Making Sense - Sam Harris - #415 — The Cover-Up

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00:04:35.060 I am here with Jake Tapper. Jake, thanks for joining me.

00:04:38.460 It's my pleasure. Long-time listener, first-time caller.

00:04:41.280 Nice. Well, I've been a fan of yours for years. You have a new book out, Original Sin, which you

00:04:46.760 wrote with Alex Thompson, which I have just read in galley form. And first, congratulations. The book

00:04:54.300 seems to be getting just a little bit of attention now.

00:04:57.640 It's quite a thing, yeah. Well, we wanted, when we pitched the book, we said we wanted it to be out

00:05:05.660 in May, and that was one of the reasons we went with the publisher we went with, because we felt

00:05:10.540 like that would be a time when people would be ready to start reckoning with this thing, with

00:05:18.660 this Shakespearean drama that the world just went through. And I guess the timing has just worked out.

00:05:24.300 Yeah, and it is, I mean, it's quite Shakespearean. It's quite a disturbing picture of hubris and

00:05:31.660 delusion, you know, always self-serving delusion, and more than a little dishonesty. I mean, it's

00:05:39.960 really, one thing that's very inconvenient from my point of view is, even though I think, you know,

00:05:46.860 Trump and Trumpism are a thousand times worse, both as characters and political phenomenon,

00:05:52.000 than what we're unearthing on the Democratic and Biden side of this. There are so many parallels

00:05:58.640 which allow for a game of whataboutism to be played. And I think there's going to be

00:06:02.980 some sort of 20 megaton satisfaction on the side of the right to discover just how fully

00:06:11.300 the rot had spread within the Biden camp and just how much deceit in the end. I mean,

00:06:17.460 just what a cover-up story this is. Again, I think, you know, the burden is on us to keep

00:06:23.620 this in proportion, but it really is, I found your book pretty shocking.

00:06:29.780 Yeah, we were shocked, Alex and I, when we were reporting it. We started the project right after

00:06:34.860 Election Day. Obviously, Alex has been aggressively covering the Biden administration as a White House

00:06:39.720 correspondent. I, you know, had interviews and I did that debate, obviously. But the big question,

00:06:46.500 what was going on behind the scenes? Alex got some answers, I got none. But after Election Day,

00:06:53.420 people were willing to talk, shockingly so. And we talked to more than 200 people,

00:06:59.960 almost all of them Biden-loving Democrats, almost all of them, you know, tried to get his agenda

00:07:05.300 past or supported it or raised money for it or whatever. And again, almost all these interviews

00:07:11.320 were after the election. And what they told us just was shocking. And even when I was doing the

00:07:15.160 audio book, I would stop after every chapter and be like, I still can't believe that happened. I mean,

00:07:19.380 just crazy, crazy stuff told to us by, as you, as you read, you know, sources in the room.

00:07:27.520 Yeah. Yeah. So the classic question, what did they know and when did they know it is really the,

00:07:31.800 the theme of this book? You know, again, your book is dropping tomorrow at the time we're recording

00:07:36.820 this. It'll be out when this is released. But, you know, there's already a fair amount of chatter

00:07:41.280 about its contents. I can only imagine there's going to be an allegation, again, probably just

00:07:47.060 coming from right of center, that you and the rest of the commentary, you know, anyone working in

00:07:53.400 journalism must have known all of this much earlier than, than now. Right. And, and so I guess I want

00:08:01.960 to track through your book systematically, but. There's a lot of skepticism and anger on the right.

00:08:06.100 And frankly, I don't begrudge them for having it. Yeah. I mean, so this is the big, so from the,

00:08:10.240 the rights point of view, this is the big lie that was foisted on the American people that Biden was

00:08:15.060 compos mentis the whole time that he was fit to run for reelection, that he could easily serve for

00:08:20.820 four more years. Obviously the lie was put to that, you know, just emphatically for the entire world

00:08:26.100 in the, in the debate performance we're going to talk about, which you co-moderated, but coming back

00:08:32.100 to this fundamental question, at what point do you think, I mean, we're going to talk about how early

00:08:37.700 the, the inner circle knew how much he was unraveling and what they did to cover it up. But when you look

00:08:44.400 back on just the role of journalism at the time, or is it, is it a story of the Biden administration

00:08:51.560 successfully deceiving and stonewalling everyone in sight? Or is it, do you feel that journalists

00:08:58.640 like yourself averted your eyes from a kind of an open secret? It's a complicated question. And the truth

00:09:07.000 of the matter is that even those of us who, you know, like I, I, when I interviewed Joe Biden in

00:09:13.940 September, 2020, I asked him if he would pledge to be transparent about his health. I did not think

00:09:20.120 at the time that he was adult. I thought that he was old and that, you know, that, that age was showing

00:09:28.480 by 2022. I interviewed him again. He seemed like he'd aged like 20 years in those two, but he didn't

00:09:36.820 seem adult. He just seemed super old. Then the Biden that I saw the next time I saw him in person

00:09:43.700 up close was at the debate. And I was as shocked as anybody else. And I, you know, had been paying

00:09:50.460 attention. Look, we all saw the video images of him stumbling or tripping. But I think that that said,

00:09:59.360 there is a difference between airing a video of Biden tripping on the stage at the Air Force

00:10:06.080 Academy graduation, which I aired on my show too. There's a difference between that as important as

00:10:11.120 it is, and I'm not denigrating the importance of it. There's a difference between that and doing

00:10:15.300 the kind of investigative journalism that Alex and I did that showed senators having concerns about his

00:10:21.800 acuity and wondering how it was affecting policy that showed him unable to come up with the names of

00:10:26.860 not just George Clooney at a fundraiser, but a top national security advisor outside the Oval Office.

00:10:33.020 I think there is, there has to be a recognition that both can be true, that the media did not cover

00:10:40.640 his decline as well as we all should have. And I'll just speak for myself as well as I wish I had.

00:10:47.460 And also the fact that a lot of this stuff was not obtainable until after the election, because the whole

00:10:56.100 conceit behind why this happened was because Joe Biden, his advisors, and to a large degree,

00:11:03.400 the entire Democratic Party bought into the argument that Donald Trump posed an existential threat to the

00:11:09.820 United States. Joe Biden was the only one who could defeat him. And therefore, anything that went after

00:11:15.980 Joe Biden would help Donald Trump. That argument, when you, when you convince yourself that you're,

00:11:21.940 that the enemy, if you're a Democrat, the enemy is Donald Trump, if you convince yourself that the

00:11:26.280 enemy is an existential threat, you can justify almost anything. And that's what I think they did.

00:11:31.940 And that's why it was so difficult to get them to talk until after the election, when they burst like

00:11:37.600 from a dam. It was, I've never seen anything like it.

00:11:41.440 Yeah. It was, it was the fact that Donald Trump was perceived to be an existential threat, which

00:11:45.280 he may yet prove to be, that's the, we are only four months or so into his administration, but.

00:11:51.520 That can't be right. It has to be like at least three years.

00:11:53.320 Yeah. It's, it's been a very long four months. But, um, the other crucial piece is that there was no

00:11:59.220 plan B, right? That they didn't perceive, uh, Harris to be viable and they were, for, and for reasons that

00:12:05.960 we'll talk about, the Bidens personally were clinging to the, um, campaign in a way that, um, you know,

00:12:13.360 really it was, it was theirs to relinquish and they weren't doing that.

00:12:17.580 And there was nobody to challenge it, nobody to challenge them. Nobody to say, sir, you really

00:12:21.960 should think about this. I have a very shabby business theory that applies to all aspects of

00:12:29.480 leadership, which, which is called the Jar Jar Binks theory, which is that powerful people rise to the

00:12:34.820 level where they can remove from their inner circle, anyone who tells them when they're making a mistake 1.00

00:12:39.180 or being an asshole. And the, the, the glib example is, is George Lucas putting Jar Jar Binks 0.99

00:12:45.700 in the Star Wars movies, the prequels, which is, I think, uh, a mistake.

00:12:49.720 A disaster by any, by any measure.

00:12:51.800 Those movies have made billions of dollars. So it's a, it's a, it's flawed that way. But I could

00:12:55.540 say like, there are so many examples of this, of great men removing a great me in terms of

00:13:01.000 achievement, removing from their inner circle, anybody who would challenge them. And I think Joe Biden

00:13:07.400 is one of those people. I, I, you know, his top aides and advisors were people who worshipped

00:13:13.700 him, Steve Ruschetti and Mike Donilon specifically, they worshipped him. And I think that that really

00:13:20.640 was a mistake to have somebody, to not have somebody who could say, you're too old, you really

00:13:26.040 need to retire.

00:13:27.380 Well, what happened to his claim that he was a bridge to the next generation of leaders,

00:13:32.100 that he was a, by, by death, he was just explicit about this in his first term, that it was going

00:13:37.680 to be his first and, and only term. What happened to that? I mean, how, how was he not held to

00:13:44.100 that? How did he, I, I don't recall how he disavowed that in the end.

00:13:49.100 They did a, they did, it was, it was craftier than you're making it sound because you're, how

00:13:54.660 you're, how you're casting it is how we all took it.

00:13:57.320 Yeah.

00:13:57.520 Didn't he say he was going to be a one-termer? Didn't he say something about a bridge to the

00:14:00.900 next generation? He was just going to be one term. What actually, and I, this, I learned

00:14:04.940 this through writing this book because my impression was yours, but I'm like, why did

00:14:08.200 we think that? I went back. One, December, 2019, four different Biden advisors call Ryan

00:14:15.580 Lizza with Politico in what Ryan thinks was a strategic leak and tell him Biden's only going

00:14:21.860 to serve one term. Put it out there in the ether. December, 2019, before the primaries,

00:14:26.800 before the caucuses, just get it out there. Cause they know people are very concerned that

00:14:31.000 Biden's too old. So they get it out there. And then the event that you're talking about

00:14:35.400 this endorsement in Michigan in spring of 2024, when he's endorsed by Gretchen Whitmer, Kamala

00:14:42.440 Harris and Cory Booker, in which he uses the term bridge. And from that and media churn about

00:14:49.300 it, we all thought, oh, okay, he's only going to serve one term. But then the midterms go not

00:14:53.280 as bad as they were expected to go in 2022. And he just decides he's, there isn't any really

00:15:01.440 sort of process to talk about it. Nobody's there to challenge him. There's a pollster

00:15:06.820 named Johnny Anzalone who'd been with him since 1987, 1988, who's kind of like eased away out

00:15:13.560 of the inner circle for being something of a person who raises these uncomfortable subjects.

00:15:17.540 And he, he calls, um, and does a conference call with Anita Dunn in 2023, wanting to poll

00:15:23.820 on whether or not Joe Biden should run for reelection, just get the data out there.

00:15:28.320 And Anita says, we're not going to poll. The decision's been made. So there's, there's no

00:15:33.780 stress testing of any of it.

00:15:35.500 Yeah. And insofar as they did have polling data, it seems that they were not actually

00:15:38.940 honestly giving it to the president.

00:15:41.880 I mean, it's a Jar Jar Binks theory. Yeah.

00:15:43.880 Yeah. Another uncomfortable parallel to Trump, the level of that to which loyalty as in don't

00:15:51.780 deliver any bad news under any circumstances was prized in this administration is pretty

00:15:57.400 disconcerting.

00:15:58.340 It's not just the administration. It is a source close to the Biden family told us this is part

00:16:06.060 of who they are. They are believers in their own myth. The theology of, of Joe Biden, like

00:16:13.580 any theology does not permit skepticism. And they have a family motto. Everybody's heard

00:16:19.060 the family motto. I give you my word as a Biden, a different family motto, less well-known is

00:16:24.160 never call a fat person fat, which means basically don't tell ugly truths. Don't share ugly truths.

00:16:32.540 And from that motto, the family lies to itself and the world about the tragic cancer diagnosis

00:16:40.080 of Beau Biden, which is kept secret. The family lies to itself in the world about Hunter's

00:16:45.720 struggle with addiction and it goes on and on. And I think that that is also one of the

00:16:51.180 Shakespearean flaws and, and, uh, aspects to this drama, which is one of the things that

00:16:55.980 people love about Joe Biden is his ability to, to pick himself up after life has just thrown

00:17:01.000 another fastball at him. And the guy has suffered more than anyone should in terms of all the

00:17:08.700 tragedies he's had throughout his life. And obviously we're all hoping and praying that

00:17:13.560 he'll survive this latest diagnosis of cancer. But that said, that belief in his ability to

00:17:20.660 beat back anything ended up being his undoing.

00:17:24.180 Yeah. Yeah. So if we were going to be totally charitable to everyone who was complicit in this,

00:17:29.620 what really does amount to a cover up as well, as we'll show, I think, I mean, the way I thought

00:17:34.380 about it at the time and the way this interpretation has since unraveled after reading your book, but

00:17:39.300 at the time when you, even in the aftermath of the debate where it was just, you know, finally

00:17:44.520 revealed just how deep his, his deficits were, if I was being charitable to everyone around him,

00:17:50.240 who must've seen a fair amount of that before we saw it on television, I think there's this,

00:17:54.700 and I believe you talk about this in your book a little bit, there's this distinction between

00:17:58.920 the decision-making role and capacity of the president and the communication burden on him.

00:18:06.180 And certainly the communication burden on him that was really excruciating during any campaign for a

00:18:11.440 second term. And it's easy to see that someone could still maintain their competence in the former

00:18:18.340 while completely unraveling in the latter, right? Like, so you could imagine that, and I think,

00:18:22.720 you know, the testimony of people, again, going back years sort of reflected this where people

00:18:27.780 would say, you know, when I was with the president, you know, I had lunch with him or, you know, I was

00:18:31.500 in a, in a meeting with him and he was all there and he's just as wise about foreign policies he ever

00:18:37.560 was, et cetera, et cetera. And you can imagine that impression of him being compatible with and

00:18:43.940 surviving contact with a fair amount of stumbling and forgetting people's names and all the other,

00:18:49.900 you know, neurological signs of being old. So for, there's this period of a, you know, a gray area

00:18:56.740 where if you're being charitable, you could imagine how the people around him thought, all right, he's

00:19:02.540 still all there. This is not a risk to the country. The same person we've always known is still making

00:19:08.720 decisions about U.S. foreign policy or domestic policy. You just can't stick him in front of a

00:19:14.000 microphone and hope that he's going to perform. And when that gulf got wider and wider such that

00:19:20.260 any microphone is, you know, a high wire act that he's destined to fail spectacularly, then it just

00:19:28.980 became an untenable for him to campaign. But again, we're going to, I want to lead you into a discussion

00:19:34.740 of the her tapes and, and just how much this is, it turns out to not to kind of be a false

00:19:39.420 psychotomy. But what do you think about that framing? And was that your, the way you thought

00:19:44.120 about it going back now some years?

00:19:47.400 So that was always the argument from the Biden people. He's fine behind closed doors. And also,

00:19:54.720 yeah, you know, he's not a great speaker and that's just always been the case. And I have a couple

00:19:59.900 thoughts on that. First of all, as one top aide said to me, and you paraphrased, being president

00:20:05.600 is basically two jobs. One is making big decisions. And the second is communicating those decisions to

00:20:11.600 the American people. And this aide said, and he was always good at the first, but he was never good

00:20:16.080 at the communication. And that got worse in his term. I would argue that the communication part of it is

00:20:21.860 just as important as the decision-making part of it because we are in a communication era. And as far

00:20:28.240 back as the advent of radio, a president's ability to, to communicate has been vital to his ability

00:20:35.640 to lead, to rally support for war, for peace, for legislation, for civil rights. I mean, it is an

00:20:43.380 important part of the job. So I disagree with the aspect of, of their argument. They kind of do this

00:20:50.020 cutesy dance where it's like performing as president versus performative as president. You know,

00:20:56.020 they think his ability to walk to Marine one is not as important as his ability to, you know, rally

00:21:02.120 NATO. And of course that's true, but no one's saying that the, that a president should have to,

00:21:08.560 that we have to choose between, you know, we should have to choose between a president who can

00:21:12.140 communicate and also can stand for the ideals, which we, we hold dear. There's also as by way of

00:21:18.760 explanation, not, it's not exculpatory, but Sam, you and I are roughly the same age. I'm 56. How old are you?

00:21:24.960 Uh, I got two years on you. Okay. 58. So you and I are familiar with Joe Biden's existence

00:21:31.440 since at least the nineties, right? Since at least the, uh, if not before when he ran for president in

00:21:36.760 1988. So I've, I've known of him since the eighties and he's always been gaff prone, long-winded,

00:21:45.220 says inappropriate things. Like that's always been him. Yeah. And so smelling people's hair. I mean,

00:21:52.300 who knows what's going on. That whole creepy little section was, it was its own thing. Yeah.

00:21:57.400 But that's always, so that what some aides said to us that during this era, when the non-functioning

00:22:03.860 Biden would rear its head 2019, 2020, and then it, and then he would show up more and more

00:22:10.380 non-functioning Biden that they weren't sure what was going on because a, he was old and that just

00:22:16.780 happens with older people. They lose a beat. B, he was always kind of prone to some of this 0.80

00:22:22.940 behavior, even when he was in fighting form, you know, long-winded, pointless stories and forgetting

00:22:28.500 names and such gaffes, lies, all those things. So that's, again, that doesn't exculpatory. It's

00:22:35.180 not exculpatory, but it is by way of understanding, like the complication of trying to figure out

00:22:39.660 wait, what a second, what exactly is going on here with this guy? Yeah. But our reporting suggested

00:22:44.580 that like after Bo died in 2015, one top aide said it was as if somebody had poured water

00:22:50.740 on his psyche, as if it were sand, like it just melted away. And then there were that I do, I do

00:22:58.800 think that's one of the reasons why Obama did not want him to run for president in 2016, because he was

00:23:03.200 just in no condition. He never fully returned to who he was. And I'm not making light of this. It's

00:23:10.080 a horrible, horrible tragedy to lose your son, but it did have a role in his acuity. And then we would

00:23:17.540 just hear like this non-functioning Biden would pop up on the campaign trail in 2019, 2020, and then

00:23:23.200 really start showing up a lot in 2023, 2024. Yeah. So there's some shocking details around that period

00:23:31.660 that we'll get to, but tell me about Robert Herr and his radioactive tapes. So now we've heard

00:23:38.140 them. And I think that they, they don't surprise, they didn't surprise me. If you'd like to continue

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Making Sense - Sam Harris - May 21, 2025

#415 — The Cover-Up

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