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The Whole Story with Anderson Cooper
Joe Biden Passes the Torch
Aired July 28, 2024 - 21:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[21:00:00]
ANDERSON COOPER, HOST, "THE WHOLE STORY": In Central America to try and reduce the huge number of people crossing illegally into the U.S. along our southern border. Vice President Harris is touring her work to protect abortion and reproductive rights as well as voting rights. This is unlike any presidential race in American history, and we will be covering it every step of the way.
Thanks for watching the "The Whole Story". Stay tuned for another hour, looking at President Biden's decision to step aside.
Welcome back to "The Whole Story". I'm Anderson Cooper.
President Biden's decision to step aside from the race came as a shock to many Americans, including some of his own campaign and White House staff. Even after the disastrous CNN debate against former President Donald Trump and the growing calls from Democrats for him to pass the torch, Biden seemed dug in. So, the question is, what finally changed his mind?
Over the next hour, CNN's Pamela Brown examines the rise and fall of candidate Joe Biden from his motivations for running against Donald Trump to the final days and hours before his history-making decision.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
PAMELA BROWN, CNN ANCHOR (voice-over): It was summer 2017. Joe Biden was out of the vice presidency, out of Washington, D.C., and in his home state of Delaware.
EVAN OSNOS, AUTHOR, "JOE BIDEN: THE LIFE, THE RUIN, AND WHAT MATTERS NOW": Joe Biden found himself in a place he hadn't been in his entire adult life, frankly. His politics had defined his identity. And now, all of a sudden, he was a man without a purpose.
JEFF ZELENY, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: It was always hanging over the question, would he get back in and run?
JILL BIDEN, FIRST LADY OF THE UNITED STATES: Every single day, would come up to me at work or in the grocery store or the pharmacy, people on the street, the strangers, that I didn't even know would come up and say, you have to talk your husband into running. He has to run. He has to run.
BROWN (voice-over): And then came the "Unite the Right" rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.
(CROWD CHANTING "JEWS WILL NOT REPLACE US")
Then, the President's reaction from Trump Tower in New York City.
DONALD TRUMP (R), FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT AND 2024 PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: You also had people that were very fine people on both sides.
BROWN (voice-over): Biden was watching.
JILL BIDEN: Joe thought we have to have change. We have to have change in this country.
KATE BEDINGFIELD, FORMER BIDEN WHITE HOUSE COMMUNICATIONS DIRECTOR: I remember him calling me and saying, are you watching what's happening in Charlottesville? Are you seeing this? I remember he said to me that afternoon, I want to say something about this.
BROWN (voice-over): What would follow? A chain of events that would propel Biden closer and closer to the presidency.
VAN JONES, FORMER SPECIAL ADVISOR TO PRESIDENT OBAMA: Well, really, nobody thought Biden was going to be a factor in 2020. Part of the reason Obama picked him was because he was already in his 60s in 2008. So, it's like this guy is not going to be around to kind of get in the way of the rest of the party. And I think Charlottesville was such a shock to people to see a President that was having a hard time forthrightly condemning somebody that most people will just would automatically say no to. And I think it really bothered. I think it bothered by.
BROWN (voice-over): So, he did what he does with all big decisions.
OSNOS: Biden turned, as he always has, to his most trusted core advisors, an unchanging group in many respects.
BEDINGFIELD: I mean, a lot of the discussions that we had in 2017 and 2018, as he was contemplating running, Biden was really focused on, if I'm going to get in this race, I'm going to be very clear about the fact that I believe the stakes are no less than a battle for the soul of our nation.
JILL BIDEN: Our grandchildren came to Joe and said, pop, we've all thought about it. You have to run. You have to run. You have to change things.
BROWN (voice-over): But, that change did not come quickly. It would take almost two years for Biden to officially announce.
BEDINGFIELD: It was pressure from outside. There was an expectation, the waiting, the anticipation, what's he going to do.
ZELENY: Every Biden decision takes a long time. That's how he has made decisions in the Senate. It's how he made decisions in the vice presidency, and certainly on his own political future. BROWN (voice-over): Some believe he was still stung by the pressure
back in 2016 to step aside and make room for Hillary Clinton.
OSNOS: Joe Biden was also seething, frankly, about having not been able to run in 2016 against Donald Trump. He had been coaxed out of the race, nudged out of it by Barack Obama and other powerful figures in the Democratic Party.
JONES: I think that bothered Biden. I think Biden felt that he had promised his son that he was going to run and he didn't do it.
JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT, UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: That's why today I'm announcing my candidacy for President of the United States.
ZELENY: When Biden finally got into the race, there was excitement in some quarters of the Democratic Party, but there was also some apprehension.
OSNOS: A lot of people thought that Joe Biden was a voice from the party's past. He wasn't their idea of what the party's future could be.
[21:05:00]
SEN. BERNIE SANDERS (I-VT): Thank you, New Hampshire.
SEN. ELIZABETH WARREN (D-MA): Joe Biden is on the side of the credit card companies. It's all a matter of public record.
JONES: People were excited about other candidates.
SEN. CORY BOOKER (D-NJ): There is a lot of people who are concerned about Joe Biden's ability to carry the ball all the way across the end line without fumbling.
JONES: It just seemed like yesterday's guy clinging the glory. And so, the circle around Biden was pretty small. His campaign was pretty small. There weren't big crowds.
BROWN (voice-over): And there weren't big wins either.
JOHN KING, CNN HOST: The disappointment for Biden currently running fourth.
BROWN (voice-over): The first two Democratic primaries, Biden placed fourth in Iowa's caucuses, fifth in New Hampshire.
OSNOS: He was really on the cusp of failing out of the race. In fact, he was so close to the end that one of his advisors said, you need to begin to prepare to have some money in the bank account in case we need to pay people for their severance and to close down the offices.
BEDINGFIELD: That was a very tough week. We were in New Hampshire in that week and we were staying at a hotel in Nashua. And the power went out in the hotel. We had candles in our rooms because there was no power in the hotel. There was some gallows humor around that. So, it was a tough moment. But, there was a lot of faith in the strategy.
BROWN (voice-over): That strategy, win South Carolina, and critical to that, the support of Representative Jim Clyburn. The two had met decades earlier.
BROWN: Did he talk to you about his dreams, ambitions, desires to be President one day?
REP. JIM CLYBURN (D-SC): Well, it was very clear in that first meeting.
BROWN (voice-over): They developed a close relationship and bonded. So, in June of 2019, Biden came calling for Clyburn's support, as did 21 other candidates at the Representative's famous annual fish fry, after Clyburn rushed home to talk to his wife, Emily, who was very sick.
CLYBURN: And she said to me that night, she says, I don't care how many people are running. I don't care how many are close friends of ours. If you want him in this election, you better nominate Joe Biden, and this was in May 2019. She passed away in September.
BROWN (voice-over): Just over five months later --
CLYBURN: I voted for Joe Biden.
JONES: You got to give Clyburn credit, because it'd been easy to say, well, we're just going to go for Cory Booker. He is black. We're going to go for Kamala Harris. She is black. Black voters said, who can stop Bernie and who can stop Trump? And in that calculation, it was Joe Biden, and nobody saw it coming.
ZELENY: That really sealed Joe Biden's presidential candidacy. South Carolina rescued him, without a doubt.
KING: Sweeping blowout win for the former Vice President Joe Biden.
BIDEN: My buddy, Jim Clyburn, you brought me back.
JONES: Biden goes from being a marginal joke to being a juggernaut in South Carolina because of Jim Clyburn.
BIDEN: He is a man of enormous integrity.
BEDINGFIELD: Having this moment where you just come roaring back in a way that's kind of bigger and stronger than people imagined was even possible, that feeling is so euphoric.
ZELENY: It was amazing how quickly things came together. Candidates dropped out of the race and Democrats were so focused on trying to make Donald Trump a one-term President.
DAVID URBAN, FORMER TRUMP CAMPAIGN SENIOR ADVISOR: I expressed some concern to the folks in the campaign, different people, even the President himself, that Joe Biden was a much more formidable candidate than Bernie Sanders. BROWN (voice-over): Donald Trump went on the attack.
TRUMP: They're going to put him into a home and other people are going to be running the country.
BROWN (voice-over): He took on Biden's age despite being less than four years younger.
OSNOS: One of the ways he addressed that was that he came up with a kind of language of it. He would say, I want to be a bridge to a new generation. The implication was, the suggestion was that he probably wouldn't serve two terms, but he never came out and said that directly.
BROWN (voice-over): On August 17, almost three years to the day after the Charlottesville rally that brought Biden into the 2020 race --
BIDEN: It's with great honor and humility I accept this nomination for President of the United States of America.
BROWN (voice-over): -- he accepted the Democratic nomination.
BIDEN: It was a wake-up call for us as a country and for me a call to action. I can never remain silent or complicit. I said we're in the battle for the soul of this nation, and we are.
BROWN (voice-over): Biden would go, of course, with show to beat Trump in crucial presidential debate.
BIDEN: The question is --
(CROSSTALK)
TRUMP: -- Supreme Court justice, rational left --
BIDEN: Will you shut up, man?
TRUMP: Who is you -- listen, who is on your list, Joe? This is --
JAKE TAPPER, CNN HOST: All right. Gentlemen, I think --
TRUMP: -- this is so --
(CROSSTALK)
BROWN (voice-over): And then on Election Day 2020 at the ballot box.
KING: Biden is leading in Nevada, but the math right now has Biden leading in Arizona.
WOLF BLITZER, CNN HOST: CNN projects Joseph R. Biden Jr. is elected --
[21:10:00]
BROWN (voice-over): -- he wins the presidency, a long-time dream fulfilled, but the opponent he defeated in this election refuses to go away.
TRUMP: This was a massive fraud. This should never take place in this country.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JOHN ROBERTS, CHIEF JUSTICE OF THE UNITED STATES: I, Joseph Robinette Biden Jr., do solemnly swear --
BIDEN: I, Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. do solemnly swear --
ROBERTS: -- that I will faithfully execute --
BIDEN: -- that I will faithfully execute --
ROBERTS: -- the office of President of the United States Office.
BIDEN: -- the office of President of the United States --
ROBERTS: -- and will to the --
DAVID CHALIAN, CNN POLITICAL DIRECTOR: President Biden obviously inherited the presidency at a very trying time. Most Americans did not yet have a vaccine. So, the pandemic was still raging. The economy was still reeling because of the pandemic.
BIDEN: I said I intended to get 100 million shots in people's arms in my first 100 days in office. Tonight, I can say, we're not only going to meet that goal, we're going to beat that goal.
CHALIAN: Americans were getting checks from the government to help them through the economic calamity that the pandemic had caused. So, that was sort of a high watermark for Joe Biden.
BIDEN: Today, I signed into law the American Rescue Plan, a historic piece of legislation that delivers immediate relief to millions of people. It includes $1,400 in direct rescue checks, payments.
BROWN: And what about the infrastructure bill?
FRANKLIN FOER, AUTHOR, "THE LAST POLITICIAN": Infrastructure is perhaps the least sexy word in the English language, but it is so important to our ability to maintain our economic competitiveness and our national greatness and the fact that that was all crumbling, and that we hadn't made these important investments for generations. It was a big deal that he was able to reverse that and to do it in a way that was not just ramming it through Congress.
BIDEN: Bravo.
CHALIAN: Joe Biden was able to put together a bipartisan coalition of lawmakers and successfully pushed through an overwhelming infrastructure bill that could transform roads, highways, airports, and all the other pieces of America's infrastructure in a pretty substantial way.
BROWN (voice-over): Like any presidency, Biden's has also had its bad moments, especially the chaotic withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan.
[21:15:00]
ERIN BURNETT, HOST, "OUTFRONT": The 13 American servicemembers are the first American troops to be killed in Afghanistan, in fact, in 18 months.
REP. NICOLE MALLIOTAKIS (R-NY): And it's been such a tragic and sad week for the United States of America, but we can't say that this was unpreventable. I believe there are a lot of horrific decisions that were made one after another that have led to where we are today. It's extraordinarily unfortunate.
BROWN (voice-over): A more lasting problem for President Biden, the effects of which still linger today, is high inflation cost, at least in part, by all the money that the American Rescue Plan put into the economy.
KRISTA STOTLER, PARENT: Grocery prices went up. A gallon of milk was $1.99. Now it's $2.79.
JONES: Joe Biden tried to respond to the real pain of people coming out of COVID, and the built-up demand in our party for more aggressive government action put fuel on a fire that just turned into a wildfire of inflation.
BROWN (voice-over): There would be one issue, one concern that Biden could not solve with legislation or an executive order, and that was his age.
JONES: He started looking different. He started walking different and he started talking worse, and people started getting worried.
BIDEN: -- stability. We talked about making sure that the Third World -- the -- excuse me -- "Third World" --
JONES: It was like this unspoken rule that you weren't supposed to say it, that you could see it, but you couldn't say it, and Axelrod kind of broke the seal on that.
DAVID AXELROD, FORMER SENIOR ADVISOR TO PRESIDENT OBAMA: He had strong support among Democrats. But, there was -- there were concerns about his age. And I was one of the people who express some of those, just as an electoral issue.
BROWN (voice-over): Two years ago, David Axelrod told The New York Times, quote, "The presidency is a monstrously taxing job and the stark reality is the President would be closer to 90 than 80 at the end of a second term, and that would be a major issue."
CHALIAN: And so, those images of him tripping up the stairs of Air Force One or falling over a sandbag at that graduation at the Air Force Academy, those were high-profile public moments on camera, and his political opponents seized on it. Now, his aides also made adjustments because of them. So, he started using the shorter steps to get up into Air Force One instead of the long steps to the top of the plane. He started wearing different shoes to try to stabilize his walks in public a bit more.
BIDEN: Good almost morning.
BROWN (voice-over): President Biden's team would schedule few interviews or press conferences, fewer than any other recent President.
MJ LEE, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: There is the chance that the President could misspeak or make a mistake, and that's clearly something that White House advisors had become really sensitive to.
BROWN (voice-over): The President's aides went to great lengths to control what the public saw.
LEE: For example, the White House rarely had the President doing public events early in the morning or late in the evening.
BIDEN: Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
BROWN (voice-over): And yet, in 2023, despite the signs of aging, Democrats had lined up behind Biden as their 2024 candidate.
BIDEN: When I ran for President four years ago, I said we're in a battle for the soul of America. And we still are.
BROWN: He announces that he is running for reelection.
REP. SETH MOULTON (D-MA): To be honest, there are people who reached out to me, some people closer to Biden than I am, who expressed concerns. I wasn't quite sure what to do.
ZELENY: So many private whispers about, is Joe Biden strong enough to win a second term, but publicly, near silence. Really, the wagons were circled from the very beginning, from the quarters of the West Wing, to the campaign headquarters in Wilmington, Delaware. So, the party apparatus to the extent that that still exists was really all behind Joe Biden. I mean, it's the power of incumbency, in every way, kept a primary from happening.
BROWN (voice-over): But, as this campaign were on, it became increasingly difficult to ignore Biden's physical and mental challenges. In February, telling a story about current French President Macron, Biden said the name of a previous leader of France --
BIDEN: -- Mitterrand from Germany, I mean from France, looked at me and said, you know --
BROWN (voice-over): -- and he called Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi the leader of a different country. [21:20:00]
BIDEN: The President of Mexico, Sisi, did not want to open up the gate.
CHRIS WALLACE, CNN HOST: Let's kick off with President Biden bucking a Super Bowl tradition again, turning down an invitation from CBS for a pregame interview.
AXELROD: That's like a layup for any President to do. You get a huge audience. So, the fact that they turned that interview down was really a concern to a lot of people. I think that sort of set alarm bells off in a lot of places.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Mr. Speaker, the President of the United States.
BROWN (voice-over): Then in March, Biden give a State of the Union speech, many described as a show of strength, seemingly reassuring some Democrats.
BIDEN: And I've been told I'm too old. Whether young or old, I've always been known -- I've always known what endures. I've known our North Star. The very idea of America, that we're all created equal and deserves to be treated equally throughout our lives. We've never fully lived up to that idea. We've never walked away from it either. And I won't walk away from it now.
BROWN (voice-over): President Biden's team was accused of trying to minimize the obvious.
ZELENY: He would walk with his aides around him as he would walk to Marine One on the South Lawn of the White House, so he wouldn't be seen simply walking alone.
BROWN (voice-over): But soon, the State of the Union enthusiasm would ebb, as some felt they were seeing Biden aging day by day, week by week, and it would only get worse.
BIDEN: -- making sure that we're able to make every single solitary person eligible for what I've been able to do with the COVID -- excuse me -- with dealing with everything we have to do with -- what --
(END VIDEOTAPE)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[21:25:00]
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: We are hours away from CNN's historic presidential debate.
BLITZER: With the stubbornly close election, it could be a make or break moment for both men.
BROWN (voice-over): A clash of political Titans, each campaign filled with vitriol and disdain for their opponent --
TRUMP: Now under crooked Joe Biden, the worst President in the history of our country, the world is in play.
BIDEN: The only loser I see is Donald Trump.
BROWN (voice-over): -- fierce rivals now on a collision course for the White House, facing each other for the first time in four years.
CHALIAN: We were in totally uncharted territory.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This was going to be a moment that jolted America awake to this election.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This may be the most consequential 90 minutes of their political careers. This might be the most consequential 90 minutes of modern American political history.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We're live from Georgia, a key battleground state, and the race for the White House.
BEDINGFIELD: Coming into the debate, there was an enormous amount of hype. There was the question of whether Trump was going to be able to keep himself in check and not be the kind of most unhinged, deranged version of Donald Trump. There was the question of whether Biden was going to be strong. Was he going to be able to push back on concerns that he was too old to be in the race?
BROWN (voice-over): More than 50 million viewers tuned in to watch the first ever debate between a sitting President and a former President. What they saw was shocking.
JONES: From the very moment that Biden walked out, my heart just sank into my stomach. He looked like an old lost dude in the park. He did not look like the President of the United States.
BROWN (voice-over): What they heard was worse.
BIDEN: We'd be able to help make sure that all those things we need to do, childcare, elder care, making sure that we continue to strengthen our healthcare system, making sure that we're able to make every single solitary person eligible for what I've been able to do with the -- with the COVID, excuse me, with dealing with everything we have to do with -- look, if -- we finally beat Medicare.
TAPPER: Thank you, President Biden. President Trump.
TRUMP: Well, he right. He did beat Medicaid. He beat it to death.
AXELROD: Three minutes into the debate, my phone was blowing up from people, some of whom I hadn't heard from for years, just apoplectic.
JONES: The phone start vibrating so much, the desk started vibrating. I've never had that experience before. The text messages start coming in, oh my god, oh my god, this a disaster. Oh my god. And people just are like, holy crap. We're watching the end of this campaign. BROWN: The debate happens. You're watching it. Bring us into what was
going through your mind as you're watching the early minutes of the debate.
MOULTON: I mean, it was really five words, holy shit, we're going to lose.
CHALIAN: Within the first 10 minutes of that debate, this entire presidential election changed.
BROWN (voice-over): Over the course of the next 90 minutes, Biden stumbled and often lost his train of thought, and missed opportunities to attack his rival.
[21:30:00]
BIDEN: There are 40 percent fewer people coming across the border illegally. That's better than when he left office, and I'm going to continue to move until we get the total ban on -- the total initiative relative to what we can do with more Border Patrol and more asylum officers.
TAPPER: President Trump.
TRUMP: I really don't know what he said at the end of that sentence. I don't think he knows what he said either. H is not equipped to be President. You know it and I know it. It's ridiculous.
BROWN: Before the debate, when did you sense like he is not going to be able to do this?
CLYBURN: I don't know. I don't know when it was. I know I just said something. It's something I got from my mother. I have no idea what it is. But, it's something my mother had. She always knew that was about to get in trouble.
BROWN: Did you cry --
CLYBURN: Yeah.
BROWN: -- watching the debate?
CLYBURN: Yeah.
CHALIAN: Before the debate had even concluded, the White House puts out information that the President is suffering from a cold.
ZELENY: I remember getting text messages on my phone from very high- ranking Democrats saying that he is going to have to be replaced. This is a crisis.
KING: Anderson, this was a game changing debate in the sense that right now, as we speak, there is a deep, a wide and a very aggressive panic in the Democratic Party. It involves party strategists. It involves elected officials. It involves fundraisers, and they're having conversations about the President's performance, which they think was abysmal, which they think well hurt other people down the party in the ticket, and they're having conversations about what they should do about it.
BROWN (voice-over): The Vice President came out and tried to defend the President.
KAMALA HARRIS, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE U.S., (D) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: So, I'm not going to spend all night with you talking about the last 90 minutes, when I've been watching the last three and a half years of performance.
COOPER: Can you say that you are not concerned at all having watched the President's performance tonight?
HARRIS: It was a slow start. That's obvious to everyone. I'm not going to debate that point. I'm talking about the choice in November.
AXELROD: The fears that people had about age were magnified and sort of hardened by what they saw on the stage.
JONES: I just want to speak from my heart. I love that guy. He is a good man. He loves his country. He is doing the best that he can.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: If you love the guy, how could you put them out there?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: That's --
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: If you love him, if you love Joe Biden, if that was my father, you don't put a guy next to --
(CROSSTALK)
DAVID URBAN, FORMER TRUMP CAMPAIGN ADVISOR: He looked lost. He looked puzzled. He looked bewildered. I just looked at him as my father, right? If that was your dad or somebody who loved your grandfather, would you put them in that situation? Knowing that that might happen, would you put him in that situation? I think not.
BROWN (voice-over): In the aftermath, Biden's team launched into damage control.
BIDEN: I don't walk as easy as I used to. I don't speak as smoothly as I used to. I don't debate as well as I used to. But, I know what I do know. I know how to tell the truth.
CHALIAN: He was jet lagged after traveling to Europe twice. He flew all the way back to Los Angeles for a fundraiser, being sick with a cold. Whatever Joe Biden tried day in and day out, none of it stopped the steady drumbeat of calls for Joe Biden to be replaced at the top of the Democratic ticket.
REP. NANCY PELOSI (D-CA): I think it's a legitimate question to say, is this an episode or is this a condition?
COOPER: To your fellow Democrats who are continuing to say, look, this was one bad night, you say what?
REP. LLOYD DOGGETT (D-TX): Well, I say that we needed a great night. We got a great disappointment instead. And I think we would be better off if we had a new candidate who could present a new vision for our country.
JONES: The party immediately split into two camps. There was nobody in the middle. You were either in the camp that said you'd be an idiot to replace Joe Biden. He has won before. There ere is nobody to replace him. Or people on my side were like, the emperor has no clothes. You can't run somebody who can't serve.
ZELENY: Donors were in a state of panic. They cancelled fundraisers. Grassroots donations was not happening. They had built this massive apparatus in battleground states, hundreds of offices. They had spent tens of billions of dollars on television ads.
BIDEN: We have the strongest economy in the world.
ZELENSY: That money was drying up.
BROWN (voice-over): Biden remained defiant. His team decided that a high-stakes high-profile television interview with ABC's George Stephanopoulos the week after the debate would prove Biden was still the best candidate to take down Trump. They were wrong.
BIDEN: It was a bad episode. No indication of any serious condition. I was exhausted. I didn't listen to my instincts in terms of preparing, and a bad night.
GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS, ABC NEWS HOST: And did you ever watch the debate afterwards?
[21:35:00]
BIDEN: I don't think I did. No.
CHALIAN: When he sat down for that George Stephanopoulos interview, the stakes could not have been higher for him. He needed a home run of a public appearance here, and he did anything but that in this interview. It wasn't a catastrophe like his debate performance was. But, that moment when he couldn't even remember if he had actually watched the debate confounded many people looking for clues that he has what it takes to remain in this fight.
MOULTON: I think in some ways, he made it worse because he almost sounded a little arrogant and obstinate.
ZELENY: That was supposed to be the moment to turn the corner, and it didn't at all because it showed just how dug in President Biden was. He said it would take the Lord Almighty to get him out of this race.
BIDEN: And I'm not done.
BROWN (voice-over): Coming up, as the pressure mounts to end his reelection bid, the President digs in deeper. BIDEN: The bottom line here is that we're not going anywhere. I am not
going anywhere.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[21:40:00]
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEOAPE)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: But, it has been a week and the follow-up continues because we're just getting news that Congressman Moulton, the Democrat, is officially now calling for Biden to step aside.
BROWN: Bring us into what you were grappling with and how you finally decided to go public and call on him to step aside.
MOULTON: One of the first things I did is I invited a bunch of local Democrats, who I represent, to just share their views. About 80 percent of the Democrats who spoke thought he should get out of the race. And after hearing that, I said, it's not enough for me to sit here in silence.
BROWN (voice-over): Early calls from Democrats for Biden to step aside didn't seem to make a difference.
BIDEN: The bottom line here is that we're not going anywhere. I am not going anywhere. I wouldn't be running if I didn't absolutely believe that I am the best candidate to beat Donald Trump in 2024.
BROWN (voice-over): He sent a letter to congressional Democrats stating he was quote, "firmly committed to staying in this race."
KATIE ROGERS, WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT, THE NEW YORK TIMES: Joe Biden is somebody who has been defiant and happy to run against the odds for his entire career. It is part of his personality to be the comeback kid, even though he is 81-years-old.
BROWN (voice-over): Biden rallied support from members of the Congressional Black Caucus who vowed to stand by his side.
BROWN: Did you think it was inevitable at some point that he would probably step aside?
CLYBURN: At first, no, I didn't think it was inevitable because I saw what the public's reaction to. It was not talking to people. Voters are not holding this against him. They are still with him. And I think they're locked in.
BROWN: And when you were standing by him, you didn't feel like you're putting man over country?
CLYBURN: No. I mean, he is going to put the country first, no matter what, and that's what was happening.
BROWN (voice-over): Biden kept a small circle of advisors and relied heavily on his family for support.
CHALIAN: They were standing in total solidarity with him. And so, Joe Biden spent weeks in a posture of not even listening seriously to the criticism, to the concern, to the panic that was quite apparent in his party.
BROWN (voice-over): Then reports surfaced that a Parkinson's disease specialist visited the White House at least eight times in the past year.
ZELENY: It opened the door to a series of questions, and whether or not this doctor was seeing the President every time, it actually didn't matter. It turned out he did not. This doctor did examine the President during his physical, but it just kept the questions alive.
BROWN (voice-over): Calls grew later for the President to undergo cognitive testing --
DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Anyone over the age of 65, again, should be getting this sort of testing.
BROWN (voice-over): -- including from our own Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta, who wrote an essay advocating for Biden to get tested after his June debate performance raised concerns about his mental and physical acuity.
GUPTA: There was a cause for concern, stumbling of speech, sort of confused rambling at times, and then also motor symptoms, lack of expression in the face. None of those things are diagnostic of anything. I just want to be clear about that. But, in aggregate, they are flags.
BROWN (voice-over): After his halting debate performance, Biden dropped in the polls.
HARRY ENTEN, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL DATA REPORTER: Joe Biden trailed going into that debate by maybe a point or so nationally. We saw that Trump extended his advantage nationwide to about three or four points. And more than that, you saw him extend his advantage in some of the key battleground states.
AXELROD: And so, in a debate that everyone hoped would lift him and get him back into the race in a big way, that have the opposite effect.
BROWN (voice-over): But, Biden was seemingly undeterred --
LEE: The campaign strategy and the fallout of the debate was to just get the President out there more. But, the problem was that his performance was really quite mixed.
BROWN (voice-over): -- like this interview with Lester Holt. LESTER HOLT, HOST, NBC NIGHTLY NEWS: Who do you listen to on deeply
personal issues, like the decisions whether to stay in the race or not?
[21:45:00]
BIDEN: Me.
BROWN (voice-over): At a solo news conference, Biden called Vice President Kamala Harris, Vice President Trump.
BIDEN: Look, I wouldn't have picked Vice President Trump to be Vice President if I think she was not qualified to be President.
JONES: If Biden got through an interview or through a press conference 99 percent perfect, the one percent mistake was all anybody want to talk about.
BROWN (voice-over): Like calling Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, President Putin --
BIDEN: Ladies and gentlemen, President Putin. He is going to beat President Putin, President Zelenskyy.
JONES: You can't win the presidency when people are tuning in just to watch and see if you make a mistake. It's literally just people munching popcorn waiting for the mistake, waiting for the gaffe.
BROWN (voice-over): -- after George Clooney, who headlined a major fundraising event for Biden weeks earlier, wrote an OpEd in The New York Times, calling on the President to step aside from the race.
AXELROD: So, you're faced with a situation where your money is shrinking. The battleground is growing and your numbers are bad. The writing was very much on the wall.
LEE: Privately, Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama were quite concerned and they were worried that it was becoming increasingly more difficult for President Biden to defeat Donald Trump.
BROWN (voice-over): Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer met with Biden in Delaware on July 13.
ZELENY: It was that conversation with Senator Schumer that was really leading people to believe that President Biden would actually see the light and follow all of these pleas for him to get out of the race.
BROWN (voice-over): That same day, there was an assassination attempt on Donald Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania.
TRUMP: If you want to really see something that said, take a look at what happened --
JONES: And all sudden I start getting text messages, oh my God, oh my God, have you seen this? And someone has sent me the picture of Donald Trump sealing up his fist in the air and the American flag behind him. I said this is over, because it was such a perfect encapsulation of the strength of the Trump campaign and Trump as a candidate, versus the fragility of our candidate.
CHALIAN: It served an immediate political purpose of unifying Republicans around Donald Trump. You saw a surge in his grassroots online fundraising, and he is now entering into his convention as a hero.
ZELENY: All the work that Democrats had done was essentially erased that weekend. The assassination attempt really encouraged and led President Biden to double down on staying in the race.
BROWN (voice-over): But, his respite didn't last long. In the end, more than three dozen Democrats publicly called for Biden to exit the race.
BROWN: Two days before he steps aside, you write this OpEd, it's an OpEd where you also say you believe he potentially didn't recognize you in a small circle.
MOULTON: Every time I've seen the President or the Vice President before that, he was so excited to see me. I mean, immediately he would pick me out of a crowd, even if colleagues. He just never seemed to recognize me.
BROWN (voice-over): Days before dropping out of the race, the President tested positive for COVID, images showed him looking frail, as he exited Air Force One to isolate at his beach house in Delaware.
ZELENY: It was almost tragic in the way that this unfolded in a Shakespearean way.
FOER: The walls are closing in on him. People that he admires and has worked with forever are telling him, Joe, it's time to step aside.
ZELENY: And we're told President Biden was furious at Nancy Pelosi. He was furious that President Obama didn't have his back. But, it still wasn't until really the final days when he really came to believe that he could not win.
FOER: This is a completely lonely sad moment for this guy who is the ultimate politician who feels totally kind of at ease and at home in the Oval Office, and it's being ripped away from him.
CLYBURN: I was disappointed, but not surprised, because I'd spent two days with him the previous week, and I could feel it, and I could see it. The fire was not in the belly that you need to have to run a campaign like this.
JONES: And then, bing, he is out, no warning, no leak, nothing. Just literally it's Sunday. Everybody is hanging out with their kids. And the biggest news of the decade lands in your cell phone.
BROWN (voice-over): The news came in a letter posted to social media.
[21:50:00] AXELROD: I reacted in a way I never really expected, but I teared up because of the magnitude of the decision and because I knew how hard that must have been for a guy that had done so much for the country.
JONES: Joe Biden's body may not be as strong as it used to be. His language skills may not be as sharp as it used to be. His heart is as big as ever. His heart is big and it's true and it's strong, and this is the difference between a politician and a leader. We love the guy. We do. And I want to share that. I think he is probably watching to see how it's going on and shaking out. And I thought like I was talking to him. I wasn't talking to the CNN audience. (Inaudible).
BROWN (voice-over): Coming up, President Biden speaks to the country for the first time since stepping away from the campaign --
BIDEN: It's been the honor of my life to serve as your President.
BROWN (voice-over): -- and he endorses Vice President Harris, who quickly becomes the presumptive Democratic nominee.
HARRIS: Do we believe in the promise of America?
(CROWD CHANTING YES)
HARRIS: And are we ready to fight for it?
(CROWD CHANTING YES)
(END VIDEOTAPE)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Next on "The Whole Story", political violence has always threatened our democracy after the attempt on Trump's life. Where does America go from here? "The Whole Story" with Anderson Cooper, Political Violence: America's Bloody History, next on CNN.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[21:55:00]
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
COOPER: Right now, we're about to go to the Oval Office and hear this historic address from President Biden.
BIDEN: My fellow Americans, it's been the honor of my life to serve as your President. But, nothing, nothing can come in the way of saving our democracy.
BROWN: How would you describe President Biden's legacy?
MOULTON: He'll go down in history as a great American leader. But, the amazing part is he might be remembered best for that big decision he made.
JONES: Joe Biden will be remembered as an American hero, as a man of character. And when it was time to go, he handed the keys over to a new generation. When the country needs you, you step up, and when it's time, you step back. That's leadership.
ZELENY: Vice President Harris found out on Sunday, shortly before the announcement, that Biden was stepping aside, and she knew that he would endorse her.
BEDINGFIELD: He has enormous trust in her and sees her as part of the future of the Democratic Party.
ZELENY: He believed it was the best way for the party to move on.
BIDEN: I am watching you, kid.
HARRIS: It is my intention to go out and earn this nomination and to win.
FOER: In his heart of hearts, did he think that she was the best candidate for President? I'm not sure, but the alternative was the unknown.
ZELENY: So, an act of loyalty, no doubt, endorsing Harris, but also an act of practicality and pragmatism.
BURNETT: President Biden's decision to drop out and pass the torch to his Vice President Kamala Harris is an earthquake of historic proportions.
KATE BOLDUAN, CNN HOST: More than $100 million since announcing her presidential campaign just on Sunday --
BURNETT: -- nearly 30,000 volunteer sign-ups, which is 100 times the average daily.
CHALIAN: And while the party has been wary of the word coronation, boy, they got something very close to a coronation with how quickly the party coalesced around Harris.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: With lightning speed, Vice President Harris tonight securing enough delegates to win the Democratic nomination for President.
LEE: There was so much speculation before the President made his decision to drop out about would there be an open convention.
SEN. JOE MANCHIN (I-WV): A lot of people would like to see a mini primary.
AXELROD: There are a lot of folks and I was one of them who thought she might be strengthened by a competition.
ZELENY: But, all the talk about an open convention that quickly closed when President Biden announced his support for Kamala Harris.
CLYBURN: Everybody knows what happened in 1968.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We wouldn't have to have the (inaudible) in the streets of Chicago. UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The Democratic Party was completely exhausted.
They didn't want any more political chaos.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And the speed in which that happened is owed at least to the threat of Donald Trump, which Democrats feel so intently.
BROWN (voice-over): Meanwhile, Trump and his campaign quickly pivoted to attacking Harris.
TRUMP: Kamala, you've done a terrible job. You've been terrible at everything you've done. You're ultra-liberal. We don't want you here. We don't want you anywhere. Kamala, you're fired. Get out of here. You're fired.
ROGERS: The Trump campaign had been planning for a Harris candidacy. It just was a matter of when that would happen.
HARRIS: I, Kamala Harris --
BROWN (voice-over): She covered up Joe's obvious mental decline.
TRUMP: She wants open borders. She wants things that nobody wants.
URBAN: At the end of the day, Kamala Harris is wedded to the Biden record. She is just responsible for the failed border policies, for the failed crime, for immigration, for the debacle in Afghanistan, for our foreign policy failures.
SEN. J.D. VANCE (R-OH), 2024 VICE PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: The Biden record is the Kamala Harris record.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You've got 100 days figuring out how to define Kamala Harris to the American public, is now a challenge for both the Trump campaign and a potential opportunity for the Biden campaign.
JONES: One way or the other, the course of American democracy is going to be determined by this matchup.
BROWN: This momentum around her and you have to wonder how that makes your Biden feel.
MARK EIN, BIDEN ALLY: I really believe that at the end of the day, he wants what's best for this country. And the fact that she is getting off to a great start is something that makes him really, really happy.
CLYBURN: I think he will be the happiest guy in the world to see her sworn in.
BROWN: What if she loses?
CLYBURN: It won't be on him. It will be on us.
OSNOS: If she loses in November, I think part of Biden's legacy will be entwined with that agonizing period. Could he have left earlier? Maybe he should have forged ahead. But, I don't think it will ever completely console the fact that he had to pull up short of the goal that he had been aiming for.
BIDEN: I made my choice. Now, the choice is up to you, the American people. God bless you all. May God protect our troops.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
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