Trump ran to save himself in 2024. He won back America.

0:02So, Isaac, I did not cover the campaign the way you did in 2024, but I was part of our general coverage. Absolutely. And I did not think that I would want to relive 2024. Nor did I. It turns out I did. Like, I couldn't put your book down. I mean, what was it like for you having, like, been out there so much and then, yeah, to have to relive it?

0:27Isaac Arnsdorf:writing it was sort of an exercise in trying to make sense of it for myself, right? And writing it as we went along and reporting it as we went along before we knew the ending, before we really knew what mattered, it helped me kind of sort out my thoughts about it and kind of answer the really fundamental questions. You know, I think our real-time reporting was really good, but we were all left with some questions of why. And I think we got to the bottom of those in the book.

0:58From the newsroom of The Washington Post, this is Post Reports. I'm Kolbe Echowicz, politics reporter and host of Post Reports Weekly Politics Roundtables. It's Friday, July 11th. So we're doing something a little different this week. I'm joined by just one guest, and that is senior White House reporter here at The Post, Isaac Arnstorf. Hey, Isaac.

1:19Isaac Arnsdorf:Hi, Kolbe. So good to be here. We're going to go deep on a new book called 2024. How Trump Retook the White House and the Democrats Lost America, which you wrote with two other former Post journalists. And it describes in cinematic detail the 2024 presidential election. I mean, Isaac, you're an expert on Trump and MAGA. You wrote another book about them. And you're going to bring us into how Trump kind of clawed his way back to victory after losing the 2020 election. And the book also takes us deep inside the Biden and the Harris campaigns and why they ultimately failed. So like we said, this book is called 2024.

1:59But you begin the story with Donald Trump in August 2022. What was Trump facing at that moment? How was he thinking about his political future?

2:09Isaac Arnsdorf:Yeah, the reason we started then was that was the moment where Trump actually decided that he was going to do this, which was not a sure thing. You know, you remember when he left office in isolation, in disgrace, at a real low. But even as he was regaining confidence and regaining his stature in the party, he would have conversations with people on the golf course. And it wasn't clear that he had really made up his mind to run. And that didn't change until the search of Mar-a-Lago. As the prosecutions got more serious about him, that tipped him over into deciding that he was going to run because it became true that actually it was his best hope of avoiding consequences.

2:49And Isaac, let's remind listeners that the FBI had searched Mar-a-Lago where Trump lives in Florida in August 2022. They were looking for classified documents that he had allegedly held on to after leaving office. And, you know, at that time, the investigation was just one of several criminal cases that were mounting against Trump. You know, you had one in New York and you had one in Georgia. And as you're saying, those cases, they really like fueled him. And the one thing I got out of the book is that he was also surprised at how like Republicans started rallying behind him the more and more he got into legal trouble.

3:26Isaac Arnsdorf:Yeah, he observed that himself in an interview he did for the book with my co-author and former colleague Josh Dossie. He was like, I couldn't believe how they're supposed to be running against me, and they all came to my defense. And, I mean, that really kind of was the story of the primary. There's a scene in the book where Ronna McDaniel, who was the party chairwoman at the time, is watching that first debate when they all raise their hands. You all signed a pledge to support the eventual Republican nominee. If former President Trump is convicted in a court of law, would you still support him as your party's choice?

4:03Please raise your hand if you would.

4:09And she's like, well, that's it. I mean, it's over. And Chris Christie told us that for the book, too. He's like, why are we doing this? You know, like, why are we having this primary if that's everyone's position? So you're referencing Chris Christie, former governor of New Jersey, and that was at that first Republican debate, which was in 2023. There was actually like a lot of people that thought the party was ready to move past Trump. And there was this field of primary contenders putting themselves out there to take him on. Who were they? Right.

4:38Isaac Arnsdorf:So unlike on the Democratic side, the Republicans did have a lot of people come forward to say it's time to move on from Trump, including his own vice president, Mike Pence. Never happened before. Like, kind of crazy. Ron DeSantis was supposed to be the great hope for a lot of Republicans. The Florida governor. We need to end the culture of losing that's infected the Republican Party in recent years. The tired dogmas of the past are inadequate for a vibrant future. We have to look forward. We can't look backwards. He was sort of supposed to be like the lab-grown candidate for the Republican who thought, oh, I loved his policies, but he tweeted too much.

5:18Isaac Arnsdorf:Nikki Haley, Trump's former U.N. ambassador and the former governor of South Carolina. You know, everybody wants to talk about President Trump. Well, I can talk about President Trump. I can tell you that I think he was the right president at the right time. I don't think he's the right president now. Vivek Ramaswamy, how could we forget? God is real. There are two genders. Fossil fuels are a requirement for human prosperity. Reverse racism is racism. An open border is not a border. Right. And I remember when we were covering the primary, like it just became more and more inevitable and inevitable.

5:51Isaac Arnsdorf:Well, I want to be clear. I mean, the chapter, one of the chapters about the primaries is called inevitable, but it's meant ironically, like it was not inevitable that Trump was going to win that primary. Republicans treated it that way and it became self-fulfilling. You know, I think one of the key findings from our reporting is, you know, the DeSantis people, like their view is that Trump was going to be indicted four times and that was going to take over the news. There was nothing they possibly could have done. But really, if you look at the sequencing, if you remember how low Trump was after Republicans got clobbered in the midterms and how high DeSantis was, that was the moment.

6:32And DeSantis missed it. He decided to put his head down and go back to Florida and disappear and let Trump take that head start to recover his standing so that by the time the first indictment happened, DeSantis wasn't even running yet. And Trump had taken that time to remind Republicans why they liked him. There was one detail in the book that I loved. And you describe how before Trump was arraigned in Georgia, he practiced his mugshot. I mean, this is a showman. Like that just shows how Trump is always thinking about kind of the optics of a moment. Talk to me about how you found out about that story.

7:10Isaac Arnsdorf:Yeah, there's a line in there. You only get to do it once, right? Right. Well, so they sort of got a clue because you remember everyone else turned themselves in first. And so all these mugshots were coming out and it became like a meme, like Hollywood squares with all the mugshots. And Trump knew that this was going to be a valuable symbol if he could get it just right. And so the angle is high. And, you know, so he was practicing, actually, as he was going in there to get it just right. He was thinking about how it was going to look. About the optics. One of the things I love so much about the book is how you toggled back and forth between what was happening to both Trump and President Biden in real time.

7:49So while Trump is going through all of that, Biden and the Democrats, they're also making decisions, right, about the 2024 campaign. That first chapter about Biden, you called it not dead. Why?

8:01Isaac Arnsdorf:So that comes from something that Biden said when he was running in 2019 or 2020 at the New York Times editorial board. It's like, people are always counting me out. And guess what? I'm still here. I'm not dead. Now, you know, it's a little macabre because obviously Biden's advanced age was such an issue in the campaign. But that's how people were talking about him in the midterms, right? They expected it was going to be a wipeout. And there were all these young, ambitious Democrats who were ready to seize that moment, give Biden the little shove aside and bring the party into the next generation.

8:33And when the midterms went the other way, they all chickened out. They all backed off. And that let Biden and his team say, well, look, no one challenged us. Yeah. Who were some of those people that were really seriously considering mounting bids in 2024? Well, I mean, they're the people who we see in early primary states this week, like California Governor Gavin Newsom, who's visiting South Carolina. Phil Murphy, the governor of New Jersey, who probably isn't the first person who comes to mind as possible Democratic presidential material. But he wanted to be. I mean, he actually he stands up at a fundraiser and goes, well, you know, obviously we all support Joe Biden.

9:11But if he doesn't run, how about me? Okay, so skipping ahead to the consequential 2024 presidential debate. The nominees, they're now Trump and Biden. Everyone else has fallen away. And the way you guys wrote this book, it's really like a political thriller, especially the parts leading up to the debate. Because you're taking us inside the campaigns in real time. And I know as a reader how this is all going to end. But the characters in the story, they don't know it yet. And I had actually forgotten that, like, leading up to it, Biden's son Hunter was facing criminal gun charges, and that had been weighing on him.

9:48So what was Biden's headspace ahead of that critical debate?

9:51Isaac Arnsdorf:So he actually said to someone close to him a few weeks ahead of that debate, ahead of that month of June, which he and his team recognized was going to be crucial because he had two big foreign trips, and he was raising money when the campaign really needed money, and then he had that debate. and Biden said to someone close to him, the only thing I really care about is that my son doesn't get convicted because Hunter's trial was that month. And people close to him noticed the personal toll that took on him. They use the word like how it seemed to age him. And, you know, when people said like, look, Biden's not as young and sharp as he used to be, but I've never seen him like that.

10:31Like there was some truth to that in the sense that he was in a really bad place because he was sick. He had a cold. He had a cold. And the trial really took it out of him. I mean, it's grief, right? He had lost one son and was probably worried about, in some ways, losing another. He was convinced the reason that the Republicans were going after Hunter so hard

10:54Isaac Arnsdorf:was to make him relapse and return to drugs and alcohol, and that it would be like losing another son. And so, you know, for all the attention that was paid during the campaign about how the criminal process affected Trump. Actually, the candidate who was more affected by it was Biden. I mean, during the prep, he, like you said, he was distracted. You do have this great scene, though, with Steven Spielberg. They bring Steven Spielberg in to kind of help him get ready. Yeah. So Steven Spielberg, the director of E.T. and other American classics, had actually been coaching Biden for a while, including the 2024 State of the Union.

11:34Isaac Arnsdorf:Which Biden and his team thought went really well. Right. That, you know, Biden appeared much more energetic. A fair tax code is how we invest things to make this country great. Health care, education, defense, and so much more. But here's the deal. The last administration enacted a$2 trillion tax cut. Overwhelmingly benefit the top in 1%. The very wealthy and the biggest corporation. And exploded the federal deficit. One person on the campaign said to me it was the first time they felt like they could actually win, but it didn't last, which is why they then had to do that early debate. So they brought Spielberg back.

12:14Isaac Arnsdorf:And the advice he gave was actually advice that a lot of candidates give in debates. It's like you're on you're on camera the whole time, not just when you're speaking. So use your face to communicate during the time when the other candidate is speaking also. and, you know, that Biden should, like, react incredulously to what Trump is saying. But some of the other advisors thought that wasn't a great idea, that Biden would just look confused, which I think is how it came across to most people watching. Yeah, so Biden was trying to follow the Oscar-winning director's advice, and it kind of backfired.

12:54Isaac Arnsdorf:Yes, as someone said, he clung to it like a life raft. And so he just kept making these facial expressions that people at home were like, what is he doing with his face? Right. There's another great moment when Biden starts talking during the debate. The Trump team is watching in their private room and they think the TV's not working because they can't hear him. And they start freaking out like, oh, my God, I can't believe the TV's not working right now. And they finally realize it's not a problem with the TV. Right. It was actually how Biden was speaking. 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.

13:47You know, talking about that night, I mean, I don't think it was 15 minutes in when I got a call from my editor that was like, we should probably find out what the process is if Biden drops out. You know, I was covering democracy then. So it was like, how do you replace a presidential nominee? I mean, the debate was terrible for him. What was the campaign's immediate reaction to it, though?

14:09Isaac Arnsdorf:Well, Ron Klain, who was Biden's first chief of staff and led his debate prep, stood up after that first answer and said, in words we don't use at The Washington Post, we're screwed. So look, they... An F word, though, was used. So they knew this was a problem. Also, we should be clear, like, the reason they did the early debate was the people close to Biden thought that if the American public could just see him the way that they saw him, they would be reassured. They thought that he was really up to the job and that the problem was this political perception of his age that was in conflict with what they saw.

14:50That's not how it went. But, you know, there was no process to replace him. Like, it's not a thing. And who was it going to be? You know, there were a lot of reservations about Harris and it didn't seem like they had time to do a primary. You know, the time was back in 2022 after the midterms when it didn't happen. But that didn't stop a lot of Democrats from beginning to call for him to drop out. And that chorus got louder and louder and louder. You even have this moment when President Obama comes to him and seems to suggest that he should drop out.

15:30Isaac Arnsdorf:Yeah, but it's a very delicate thing because you have to remember that Obama told Biden not to run in 2016 because he wanted Hillary. And Biden is convinced that actually he could have beaten Trump in 2016. And Obama knew that too. So he knew that if he came out and tried to pressure Biden too hard, it would backfire. And a lot of people couldn't reach him in that time period. He was so, it wasn't about hiding Biden from the world. It was actually about hiding the world from Biden. It was how tightly the people around him were managing the information that got to him. You do have the scene with Chris Coons, the Delaware senator, who's known Biden forever.

16:14And it seems like that was a moment when Biden was like, wow. Like, Coons was like, I'll be with you, but you should probably drop out.

16:23Isaac Arnsdorf:Well, that finally comes when actually Biden is in isolation in Delaware with COVID. Right. And Hunter, Hunter thought like there was a way in which him catching COVID and making him stop for a second. Because when you're a president, your schedule is so programmed. You're going from this thing to this thing to this thing to this thing. And Biden, the way he's always operated was to compartmentalize. And so there was a way in which that like just having to rest and stop and be by himself because he caught COVID gave him that moment to reflect and think about what he was doing and gave him the space to realize that it was time to go.

17:04There was also that, you know, as a parent, like that heartbreaking quote from Hunter where he says something to the effect of like, well, it would be nice to have you back. Yeah. In some ways, Hunter had the most after Biden on the line for him remaining president. And he never told Biden to run or not. But yes, there is that really touching line where he he's basically said, you know, I missed you. None of his advisors, no one he actually listened to ever told him not to run. The closest they ever got was inviting him to think about the personal toll that it was taking on him and his family.

17:47And that is eventually sort of what did it. Well, let's take a quick break here. And when we come back, we'll get into how the Trump campaign scrambled to adapt to their new opponent. We'll be right back.

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19:00so Biden drops out and I want to talk to you about Trump's reaction to that but before Biden had made that decision something massive occurred and you were there almost exactly a year ago Trump was shot in Butler Pennsylvania how did that event change Trump and like the contours of the race?

19:22Isaac Arnsdorf:I think it wasn't exactly clear at the time, actually, and it's become clearer with time. You know, the way that Trump himself was talking about it, he kept saying, I'm not supposed to be here. I'm not supposed to be here. And it was actually in a conversation with his top advisor, Susie Wiles, that she said, well, you know, that's God. And, you know, Trump is not known for being a very religious person, although he obviously has a lot of support from people who are. And he seemed to connect with that for a change. And he actually started saying, God save me. And then we eventually heard that publicly.

19:59And it became a thing at the convention. But if the events of last Saturday make anything clear, it is that every single moment we have on Earth is a gift from God. For people who were already on board, it really gave them almost like a supernatural feeling about something historic and momentous happening. I think there were also a lot of people who looked at that and were just kind of like, this is it. What else is there possibly going to be? And it kind of made them, if they were maybe thinking about Trump, it made them less shy about it. I mean, the most important person like that was actually Elon Musk, who was a reluctant Trump supporter, so reluctant that even though he was spending a lot of money to help Trump get elected, he wouldn't give it to the campaign.

20:51He didn't trust the campaign. He was spending it himself. And it was after the assassination attempt that he actually endorsed Trump, became very enthusiastic about supporting Trump. You know, Isaac, thinking back to the craziness of last summer, and despite the shooting, the Trump campaign, they were riding high. He felt like he had the race in the bag. But then, as we alluded, Biden drops out, And that's just days after the Republican National Convention. And he almost immediately throws his support behind Harris, his vice president. And she quickly becomes the Democrats' new nominee. How did Trump take that?