Why America's leaders keep getting worse

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1:18Katy Balls: Character matters less and less when you have this level of polarization and partisanship. And it means, unfortunately, the quality of the leadership of the United States, as we have seen unquestionably in the last 10 years, just continues to decline.

1:36Welcome to The State of It, USA, the podcast for The Times and Sunday Times' best American coverage. I'm Katie Balls, Washington editor and columnist for The Times and Sunday Times.

1:46Katy Balls: And I'm Gerry Baker, editor at large of The Wall Street Journal and columnist for The Times. This week, we've seen some tentative signs of political setbacks and weakness for Donald Trump and the White House. How serious are they? What do they all mean? We'll also be looking at the former First Lady, Jill Biden, out with her book, her own version of events about what happened in those memorable final days of Joe Biden's presidency. Quite controversial. We'll have some thoughts on that. But first, we're in the middle of primary season, and this week we had a slew of primaries on Tuesday. The biggest of all was California, heavily Democratic state controlled for years by Democrats.

2:28Katy Balls: The big race there was the race for governor. Now, as we record this on Wednesday, the results are by no means final. California has this extraordinary system, Kate, as you know, where it takes them weeks to get a result. We may be waiting until the middle of July before we actually get the final results in California. The big race there is the governor's race. As it stands, as I say, with somewhere a little over half the votes counted, Steve Hilton, one of the Republican candidates, well known to a British audience, former advisor to David Cameron. Steve Hilton is the Republican Donald Trump backed candidate in California.

3:07Katy Balls: He leads the result, the election returns at the moment. And then he's followed by a Democrat, Javier Becerra, who is state attorney general, former congressman, Democrat. So and then you've got another Democrat behind him, Tom Steyer, billionaire who spent an enormous amount of money on this campaign. But it looks likely as it stands that Steve Hilton will be the Republican, will be going through to the general election in November. And he will be running against a Democrat, probably Becerra. That's as expected. But it could be another Democrat. but it looks likely to be Becerra, this sort of mainstream Democratic guy.

3:41Katy Balls: So again, Katie, early days. You were there again last week. You've seen these returns and the likely outcome. Given what you saw over there and what you heard, what's your take? Well, I think the Steve Hilton camp are feeling pretty bullish as the results start to come in, even though, as you say, many more to be counted. I think they're fairly confident that you could end up with a primary, where it's going to be a Republican versus a Democrat. and there are different opinions on whether this is a good or bad thing in MAGA Republican world. I spoke to one figure this week who is a Californian, who is close to Donald Trump and they were saying actually in a way they're not sure that a Republican is going to be able to win, a Republican that is not Arnold Schwarzenegger.

4:28If we go to the last time there was a governor, he was a Republican who won And therefore, if Steve Hilton makes it to the final two, doesn't mean that a lot of money is going to go into that race that could be more successfully going into other, you know, important races in the midterms. But I think the counter to that is that the very sense of having a Republican on the ballot when you get to the governor race means that they think they're going to have a higher turnout. And therefore, what is obviously seen in many ways as a one party state, you could start to have a bit of a Republican resurgence, even if that doesn't quite mean Steve Hilton becoming the governor.

5:08Yeah.

5:09Katy Balls: I mean, look, we should say exactly as you point out there, Katie, we should say it's Steve Hilton, although even if he comes out on top in this primary, it's a very, very, very long shot. The idea that Republican could win the Democratic could win the California election, could win the governorship. As you said, it hasn't been one since Arnold Schwarzenegger 20 years ago. And if you add up, if you look at the primary results as they stand now, you add up the Republican candidates, which is basically Hilton and another one, and you add up all the Democratic candidates, the total numbers of votes cast for Democrats are about 60 percent.

5:43Katy Balls: And the total of votes cast for Republicans is slightly under 40 percent. So that gives you an indication of how the result is likely to be in November. The other really interesting race in California yesterday on Tuesday, and we're still getting the results for that, was the L.A. mayor's race, the Los Angeles mayor's race. Now, that's been interesting because the incumbent mayor, Karen Bass, who's a Democrat, of course, L.A., a very democratic city, as you'd expect, has been challenged in that primary, in that jungle primary, by a new, by someone completely new. And again, we have talked about in the past Spencer Pratt, who is a former actor and sort of sort of a television, I should say it's not a television personality who's come out of nowhere.

6:25Katy Balls: No political sort of background whatsoever, but has really challenged Karen Bass and the Democratic administration of L.A. on the record, which is homelessness, crime, the failure to deal effectively with the wildfires. There's a real – I speak to a lot of people. I've got a lot of friends in LA, a lot of friends in Southern California, that this is a city and a state that is incredibly dysfunctional. And so someone comes along like Spencer Pratt comes on from the outside. And as again, as it stands, those numbers in the LA mayor's race suggest that Karen Bass is going to come out on top. And so we'll go through.

6:58Katy Balls: But Spencer Pratt as the sort of leading Republican challenger will also go through. And that will be the two-horse race in the general election there. I think that my overall take on this, Casey, is that at the governor's level and at the mayor's level is that there's a lot of dissatisfaction with the way California is going. You know, it's an amazing state. We all know it's the richest state. If it were an economy on its own, it'd be the sixth largest economy in the world and all that stuff. Forty five million people, hugely important, hugely rich, Silicon Valley, all of that. But it's really dysfunctional.

7:32Katy Balls: It's really, you know, it's been run for years by Democrats who put up taxes, very, very high tax levels, very, very high levels of regulation, environmental regulations, housing regulations. It's really a kind of, you know, it's it's sort of, you know, democratic socialism, if you like, in action. And of course, like democratic socialism in action everywhere, it doesn't work. And so, you know, people leave people leaving the state. They're failing to deal with these fundamental issues of homelessness and crime and, you know, lack of housing availability for people. And there's a real sense of dissatisfaction.

8:06Katy Balls: But the problem is because it's a one party state, because Democrats, as I say, like two thirds of the state are Democratic voters. Nothing ever changes. And what you're going to end up with, I think, out of this election, we'll see early days and we'll see what happens in the general election in November. But it's once again, you know, Becerra, Javier Becerra, this guy who's probably going to be the governor right out of Democratic Central casting, Gavin Newsom, Kamala Harris, all these people who've run California in such a frankly disappointing way for so many Californians for the last 10 years or so.

8:36Katy Balls: And you're going to end up probably with Karen Bass. Maybe that may be different in L.A., but Karen Bass is the mayor of L.A. Exactly the same again. and there's just this problem I think in California or any one party state of a, you know, dysfunction doesn't get held accountable. These people don't get held accountable and you are unable to correct this because you don't have proper political accountability. It's a fascinating phenomenon. We'll see how it all unfolds. When I was in Sacramento ahead of following Steve Hilton around, I spent a day in Sacramento which is obviously the capital of California and I was staying in a hotel pretty near the capital building and I have to say I mean I've been to lots of cities where there was crime where there was homelessness I was pretty taken aback by how bad it was high streets completely shuttered you know lots of signs outside the few shops that were still open saying no loitering didn't seem to matter what time I was walking down that street whether it was morning, afternoon or early evening I didn't even try late people urinating, defecating on the street and you know when I was getting out of there one of the drivers I was speaking to was just saying you know everyone now just goes to the suburbs to get out of there.

9:45There was a park around the corner, which has become the homelessness park. And it does speak to, I think, both Steve Hilton and Spencer Pratt. While Spencer Pratt is running independent, Steve Hilton Republican, it is a fairly similar message of change and a frustration with the system. But I think on Spencer Pratt, one of the interesting things is he has been jumping onto that wave of anger, that frustration with his videos, many of which are done by AI. and I think we can hear a few of them now.

10:21Please, I'm begging you. There's homeless drug addicts in front of the schools. My children aren't safe.

10:36I have had some people in D.C. Jerry say to me that the Spencer Pratt campaign almost shows that AI can run a campaign better than very well overpaid advisors. Are you impressed by it?

10:47Katy Balls: Yeah, I've been very impressed with this campaign. And look, yeah, of course, those those ads are being created by AI. And that's clear. But the message is a real one, which is the city's, you know, in a terrible state. And, you know, So we are, the one I particularly enjoyed is there's one sort of set in a, it's a mock-up of a hospital scene where, you know, it's a mockery of sort of political correctness and right thinking and how you can't do anything in California, in LA, I should say, which is sort of a challenge, which is a challenge to the organized, you know, to the organized establishment, to the regime, to the way in which they do things.

11:33Katy Balls: And I think they are very effective. California, the one last thing I'll say on this is, you know, it's such a fascinating place, California, because it is this land of contrasts, if we can use that cliche. I mean, it's an astonishing, it's a place, it's almost an idea, right, that seems to succeed in spite of the people who run it, right? But California's, the history of California is these extraordinary waves of gold rushes. I mean, literally, beginning with the, you know, beginning with the original one in the middle of the 19th century. But then, you know, gold brought people there and it became phenomenally wealthy as a result of that.

12:10Katy Balls: Then the railroads came and that became a boom. That drove the boom. Then Hollywood came along and the entertainment industry became, you know, became the sort of defining boom. Then you had the defense industry. Defense became hugely important. Then, of course, after the Second World War, technology in Silicon Valley. So it keeps somehow attracting these extraordinarily talented, resourceful, entrepreneurial people who create astonishing prosperity and wealth. And it's a beautiful state. And they keep electing these terrible people to run it. And it's just a remarkable contrast between the talent and the creativity and the genius of the people in the state itself and the political system.

12:53Katy Balls: And just one final quick point on it. Of course, we're going to be paying quite close attention to it because Gavin Newsom, who is stepping down as governor, he has to do his term limited, almost certain to be running for the Democratic nomination for president and a serious front runner by all accounts. He's been governor in California for eight years. Kamala Harris, previous nominee for the Democrats, previous attorney general and senator from California, still in the field too. So California may dominate the Democratic Party in the presidential election, even as the voters of California, you know, continue to be pretty unhappy with the way the Democrats run the state.

13:29Katy Balls: It's a remarkable phenomenon. Now, we're talking about change candidates, Gerry, but we want to turn our attention to Maine, where we have a primary involving Graham Plattner. Now, just to introduce Graham Plattner to listeners who may not yet be aware, let's go to his campaign video. My name is Graham Plattner, and I'm running for U.S. Senate in Maine to defeat Susan Collins, a decade of military service going overseas, farming oysters to feed my community, diving to lend a hand to other fishermen, trying to start a family. But everywhere I've gone, it seems like the fabric of what holds us together is being ripped apart by billionaires and corrupt politicians.

14:06So Graham Plattner emerged in the race and has been controversial for some time, it's fair to say. The left of the Democratic Party have, you know, many positive things to say for Graham Plattner. One of his political strategists is Morris Katz. I think her Upper East Side of New Yorker released originally Upper East. And he has worked on the campaign for Mandani in New York. And so it's very similar parallels in terms of the type of messaging, the idea of going against the system. The establishment Democrats are a bit more sceptical. But Plattner has been seen as a candidate who has various issues, probably beginning with a tattoo, Gerry?

14:47Katy Balls: Yeah, so we should say Maine is a Republican-held state currently. It's one of the crucial states that if the Democrats are to take control of the Senate in November, it's one of the states they have a chance of winning and they have to win. held currently by Susan Collins, who's been senator there for a very long time. She's in her 70s, a very moderate Republican who keeps getting reelected in Maine, which is a pretty liberal sort of, you know, Democratic leaning state otherwise. And so, you know, yes. So she's up again. She's facing a tough reelection fight again this year. And as you say, the Democrats, the leading candidate for the Democratic primary, the primary takes place next week.

15:24Katy Balls: It's a regular primary system, by the way, in Maine, not like the California one we just discussed where set parties have their own primaries. And this guy, Graham Platt, this extraordinary figure, as you say, exactly kind of who's sort of campaigning out of the Zoran Mamdani, sort of hard left wing of the party. We should say he's a kind of a trust fund kid, inherited huge amounts of money, but like all good trust fund kids has rebelled against the system and discovered how evil and unfair it is and needs to be completely revolutionized. But as you say, you know, so, you know, he would that would be he would be an interesting and controversial candidate if only for that reason.

16:03Katy Balls: But the most extraordinary thing, which we learned a few months ago, is that he was he served in the I think it was the army served in the military. And while he was in the military or shortly afterwards, he got a tattoo. And this tattoo is the Tottenkopf. the historically minded among us will know that that is the Nazi death's head symbol. So here is a Democrat, a left wing Democrat campaigning in the sort of socialist mould who actually on his chest has a Nazi tattoo. Now, you would normally think that would be pretty disqualifying. But as you say, Katie, the man is leading the Democratic primary race, by the way.

16:41Katy Balls: So in addition to the Nazi tattoo and he's had a new scandal this in the past week. Yeah, explain that. Yeah, so this is a scandal regarding his love life. Now, he is married, but his wife had basically told a strategist early on when Plattner was thinking about starting this campaign, I think this is what happens to any political candidates, which is what skeletons do you have in the closet so we can start working out how to deal with those? What's gone wrong in the case of the Plattners, if you put even the scandal itself aside, is the person that the wife told no longer works on the campaign.

17:18And the details of those conversations have now made its way into the press. And this is about various sex messages he sent, affairs and so forth, but messages to various women in the early stages of their marriage. And they have since, we're told, worked through it. But I think this is just another sense to lots of Democrats looking on that this is not the candidate in, as you say, a really important race when it comes to the midterms next year and it comes to the state that they should be putting forward. And I think that, you know, you've had Team Plattner coming out saying this is the evil mainstream media, etc., etc.

17:59You had Graham Plattner get his wife to record a video, a pretty extraordinary video. We can hear a clip here. Being married is hard. Being newly married is hard. being newly married and going through infertility is hard being newly married going through infertility and a senate campaign is is hard a video which i think actually drew i mean it drew different reactions but one of which was graham plantain you're not defending yourself you've got your wife to go and defend yourself for you and she's detailing really bad things that have happened you know in her life and also talking about how she's going to a therapist her husband's going to a therapist they've got a joint therapist and all these details of their marriage but i think for some looking on they're thinking well hang on a minute if he sent messages to this many women how long before some of those start to come out you know weeks before a crunch vote right and

18:53Katy Balls: maybe pictures and things too we need to once you start pulling on that uh that all kinds of nasties nasties and nazis indeed uh come out of the uh come out of the well so yeah god knows what's going to happen there. Look, my overall take on this is that, I mean, he's obviously a deeply, deeply, say he's a flawed candidate, is, you know, doing a disservice to flawed candidates. I mean, he's a Nazi tattoo with a very dubious person. He's said some very disobliging things, by the way, on social media over his lifetime, including things about, you know, domestic political violence and stuff like that.

19:27Katy Balls: He's a pretty awful man who looks like he's going to get the nomination. We talked last week about Ken Paxton in Texas, who's just won the Republican primary in Texas, as we talked about last week. And so you've got these, unfortunately, when you have a situation where partisanship is as intense as it is right now, where the stakes for both parties, both parties claim the stakes are so high, you know, we've got to win this election. Otherwise, we lose our country. That's kind of the mood on both sides right now in this country. It's a flight 93 election, as they call it. You know, this is our last chance to save the country.

20:01Katy Balls: when you have that mentality you just end up picking some really bad people because you can always say oh well i don't like them they may be you know they may be uh you know sort of a terrible person but at least they're aren't they're my terrible person they're on my side they're going to stop the republic falling into the hands of these fascists communists uh whatever else you want to think of them it's kind of ironic that this man is a sort of socialist who has a nazi tattoo. But there it is. I think it's just what happens when you get character matters less and less when you have this level of polarization and partisanship.

20:36Katy Balls: And it means, unfortunately, the quality of the leadership of the United States, as we have seen unquestionably in the last 10 years, just continues to decline. All right, we're going to have to take a quick break there. And when we come back, we're going to talk about setbacks for Donald Trump, particularly his plan to set up a fund to reimburse victims of the weaponization of justice, as he calls it, which died a death this week. And we'll talk about some of the other challenges he faces too. And we'll be talking about Jill Biden's memoir. So stay with us.

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22:20us. Now, Jerry, we talked about the weaponization fund a couple of weeks back, and this was a 1.776 billion fund for victims of government lawfare. It quickly became very much a hot potato for the president. You had various Jan Sixers coming out saying they were looking forward to making their claims. They thought they would be entitled to money. You had the former leader of the Proud Boys, Eric Ontario, saying he'd be making a claim and that he was eligible. Then you had irate Republican lawmakers saying, hang on a minute, you've just turned on various of our colleagues in the primaries and given us people like Ken Paxton, you just mentioned, and now you're asking us to hold our nose and vote for legislation, which is going to include the slush fund, and refusing to rule out the idea money could go to those who had assaulted police officers.

23:14So this week, we've now had the news that the fund is off, at least in the short to medium term.

23:21Katy Balls: We are not moving forward with the fund. Not moving forward ever? Correct. Oh, there's no more fund then? Well, to the extent there was a fund. Remember, the fund wasn't set up yet. There were no commissioners named. There was no claimants brought anything in front of that. There was no claims made yet. So yes, we're not moving forward with the fund. Yes, a rare retreat, but rare but not unique retreat from President Trump. We've seen on a couple of other fronts too. This was just too much, even for some of those very, very supine, Donald Trump is right in everything he does, Republican members of Congress who just said, I'm not, we're not appropriating money to be given to people, as you say, who rioted on January the 6th, 2021, and, you know, sent police officers to the hospital and had members of Congress cowering in their offices while they rampaged outside and inside, in fact.

24:19Katy Balls: And so they just said, this isn't happening. We're not doing this. And so it's been it's been withdrawn. Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general, just announced yesterday this dead. Interestingly, that part of it, that part's dead. He also made clear, though, yesterday that the other part, which is which is also controversial, but not looks like it might end up still surviving is the other part of this proposal is that Donald Trump remember this came out we talked about this last week this came out as a result of the lawsuit that Donald Trump filed against the Internal Revenue Service because his tax returns were leaked a few years ago and he claimed this was a terrible breach of trust and he was suing them for I think 10 billion dollars and this settlement it's a weird situation where the president was suing his own government and then, you know, surprise, surprise, agreed a settlement with his own government.

25:06Katy Balls: This settlement was this$776 million fund, so$1.8 billion fund. And the other part of it was that Trump would be exempt and immune from tax audits on any of the tax years that were in question. And that's very, potentially very profitable for him because there are allegations that he may, you know, that audit, the audits that may have been going on may have led to him having to pay an extra$100 million in tax. Well, that part, the tax immunity, the tax audit immunity part still stands. So it's not a complete defeat for Trump. But I think, again, the larger point, Katie, is it is an interesting setback.

25:39Katy Balls: And we've seen, you know, we're seeing, we talked about this before, but we're starting to see more signs of pushback. You know, we talked about this in the context of these Republican senators who've lost their primaries, Bill Cassidy in Louisiana, and John Cornyn in Texas, who now are scot-free, as it were, and no longer have any obligation for the next eight months to Donald Trump. They're starting to push back on things like Iran, on things like the money for the ballroom that he wants. They are, yeah, I think they're indicating, and look, it's all in the context of Trump's opinion approval rating still being in the tank.

26:16Katy Balls: He's still very, very unpopular. He's still, you know, the Republicans fear that the party is going to go down to a very big defeat in November and they're starting to just get a little bit antsy. I'm very interested. Just we spent the first section talking about primary day on Tuesday this week. There were other primaries outside California, including one in Iowa, where the very, very few occasions we talked again. We've talked about how Trump's extraordinary hold over the Republican Party, that all his candidates that he nominate, that he endorses in these primary races, they always win, sometimes defeating incumbents.

26:48Katy Balls: Well, in Iowa, that didn't work. He endorsed a candidate who was running for governor, and that candidate seems to have lost, as far as we can tell. Looks like he's gone down. So there are just indications there. I spent some time this week with Mike Pence, the former vice president, who's obviously from a very different kind of strand of republicanism than Donald Trump. He's talking about reviving. He's got a new book out about reviving conservatism, restoring conservatism in the Republican Party. I think that might be a little bit ambitious, a little bit optimistic. I think it's still very much Donald Trump's party.

27:23Katy Balls: He's very much in control. But, you know, whether it's this 1776 fund, whether it's growing discontent on Iran, whether it is, you know, we saw it to some extent with, you know, when he backed down on immigration, the ICE enforcement, that that changed. So, you know, he's not all powerful and his political powers will diminish very rapidly and very dramatically after the midterm elections. And I think we're getting a flavour of that right now. Yeah. And I think some of this is also just the blowback for asserting his authority on the party. Right. So he he's made decisions and you now have, you know, these zombie senators we've been speaking about who have little motivation, Nestle do it.

28:07And you have John Cornyn, who was the senator he lost out in Texas, you know, on his social media and sends, you know, he's he's just sharing various parables about, you know, frogs and scorpions crossing rivers and what he's learned from this. and just a sense that I think this group just, you know, if you speak to figures on the House and in the Senate, there is just a sense that they're not going to follow him completely blindly. And some of this is just retaliation for him deciding to override and stamp authority where he wants to do it. And some of the endorsements he's doing now with various primaries, they are getting a bit more rogue.

28:40So it's almost as Trump is testing out how far he can go with some of these primary endorsements. And we'll see in the coming weeks. Now, the new book that has everyone talking is Jill Biden's. We have been getting various books from the Democratic Party, which I think every time they come out, you think about Kamala Harris's. Obviously, there was the expose on Joe Biden from Jake Tapper. and and but every time they come out I feel like you can kind of see or hear the Democrats start to wince as they're trying to turn a page and instead they're back there talking about whether Joe Biden should have really ran for the second term and who is to blame for that what they now think largely I think everyone accepts is a pretty catastrophic decision.

29:28Do you think in Jill Biden's book, Jerry, from what you have seen and heard, she does anything in terms of putting a positive case for the Joe Biden running and Joe Biden, you know, post-president PR?

29:45Katy Balls: No, not at all. The book is obviously an attempt, as you'd say, to sort of whitewash that whole disastrous, frankly, that whole disastrous Biden term. And in particular, the fundamental error, the original sin, the core of that Biden term, which was his determination and that of his family, it should be said, perhaps more of that of his family than it was even of his, that he would run again for a second term, despite absolutely abundant evidence that he was not mentally going to be capable of running. The idea that he could serve after we all saw what he was like in June 2024, the idea that he could be president of the United States for another four and a half years after that was not only absurd, it was an insult to the intelligence of the American people.

30:35Katy Balls: And what we're learning supposedly from this book, you know, perhaps the most interesting single revelation from the book is that Jill Biden is now saying that she thought he shouldn't have run again, that he shouldn't have tried to run again, that he should have acknowledged that he was not up to it. Well, you know, that wasn't what they were saying at the time. You know, and in the, you know, another general heading of what things they weren't saying at the time. One of the things Jill Biden says in that book is that when she watched that first debate, we're all familiar with it now, June, almost what was it, two years ago, June of 2024, famous debate.

31:10Katy Balls: You know, Biden more or less incoherent for most of the debate on stage. 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. She says in that book that when she watched that, while she was watching that live and from backstage, she thought he was having a stroke. um now that's what she she writes now um if she thought that she certainly didn't say that at the time she came straight out of that debate we can hear the clip um the interesting clip of what she said after the debate so there she was saying what a marvelous job he did when she's now telling telling the world she thought he was having a stroke.

32:07Katy Balls: I mean, I don't know how more dishonest you can possibly be than that. And now she's asking us to believe that she thought, oh, it would be better if he didn't run again, when all of the evidence is that she and Hunter, in particular the son, were egging him on to run again. But now supposedly we're being told, no, no, no, you know, we thought it was the right thing for him to step down. And so it's just, you know, we can talk a lot and we do talk a lot about Donald Trump and about how dishonesty is and what a disreputable, in many ways, disreputable human being is. But it is occasionally good to be reminded of what terrible people there were on the other side.

32:46Katy Balls: And the reason why Donald Trump in the end won was because of this, not only the incompetence and the mental ineptitude of Joe Biden, but also just the dishonesty and the fakery of him and the people around him. It's a very dystopian tale of American politics. I think, too, you look at, you know, when it comes to that whitewash and trying to protect the legacy or make the legacy what they want it to be, even things like talking about Hunter Biden, what happened there. Hunter Biden, he is increasingly growing his own profile. But Hunter Biden being Joe Biden's son, who obviously has had drug addiction problems and was facing criminal, was facing time in the courts, could have had a prison sentence and then was pardoned by Joe Biden.

33:30And even her excuse there, which is, you know, well, we can see our son go to jail. I mean, lots of people would not let their son to go to jail.

33:38Katy Balls: And it's worth saying, you know, when Joe Biden was elected in 2020, I remember it very, very well. He didn't say this publicly, but it was sort of widely said on his behalf that he would be a transitional president. He probably only served one term. He was already, you know, very old at that stage. And people were thinking, you know, I think he was 78, wasn't he, when he was elected, that, you know, one term would be fine. And then he could have had an orderly transition in the Democratic Party. They could have had a proper primary system. Kamala Harris could have fought it out with Gavin Newsom and everybody else, all the other candidates.

34:06Katy Balls: and that they could have and they might have had a better chance. So, you know, I mean, honestly, if there are all kinds of reasons Donald Trump got elected in 2024, I believe far and away the most important was Joe Biden and his decision, his selfish decision, frankly, to keep going and aided and abetted, I'm afraid, by, let's not forget, Dr. Jill Biden. And with that, I think that's all we have time for this week. Do join us again next week. And in the meantime, if you like this podcast, do please subscribe and rate.

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