Hi there. Welcome to Meet the Press Now. I'm Ryan Nobles in Washington, as Democrats here and around the country are trying to reckon with a five-alarm fire after a historically disastrous debate performance by President Joe Biden last night. A performance that seemed to validate months of Republican attacks and Democrats' worst fears.
His performance was raspy, halting, rambling, and at times incoherent, and it has reignited serious concerns about his age and his fitness for office, leaving his party in a panic that has some raising the specter of replacing him on the ticket. You're looking right now at live pictures here of former President Trump, who is speaking for the first time since last night's debate. He's holding a rally in Virginia. We'll keep a close eye on his remarks.
This all comes as the Biden campaign has pushed back forcefully against the criticism of the president, dismissing his performance as the result of a cold, saying that he also has no intention of dropping out, and that, quote, it's all systems go on September 2nd presidential debate. Speaking at a rally in North Carolina this afternoon, the president directly addressed his performance last night while trying to reassure his base that he can do the job. I don't walk as easily 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. I know, I know, I know right from wrong, and I know how to do this job. I know how to get things done.
I know like the Americans know, when you get knocked down, you get back up. Folks, I give you my words, Biden, I would not be running again if I didn't believe with all my heart and soul I could do this job. Despite something. A little different than the guy we saw last night.
He was reading from a teleprompter, and the president did unleash a barrage of attacks on his opponent, at one point sparking chants of lock him up from the crowd. The fiery attacks from Mr. Biden today could not have been a starker contrast to the Joe Biden who showed up at last night's debate. He'd be able to help make sure that all those things we need to do, childcare, eldercare, 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 COVID.
Excuse me, with dealing with everything we have to do with. Look, if we finally beat Medicare, I'm going to continue to move until we get the total ban on the total initiative relative to what we're going to do with more border patrol and more asylum. President 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.
On Capitol Hill today, it was hard to mask the shock from Democrats about what they saw on that debate stage. Even as most rank and file members did defend their candidate, the Democratic House leader, Hakeem Jeffries, gave a terse no when he asked if he thought the president should drop out. And after initially dodging reporters, Speaker Emeritus Nancy Pelosi gave a more full-throated defense of the president's record. Do you think President Biden is the best messenger on the ticket?
I'm a big supporter of President Biden. He's been a great president and done great things for our country. He's a good man, respects the Constitution, truth. Had a bad night.
You know, sometimes you get over it with one debate. There's not a campaign. On substance, there is absolutely nothing needs to be repeated what he's doing. On style, Joe Biden is not a superstar.
But do you think that the president had a good performance last night? No, I'm just saying I thought he had a performance. How many times do I need to say that? Did Joe Biden have a bad night, in my opinion?
Yes, he absolutely did. Do we have concerns? And do we wish that Joe Biden did better yesterday? Yes.
Why? Because we put people over politics and we know what's at stake in this country. And we know that this would be devastating to the country and to the world if there is another Donald Trump president. Look, he had a bad night.
That doesn't... I've been in this town for a long time. I've seen ups and I've seen downs. I am not part of the drama of this town that immediately demands because somebody had a bad night, we're in a crisis.
Let's see what happens. I'm going home and talking to the people in my district in Erie, Pennsylvania. And that was just the Democrats who spoke to our cameras. I was out there on the steps of the Capitol today trying to get reaction from Democrats.
There were a whole lot of them actively avoiding our cameras and dodging me and my fellow reporters. Ultimately, it could be weeks before we know what kind of lasting damage, if any, last night's debate did to the president's campaign. But if you ask voters now, in their immediate aftermath, almost no one seemed happy about the choice before them in 2024. We're doomed.
This is the best we got. The fact that they're pushing such old candidates forward and saying this is the best we have. I don't imagine that if anybody's being honest, that anybody is excited or enthusiastic about either of these candidates. Nothing is Donald Trump's fault.
It's all the Democratic judges that Biden put into office. Nothing is Joe Biden's fault either. It's all, I have to clean up your mess. So figure it out, boys, because you're both wrong.
I don't want to, I'd be at fault for having both of you. Because I don't think anything good is going to come out of either one of them. I think it's time for new leadership. I think it's time for younger leadership.
And joining me now from North Carolina, where Biden held that rally earlier today, is NBC's Mike Memoli. Shaqil Brewster is in Philadelphia, where he's been speaking to voters. And also joining me is NBC's chief political analyst, Chuck Todd. So, Mike, let's start with you.
The campaign is defiant today publicly, but what's been going on behind the scenes, both in the campaign and at the White House? Well, Ryan, one of the most interesting reactions I've gotten today in all my conversations was that for many of those who were watching last night's debate, average voters, including those who maybe haven't been paying much attention to this race, it was about as poor a performance from President Biden as they expected, but that for Democratic insiders and a lot of those lawmakers you were talking to on Capitol Hill, it was worse than they feared. And the question this person posed is, which is the bigger problem? Is it that Biden needed to begin confounding those expectations and moving those voters more firmly into a camp in a race where they feel like all the other fundamentals are in their direction?
Or is it that the panic that we're now seeing among the Democratic establishment, the growing calls for President Biden to maybe even step aside, makes the problem actually worse than it might really be? So, as I was at this rally today and speaking with people close to the president and in the room with him this morning, they said, listen, he didn't need bad coverage of that debate last night. He didn't need some of those calls that are growing louder for him to maybe consider stepping aside to know that he had a bad debate. He knew it.
He understood it in real time. And so they looked for that opportunity as quickly as they could for the president to show some humility here. We've seen this in debates past when an incumbent president does have a little bit of a reality check. This is a much different situation, though, than in Denver with President Obama in 2012.
For a lot of reasons, one of them that there's no big immediate debate coming up next. The next presidential debate is more than 70 days away. We don't even have a vice presidential debate like then Vice President Joe Biden was able to help Barack Obama get out of that. So we are seeing them rally the forces, including President Obama putting out a supportive tweet.
But there's no question that this is going to be a difficult weekend for the Biden team and as they deal with the incoming and consider what more they can do to try to deal with the situation. Mike, it's not uncommon for Democrats to worry. They often worry. But is this type of panic that we're seeing now typical or does it feel a little different?
Well, I had an interesting comparison that somebody made to me as well, which is this is just like what happened when the her report was released. And there was a very real panic about what that was concluding about the president's state of mind. I think what's different is people saw it this time with their own eyes. Right.
The answer to the her report was just to keep fighting to get the president out there more. I think there's a much different situation now. The Biden team, though, is going back to their safe space, which is to say Joe Biden is counted out often and throughout his career. And he has often rebounded and fought back even harder.
And that's what they say will happen now. But the next few weeks are going to be critical for this president, no doubt. And you were in the room there, Mike. And I do want to ask you about this chant that we heard break out during Biden's North Carolina event.
Let's take a listen. Donald Trump is just a convicted felon. Donald Trump is a one man crime wave. He's got more trials.
He's got more trials coming up. Lock him up. Lock him up. Lock him up.
Lock him up. Lock him up. Lock him up. You can tell the president seems a little uncomfortable that that's the way his supporters are responding to that.
Has the campaign commented on this? And does this kind of reaction undermine the president's better Biden is odd, shall we say, and I don't know if Obama would even feel comfortable, you know, playing the so-called Barry Goldwater role. When I say that, I mean when Senate Republicans back during Watergate went to Nixon and said, hey, buddy, you got to go. I can't imagine him playing that role.
I could imagine former Speaker Pelosi playing that role if she thought, well, somebody's got to do this. And I'll tell you this. I think people are going to go home for the weekend, Ryan. I think they're gonna be talking to people with Debbie Dingell said, talking to constituents.
I think people are gonna look at their own polling. Oh, this is a weird time to poll. Biden's actually lucky that it's Fourth of July week, right? It's not a reliable time to poll.
But on Sunday or Monday, you see somebody and then another and then another. That is when I think there's trouble. And all of these folks are gonna be going home for Fourth of July picnics and talking to their constituents. So I think the next week is a big deal for team Biden.
Yeah, it's interesting that you bring up constituents. I spent all day today trying to get Democrats to get beyond the talking points on Capitol Hill and didn't have much success. And one of the things I was most struck by when I watched the debate last night, obviously, I heard from a lot of operatives and lawmakers and things along those lines. But I also heard from just a lot of average, everyday people, friends of mine, college friends, neighborhood friends, who seemed alarmed by what they saw on television.
Do you think Democrats understand that this goes beyond just the back and forth of what's happening here inside the beltway and that this was something that average everyday Americans were paying pretty close attention to? I don't. I think many of them are trying to comfort themselves in sort of, well, this happened since the bedwetters. It's this or that.
I don't think they fully appreciate that. And, you know, it's interesting. It's a very narrow window here. If Democrats did want to change, if they could talk Biden into doing this, they really, you know, even though the conventions in mid-August, you know, they've early up the roll call.
He actually is gonna get the nomination potentially about two weeks earlier because the Democrats did that in order to prevent, you know, to make sure they got on the Ohio ballot, if you recall that little kerfuffle a few weeks back. And so you really only have a window of about four weeks. You know, if major polling doesn't really start showing up and if it is an impact and you don't see it, all of a sudden your window is narrowing and narrowing and narrowing here. So I, you know, I do think Biden, if he can get out of, if survive the next 10 days without anybody major publicly coming out, I don't know how you stop him from becoming the nominee.
Well, but do you think that Democrats have really come to grips with the idea that 40%, maybe even 45 to 47% of this country is comfortable voting for Donald Trump? Because what I heard over and over again today on Capitol Hill is that, well, the alternative is just so much worse. And when voters actually get a chance and have to choose between Joe Biden and Donald Trump, they're never going to pick Donald Trump. But sometimes I feel as though a lot of these Democrats, particularly ones in safe districts and blue states, don't really understand how much of this country is willing to vote for Donald Trump.
Maybe even if they don't love him. Well, and Ryan, I got this. If you really believe American democracy is on the line here, right? We hear this rhetoric a lot from Democrats.
Are you really going to sit silent while you may be putting up somebody that maybe doesn't have what it takes to run the campaign it takes to win? And, you know, I'm sorry, this is the rules of politics. You got a campaign to win, right? You just can't hope people, well, he's been a good president.
He's a bad debater, but a good president. You know, that isn't the way this works. Politics ain't beanbag, et cetera, et cetera. So, you know, and I'll say this.
If you're a Democrat who has lectured Mitch McConnell for not having the guts to stand up to Trump and vote the right way or do the right thing, put the country over your party. And you sit silently now while you watch this slow motion potential train wreck. I don't think you have a lot of I don't think you have a lot of lot to stand on if you're sitting silently here. You know, it's not working, but you're afraid to speak up.
They have a lot to think about. And as you point out, Chuck, not a lot of time to make serious decisions if they're going to change course. Chuck Todd, thanks so much for bringing us bringing us your expertise on this important day. We appreciate it.
Coming up, former president Trump returns to the trail, blasting President Biden's performance in his first post debate rally after rattling off a torrent of misinformation from the debate stage last night. We are live in Virginia next. Plus, we'll dig into the options the Democratic Party has and does not have when it comes to potentially nominating a candidate other than President Biden. Don't go anywhere.
You're watching Meet the Press Now. Welcome back. Donald Trump's first stop after last night's debate. Virginia, a state he lost in 2020 by 10 points.
The former president is campaigning right now in Chesapeake, Virginia. He began his remarks a short time ago by declaring victory in last night's debate. As you saw on television last night, we had a big victory against a man that really is looking to destroy our country. Despite the fact that crooked Joe Biden spent the entire week at Camp David resting, working, studying.
He studied very hard. He studied so hard that he didn't know what the hell he was doing. During Trump's victory lap today, his performance last night had its share of questionable moments and just outright brazen falsehoods. He was asked three times if he would accept the results of November's election.
And only on the third attempt by the moderators did he even come close to answering, repeating his claims of fraud in the 2020 election. The question was, will you accept the results of the election, regardless of who wins? Yes or no, please. If it's a fair and legal and good election, absolutely.
I would have much rather accepted these. But the fraud and everything else was ridiculous. And if you want, we'll have a news conference on it in a week. Or we'll have another one of these in a week.
But I will absolutely, there's nothing I'd rather do. Of course, those are all false his claims of fraud. And in an exchange that might have made more headlines if it weren't for Biden's overall performance, Mr. Trump denied having an affair with adult film star Stormy Daniels.
How many millions of dollars do you owe in civil penalties for molesting a woman in public, for doing a whole range of things, of having sex with a porn star on the night while your wife was pregnant? I didn't have sex with a porn star. NBC News correspondent Ali Vitale joins me now from Chesapeake, Virginia, where that Trump rally is taking place. Ali, Donald Trump lost there where you are by 10 points in 2020.
Hillary Clinton won there by five points in 2016. Why does the Trump campaign think that the Commonwealth is in play in 2024? And this is the state that you know so well, Ryan, from your years spent here, too. This is one of the states that they're hoping to make inroads in.
Rallies like this, trying to capitalize on the successes that Republicans have seen in recent years, including the success of Governor Glenn Youngkin, who really has completed his 180-degree return on Trump by appearing at this rally today and really bear-hugging the former president. We know that the two men have spent time together in recent days, not in a vetting capacity for VP. You and I have done that reporting. But instead, just as a sort of show force for Republicans, all coming back under the umbrella and all coming back home to support the former president in his attempt to retake the office.
The fact that Youngkin was here, the bad blood seemingly left at the door, the spirit of Virginia songs that get him on stage, not left behind at all. That is, I think, yet another moment that we're watching here as Trump really coalesces the entire party. He's hoping that through coalescing and driving out turnout in areas with heavy veteran populations like this one, that he could put states in play like Virginia that were out of reach in 2020, but maybe could come back into the fold now. You mentioned the vice presidential vetting process.
We have reporting that perhaps it could come as soon as this week. Does it seem now like the campaign wants to hold off on any announcement now, given the fact that they feel like they had such a good night last night? But I don't know why they would change this news cycle, Ryan. I mean, my conversations with allies of the former president, people who talk with him regularly, they were hoping for a debate night like that last night, one where Trump was able to at least appear more competent than President Biden.
Obviously, we've all heard the convention from Democratic lawmakers as they panic really over the performance that they saw from their standard bearer last night. But look, on the beach question, many people that I have been talking to questioned why they would do it going into the debate, questioned why they would really blunch their own momentum before he had even had time to face off with President Biden. Now we're seeing why that decision ended up being the smart one, especially because they're Ruling today that could impact prosecutions of hundreds of January 6th defendants, including former President Trump. We'll dig into the ruling plus the major opinions that are set to be released now on Monday.
You're watching Meet the Press Now. Welcome back. We now know when we'll know whether Donald Trump has immunity tied to his actions on January 6th and his efforts to overturn the 2020 election. The Supreme Court announced that its term would end on Monday, which means all pending decisions, including Mr.
Trump's immunity claim, will be released that day. Meanwhile, today the court delivered a major legal victory to some January 6th defendants who stormed the Capitol, ruling in favor of a former police officer who'd been charged with obstructing an official proceeding when he joined rioters and pushed toward a police line. In a 6-3 decision, the court ruled that the charge he faced was intended to be applied to more limited circumstances, like when an official proceeding is obstructed specifically by a defendant tampering with evidence or destroying records. Now, the decision could impact hundreds of January 6th defendants who were also charged with obstructing an official proceeding, which includes the former president himself.
NBC News justice reporter Ryan Riley joins me now to talk more about this. So Joseph Fisher was the plaintiff in this case. Explain to me who he is and what he was accused of and what this means for him. Sure, he actually was a police officer at the time he stormed into the Capitol.
And you can see video of him coming through those rotunda doors, sort of barreling in. He ends up in sort of a pile of bodies inside of the Capitol. And this is only one of the charges that he's facing. So even, you know, regardless of what the Supreme Court decided here, he still has those other charges that are still pending.
So really, it's kind of just kicking the can down the road here. And that sort of, I think, speaks to a lot of January 6th defendants, because there are a very narrow subset of these defendants who only face that charge or only face that felony. You're talking about 52 of the more than 1,400 individuals who were charged. So of that 52, you're talking about 27 individuals who are still incarcerated right now.
So that's really who this is going to have the most impact on. But this will ultimately impact a lot of January 6th cases. And you're seeing some filings deciding for resentencing potentially under this new decision and figuring out what this means going forward. So how does it affect Donald Trump and his federal election interference?
It almost certainly won't, actually. And I think that Donald Trump's team is going to make that argument. But because of the documents tie that is so essential to Donald Trump's case, when you talk about the fake elector scheme, that's all about documents. That probably isn't going to be on the table.
So I think while Donald Trump's team is certainly going to try for it, what you're going to end up with the situation being is that Judge Chutkin, if she gets the case back after Monday when the Supreme Court rules if presidential immunity applies, she can probably just deny that motion that they would make and there's not really an interlocutory process. So that wouldn't go forward through the appeals court. That wouldn't be something that would hold the case. Let's quickly talk about Monday.
There's a chance that this may not be a clear decision from the Supreme Court. Yeah, it could be complex. It's going to be one of those things that will be scrolling through very quickly trying to get the best sense of what exactly this means. I think most likely it's going to be a scenario where it goes back down and then there's some sort of mini trials that are going to play out in the future to figure out what was an official act and what wasn't an official act in the proceeding.
So yeah, it's not going to be the clear cut thing, total victory, total loss. It's probably going to be cut pretty complex. But at the very least, maybe a short term victory for Donald Trump because it likely means that case doesn't pass by just kicking this back down the road until after the election. Ryan Riley, thank you so much for that.
We appreciate it. After the break, a deeper look at the view from Democrats in the aftermath of President Biden's debate performance. My interview with a former cabinet member and presidential candidate is next. You're watching Meet the Press Now.
Welcome back. That was the Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg defending his boss while acknowledging that President Biden's weak debate performance last night. It comes as Democrats grapple with where to go from here after Biden failed to ease concerns about his fitness for office and his capacity to do the job for another four years. Last night, former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development in the Obama and Biden administration Julian Castro also acknowledged President Biden failed to meet expectations.
He, of course, launched his own bid for president back in 2020 where he competed with Joe Biden for the nomination. And he joins me now to talk about what he saw last night. Mr. Secretary, thank you for being here.
And I do want to put up what you posted on X last night after the debate. You wrote Biden had a very low bar going into the debate and failed to even clear that bar. He seemed unprepared, lost and not strong enough to parry effectively with Trump who lies constantly. Lay on the line for me.
How concerned are you about the president being the Democratic nominee? And what are you hearing from other Democrats? Is there a sense of panic in the party right now? Yeah, I think it's fair to say that last night there was a sense of alarm, panic, fear, dread.
Any of those words I think are appropriate. A lot of texts flying back and forth about, you know, what are we going to do now? Biden had probably the lowest bar to clear of any presidential nominee coming into this time summer. Usually it's a fall debate.
And he failed to clear that bar. That was obvious. And I think the way to address that is not to try and make people pretend they didn't see something that they did see. It's to do what he's doing.
He did this afternoon to get back up there on the campaign trail and to show that he's still got it, that he's energetic, that he can take command of the campaign and hit his marks and rebuild confidence. And so I think that's the best course for his campaign right now. I still think that it's possible for him to win because we have a very partisanized, hyper partisan country. And whether it's the Republican or the Democrat, we've seen in these last few cycles, you're going to be close.
But after last night, it became less likely that he will win. Now it's up to him to rebuild that confidence to make it more likely. But it sounds like you aren't in a position, at least at this point, where you think he needs to step down. Are you hearing that from others within the Democratic Party?
Have there been calls being made as a movement behind the scenes? Or do you think the Democrats have kind of settled on the idea that you just have to power through what happened last night? I think what happened was that this was sort of a dilemma, a predicament, a draft, I might say, that that establishment Democrats were walked into not last night, but over the course of two years, where anybody that stepped forward as a potential contender, the idea of having debates, campaign consultants that might think about supporting somebody, all of them were shut down. And so at each juncture, the opportunity for an off ramp was cut off.
And now the party finds itself in this position where you only have four months left and you have a convention coming up in four or five weeks. It is not the optimal time by any measure to actually try and switch course here. It makes it extremely difficult. So I want to be clear.
I said on this network and others publicly that I was never convinced that Joe Biden was the strongest candidate to take the mantle in 2024. I think he had a strong term. I think he has done a lot of great work. And I still think he could win.
But I never bought into the idea that he was the strongest contender for 2024. And I think that we're seeing partly why right now. All right. Well, the RNC is already taking advantage of the situation.
Here's a new video. I want you to take a listen. He is sharp, intensely probing and detail-oriented and focused. This is a man who is sharp, who is on top of his game, who knows what's going on.
This guy's tough. He's smart. He's on his game. Secretary Marquez was among those in the video that we just showed there.
You served in a cabinet level position. Is this the Joe Biden that you saw yesterday on the debate stage? Somebody who's up for this job for another four years? Well, look, it's clear that if you watch his debate in 2012, in 2020, that he's lost a step.
But everybody does when they're progressing at that age. Right. I mean, that's no surprise. I think voters have baked that into their calculations.
But part of the job of politics is also the optics. And we've come to a point where this is a political liability that is so difficult to overcome. And here's the really galling part, is that Donald Trump is actually the one with issues around his stability and that he's unhinged and would take this country in a terrible, terrible direction. Not Joe Biden.
Joe Biden actually has a track record of doing good, productive work. So there's an irony here. But this is part of politics. This is part of people see and they react to what they see.
I wonder, though, I spent a lot of time talking to many of the Democratic colleagues up on the Hill today, Mr. Secretary. And it seemed to me their only answer was, well, Donald Trump's a Leadership, these are not regular voters. I think there's another conversation about regular voters, and we are still, we're still gleaning some of what they think, how the debate went.
Some voters in Michigan said Joe Biden won a debate, and I was like, what? And then there were voters in Arizona who said it was an oh no and oh, and I'm like, okay, that's, that's more like what I saw. So, still waiting to hear from those folks. But to the political professionals, if you will, when it comes to the House, the elected officials, they are concerned because they're all on the ballot, right?
Every single House Democrat is on the ballot. A number of frontline members, it's my understanding, the frontline members and the new Dems had their own meetings last night just to get together to figure out what the, how they felt and what they wanted to say. And every conversation from the elected officials was, look, we need to think about what this means for us, but also we want to hear more from the president about the future. He talked a lot about the past last night.
When I asked the campaign about that, they said, well, he got more to talking about the future towards the end of the debate. Um, so I, I do not think, now he was very strong in North Carolina today. To be clear, that was, I was like. But like a quarter of the people that saw.
And that was my point, right? People didn't, the bad travels a thousand times more than the good. And last night was a debate where millions of people were watching. This was a campaign rally that millions of people were not watching.
And so one performance in North Carolina isn't gonna get it done. That has to be consistent. But Joe Biden cannot show up at the next debate and perform in the way he performed last night. I think the people are gonna be all right with that.
And I think he knows that. My question is, does the inner circle around him know and accept that that is in fact the case? Because, you know, I saw the president last night out on the, he and the first lady said, I did great. You know, it's hard to debate a liar.
No, he did not do well last night. And the honesty is what he needed in the aftermath of the debate. But I don't think he's, he's, I asked the chair of the convention today. I said, y'all picking a new nominee?
He said no. I said, I'm just asking because that's what people are saying. He said, no, we are not there. Jim, should they be talking about a new nominee?
They should be, but the window is closing. Barack Obama tweeted earlier today that he knows what it's like to have a bad debate, but he said this is about what Biden has done for the country. And unless some elected official, not just a columnist or talking head, comes out and says, this is a disaster. We've got to replace him.
Unless somebody is willing to go first, it's not going to happen. And I kind of feel like the more time goes by, the more Democrats convince themselves, okay, it was a really bad night, but it's only one bad night. He's got to be better on September 10th. By the way, we don't have another debate until September 10th.
A convention speech is not going to do it. Reading off a teleprompter at a rally at an event in Raleigh, North Carolina, that's not going to do it. He needs another big event like this. Maybe the Biden campaign will come out and say, hey, let's do more debates or something.
He's got to come out and do something to dispel. Yeah, you know, let's touch the high school again. It's getting cool down by now. I'm doubtful, but this was the window.
And this was the opportunity. If it was going to happen, it had to, you know, build momentum off this. And by this afternoon, you could see the momentum was already slowing. Can I just say one point about delegates?
There are about 780 unbound delegates, the superdelegates that we talk about. Those folks do have the ability to, you know, vote for whoever they want on the floor. But the majority of delegates are bound delegates. Now, the question becomes, is there somebody who is out there right now whipping and pushing the bound delegates to buck the oaths that they signed that they would support the nominee?
And right now, my intel tells me that there's not. But that could change. I think it's highly unlikely, but that would be the vehicle in which there is a contested situation on the floor short of Joe Biden releasing his delegates. Molly, it's interesting what Jim said about this idea of there would need to be one prominent Democrat to stand up and say, this has got to change, and then maybe the avalanche comes after.
And I feel like for the last eight or 10 years, we've been talking about Republicans standing up to Donald Trump and doing the same exact thing. And Democrats were being very critical of the idea that rank and file Republicans haven't done that. I know these are not, this is not an apples to apples comparison here. But if Democrats are so concerned about the existential threat that Donald Trump presents when it comes to democracy, and that they see the reality of this race right now, which you can ignore the polls all you want, but Donald Trump has the lead.
And after this, I mean, isn't there a comparison to be made here about standing up and doing the right thing for your party, for your country, et cetera, et cetera? Absolutely. I mean, I don't see how anyone can look at what just happened and say with a straight face, this is our very best chance to win the election in November. And, you know, to some extent, what I'm hearing from a lot of people, whether they're rank and file Democrats or people involved in politics, it's not just fretting and quote unquote bedwetting, it's anger, right?
It's a feeling that he and his inner circle have been deceiving us about what he is capable of and that they protected him for far too long and they've encased him in this echo chamber where they're not seeing the person that the rest of America is seeing. And that it's a very reckless and a dangerous and a selfish gamble to cling to power in this way and not to give the party a better chance to defeat what they see as an existential threat in Donald Trump. But if, where were the Democrats then that wanted to run against Joe Biden in this part? Dean Phillips was the only person that got up well after the fact, after Joe Biden said he was running for reelection.
There was a very long window where a number of Democrats who could have said, I'm going to raise my hand and they didn't. Dean Phillips, it was so marginalized because he raised his hand after the fact. And so I would just say, I think that those Democrats, those people know better. And I think what frustrates me the most is because I feel like I know so much.
And then the people that come out and say things like that, they know just as much as I do. And so there is, there is, I think there's an indictment here on the president's inner circle for, they, they saw him before he went on the debate stage, was nobody going, well, I can't have a lawsuit. Okay. Why you didn't tell anybody he hadn't called before people started asking.
But then there's also an indictment on some of these other Democrats. It's like, okay, look, y'all don't, y'all want to throw Joe Biden over the edge after last night's debate. That's, that's, that's it. That's okay.
But I think you know how kind of party establishment politics work. I mean, it's pretty difficult for someone to tell the incoming president they're going to run against him. I mean, that's a huge countercurrent to go up against. Right, right.
Ben President said that. Ben President's got out there and said somebody should primary Obama. And Obama's people still didn't like that. Barack Obama did it against Hillary Clinton in 2008.
You know, look, it's never easy to tell the leader of your party, you stink. You can't get the job done. You're too old and all that stuff. Mitt Romney, a couple of Republicans did try to do this to Donald Trump and they basically ended their careers this way.
There was not a great hunger amongst Democrats for bad news throughout this entire last year or two. And yet all they needed to do, all you needed to see the problem coming was look at calendar and recognize what, what, how old Biden was. And most people who are 80 are in retirement homes. They're not preparing for another four years in the hardest job in the world.
Well, the best case scenario for Joe Biden is that nobody expected anything better from him and that voters already thought he was this bad. And so there isn't a contingent of voters who will actually be put off by what they saw last night. It definitely felt like we were in a wine in the road last night and where that road ends up heading. Well, we're gonna have to wait and see.
But great conversation. I appreciate you all being here. Thank you so much. We're gonna be back with more meet the press now on Monday.
But if it's Sunday, it's meet the press on your local NBC news station. Kristen will have exclusive interviews with Senator Raphael Warnock and Governor Doug Burgum, who's, of course, on the VP shortlist. The news continues now with Tom Costello, who is in for Hallie Jackson. That's happening right now.
Thanks so much for watching. Have a great weekend. He was a young Marine. She didn't care about convention.
They made a life together. Then one night the Marine died. And then the death investigation took a wild, unexpected and utterly bizarre turn