Page 3 of 107 Days
During the final commercial break, I went to another room to quickly get makeup and hair touched up. Brian handed me the talking points the campaign had prepped. I glanced down at them.
“JOE BIDEN WON”—all caps, highlighted. “He fought through his cold as he is fighting for the American people.”
Are you kidding me?
I threw the paper back on the table. Then Michael Tyler, Biden’s campaign communications director, called from Atlanta with a similar account of what they expected me to say.
No. Don’t feed me bullshit. Everyone saw what they saw.
I couldn’t help but think of the Richard Pryor joke where his wife catches him in bed with another woman. “You gonna believe me or your lyin’ eyes?” he says.
I was not about to tell the American people that their eyes had lied.
I would not jeopardize my own credibility.
This night had turned into a disaster, and I was fully aware of the importance of what I was to say.
How we handled this, right now, would have a long-term political effect, not just for him but for me.
I had to acknowledge what people saw and then try to give them a way to make sense of it.
I got on the phone for the previously scheduled call to the campaign staff and volunteers.
I wanted to calm them down, but I needed to speak the truth.
I told them that as the debate progressed you could see that Biden wanted to debate on facts, but Trump didn’t.
I read to them from the notes I’d scrawled on Trump’s numerous lies.
It was just a few paces to the makeshift studio, but it felt like a death march.
My staff crowded around me, stressed, knowing the weight I had to carry.
Even in that dark room, I could see Brian sweating.
He was nervous that we hadn’t had time to game out a better line of response than the worthless campaign talking points.
I looked at him and said, “I’m ready.”
As I squared my shoulders to face Anderson Cooper on CNN, I shooed the team out of my line of sight. I needed to focus on the real audience, and I couldn’t be distracted by their anxious faces.
Anderson lit straight in. “Some within your own party are wondering if President Biden should even step aside. What do you say to that?”
“Listen, people can debate on style points, but ultimately this election and who is the president of the United States has to be about substance… Donald Trump lied over and over and over again, as he is wont to do. He would not disavow what happened on January 6. He would not give a clear answer on whether he would stand by the election results this November. He went back and forth about where he stands on one of the most critical issues of freedom in America, which is the right of women to make decisions about their own body.” As I went on to point out that women suffering miscarriages had been denied emergency care, he tried to interrupt me, saying that the president hadn’t been able to clearly make that case.
I shot back that what mattered more is a president’s actions in office, pivoting to what Trump had done in inciting the attack on the Capitol.
I talked about the bipartisan infrastructure bill, about Joe’s daily work as I’d witnessed it: in the Situation Room, keeping Americans safe; in daily meetings, carefully weighing briefings with the intelligence community and military leaders; on the world stage, where I’d often witnessed leaders leaning on his long experience, seeking his advice.
And then I just lost my patience with his line of questioning.
“So I’m not going to spend all night with you talking about the last ninety minutes when I’ve been watching the last three and a half years of performance. ”
Anderson pressed. “This was a debate that your campaign wanted… Can you say,” he asked, “that you are not concerned at all having watched the president’s performance tonight?”
I had to tell the truth. “I get that this is the after-play for the debate, this conversation that I’m in, and I understand why everyone wants to talk about it.
But I think it’s also important to recognize that the choice in November between these two people that were on the debate stage involves extraordinary stakes.
And there’s one person on that stage who has the endorsement of their vice president, and that’s Joe Biden. ”
Anderson tried to jump in, but I pushed right on.
“Mike Pence is nowhere to be found in supporting Donald Trump, and that’s why he has to look for someone else to run with him, who, as we know, will embolden and rubber-stamp whatever he wants because they’re going to have to make a choice to not be Mike Pence and to put Donald Trump over their country. ”
And then Anderson said: “Neither person on that stage tonight made the argument as coherently as you just did.”
As Anderson returned to his panel of pundits, I scrawled one word on a note card and slid it beneath the gaze of the camera to my staff: Feedback?
They slid back an answer: Keep saying 3⒈／⒉ years vrs 90 mins. Mike Pence.
Then I was on with the other networks.
Meanwhile, on Cooper’s follow-up panel, CNN’s national correspondent John King kicked off his remarks: “I just want to make an observation about your interview with the vice president… I think one of the greatest acts of political malpractice I have seen in my lifetime doing this is that they kept her under wraps for three years. Now she’s on the road, she has great appeals…
She also has potential star power. And on issues like reproductive rights and in the Black community, she is a great asset to this team, and they have kept her under wraps. ”