totally fair question. I actually think plan B looks pretty good. I don't know what it looks like, but I think we have a remarkable bench of Democrats. And they're also worried about something very legitimate, which tortured me and continues to torture me, which is we cannot be here anymore.

This needs to be resolved, I don't know, in the next five to seven days. Because we just went 10 days where the story was not Donald Trump promising totalitarianism. It was how is Joe Biden going to do in the big boy press conference?

All right. Our panel's here. CNN senior reporter Isaac DeVere, former Obama White House staffer Ashley Allison, and former RNC communications director Doug High. Welcome to all of you. Ashley Allison, I want to start with you because the reality is all eyes are going to be on what are Democrats going to do next. We're set to hear from Jim Clyburn on one of the broadcast networks later on this morning. They're going to be listening for every word.

I'm Isaac has reporting that Obama and Pelosi are discussing what to do we're going to dig into that later in the show as well but what are you hearing in the text chains that I know are flying everywhere about where this goes from here I turn my phone off

I would forgive you for that, to be honest. Yeah, you know, I mean, after the debate I was with or during the debate, I was with voters and I think everybody was like, OK, that was not great. But I have to be honest.

People are so terrified, including myself, about beating Donald Trump. They are disappointed that we are 15 days or however many days, two weeks after the debate, and we're still having this conversation. Look, I sat on CNN sets a year ago, and I said, if you want to run to be the Democratic nominee, I think anybody should be allowed to do it. And nobody did it. Well, a couple people did it.

But they weren't the people that folks are acknowledging should be. And in the clip you showed of the congressperson, they were like, I like the plan B. Plan B is Kamala Harris. And the fact that those individuals who have called for Joe Biden to step back

I was talking to someone last night and they said there's one job that the vice president has and it's when the president steps back, it's that the vice president steps up. And so I think we're seeing right now some undertones that many black voters, many brown voters still know live

not just in america but still in the democratic party and it's that you don't trust black women even though you say we're the backbone of the democratic party you aren't listening to black voters who overwhelmingly i think it was 57 percent of black voters say yeah it was a bad night but we're still soaking with joe biden you don't trust us in moments of consequence

but you expect us to show up and show out when it's time to actually win an election. And I think people are frustrated. Last night I was on this network at a very similar desk and I said,

Black people are saying it's time to move on. It's time we understand the existential threat that Donald Trump faced. And my text chains lit up. And people who I hadn't heard from literally since I worked at the White House 12 years ago were like, thank you for the courage and leadership. I will say it again on this network. When I worked for Joe Biden,

And when I left my job in 2020 at a civil rights organization to go work for Joe Biden, I didn't go work on that campaign in June, this time four years ago because of Joe Biden. I went on it because I love this country. In this moment, I'm not saying that Joe Biden should be the nominee because I love Joe Biden. I'm saying it because I love this country and I love democracy and I love the people that look like me and experience the hardest parts when democracy doesn't work for the average American.

I don't know what's gonna happen. I don't have a crystal ball. I wish I did. But it's time to get it together as Democrats. It's time to move on. It's time to rally. And we're missing the point in these moments when 12, 15 Dems are calling for him to sit down, step down, but nobody is checking the one minute and 20 seconds every time Donald Trump lied on that debate stage when people are not calling out Project 2025. It's frustrating. It feels like you're playing with literally my life.

as a black woman in this country, and I'm tired of it. So fair enough. I will just offer, and Isaac, I'm going to put this to you as a counterpoint in terms of this conversation and how it's continuing, which is that the Biden campaign itself is actually testing Kamala Harris in internal polling. The New York Times writes this, under siege from fellow Democrats, President Biden's campaign is quietly testing the strength of Vice President Kamala Harris against former President Donald J. Trump. In a head-to-head survey of voters, the survey was being conducted this week, was commissioned by Biden

Biden campaign's analytics team. It's believed to be the first time since the debate that Mr. Biden's aides have sought to measure how the vice president would fare at the top of the ticket. It could be read as the team gathering information to present a case to the president that his path forward is slim or to argue that Mr. Biden is still the strongest standard bearer for his party. Yeah, look, we don't know exactly what the use of this data is going to be as it's being pulled together here. But I think to Ashley's point,

it is very hard for any person who is aware of not only the rules of the Democratic Party but the the way the politics the Democratic Party the demographics is never party to see anyone other than Kamala Harris being the nominee other than Joe Biden doesn't mean it's not possible that someone else could be but it it as this has gone on I wrote the weekend after the debate that people thought that she would have the edge if there need to be a substitution that has only strengthened and

her the way that she has gone about these two weeks and sticking very close to joe biden has made that case for her in the minds of many people look this is a continuing

trauma and turmoil for the Democrats and when you go and talk to a lot of them what they say is it just wanted to be over already. I want it to end and I have heard people who say to me I don't want Joe Biden to be the nominee. I want this to change but I don't even care anymore. We just need to stop and that is what is driving a lot of people here. I do think also importantly look there are 17 House Democrats who have now

stood up and said that they want Joe Biden to step aside. Most of these Democrats, I would say, probably are not that well-known outside of their district or inside their district. Fair enough. Right? And also, there is a longer list of people who have stood up and said, we want Joe Biden to be the nominee.

And there is a way that we think about this where we look toward the people who stood up against the president. And by the way, it is notable that that many Democrats are willing to take that position. And it's notable also that there are many people, including many people who have publicly said that they want Joe Biden to be the nominee, who are saying to me and to other people, actually, no, I don't want to be the nominee. One House Democrat who

has not cut is not on that list 17 who I was super really surprised last night said to me right before the press conference I'm out I don't want to do this anymore but again the impetus in a lot of minds is how do we get past this yeah it dug high as we button up this conversation I'm Donald Trump is obviously running and I mean to ash's point we're not talking about him we have not he's been sitting back means that him poppin popcorn in the week the debate watching a conversation play out

Are they at the point right now where they would rather run against Joe Biden or against Kamala Harris after? They will tell you the same thing publicly and privately. They want to run against Joe Biden. They think that is the best option. They've been planning for it. Now, the research department at the RNC is and has been doing a lot of research into Kamala and Whitmer and Newsom and so forth. But they want Joe Biden. They think he's the easiest to defeat. And that's because of what we saw last night, obviously, in the debate and the interview. And

And part of it is because why did everybody watch the debate? Why did they watch the Stephanopoulos interview? Why did they watch last night? Because Joe Biden doing unscripted events has become must-see TV for the worst reason possible. Everybody knows that he's walking on a trapeze and they want to see if he falls or not. That's going to continue. That's not going away. That's devastating for Biden. But the truth of it is that press conference, when they say we want to see Biden do things, he did for the most part

Fine. He answered a lot of questions in much more depth and detail than I think Donald Trump would have been able to do if he'd been standing up there. That's obviously not the question in a lot of minds right now, but it is potentially the question that we will come back to when we think about this election in November. Yeah. All right. We're going to continue to talk about this, of course, up next on CNN This Morning. You are gambling the future of the United States of America.

More Democrats calling on President Biden to drop out of the race. Plus, we've got that new reporting on private discussions between Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi about the president's fitness for office.

I'm Dr. Sanjay Gupta, host of the Chasing Life podcast. What are some of the social service agencies that have supported you and your family growing up? That's Dr. Robert Waldinger. He's a psychiatrist, a professor, and a Zen master. What kind of relationships actually help us maintain happiness? And what should we do in those moments where we have setbacks and things that don't work out? Listen to Chasing Life, streaming now, wherever you get your podcasts.

The bottom line is all the polling data right now, which I think is premature because the campaign really hasn't even started. I mean, it hasn't started in earnest yet. Most of the time it doesn't start until after September, after Labor Day. So a lot can happen. I know, I believe I'm the best qualified to govern, and I think I'm the best qualified to win.

That was President Biden at the press conference yesterday trying to convince his fellow Democrats he's still the right person to beat Donald Trump. Because the reality right now is that a lot of Democrats simply don't believe that. All I can do is look at the numbers right now. No president has ever won with a 37% approval rating. You can't undo the debate. It's simply my belief that another candidate would give us a much better chance to win. The fact is, and as was said earlier,

We can't have a situation where every day we're holding our breath. I think we're in a historic moment where the president can pass the torch to the next generation. Joe Biden is a patriot and a person of integrity, but we have to be clear eyed that in my view, he's no longer the strongest candidate to beat Trump. So Isaac, that of course, the selection of the officials that are here in Washington who are thinking about this.

The real reality, and I've talked to several members who are going back to their districts this weekend, they are talking to voters and they are seeing polling of voters in their districts who can't get past the news conference. And I want to play a little bit of a focus group that Axios did. Mark Talib was with us earlier in the hour talking to swing voters about their reaction to the debate. I want to show everybody that. What emotion does he evoke in you?

when you see him on TV. I fill in the blank. When I see President Biden on TV, I feel X. Worried. Respect and sadness. Scared. Embarrassed. Pity and disgust all rolled into one. I mean, Isaac, that's what the president is up against. And as much as they are trying to change the narrative with him being out there now,

do you think it's possible to change what those folks think after that? I think it will be hard to change it. But look, CNN had a poll after the debate with our snap poll had, I think it was 57% of people said after the debate that they didn't think Joe Biden was up to the job, but 55% of people before the debate said that. So some of this is baked in. I think the other thing that's going on here is that

The words that people use, and I don't know in that group and in other focus groups about Donald Trump are pretty harsh too. It doesn't mean that Joe Biden is presenting a choice to the American people that a lot of them are thrilled to have. And we've known that for a while. And that is the problem that he has been facing for months. And that, I think part of what you're seeing with Biden is,

It was a 90 minute debate, they say it. The reason why it hit so hard was not just because of his performance, but was because of the doubts about him that were long there and the feelings among a lot of Democrats that they never wanted him to be running for real. - You mentioned the 17 congressional members, that they aren't well known. And that to me is very striking. Jim Hines is a serious thinking person. Peter Welch, Senator from Vermont, I know pretty well. Very serious, hardworking person.

What we're not hearing from are, frankly, the loudmouths. You know, the people who say, "I will not be silenced," and we do nothing but hear from them. The people who say, "When is Paul Ryan or when is Kevin McCarthy going to stand up and speak truth to power?" And at best, they're implying truth to power, which means they're being completely insincere. And I can tell you, as the first Republican to stand up and say, "I will never support Donald Trump. It's cost me a lot of money. It's cost me contracts.

friendships, jobs, all of that, no regrets, the water's warm, having some dignity is worth it. And if you're a speak truth to power Democrat, and all of a sudden, Maxwell Frost, Cori Bush, you know, Eric Swalwell, where's he been lately? And you just zoom past microphones or you say, not I want Joe Biden to be the nominee, but he's our nominee, so let's just move on and I gotta get to this elevator quickly.

you're not a serious thinking person I I will say I I take spoken out he he said he supports button I support our nominee and he kept walking earbuds in that's not true I'm power I know how to remind me of the Trump era I have to say that there is definitely that a lot of that going on but look at Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has actually been one of the strongest people standing off in but they're going far between that's true can I just say I think that like

We are in I'm going to just step away. This is like about not about Joe Biden and Donald Trump at this moment and just talk about how politics and how elections are working right now, because there are I've been really, really constantly like what is happening right now in our political system as someone who has dedicated the last 20 years of her career doing this.

There have been indicators in the last six years, and there have actually been outcomes. And the indicators, the polls, the focus groups have been saying that Democrats aren't going to fare well or that we're going to see a red wave, but the outcomes haven't matched the indicators. And so I think that what we're seeing right now is that the tools that we use to gauge where voters are are a little out of date. And so when we talk to voters and they say,

I think we're asking them the wrong questions. It's like, what do you feel when you see that way? And they say like frustrated. But when you say, how do you feel about Donald Trump? Their concern of Joe Biden is out measured by their concern of Donald Trump. And so it's like, but then, so then how do you make up the difference and will that motivate you enough to go out to vote? That's the question we don't know yet.

Very quick. So the focus group you showed, that's Rich Tao. His focus groups are amazing and he spends a lot of time on the double haters. The problem for Biden here is the double haters tend to skew more female, tend to skew younger. Those are the voters that Joe Biden should have already convinced and he hasn't. That's a problem for him. I take your point too on the indicators because, I mean, one thing I'm trying to apply to going into this election is that

it's possible that everything that we know is wrong. That has happened multiple times. And so I think we all need to keep our minds open to something that we have no idea what's ultimately going to happen in the end. So I appreciate that reminder. All right, coming up next here. One thing we know about our president, Joe Biden, is that he is a fighter. All right, more on Kamala Harris staying on message, standing by the president.

all right welcome back while more democrats publicly call on president biden to bow out what is happening in private right now the most telling and possibly the most consequential cnn reporting this morning barack obama and nancy pelosi have had behind the scenes discussions about joe biden's fitness and how to move forward their talks focusing on how much harder it's become for the president

to beat Donald Trump. The takeaway that we are reporting is that neither one of them is quite sure what to do. I guess it mirrors the country or the Democratic Party anyway. Earlier this week, the former speaker raised quite a few eyebrows when she appeared to, quite frankly, kick the exit door back open for Biden to walk through it.

It's up to the president to decide if he is going to run. We're all encouraging him to make that decision because time is running short. I want him to do whatever he decides to do, and that's the way it is.

So, of course, these remarks were so earth shattering because the president at this point, when she'd made those comments, already announced he was staying in the race. Isaac, this is your reporting with our colleague Jeff Zeleny. Kind of take us behind the scenes. I mean, Obama has been President Obama has been so careful about how he's talked about this in public. The thinking being that President Biden is so prickly about his former boss that if Obama were to weigh in, say Biden should leave, it would actually have the opposite effect.

What have you learned? Look, part of the dynamic here is that the Obama-Biden relationship is much more complicated than people often understand it to be. They are friendly. They are not friends. One person who knows both of them said to me a couple years ago, neither one of these people really has friends, and they're certainly not friends with each other.

Sounds like me. You need a friend in Washington, get a dog. They have not been in contact as much over the last couple of years of Biden's presidency as people might think. They've talked a couple times and

And Barack Obama has forever been skeptical about Joe Biden's chances as a presidential candidate. Part of the reason they picked him as vice president is they thought he would never run for president. Easy enough. In 2015, there was a moment in the summer there after Beau Biden died when Biden was thinking about getting into the race.

The way that Joe Biden remembers what happened, and he's written about this in his book, is that he says Barack Obama was not encouraging. Obama's sense of what happened in that conversation is different, notably, that he was just saying, focus on your grief. He was trying to say to Biden, this is going to be a really hard race. Are you sure you're up for it? Now, fast forward to right now. I talked to a number of people about this who said,

Not only would it be complicated for all the other reasons for Obama to step in, but that if he said to Joe Biden, someone said to me, you should step aside, that Biden's reaction would basically be, well, Mr. President, you used that chip in 2015 and that's what got us Donald Trump.

So basically saying your judgment on this that you may think is the thing to do is not the right thing to do. I think also it taps into a lot of frustration that a lot of Democrats have had with Barack Obama since he left office that he has really stepped away. Obama has a theory of why he's doing this, that it lets the next generation come up, that it doesn't trigger Donald Trump as much, all of that. But

Obama is not prone to getting involved here. And if people have looked, every time they've looked to him over the last couple of years, they say, "Save us Barack Obama," his response has basically been, "I'm going to stay right here for right now and not say anything." Yeah. How, is that helpful? I mean, and what do you make of these conversations also, Ashley?

You've made your views of where you think the hardest should be very clear. No, and very clear this morning. These two seem to disagree with you. Well, I guess I just want people who are weighing in on this right now to, it is insufficient as a leader to say, take...

step A, but not then how we get to Z. So people say step down Joe Biden, but they don't tell us then like, I'm going to fall, throw all my support behind Kamala Harris, or we should run an open primary. That is to me is irresponsible. I also remember, look, I remember the day before

Beau Biden passed away. I was working at the White House at that time. I remember the day Donald Trump, I was in the Rose Garden the day Donald Trump won and President Obama told his whole team to like support the process.

I was someone in, I was probably like a lone wolf, but I was someone in 2015 that wanted Joe Biden to run for president. And I appreciated the grief, but I thought he could beat Donald Trump. And then we saw what happened with Hillary Clinton losing. So I understand. And I remember having conversations the day after Donald Trump

in the West Wing and people who, we weren't like super senior folks that were like next to the president that day, but people saying, wow, I wish Joe Biden had run. So it is complicated. I think President Obama also realizes the weight he carries in the Democratic Party and doesn't take that lightly.

So he is being thoughtful because whether or not Joe Biden and him are best friends, he respects him as a colleague. He respects the role that Joe Biden played for him as vice president, as being the first black person ever elected to the highest office of the land. And so I think he is taking that with a great weight, which is why he wants, if he's going to say something, he's not going to say, here's step A and figure the rest out. He's going to lay a pathway. Isaac, what

- I noticed the difference between, we spent a bunch of time talking about Obama and that relationship, which I find fascinating, but Nancy Pelosi has been like taking, she has been lockstep with President Biden in all of the accomplishments that he has laid out, right? All the things he's the most proud of. And it does seem like she actually seems to be taking a leading role here because I will say having covered her for many years, if she knows how to do anything, sure, she runs house races every two years, a lot of them are competitive,

the woman knows how to win, right? And it's like the thing that is the most important to her. And I think she understands better than anyone what the consequences would be if Donald Trump were to win the White House. We expect Republicans to win the Senate. The hope that they had was to hold on to the House of Representatives. Is that a message that you think she could deliver to Biden?

That is a message that a lot of her colleagues hope that she will deliver directly and that they took from her appearance on the other network two days ago as saying what they wanted to hear and saying it directly to Joe Biden, basically. That caused a lot of heartbreak

in the White House and in the Biden orbit that Pelosi did that. Look, she has been in Joe Biden's corner for a long time, including throughout this presidency. They've known each other for decades. She is older than he is. There is a power that she has to come in

personally and politically like you say to make this case look I don't know that we know who's going to be in control the Senate when this is all done but it doesn't look great for Democrats and they know that didn't look great before that there are so many Democrats who are so petrified in their house races now people who were not worried a couple weeks ago and of course the presidential race so she could have that real power

She has been talking about it with Obama. They are concerned. They were concerned before. They are more concerned now. And it is a dynamic that they are trying to work out of how to relay this message to Biden in a way that gets him to a decision. At least in Pelosi's mind, it seems very clear that what she wants the decision to be.

Well, and Doug High, I mean, Pelosi also has the benefit of having shown how to pass the torch in a pretty, I mean, look, it was masterful what she did. She avoided the kind of infighting that can really do damage to political standing. And she looked around and said, okay, my time has passed. And she handed it to younger people. So as one of the architects of the Fire Pelosi campaign in 2010, I have nothing but respect for her.

Nothing but respect for her abilities on that. And this is where we see the public versus private be a push versus pull. And what we're seeing on the inside game is Pelosi and Obama, they're trying to pull Joe Biden out of this race. The push is George Clooney. And what George Clooney did was, it's very easy for a Republican to dismiss Hollywood actor.

But I remember watching TV after it came out, and Harvey Levin of TMZ was on local Fox News here, which means he was on a lot of local Fox News. And I'll talk about the Harvey Levin voters. There are people who don't like either one of these candidates. They're the double haters.

And what they're seeing from this is when George Clooney spoke out, this is the push. And it's not just happening on sets in Washington, DC. This is playing out on phones and on apps. This is younger voters. They skew younger. They skew more female. They're seeing this everywhere they go, not just People magazine, which you have here on the table, but on their phones.

And that's why the Clooney thing is a push that is significant. And it involves money as well. Right. And he is sort of, I was reading, forgive me for blanking on which outlet exactly, had sort of laid this out, but his category of celebrity is much different than the vast majority of activists. Democrats take him seriously as an activist. And Joe Biden takes him seriously. They have a longstanding relationship. This goes back a long, long time for Biden and

So it was personally an affront to him and a hurt to him to have Clooney speak out against him. I think one of the things that's in the reporting also is that part of what seems to have gone wrong here is that fundraiser in Los Angeles, and then maybe the jet lag that

The only reason why they flew Biden from Italy across all the way to Los Angeles overnight to that was because George Clooney, who they wanted to do the event, said that was the only day available in his shooting schedule. So there is a frustration then that comes out that then Clooney is the one who took the shot at Biden.

And there are a lot of layers to what's going on here. Is the president allowed to look George Clooney in the eyes? How does that work? Final thought. I will just say, I think the underlining thing that is frustrating a lot of people is that Dems might be missing the point, is that the reason why people may be speaking out against Joe Biden or Joe Biden is staying in his race is because we understand the existential threat that Donald Trump is. And in all of this, it feels like a circling, firing, whatever the analogy is, a firing squad. Yeah.

when we should be aiming at our opponent, Donald Trump. - Right, well, and of course the challenge in doing that now on display on the debate stage, which is of course why we're here. All right, next. If not Biden, who? The governors of Michigan and California are two of the names on the Democratic shortlist.

for to engage him. But there's one thing in closing that we have in common is neither of us will be the nominee for our party in 2024. We're going to get you caught up on the latest buzz on possible Biden replacements. Plus, we're going to ask Michael Smirconish what this race looks like if Joe Biden bows out. Love Smirconish Fridays. We'll be right back.

Alright, 44 minutes past the hour. Here's your morning roundup: Donald Trump meeting with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban at Mar-a-Lago. A spokesman for Orban says he discussed peace between Russia and Ukraine with the former president. Orban's recent visits to Kyiv, Moscow and Beijing have angered NATO allies.

In Houston, over a million people are still without power amid deadly heat thanks to Beryl. Texas Governor Greg Abbott calling for an investigation into how the power companies prepared for the storm.

And sources tell CNN Melania Trump is planning to attend the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee next week. It is not clear whether she'll speak or be part of the official program. The former first lady has attended just two public events with her husband since 2022. Once a year, I guess, on average. All right, let's turn back now to this.

-Each day, more Democrats are calling for Biden to step aside. Biden hasn't seen this many people jump ships since he vacationed on the Titanic. The majority of Biden supporters think that he should step aside. At this point, I think we can stop calling them supporters.

So it wasn't a total disaster. It wasn't a home run either, though. Biden's press conference last night, keeping many Democratic lawmakers still in limbo, unsure about where to go from here, unsure about what it would look like if Biden does stand down. Joining me now is Michael Smirconish. He's the host of CNN's Smirconish and also a CNN political commentator. Michael, happy Friday. Always wonderful to have you with us. Let me just

Start with your top line reaction to the press conference last night. I mean, I talked to Democrats who felt like maybe this would buy President Biden more time, but not fundamentally change the calculus. I'm not really sure how more time for him to ultimately maybe get out of the race helps anyone, but I want your take.

I'm sure you've had the experience, Casey, of being in the green room and ready to go on and do a television interview like this. And then the guest ahead of you uses a word choice that you had written down. That's how I feel this morning, because in the margin of the notes that I was writing last night, I wrote the word purgatory. And now I see it's on the lips of many commentators. It doesn't mean it's the wrong assessment. It just means it's no longer my unique assessment. We are in a

holding pattern, right? We're in God's way station right now. And time, I think, is the Democrats' enemy at this point, not their friend, meaning there is time on the clock for a so-called blitz primary. You can get it done in the next five or so weeks. But if President Biden is sort of hobbling along as a candidate without resolution of this, it makes it a lot less likely that there's a change in horses.

Well, and that, I mean, the New York Times put that strategy on their front page a couple of days ago, that the Biden team was basically running that strategy, run out the clock to jam everybody up. I mean, I guess I do question whether that is even plausible, like a primary process in this amount of time. It seems like some of even the reluctance of Democrats on the Hill to come out and push Biden to step aside is that they don't know what it looks like next.

Right. I mean, it's it's uncharted waters, but I don't think a coronation is Vice President Kamala Harris's best friend. I think that she would benefit from a competition if it's a vote of acclimation. If everybody just sort of pitches in and she becomes the candidate, then the questions that were left unresolved about her when she ran in the last cycle as an opponent of Joe Biden and many other Democrats, I think then go to the debate against Donald Trump. We don't know what that looks like.

I am a big believer that if a change needs to be made, it ought to be a competitive process. I don't buy what Governor Newsom says, that he's not interested in running against Kamala Harris. As long as there's not an endorsement from Joe Biden, I think it's a very exciting process. It's must-watch television. And whomever emerges from that would have the wind at their back. Can I just say that a Casey Hunt, Michael Smirconish ticket, and I'll give you top billing. Absolutely not. We start out.

We start out with 45% of the vote against Donald Trump because anybody starts out with 45% of the vote against Donald Trump. It's a game of inches. Yeah, well, maybe you would. Look, I've covered politics long enough to know that I want absolutely nothing to do with running for elected office ever. But thank you for your faith in me, Michael. I do appreciate that.

Hey, while I have you, this, the press conference, I mean, everyone was obviously watching and this happened in the debate too. We reported that voters who were supportive of the president, they're watching with bated breath. They're just anxiously hoping that there's no mistakes made. We saw, of course, that was how the same supporters went into this press conference, like hoping, praying he didn't make the mistakes. It's likely going to be that way for the rest, you know, for the rest of the game here that President Biden does. They are out there trying to prove, you know,

that he can do that and he's consistently going to be showing up but we've seen even in some other efforts to do that this came out yesterday he did a pair interviews on the radio they were his first time for a is before he did that interview with george stefanopoulos after the debate

And we learned yesterday that the Biden campaign called one of the radio hosts and asked them to edit what was said, edits that were initially agreed to. Now they have put out the things that were edited out. And I want to play one of them what he had said about black people serving in his administration, just to kind of give you a sense. But I really want you to take kind of as a radio host about what happened here and whether it was appropriate. Let's first listen.

In addition to that, I have more blacks in my administration than any other president, all of the presidents combined, and major positions, cabinet positions. So they wanted that cut out. The radio host agreed. Now, this host is more on the opinion side than the straight journalism side. So there's that aspect to this as well. But the fact that the Biden team is so aggressively trying to prevent that from being heard also says a lot.

Well, it also is compounded by the problem of the same interviews being asked in back-to-back interviews in the aftermath of the debate. And now we know, because Victor Blackwell brought this to light, that the White House had fed those questions to the radio hosts

And the radio hosts went along with it. Casey, in August of 2009, I was privileged to conduct the first live radio interview with President Obama from the White House and interviewed President Obama several times thereafter as president. I know a thing or two about how this all worked.

never have i heard of questions that would actually be suggested to a radio host is there some pre-show cajoling in terms of what will the subject matter be do you think you're going to get into the situation in ukraine might you talk about gaza yes that takes place but no host of any kind should ever accept questions suggested by any principle and in this instance

If the question is, will you edit the tape? The answer is hell no. We should have run it live. 100%. All right. Michael Smirconish for us. Michael, thank you. I'm not running for president with you, but I love having you. I hope you'll come back. All right. Have a good weekend, sir. I'll see you soon, I hope. You too. All right. Coming up next here on CNN This Morning, if not Biden, then who? As some Democrats begin to think seriously about changing up their ticket to governor's names. Keep coming up in the conversation. We'll discuss ahead.

all right welcome back with a growing number of democrats calling on president biden to drop out it does seem to raise the question who would replace him at the top of the ticket in addition to vice president kamala harris who really is the uh second front runner there's been a handful of high-profile democrats whose names have been floated including michigan governor gretchen whitmer she was asked earlier this week on cnn about president biden's mental fitness and she had an interesting answer

Should he, as some people have suggested, just go ahead and take a cognitive test and demand that Donald Trump do the same? I don't think that it'd hurt, to be honest. But at the end of the day, you know... So you think that he should take a cognitive test? I don't think it would hurt. You don't think it would hurt. And then there's California Governor Gavin Newsom, who has been insisting that he is standing behind Biden.

In September, you said in an interview with Chuck Todd that you would not oppose or run against Kamala Harris in a presidential campaign. Yeah. And I'm curious if you still feel that way. Of course. Yes. That was actually Newsom saying that he basically would get behind Kamala Harris, which, Ashley, you've been talking a lot about this. Interesting how these two are approaching this question. Yeah, I mean, look.

The thing about it is Donald Trump is 78, Joe Biden is 81. So if Joe Biden takes a cognitive test, we were just saying in the break, so should Donald Trump, and we could just put it to bed. But they won't, you know, and fine. You don't want to sometimes get on somebody else's terms. I also don't know if taking a cognitive test would actually satiate the naysayers of Joe Biden because...

People are so dug in right now on where they are. It's actually why the debate has

unsurfaced a lot more questions and concerns, but actually haven't shifted the poll numbers drastically is because people are like, they are who they are. And in November, I'm just going to have to do what I got to do. So one thing about this kind of whole replacement that we've touched on it throughout the show today, but Isaac, the bottom line for some of these people, including Newsom and Whitmer, to a lesser extent, Harris, she has been the vice president here now for a number of years.

But none of them have been tested the way that the crucible of a presidential campaign tests you. They just haven't. And honestly, Biden denied them that when he decided to run for reelection back in the fall of last year. If there was a mistake made, it was probably right there. Because now it's not clear that either one of those, even if in a pipe dream or hypothetical polling, we have no idea how they would stand up to the scrutiny of a campaign. Yeah. And also, look, Gretchen Whitmer is very popular in Michigan. I don't think most people in North Carolina or Pennsylvania know who she is.

It would be very hard, and that's another thing that gives an edge to Kamala Harris in this conversation in a lot of minds. But then there are the political realities of it. Donna Brazile, who is a Harris outside advisor, former interim chair of the DNC, said to me two weeks ago that when people have been coming to her and suggesting people like Whitmer and Newsom, her response is, and it's morning TV, so I'll sanitize it, how the F are you going to put any of these white people ahead of Kamala?

That's right. We've got a minute left. Doug, how are you looking at this? I think exactly that. How are you going to leapfrog Kamala? But they aren't very well known outside of their home states, but they are unavoidable for comment at this point. They're everywhere. And what they're saying basically is, in case of emergency, break glass. Here I am. They still want to be part of this conversation. Yeah, I mean, obviously. I mean, it's especially for Newsom. I mean, the ambition is like almost visible, right?

Yes. You are not the only person that feels that way about Governor Newsom. And look, there are a couple of others circulating around too. But the conventional wisdom that has settled in for a lot of them is that

probably, if we're into the hypothetical here, then Harris would have to put herself forward and then sort of fail on her own. It's hard to see that that is where this is going to go. But if there's an open primary, let's see who actually would step forward and run against her. Let's see. All right. Guys, thank you very much for joining us today. Isaac, thank you, especially because it's your birthday. Happy birthday. You missed your kid's concert for you. This is my present. So we're grateful to have you.

Go home, talk to your kids, have a great day. Thanks to all of you for joining us. I'm Casey Hunt. Don't go anywhere. CNN News Central starts right now. I'm Oprah Winfrey, and I am delighted to introduce you to my podcast, Super Soul Conversations. You can listen to some of the most universal, powerful life lessons. I hope these conversations will help illuminate your path to all that you've been meaning to be and all that you were meant to be.

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