Hello from Washington, I'm Chuck Todd, and this is the Chuck Todd cast.

Well, it is Friday morning and at all eyes last night were on President Biden even though the Republican

Convention is next week and we're on the cusp of Donald Trump picking his

running mate it normally would be all we were talking about, and I actually promise you in this episode,

I got Mark Short, who of course was former Chief of Staff to Vice President Pence,

and we're going to talk a lot about the vetting process, how it worked the last time, and frankly how the Trump

campaign may or may not be pivoting when it comes to uncertainty over the Democratic

ticket and all of that. But before we get to there, I just want to give you a few minutes of sort of my thoughts, what I took away from the press conference that President Biden did following the NATO conference.

I think the best way to describe it and certainly how I'm what I'm hearing from some of my sources

are simply, you know, if you have already determined that he's just not up to this, this

press conference wasn't going to be enough to persuade you.

It was, you know, I would characterize it this way. If the debate debacle had not happened this

way if the debate debacle had not happened

this press conference would have been fine

uh... some up moments some down moments, some weird moments.

No different, frankly, than many of Biden's sort of live events

where there's a little bit of a drop-off here or there.

There's sometimes a fiery moment like he had when he talked about

guns and there's an occasional humor here but then there's the flub right the

unfortunate right at the top, right?

The Vice President Trump moment, which Trump himself was able to make hay out of.

And unlike the weird Putin-Zilensky thing, which again was probably a bit overblown by some in the press,

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