Tyler Pager
Appearances
Apple News Today
Why Nike is a cautionary tale when it comes to tariffs
There are people already in the race who have basically said that they would withdraw and clear the way for her. She obviously has the stature of a former vice president. But it is not clear that she would automatically run away from the race. There isn't a lot of polling yet to really determine what the race would look like with her in it.
The Daily
A Reckoning Over Joe Biden’s Health
Yeah, so the interview occurred in 2023. And after that, in 2024, the special counsel released his report. And we got a full transcript of Biden's interview with the special counsel. And it spanned more than five hours. But the Biden administration fought Republican efforts to release the audio.
The Daily
A Reckoning Over Joe Biden’s Health
And so when Donald Trump was elected president, it was not a stretch to believe that the Trump administration would be willing to release the entire audio.
The Daily
A Reckoning Over Joe Biden’s Health
It's a great question. It's not a stretch to believe that in this current moment, when there's a lot of conversation about Joe Biden's mental acuity, that the Trump administration would capitalize on that.
The Daily
A Reckoning Over Joe Biden’s Health
And I think one of the most remarkable things is what you hear when you talk to Biden's closest aides about that interview. I've done a lot of reporting about the Her investigation and that interview specifically. And in the aftermath, when I talked to some of Biden's closest aides who were either in the room or briefed on the conversation, they said the interview went fine.
The Daily
A Reckoning Over Joe Biden’s Health
They said it was Biden being Biden. Hmm. It's Biden telling stories, Biden zigging and zagging. And they thought it wasn't his best performance. There were some concerns they had about his inability to recall certain dates and specific events. But they really said that is just Joe Biden being Joe Biden, the sort of politician storyteller he's always been.
The Daily
A Reckoning Over Joe Biden’s Health
It's good to see you, Michael. Welcome, Tyler, to The Daily.
The Daily
A Reckoning Over Joe Biden’s Health
I think it is absolutely that the vast majority of people closest to Biden genuinely believe the portrait that Robert Herr painted of him was deeply unfair. And I think it's in part because they saw Joe Biden in different settings and all the time. And there were times where he was really strong and dialed in and capable.
The Daily
A Reckoning Over Joe Biden’s Health
They would say, if you could just hear Joe Biden on a foreign leader call, or if you could just see Joe Biden in this negotiation, or if you could just see Joe Biden in X, Y, or Z setting. But the problem was the public rarely saw that version of Joe Biden. In fact, the public rarely saw... Joe Biden much at all.
The Daily
A Reckoning Over Joe Biden’s Health
And so I think the challenge for Biden's closest aides was confronting the reality of the Joe Biden that outsiders saw, the Joe Biden that Robert Hearst saw, the Joe Biden that many voters saw, and ultimately the Joe Biden that America saw when he stepped on that debate stage in Atlanta, Georgia with Donald Trump.
The Daily
A Reckoning Over Joe Biden’s Health
We haven't seen any polling yet. So let's put a pin in like what normal voters think about this. But people are saying today, after living through the last 72 hours, is that it's really a microcosm of how they feel about Biden. They're angry at him for how he ran the race while he was still in it, that he stayed in it for as long as he did, that he insisted on running in the first place.
The Daily
A Reckoning Over Joe Biden’s Health
They have deep sympathy for his physical condition now that he appears to be pretty sick with cancer. And they are conflicted about his legacy and whether it's going to be somebody who did a bunch of things in office that they're proud of or a guy who ran and stayed in a race for much longer than he should have delivering the country again to Donald Trump.
The Daily
A Reckoning Over Joe Biden’s Health
In a normal world, if somebody reveals that they have a terrible health diagnosis, it's really just a lot of sympathy and people feel bad for them and then that's it. Of course. But this is all complicated by the fact that we were discussing Biden's health and how forthcoming or not the Biden camp had been on it all along. And so...
The Daily
A Reckoning Over Joe Biden’s Health
In that environment, there's really a disinclination to take what they're saying and the timeline of what they say happened at face value.
The Daily
A Reckoning Over Joe Biden’s Health
Well, it's important to know that Axelrod has been a Biden skeptic for a couple of years. I think when Axelrod said that on Sunday night, that statement was wound up being operable for about 12 hours or so. And then when people woke up Monday morning, they were skeptical of the story being told by the Biden people. And so I think in the media era we're in now,
The Daily
A Reckoning Over Joe Biden’s Health
and the trust level that Biden started with, he's just not afforded that kind of luxury to have people stop questioning the things that they were questioning Sunday before this diagnosis emerged.
The Daily
A Reckoning Over Joe Biden’s Health
Well, I think that's part of what is happening now in the party, right? We see Democrats fanned out around the country. They're going to town halls. They're doing podcasts. Some of them are starting their own podcasts to try to listen to voters. Gavin Newsom?
The Daily
A Reckoning Over Joe Biden’s Health
And there is just this broad reckoning in the party about what happened with Joe Biden, about what Donald Trump is doing as the president from the White House, and what kind of message and messenger is best to lead Democrats out of this wilderness that they're in. And be in a place where they can retake power. And the issue is, at the moment, no one really has the right answer to that.
The Daily
A Reckoning Over Joe Biden’s Health
And so we see people scrambling around to test things out. And the one thing that they all seem to agree on is that they don't want anything to do with Joe Biden. And kind of how that manifests itself going forward, we don't really know the answer to, except... that these people are all going to position themselves as different in some way from the last Democratic president.
The Daily
A Reckoning Over Joe Biden’s Health
And one of the challenges, Michael, in doing so is that Joe Biden right now is dominating every conversation. All of these things are making it so that Joe Biden is at the center of attention. And as Democrats try to chart a new path away from Joe Biden, he's still center stage.
The Daily
A Reckoning Over Joe Biden’s Health
Tyler, what was your reaction? Yeah, this is something that my colleague, Sean McCreesh, and I had actually been tracking a little bit because about a week ago, Biden was in a Philly area hospital. And we learned that that was because there was a small nodule found on his prostate. We had very few details beyond that.
The Daily
A Reckoning Over Joe Biden’s Health
But because of that, I had been following up almost every day with the Biden folks to get a better sense of exactly what the diagnosis might be from that discovery. But I don't think any of us expected it to be this severe in nature.
The Daily
A Reckoning Over Joe Biden’s Health
When I saw this on Sunday afternoon, it felt like another piece of terrible news for Joe Biden. It's a very serious diagnosis. And I think there was an enormous outpouring of sympathy for him to be as sick as they say he is at this point in his life.
The Daily
A Reckoning Over Joe Biden’s Health
At the same time, it's hard to divorce that from the weakened change that preceded it, which was just an unending string of bad news for the former president.
The Daily
A Reckoning Over Joe Biden’s Health
Yeah, I mean, you can't separate this from the reality that the party –
The Daily
A Reckoning Over Joe Biden’s Health
has been having a conversation about Biden's health and what people knew about his health and what some of the people closest to him, both his aides and other elected officials who were close allies, kind of what they knew about how capable he was of performing the duties of the presidency and what the gap might have been between that reality and what people said to the public.
The Daily
A Reckoning Over Joe Biden’s Health
And so this is getting thrown on top of that conversation, almost like pouring gasoline on a fire. People still feel deep empathy for him and feel sad that he is going through this. But I think it's also fits in with the anger that a lot of Democrats have at former President Biden and the people closest to him who protected and abetted him throughout this process.
The Daily
A Reckoning Over Joe Biden’s Health
Yeah, there's a whole host of different types of revelations that fall into various buckets. One, you know, Michael, as you mentioned from the book that I co-wrote with former colleagues at The Washington Post, revealed that some of Biden's closest aides debated before his final physical as president whether they should have him submit for a cognitive test as part of his physical test.
The Daily
A Reckoning Over Joe Biden’s Health
They were adamant that he would not fail the cognitive test, but thought that maybe it would help prove to the American people that he was fit to run for office. Ultimately, they decided not to do so in part because they worried it would raise more questions, particularly around why he would take a cognitive test if they didn't think there were any problems there.
The Daily
A Reckoning Over Joe Biden’s Health
Some of the other revelations relate to his memory and his ability to interact with other people, particularly as it relates to faces and names. One of the books recounts a scene at the infamous fundraiser in California, in part hosted by George Clooney, in which the famous actor relates that the president did not recognize him and had to be prompted by an aide.
The Daily
A Reckoning Over Joe Biden’s Health
One of the most recognizable human beings in the world. Absolutely. Who has a longstanding relationship with the president that dates back decades. George Clooney is very active in Democratic politics and someone that had a personal relationship with Joe Biden.
The Daily
A Reckoning Over Joe Biden’s Health
And there are similar scenes across books that show the president forgetting certain staffers and even lawmakers' names and other key dates.
The Daily
A Reckoning Over Joe Biden’s Health
Yeah, I mean, I was actually talking to somebody today who said that the donor events for the president were so scripted that they not only chose the donors who would ask Biden questions in these private settings, but they just gave the donors questions and asked who wanted to ask which question. And so Biden knew both the questions. And of course, he was given the answers in advance, too.
The Daily
A Reckoning Over Joe Biden’s Health
Mm hmm. And part of the reason this story has been so complicated for Democrats is because Biden's performances were uneven and complicated. Sometimes Democrats said he did quite well. They point to the State of the Unions in 2023 and 2024. Right. Where they were impressed by his performance.
The Daily
A Reckoning Over Joe Biden’s Health
And others said in key moments, particularly as it related to national security matters, they saw him really turned on and engaged. And I think that's part of the challenge for Democrats is disentangling certain moments of Biden's presidency from the vast majority of others, particularly in the latter half of his term, where there were moments of great concern that are now just coming to light.
The Daily
A Reckoning Over Joe Biden’s Health
Maybe. He didn't quite go all the way. He took a baby step. And, you know, right now, with the benefit of hindsight, I think most people would agree that that's the case. And said maybe it would have been a good idea if Biden hadn't stayed in the race for so long and they had a primary. We saw Chris Murphy, the very ambitious senator from Connecticut.
The Daily
A Reckoning Over Joe Biden’s Health
Obviously, in retrospect, the president should have gotten out of the race earlier.
The Daily
A Reckoning Over Joe Biden’s Health
Who made a personal vouching for Biden's mental fitness as late as, what, like February or March of last year.
The Daily
A Reckoning Over Joe Biden’s Health
Say that it was obvious that he suffered some sort of decline in his acuity.
The Daily
A Reckoning Over Joe Biden’s Health
We've seen Ro Khanna, who was an ambitious Biden surrogate who would go anywhere in like four or five days before Biden dropped out, vouch for him.
The Daily
A Reckoning Over Joe Biden’s Health
Saying that people like him who campaigned for Biden were wrong to do so,
The Daily
A Reckoning Over Joe Biden’s Health
I think it also comes at this larger reckoning with transparency and health around elected officials. Many of the most senior elected officials in our country are quite old.
The Daily
A Reckoning Over Joe Biden’s Health
And so I think as the public reckons with what that means for the country's leadership, and especially as Democrats are without a clear leader, we're entering into this period where Democrats are going to start jockeying to run for president. It's already sort of spilled out into the open.
The Daily
A Reckoning Over Joe Biden’s Health
And I think they feel that there is a certain reckoning that needs to happen over the public statements, as Reid and Lisa just outlined, that they made over the last several years about what they thought about Joe Biden's ability to lead the country and what they have since learned about it.
The Headlines
Trump’s New Charm Offensive, and a Drone Attack on Moscow
Many business leaders supported Donald Trump in his run for president because they thought he would usher in this booming era of economic growth and were hoping Trump would be a president that was more sympathetic to their interests. However, they've been frustrated not just by the tariffs themselves, but also by the uncertainty.
The Headlines
Trump’s New Charm Offensive, and a Drone Attack on Moscow
We know that Donald Trump pays close attention to the stock market and uses it as a barometer for his own success. And so the question hanging over Washington and really the entire world is how long the president is willing to stomach the pain of not just declining markets, but also negative media coverage.
The Headlines
Trump’s New Charm Offensive, and a Drone Attack on Moscow
And if he's willing to sustain that over time as these tariffs continue to inflict economic pain, not just on Americans, but across the global economy.