Return to Transcripts main page

State of the Union

Questions Linger About President Biden; Interview With Rep. James Clyburn (D-SC); Interview With U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. Aired 9-10a ET

Aired May 18, 2025 - 09:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[09:00:41]

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JAKE TAPPER, CNN HOST (voice-over): Price check.

President Trump touts his Middle East dealmaking.

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Nobody's treated well like that.

TAPPER: But threatens new tariffs ahead.

TRUMP: We will be telling people what they will be paying to do business in the United States.

TAPPER: With a key retailer's new warning, can America's economy withstand this stress test? Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is live next.

Plus: party foul. Republicans in Congress deadlocked over Trump's big, beautiful bill.

REP. CHIP ROY (R-TX): I'm a no on this bill.

REP. RALPH NORMAN (R-SC): I'm a hard no.

TAPPER: Can Trump muscle it through and how would the cuts affect you? Congressman Jim Clyburn is ahead.

And hindsight. New evidence of President Biden's frailty, as Democrats scramble to explain their support.

GOV. GRETCHEN WHITMER (D-MI): I was busy working.

GOV. J.B. PRITZKER (D-IL): They never saw any of that.

TAPPER: Will the Democrats try to move on or face the truth? David Axelrod and Van Jones join me to discuss.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

TAPPER: Hello. I'm Jake Tapper in Washington, where the state of our union is uncertain. After a tightly controlled visit to the Middle East and the emergence

of a new Trump doctrine more focused on dealmaking than on spreading democratic ideals, the president is back home. And he is being plunged back into our messy democracy, as the courts try to block some of his migrant deportation flights.

Republican holdouts in Congress rebelled against his pricey tax cut and spending cut plan, with the bill's fate unclear as of this hour, and the deadly conflicts in Gaza and Ukraine proving complicated to solve.

On Monday, President Trump will turn his focus to Russia's war in Ukraine and he will speak on the phone with Vladimir Putin. Trump says he is hopeful he can bring about a cease-fire. On the economy, with so many business leaders unsure of what to expect from a capricious president and how to plan for the next year and beyond, President Trump said his economic team would begin informing countries about their new tariff rate in coming weeks.

And the president also warned Walmart against raising prices on some goods, as they warned they would do because of those tariffs. The U.S. was downgraded from its very last perfect credit rating on Friday.

Joining me now just back from that trip to the Middle East is Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who has a lot on his plate.

It's so good to have you here.

SCOTT BESSENT, U.S. TREASURY SECRETARY: Jake, good morning.

TAPPER: Good to see you.

So let's just talk about Moody's downgrading America's AAA credit, citing out-of-control debt, citing growing interest payments on that debt. How concerned are you that this is going to drive interest rates in the U.S. even higher and maybe even drive investment in the U.S. away?

BESSENT: Well, Jake, first of all, that the history of rating agencies by the time, they get to a downgrade everything's already in the market. Larry Summers and I don't agree on everything, but, in 2011, the last time or two times ago when he had a downgrade, he pooh- poohed it.

What I think is important is that President Trump has just come back from this historic Mideast trip, and there's trillions of dollars coming into the U.S. So we are seeing competence from investors, so I don't put much credence in the Moody's...

TAPPER: The downgrade comes as Republicans are trying to pass the big, beautiful bill, as the president calls it. It's a massive bill that has tax cuts, spending cuts.

The nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget says that this bill, if it passes in its current form, will add between $3.3 trillion and $5.2 trillion to the national debt over the next decade. Now, the debt is a concern of yours. You talked about our debt being

on an unsustainable path earlier this month. Won't this bill just make it worse?

BESSENT: There are several components there. So, if we unpack it, there is the growth, the potential growth of the debt. But what's more important is that we grow the economy faster.

So what we have seen under the past four years and what we inherited -- I inherited 6.7 percent deficit to GDP, which was the highest deficit when we were not at war, not in a recession. So we have been trying to bring down the spending and we are going to grow the revenue side.

And so we are going to grow the GDP faster than the debt grows, and that will stabilize the debt-to-GDP, which even Secretary Yellen and I agree is the most important number.

TAPPER: So when in the first Trump administration -- you were not a part of it, but obviously President Trump was -- there were tax cuts passed, and the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget says that those tax cuts added $2.5 trillion to the national debt and did not -- I mean, there's always a hope that it will bring about so much revenue growth that it will pay for itself, but that didn't happen.

[09:05:15]

BESSENT: Well, we also had something called COVID.

And so there was a Rescue Plan. The...

TAPPER: This is separate from that, though. I'm aware of the COVID trillions.

BESSENT: Yes, but the CBO scoring was about a trillion-and-a-half off.

And, again, what matters is the growth. And during President Trump's first term, up until March of 2020, we had very high non-inflationary growth. And that's what I think we can have again this time.

TAPPER: Let's turn to trade because that's obviously where there's been a lot of focus.

President Trump just put 150 countries on notice that their tariffs are about to go higher in the next few weeks if they don't reach a trade deal with the U.S.

How exactly will you decide what those new tariff rates will be? Will they be what was previously announced on April 2, so-called liberation day? And when will they actually go into effect?

BESSENT: So, Jake, we have a 90-day pause. There are 18 important trading partners, probably another 20 strong relationships.

President Trump has put them on notice that, if you do not negotiate in good faith, that you will ratchet back up to your April 2 level. So...

TAPPER: So, the 90-day pause isn't just China? It's everybody?

BESSENT: No, the 90-day pause was put on about a week after April 2.

TAPPER: Oh, that first 90-day pause. OK, yes.

BESSENT: The first 90-day pause.

TAPPER: Yes.

BESSENT: And I can tell you that, with a few exceptions, the countries are coming with very good proposals for us.

And I look at these proposals, and they want to lower their tariffs. They want to lower their non-tariff barriers. Some of them have been manipulating their currency. They have been subsidizing industry and labor. And I look at these proposals and I think these are excellent proposals, but I wonder, how did we get here?

How did the previous administrations allow this to happen to the American people?

TAPPER: So, 150 countries have been put on notice. How many deals do you think you're going to be able to announce, and how quickly?

BESSENT: Well, again, it will depend on whether they're negotiating in good faith.

And there are a lot of smaller trading relationships that we can just come up with a number. My other sense is that we will do a lot of regional deals. This is the rate for Central America. This is the rate for this part of Africa. But what we are focused on right now are the 18 important trading relationships.

TAPPER: Walmart announced this week it's going to have to raise prices on some goods, and they blame Trump's tariffs, particularly the tariffs on China. Here's the CEO. Take a listen.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)

DOUG MCMILLON, CEO, WALMART: We will do our best to keep our prices as low as possible. But given the magnitude of the tariffs, even at the reduced levels announced this week, we aren't able to absorb all the pressure, given the reality of narrow retail margins.

We're positioned to manage the cost pressure from tariffs as well or better than anyone. But even at the reduced levels, the higher tariffs will result in higher prices.

(END AUDIO CLIP)

TAPPER: So President Trump went on TRUTH Social and says Walmart should eat the tariffs, in other words, not pass on the prices to consumers. Doesn't that inherently serve as an acknowledgement that tariffs are

essentially a tax on consumers? Because, initially, President Trump said, well, other countries -- that's not true, countries pay for the tariffs.

But here we have a perfect example. The countries -- China gets these tariffs, and then Walmart has to raise its prices and consumers end up paying for them.

BESSENT: Well, Jake, in essence, what you're saying is, you're saying taxes are inflationary, so it was, pass the Trump tax cuts and that will be disinflationary if we continue that line of thinking.

TAPPER: I don't know that you can put me on as endorsing anything, but go ahead.

BESSENT: Well, let's just keep everything consistent.

I did speak to Doug McMillon, who I have a very good relationship, yesterday just to understand what he had to say. And understand that came from an earnings call. On an earnings call, because of SEC requirements, they have to give the most draconian case. So Walmart will be absorbing some of the tariffs. Some may get passed on to consumers.

But the other thing that's happening is that inflation is down. We had the first drop in inflation in four years under President Trump. The other thing that Doug mentioned to me is, for his consumers, for his buyers, the most important thing are gasoline prices. And this administration has gotten gasoline prices down.

Service prices are down. So, overall, I would expect inflation to remain in line. But I don't blame consumers for being skittish after what happened to them four years under Biden. We had the worst inflation in 40 years.

[09:10:09]

TAPPER: So, ever since liberation day, April 2, I have a weekday show called "THE LEAD," and ever since then, every day, pretty much, we interview a small business owner.

Some of them are Trump supporters. Some of them are not. Some of them are tariff supporters. Some of them are not. The one thing I hear from almost every one of them is the uncertainty. They don't know how to plan for the future because they have no idea what's going to come.

The other thing I hear is that their margins -- these are small, small business. Their margins are so thin, 5 to 10 percent max. And they say that these tariffs are just taking away all of their profit margin. So I guess my question is, what do you say to people concerned about the uncertainty, and what do you say to people who say, small business owners who say, we need relief?

Because as they say, like, I'd love to buy lithium batteries in the United States, but you can't. They're only available for small businesses from China.

BESSENT: Well, a couple of things to unpack there, Jake.

One is that we didn't get here overnight in terms of this terrible trade situation we have with China, but also with the rest of the world. And President Trump is renegotiating these, and strategic uncertainty is a negotiating tactic.

So, if we were to give too much certainty to the other countries, then they would play us in the negotiations. I am confident that, at the ends of these negotiations, both the retailers, the American people, and the American workers will be better off, that what we saw with China, China was the only country post-April 2 to escalate.

So both sides escalated. We got to an untenable level. We were at 145 percent. They were at 125. And we had a meeting in Geneva last weekend, and both sides came down 115 percent. So, the U.S. is now at 30, the 10 percent reciprocal tariff that's on a pause, And 20 percent fentanyl tariffs, those were put on back in February. So those are already in the system.

So I think most of the small businesses you're talking to, they were probably the referring to the very high triple-digit tariff levels, which have now been brought down.

TAPPER: Yes, some of them were, but there's also just this idea, a lot of them saying, look, I support what President Trump wants to do. I support the idea of wanting to bring manufacturing back to the United States, but it can't be done in a month or three months or even a year, that there is just an entire infrastructure in this country that is lacking.

They can't buy what they would love to buy. But most of them, as you know, if not all of them are patriotic. They want to buy American goods, but a lot of this stuff just isn't made in America. I mean, this is -- we could go into a long history about the hollowing out of the manufacturing base that is neither the fault of you, me, or President Trump, but it does exist and it will take years to make the manufacturing infrastructure that these small businesses rely on.

BESSENT: Well, Jake, I think what we're going to see, just like we saw with the U.K. trade deal, my sense is it's what we will see with China.

We don't want to decouple with China. And President Trump actually wants to open up China for business. So the manufacturing, we want to bring back. We had -- during COVID, we realized that we had some very strategic shortfalls, whether it was medicines, semiconductors, steel, the other products.

So the long-term -- the medium-term goal is to bring back these strategic industries as quickly as possible. And I think we will continue trading with China in the kinds of products that these small businesses are talking about at lower tariff levels.

TAPPER: Before you go, you joined President Trump on his Mideast trip.

And he's been defending from criticism from both liberals and conservatives to accept this $400 million luxury jet as a gift from Qatar to use for the duration of his presidency, and then I believe for his presidential library. Trump says he's giving it to him as a nice gesture.

You're a hard-nosed businessman. Even if Qatar isn't asking for anything in return now for the jet, I mean, that's a bill that could come due. Nobody in the Middle East gives things just to -- or anywhere in the world, just gives a $400 million jet just to be nice.

BESSENT: Well, I don't know, Jake. The French gave us the Statue of Liberty. The British gave us the Resolute Desk. I'm not sure they asked for anything in advance.

And the more important airplane deal was, there's $100 billion of orders from Qatari airlines to Boeing. Kelly Ortberg, the CEO of Boeing, was with us in the Middle East. This is the biggest order in the country's -- in the company's history.

[09:15:08]

So I think that that plane deal is much more important than this other one.

TAPPER: Well, I will just say about the Statue of Liberty, I mean, that was authorized by Congress and it belongs to the American people. It doesn't belong to whoever was president at the time.

BESSENT: Well, I think that this plane would be a gift to the American government.

TAPPER: All right, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, it's great to have you here. Thank you so much for being here. And welcome back. You probably need to go get some rest. It's Sunday. If you are -- does anybody in your position rest?

BESSENT: I'm going to church after this, Jake.

(LAUGHTER)

TAPPER: OK, good to see you. Thank you, sir.

The Trump agenda hits a roadblock. What are the chances that Republicans' Medicaid cuts are going to become law? Democratic Congressman Jim Clyburn is here next.

Plus: cleanup on aisle five. Tough questions for Democrats about the last election. Who's getting it right?

Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:20:15] TAPPER: Welcome back to STATE OF THE UNION. I'm Jake Tapper.

House Speaker Mike Johnson is scrambling to pick up the pieces after GOP hard-liners blocked his bill, which would institute President Trump's agenda in Congress. Democrats are facing their own internal struggle, of course, about whether they should have approached President Biden and his reelection bid any differently.

Joining us now to discuss, Democratic Congressman James Clyburn of South Carolina.

Congressman, always good to have you on.

So you heard Treasury Secretary Bessent just trying to defend the president -- the Republican House members' spending bill. What's your reaction?

REP. JAMES CLYBURN (D-SC): Well, thank you very much for having me, Jake.

I -- this spending bill is terrible. And I think the American people know that. There is nothing wrong with us bringing the government in balance. But there is a problem when that balance comes on the back of working men and women. And that's what is happening here.

When you put forth a budget asking for top lines just in Energy and Commerce alone being somewhere around $860 million (sic) cut, that's a problem, because that's where Medicaid is. That's where Medicare is. That's where people get most of their medicine from. That is a bad deal.

And so I think that, when President Trump indicated that we ought to be raising taxes on the wealthy, he got our attention. But then he retreated from that almost immediately. And so what we see happening in that committee is that those people on the other side, those Republicans who refused to go along, they want more cuts.

Some of them would like to see the elimination of Medicaid and they want to see the privatization of Social Security and Medicare. And so that is what we are faced with, and Democrats are on the side of the American people on that.

TAPPER: So one of the key components Republicans are pushing in this legislation is adding work requirements for able-bodied recipients of Medicaid.

According to a Kaiser Family Foundation poll, most Americans support that, 62 percent. What do you think?

CLYBURN: Most Americans do support that. And most Democrats support that. And then we do have that in many states.

We have left that kind of thing up to the states, and it's been approved time and time again. And so every time people get into this discussion, you have folks talking about people getting something for nothing. Well, let me tell you something. Medicaid. The bulk of Medicaid is not

necessarily people who are unemployed. People who are disabled, people who need nursing home care. The bulk of Medicaid is in nursing home care. So what happens to those nursing homes when you take all this money out of Medicaid?

So this is not about working men and women. This is about this country showing what kind of country you are and taking care of senior citizens, parents and now grandparents who are in need of nursing home care. That's what's in Medicaid.

TAPPER: Let's turn to the debate going on within the Democratic Party right now.

On Friday night, Axios obtained the audio from then-President Biden's interview with former special counsel Robert Hur, who was investigating Biden's mishandling of classified documents. In that audiotape, you hear President Biden rambling, unable to keep a train of thought, getting dates wrong.

Let's run a little clip of that.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)

JOE BIDEN, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Trump gets elected in November of 2017.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: 2016.

BIDEN: '16, 2016. All right, so -- why do I have 2017 here?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That's when you left, January of 2017.

BIDEN: OK, yes. But that's when Trump gets sworn in, then, January.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Right. Correct.

(END AUDIO CLIP)

TAPPER: At a different time in that interview, he's asked about the 2017-2018 period, and he says during that period, his son Beau was either deployed or dying, but Beau was deployed in 2008-2009 and he died tragically in may 2015.

Needless to say, even supporters of the president have heard these tapes and been alarmed by it. What was your response to them? Did you see much of that when you had meetings and interactions with President Biden during his term?

CLYBURN: No, I didn't.

[09:25:00]

The fact of the matter is, I saw Biden often, but not as often as people seem to think. I saw him. I talked to him on the telephone very often, and I never saw anything that I thought was outside of the ordinary.

I watched my dad reach the age of 80, and I saw him slow down. He couldn't do the same things he did at 50 or 60, but it didn't bother his mental capacity at all. And then my father died from prostate cancer.

So I never saw anything I thought was unusual. Did he talk as swiftly as he used to talk? No, he didn't. Did he walk as swiftly? No, he didn't. But that is to be expected. Those of us who reach that age, as I have, we don't walk as often as -- as fast as we used to. And I may talk as fast as I used to, but we down here in the South don't talk all that fast anyway.

TAPPER: Well, with all due respect, sir, having interviewed you quite often, I don't think there's any comparison between how sharp you are and your ability to talk and answer questions and get dates right, et cetera, and what we have seen from President Biden, both in that audio, but also throughout 2023, 2024, especially on the debate stage.

Do you think that Joe Biden really would have been able to perform as president all the way through January 2029, when he would be 86?

CLYBURN: Yes, I thought that back then. I still think that, but I don't know that.

When people ask me, did I know this or did I know the other, and the fact of the matter is, no I didn't. And that's -- you make my point here. So it's not all about age. I have seen people develop Alzheimer's when they're in the 30s and 40s. So it's not about age. It's about the ability to do the job.

And I never saw anything that allowed me to think that Joe Biden was not able to do the job. It's just that simple.

TAPPER: The debate didn't make you concerned about whether or not he could do the job.

CLYBURN: Absolutely, it did. I never saw any of that. I didn't see the tapes from the Hur interview. And I watched that debate, and you and I talked about it. And, yes, I was concerned.

Now, the question is, is this a condition or is this an incident? And I have had incidents when I was looking for my glasses and had them on. So you have these kinds of incidents. And that's -- the question is.

And then remember a lot of us were a bit concerned about his schedule in the run-up to the debate. He took two overseas trips, came back and started preparing for that debate. And I called it at the time preparation overload, because they were cramming into a four- or five- day period the preparation for the debate after taking two overseas trips, which I thought was taxing in and of itself.

And so these kinds of concerns were out there, but none of us thought that there was anything here that created any suspicions of any prolonged condition. TAPPER: Do you think -- and this is my last question this. Do you

think that your party's incredibly low standing with the American people in polling has anything to do with the impression that many people in your party, especially in the White House and especially President Biden and his family and inner circle, hid his actual dysfunction, his non-functioning abilities from the American people, not only hid them from the American people, but hid them from you and Cabinet officials and donors and even other people in the White House?

Do you think that the low polling has anything to do with that?

CLYBURN: Well, it very well could have. I haven't looked at the numbers behind the numbers to come to any conclusion as to what exactly is going on here.

I do know that-, on yesterday, I spent a pretty full day starting out with the commencement of the Converse college in Spartanburg, finished last night at a sneaker party for a Head Start fund-raiser. And I have talked to people, talked to students.

And people still feel that Joe Biden has -- had the capacity to do the work that needed to be done. They still feel that Joe Biden was a good president. And I do as well.

[09:30:04]

And so -- but these people are also concerned when they look back at those tapes, they remember the debate. And they are concerned as to whether or not that was, in fact, just an incident or whether that was a condition that was being kept from people. I have no way of knowing which one is true.

TAPPER: Congressman James Clyburn, the dean of the South Carolina delegation, thank you so much for being with us today. We appreciate it.

CLYBURN: Well, thank you very much for having me.

TAPPER: Two of the best and most interesting minds in the Democratic Party, David Axelrod, Van Jones, join us next on where the party goes from here.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:35:02]

TAPPER: Rising Democrats find themselves in something of a difficult spot, being asked, why didn't they acknowledge voters' concerns about President Biden during the last election? Why didn't they tell the truth about him? What can they do to fix that now?

Joining us now to discuss, CNN chief political analyst David Axelrod and CNN senior political commentator Van Jones.

David, let me start with you. You were on the record in 2022 voicing concerns about Biden's age and

ability. Whom do you blame for the decision of him to run for reelection and the decision to hide his declining abilities as much as they were able to?

DAVID AXELROD, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Look, at the top end, you have to blame him because he made the decision.

But he was -- and your book reflects this in many different ways. He was shielded by a coterie of advisers and his family. They were in this confirmation bubble. And they shielded -- they tried to shield the world from his decline and they tried to shield him from his own standing and his polling numbers and so on.

And so, at the end of the day, I have to point the finger at the people around him who didn't do him a service by encouraging him to continue. I think it was obvious to the public. It may not have been obvious to a lot of politicians. I actually think it was, but it wasn't politically wise, in their judgment, to speak out.

But it was obviously the American people, even before that debate, that the president was just too old. He would have been closer to 90 than 80 if he had won reelection. And he already was showing decline.

So I blame the people around him, because real loyalty -- and it's hard when you work for a president, Jake, to tell them hard truths, but real loyalty demanded that they say, Mr. President, it's just not there. And it's not in your interest.

And it's better for you, the country and the Democratic Party, if you leave now.

TAPPER: Van, I remember how emotional you were in the immediate moments after the June 27, 2024, debate because of what you saw on the stage. And with all this new reporting coming out -- and I should disclose that I gave both of you copies of the book so you would have a little bit more information.

Do you feel like you were duped, Van? Like, how do you feel?

VAN JONES, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: First, this book is extraordinary. I don't care who you are, left, right, or otherwise. Anybody who cares about this country and about just the dynamics of power, this is the emperor's new clothes playing itself out in real time.

Everybody knew, but everyone was afraid to say, except for David Axelrod, for two years that something was wrong here. And so I was shocked. I love Joe Biden. I don't like him. I love him. I got a chance to work with him when I was a part of the Obama administration and loved him more every day.

I was shocked to see his condition when he came out. And so was the world. And that wasn't the first time he was in that condition. The book makes it very, very clear. There are people who knew and said nothing. And that is a crime against this republic. And I think the Democrats are going to pay for a long time for being a

part of what is now being revealed to be a massive cover-up.

TAPPER: And, David, in what seemed to be an attempt to get ahead of the book, President Biden and first lady Biden went on "The View."

And he still says that if he had stayed in the race, he would have won. What do you think?

AXELROD: Well, I don't think -- I think that's preposterous. I think he's being told that by Mike Donilon, his top political aide.

And I have known Mike for decades. Mike is a brilliant, brilliant guy. He knows -- he was a pollster. He was a media consultant. He knows politics very, very well. I think he's just so tied to Biden emotionally that he could not accept the truth, which was, it just -- it wasn't there.

The analytics before the debate, Jake, that, within the Democratic Party, within both the campaign and outside the campaign, showed him with less than a 5 percent chance of winning. And had he run, Democrats would have lost at least three more Senate seats, probably would have lost some more states. The damage would have been greater.

He may need to comfort himself by believing that, but it's just not true.

TAPPER: Van, the big question is, what now? What now for Democrats?

And over the past week, we have seen some potential 2028 candidates, Pete Buttigieg, Governor Whitmer, Governor Pritzker, saying that they didn't know that this was going on, that they didn't know that there was -- there were any acuity or cognition issues. We have heard, I was busy working, I was too far away, I didn't see it.

[09:40:03]

What do you think Democrats need to say? What is the right thing for Democrats to say? You heard Jim Clyburn Clyburn acknowledge it, possibly, the party's low standing in polls does have to do with this.

JONES: Look, I think before you get out there trying to say stuff and persuade other people, you have got to look inside. And 2024 (sic), we got beat by W., John Kerry got swift-boated by Karl Rove, and suddenly we're looking at a president that we didn't like, George W. Bush, with a war that we thought was being fought badly, constitutional crisis, and triple red Senate, House and White House.

It took 3.5 years before Barack Obama emerged with a message. What did we do in the meantime? We looked inside. Donors got reorganized as a Democracy Alliance in 2005. Bloggers got reorganized as Huffington Post in 2005. Black voters got organized under Color of Change in 2005.

And there was a deep internal reflection. I do not see that happening. I see people, rather than reorganizing, rethink -- Center for American Progress took off in 2005 and came up with a new set of ideas for Democrats. That has to happen.

Before we get out here and start trying to tell people why they should like us, we need to look in the mirror, reorganize ourselves, get bad people and bad ideas out of the way, and then we will be able to come forward in the midterm.

But, right now, we need to apologize to American people that we were part of something that wasn't on the up and up.

TAPPER: Van Jones, David Axelrod, thank you so much to both of you for getting up early and talking to us this morning. Really appreciate it.

Democrats are eager to move forward, but is that possible without first looking back? What I learned from writing the new book with Alex Thompson of Axios. That's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:46:11]

TAPPER: Welcome back to STATE OF THE UNION.

Right around the time that the 2024 election was called for Donald Trump, I started working with Axios' Alex Thompson, whose reporting on President Biden I admired. And I made a pitch to him. He and I should start working on a project to explain what just happened and how President Trump, who was not particularly popular at the time, got elected again in a commanding victory.

According to the top Democrats that we spoke with at the time, the reason for this was clear. The stunning election result traced back to the original sin of the 2024 election, President Biden's decision to run for reelection, even though he would be theoretically 86 years old at the end of his second term, and was showing every day of it.

And the result is our new book, "Original Sin," which comes out on Tuesday. Our goal with the book was simple, to present the disturbing reality of what happened in the White House and the Democratic presidential campaign in 2023-2024, as told to us by more than 200 people, including lawmakers, White House and campaign insiders, some of whom may never publicly acknowledge speaking to us, but all of whom know the truth within the pages of the book, basically, how this guy became this guy.

What we learned was going on behind the scenes stunned us. Some people were willing to go on the record.

David Plouffe, who ran the Obama and Harris campaigns, did not hold back -- quote -- "We got so screwed by Biden as a party," Plouffe told us, "referring to Biden's decision to run for reelection, then wait more than three weeks to bow out. Plouffe added: "He totally effed us."

Others, of course, remained publicly silent, despite the entire world seeing what had gone very, very wrong during the debate on June 27. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BIDEN: Making sure that we're able to make every single solitary person eligible for what I have been able to do with the -- with the COVID. Excuse me, with dealing with everything we have to do with...

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: What we saw that night wasn't a cold. It wasn't somebody underprepared or overprepared. It was the logical result of a president who had been deteriorating for years, most precipitously declining in 2023 and 2024, a president who had began his term telling voters to watch him if they had questions about his age.

By the end, his aides and his doctor were even privately discussing whether or not he would need to be in a wheelchair after the election. And a small, secretive group of advisers kept his worried Cabinet in the dark.

The presidency requires someone who can perform at 2:00 a.m. during an emergency. Cabinet secretaries in his own administration told us that, by 2024, President Biden could not be relied upon for that.

And yet, until the debate and even weeks after, those in power stayed quiet. They were convinced that they were saving the country from the existential threat of Donald Trump, as they saw it, and that only Biden could beat Trump. But, instead, what they did was they paved the way for that which they feared the most.

Indeed, for those who tried to justify the behavior described in our book because of the threat of a second Trump term, those fears should have shocked them into reality, not away from it.

In a statement to CNN, a Biden spokesman criticized the book, saying -- quote -- "We continue to await anything that shows where Joe Biden had to make a presidential decision or where national security was threatened or where he was unable to do his job. In fact, the evidence points to the opposite. He was a very effective president" -- unquote.

To that, I say, read the book and you will see examples of that. But, regardless, Democrats are now in the wilderness and they are trying to figure out how to regain the trust of the American people.

Months after Biden's debacle and Harris' loss, they're torn between trying to appeal to base voters focused on Trump, who don't want to hear any criticism of Biden, and those who are angry about what the Bidens did.

[09:50:09]

It's a real tightrope. Here's what top Democrats in Congress had to say this week when asked about what we uncovered in our book.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. HAKEEM JEFFRIES (D-NY): House Democrats have been very clear we're moving forward. We're not looking backward.

SEN. CHUCK SCHUMER (D-NY): We're looking forward.

KASIE HUNT, CNN HOST: That's it?

SCHUMER: That's it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: And here are two prominent Democratic governors positioning themselves for a run in 2028 asked about whether they knew about Biden's decline.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PRITZKER: I saw him a few times. I certainly went to the White House. To the extent people are now saying, well, we thought about whether he should have a wheelchair, I never heard any of that. I never saw any of that.

WHITMER: As a governor at a state halfway across the country who was working her tail off, I was busy working.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: As Politico's Adam Wren and Holly Otterbein write -- quote -- "Some Democrats argue that their leaders aren't owning up to the truth about Biden and risk keeping the issue alive indefinitely as a result. They fear that Democrats' record low approval ratings are tied in part to their unwillingness to come clean" -- unquote.

So, the big question, how long will Democratic leaders be able to walk this line? The book comes out Tuesday. You will not believe what we found out.

The vice president, J.D. Vance, met this morning with the first ever American pope. That's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:56:06]

TAPPER: A second meeting this morning between the vice president, J.D. Vance, and a pope, Vance, who's Catholic, along with the second lady, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

All of them attended the inaugural mass of the first ever American pope, Leo XIV. Vance, Rubio, Zelenskyy all in one room? Is there any momentum building for a Ukraine-Russian deal? We will watch for that this week.

Thanks for spending your Sunday morning with us.

"FAREED ZAKARIA GPS" starts next.