I did not try to type up a transcript whilst President Biden spoke with George Stephanopoulos (hereafter George, as with all due respect I can only spell his last name with a lot of help from Spellcheck and the Internet!) and I don’t find one online so far, but overall I thought President Biden came across quite sharp. I have trouble hearing him, so I had on closed captions, with which he was easier to understand. I also watched his face, and there was no “resting 25th Amendment face” as Jon Stewart called it immediately after the disastrous debate.
During this interview, I thought George harped way too much on President Biden’s fitness to continue and potential problems and poll numbers (even whilst acknowledging that polls are not as accurate as they used to be!). Of course these are the salient questions, but did he have to ask them for 20+ minutes?? So I was delighted to hear President Biden push back and turn the questions around to discuss issues, such as (not a direct quote): “I take a cognitive test every day, like when I’m delivering economic relief for Americans. I have turned around ‘trickle-down economics’ that don’t work and prioritised bottom-up and middle-out economics.” Smooth!
I noted that at the beginning, they said that there were no cuts and no editing, which I think was necessary to allow us to judge for ourselves. I missed whether or not they said that President Biden used a Teleprompter, but I think it would have been difficult to do so given the back and forth between the two men. Overall, he did not appear to get backed into a corner on any issue. He knew where he wanted to go, discussing his “bad night” debate performance, then pivoting to discuss issues other than the debate performance; and he went there despite George’s lack of cooperation. President Biden knew details about policies and events that I did not remember, and I have followed his work pretty closely. I nodded along with him pretty much throughout.
This may sound like too much praise, but honestly, I’m not even all that fond of President Biden. I did not want him as the nominee in 2020, as I thought he was too centrist. He has gone farther in making improvements in this country than I thought he was going to be willing or able to go, given the pretty much evenly divided Congress, so I have been pretty pleased about that whilst wishing he would go even farther.
And in this interview he said that he would go farther, including continuing to improve the economy for the lower and middle classes, AND providing healthcare access to all — one of my pet causes.
So an interview, even a tough interview like I thought this was, is not a debate, I realise he could still have a bad performance in September. But I think President Biden performed at least as well as he had to tonight, to begin to lay to rest our questions and concerns. I also thought he went beyond the bare minimum and did quite well.
What did you think? Please feel free to comment below. And let’s keep this respectful please, we’re all on the same side here! Democrats for the win, 2024!