The Campaign Moment: A chaotic 96 hours inside Biden world
Post Reports
The Washington Post
4.4 • 5.1K Ratings
🗓️ 2 July 2024
⏱️ 33 minutes
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Summary
It’s not Friday, but here’s a special Tuesday edition of The Campaign Moment — our weekly roundtable conversation to help you keep track of the biggest developments of the 2024 campaign.
We’re bringing you an episode early in the week to share details from inside President Biden’s campaign as the Democratic Party reckons with the fallout from his stumbling performance at the first presidential debate. Senior political reporter Aaron Blake, who writes The Washington Post's “The Campaign Moment” newsletter, and Tyler Pager, a White House reporter who’s been traveling with Biden around the country, sit down with co-host Martine Powers. They reveal the behind-the-scenes details of Biden’s preparation before the debate, his Friday campaign rally to reinvigorate the president’s image, and his team’s willingness to engage in discussions about replacing him ahead of the Democratic convention.
Today’s show was produced by Laura Benshoff and mixed by Sean Carter. Additional production by Ali Bianco. It was edited by Allison Michaels and Mary Jo Murphy.
Subscribe to Aaron’s newsletter, The Campaign Moment, here.
Subscribe to The Washington Post here.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | So what is the last 96 hours been like for both of you? |
| 0:07.0 | Listening to the internal Democratic Party debate in this moment has been just so, there's just been kind of like a whiplash going on of you know should he come out should he not come out |
| 0:17.7 | It's just been kind of a lot to keep track of and it's still evolving I feel like it's all I've been thinking about, but Tyler, you have actually been with |
| 0:25.6 | Biden for the last four days. |
| 0:27.7 | Been living it. |
| 0:28.7 | So what's remarkable about my experience inside Biden's bubble? |
| 0:32.4 | I was one of the few reporters who was with them the entire time is that |
| 0:37.3 | They acted as if nothing went wrong. You know the Democratic Party ecosystem is melting down. |
| 0:45.0 | People are privately and publicly calling for Biden to step aside or at least question whether he should. |
| 0:52.0 | And inside the bubble bubble it's business as |
| 0:54.5 | normal. One of the top aides the First Lady was dancing at 2 a.m. on the tarmac to |
| 1:00.0 | Diana Ross as the president was greeting supporters in Raleigh, North Carolina after the debate. |
| 1:05.9 | That is so interesting. |
| 1:10.5 | Welcome to the campaign moment on this Tuesday, July 2nd. I'm Martin Powers, co-host of Post Reports. |
| 1:16.0 | And I'm Aaron Blake, senior politics reporter and author of the campaign moment newsletter. |
| 1:21.0 | We're also joined this week by Tyler Pager, White House reporter for the post. |
| 1:25.3 | Hey Tyler, hey! |
| 1:27.3 | So today we are going to spend all of our time on one big messy topic, which is the |
| 1:37.0 | fallout from Joe Biden's performance at the first presidential debate. |
| 1:41.1 | And all of the questions that that performance raises about the future of his candidacy. |
| 1:46.4 | So we're going to get an inside look into Biden world from Tyler and understand how this has played |
| 1:52.4 | out from inside the president's circle. |
... |
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