Speaker 1: Welcome to the show. I'm producer Pat Forde, filling in for David today as he is
traveling up in Canada, visiting our neighbors to the north. He has some family members he's seeing
up in Montreal. So it's going to be me hosting today as well as on Monday. And then we actually
a foreign cousins who's going to step in and guest host a couple of shows for us next week. We do
have a jam packed show to get to today. We're going to be discussing everything from the Mar
a Lago raid to the new IRS agents to Alex Jones to Marjorie Taylor GREENE. But let's start things
off today by talking about how it's looking even more unlikely that Joe Biden will be running for
a second term in 2024. Now, even back when Biden was campaigning in 2020, I thought that Biden is
just going to be a one term president if he wins. He's convinced himself that he is the best shot
at defeating Donald Trump and getting our country back on a path to normalcy. So he'll when his one
term, he'll accomplish whatever he can and then he'll step aside and let someone else take over.
And the real reason is his age, right? Biden would be 82 by the time that he's sworn in for
a second term and 86 by the time he'd leave office after eight years. I'm not trying to be a just or
anything like that, but there's just a reality to the fact that the president of United States is
the most important job in the world. You could argue it's it's one of most stressful jobs out
there. And you're always busy. You have to make these public appearances. Not everyone even lives
in their eighties, let alone is working into their eighties, let alone has the most important job,
arguably in the entire world in their eighties. So I don't know if Joe Biden really wants to do that.
And over the past couple of years, whenever a reporter has asked about Biden running again
for a second term, the White House position has always been that Biden intends to run,
but they never make the full on commitment, leaving them plenty of room to backtrack. If they
decide that, you know, he's not really going to be doing this. The one time that Kamala
Harris overstepped and said that he is going to be running her office, had to step back the
statement the next day. Well, now we're hearing from Democratic Representative Carolyn Maloney,
who represents part of New York City, that off the record, Joe Biden is not running for president
again. Maloney was speaking to The New York Times editorial board and the exchange went like this.
New York Times's Eleanor Randolph said, quote, Should President Biden run again? Maloney said
off the record, he's not running again. New York Times's Jodi thought men definitely
mispronouncing. That said. Not off the record. On the record, Maloney said. On the record, no,
he should not run again. So there was a bit of confusion about this on the record versus
off the record thing. Both the reporter and the interviewee are supposed to confirm and agree that
something is off the record before it's truly off the record, which you can see didn't happen here
in this exchange. But her position sure sounded like Biden won't be running again for a second
term. She also doesn't want him to run again. As to why Maloney might not want Biden to run again,
that's probably because of his sagging approval numbers. They haven't been doing all that well
in recent months, although it has ticked up a little bit over the past couple of weeks,
he's back to around 40%. But maybe Maloney just sees Biden as a liability for the Democrats and
she wants him to step aside and to get a new face in there. Maloney later went on CNN to apologize
for the statement and to say that Biden is a great president and she doesn't think that Biden
is going to run again, but she sure wants him to. Speaker 2: Mr. President, I apologize. I want you
to run. I happen to think you won't be running, but when you run or if you run, I will be there
100%. You have deserved it. You are a great president and thank you for everything you've
done for my state and all the states and all the cities in America. Thank you, Mr. President.
Speaker 1: Okay. So a little awkward there, and it's a little bit unbelievable, too, because while
she is holding firm that she doesn't believe Biden will be running again, she also doesn't sound that
sincere that she wants Biden to run again. I happen to believe her earlier comments about it
are true rather than this apology and correction. And the real question in this conversation is,
do Democrats have a better chance at holding the White House if it's Joe Biden at the top of the
ticket in 2024 versus if it's someone else, fill in the blank. You know, it could be Kamala Harris,
Gavin Newsom, Elizabeth Warren, Pete Buttigieg, Edge, whoever. I could be swayed either way on
this, because helping Biden, of course, is the power of incumbency. Presidents do tend to win
reelection more often than not. But then there's also these liabilities, right? Like there's
Biden's advanced age. That will be even more of a liability the next time around because he'll
be four years older. There's also his approval ratings, which at least now aren't so good. Maybe
they'll improve between now and the next election. There's also the question of if Republicans are
able to take back the House and or Senate, will Biden be able to get all that much accomplished?
Probably not. So then that's hard to make the case to the voters that you should reelect him.
So to me, it seems a little bit too early to tell what's going to happen for sure. But I'm sticking
with my position that I don't think that Joe Biden is going to be running for president again
in 2024. And you better believe. That that will set us up for an interesting election
cycle if he chooses not to run again, because then both the Democrats and the Republicans
will have to be having these contested primaries to see who their respective nominees will be.
And that will definitely be entertaining and juicy to cover.