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Fox News
09-07-2025
- Politics
- Fox News
New book sheds light on Harris decision to pick Walz as her running mate over Shapiro: 'Went with her gut'
A new book on the end of Joe Biden's presidential campaign and the birth of Kamala Harris' sheds light on the process behind the vice president choosing Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate, a decision widely panned by pundits in retrospect. "2024: How Trump Retook the White House and the Democrats Lost America," released Tuesday by journalists Josh Dawsey of The Wall Street Journal, Tyler Pager of The New York Times and Isaac Arnsdor of The Washington Post, described a vetting process that came down to three finalists: Walz, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro and Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly. All three candidates did a final interview with Harris at her residence, the book explains, adding that when asked what they wanted to drink, Shapiro and Kelly chose water while Walz chose Diet Mountain Dew. Appeal with rural voters was a top priority for the Harris ticket and the book states that Harris's advisors felt that Walz was the best candidate to do that. "Pelosi privately pushed for him too, because she'd worked with him in Congress," the book said about the former House speaker. "The pitch for Walz was straightforward: He could appeal to white voters across the Blue Wall states (Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania) and hopefully help Harris with male voters. He'd never lost election." While most political experts felt Shapiro, governor of a key swing state, was the most logical choice, the book states that the interview with Harris and Shapiro "revealed the two were not a perfect match." "He came across as overly ambitious, pushing Harris to define what his role would be. He also conceded it would not be natural for him to serve as someone's number two, leaving Harris with a bad impression," the book states. Conversely, the authors explain that Walz was "deferential" while "showing no interest in himself" and "flatly denied any interest in running for president." "He went so far as to proactively volunteer reasons why she might not want to pick him," the book says. "In his interview that Friday, he said he had never used a teleprompter before. On Sunday, he told Harris, 'I would understand if you went with someone else because I'm really nervous about the debate, and I don't think I'll do well.' Still, the vetting team did not fully appreciate his tendency to misspeak, his folksiness sometimes tipping into factual imprecision." Walz would ultimately draw intense scrutiny on the campaign trail for his "folksiness" with a series of blunders, including his characterization of his military service and a claim he was present at the Tiananmen Square massacre. The book says Harris "struggled" deciding between Shapiro and Walz, believing that she had a better "rapport" with Walz but understood the importance of Pennsylvania. Harris' team, according to the book, told her that polling did not offer a clear answer as to which of the two candidates would help the ticket more. "There was no empirical evidence that Shapiro would deliver Pennsylvania and with it the White House," the book said. As Shapiro was being considered, many pundits speculated that his staunch support of Israel could be an issue given the progressive wing of the Democratic Party being vocally pro-Palestinian, resulting in protests, sometimes violent, across the country after Oct. 7. The book said the Harris campaign was aware of that issue. "Much of the progressive wing of the Democratic Party declared war on Shapiro, largely because of his support of Israel," the book said. "Some Shapiro allies saw the criticism as deeply unfair and borderline antisemitic, since the governor was an observant Jew, but his positions on the Palestinian conflict broadly aligned with the Biden administration and the other vice presidential contenders. The lawyers vetting Shapiro did flag some comments they viewed as more incendiary, particularly as it related to pro- Palestinian protests on college campuses after the October 7 attacks." "One that caught their attention was his commentary on CNN from April: 'We have to query whether or not we would tolerate this, if this were people dressed up in KKK outfits or KKK regalia, making comments about people who are African American in our communities.'" Ultimately, the book says Harris "went with her gut" and chose Walz believing he was the "better fit" in a decision her staff was "unanimously behind." Fox News Digital reached out to the offices of Walz and Shapiro for comment. After losing every battleground state and ultimately the presidency to Donald Trump, critics were quick to judge the Walz pick as a misstep by Harris. "The choice of Walz was only one of many disastrous mistakes but symptomatic of one larger problem – the Democratic Party leadership is too scared to say no to the hard-left progressive wing of the party," Julian Epstein, longtime Democratic operative and former chief counsel to the House Judiciary Committee, told Fox News Digital shortly after the election. Rob Bluey, president and executive editor of The Daily Signal, told Fox News Digital in November that Harris picking Walz "proved to be a disastrous decision that doomed Kamala Harris from the moment she made it." "Not only was Walz ill-prepared for the national spotlight and media scrutiny, but Harris passed over several better options," Bluey said. "Given how little Americans knew about Harris or her policy positions, they were right to question her judgment on this big decision."
The Independent
09-07-2025
- Politics
- The Independent
Joe Biden aides changed his phone number and scolded reporter for calling him about election loss, new book claims
Aides to former President Joe Biden reportedly changed his personal cellphone number and chewed out a reporter after he called the ex-commander-in-chief to get an interview. According to the book How Trump Retook the White House and the Democrats Lost America by Josh Dawsey of The Wall Street Journal, Tyler Pager of The New York Times, and Isaac Arnsdorf of The Washington Post, Pager got hold of Biden's personal number and gave him a call in late March. 'Biden said he would be willing to speak for this book the next day,' the authors write. He answered the call the next morning and he criticized his predecessor and successor in the White House, President Donald Trump. 'I don't see anything he's done that's been productive,' said Biden. Asked about his thoughts on ending his 2024 re-election campaign, the former president said, 'No, not now. I don't spend a lot of time on regrets.' He then hung up as he was boarding an Amtrak train. It was then that Biden's aides called and texted Pager on repeated occasions. 'After the first call, furious Biden aides repeatedly called and texted' Pager, the authors state. Aides to the former president blocked Pager's number and removed Biden's number from use within two days. When they later tried to call the president a Verizon recording could be heard. 'The number you dialed has been changed, disconnected, or is no longer in service,' it stated. The incident follows reports that Biden had a tightly managed inner circle during his time in the White House and during the 2024 campaign. The authors noted that Trump has a more freewheeling style and, at times, takes calls from reporters. Pager wrote in The Times on Tuesday in a piece adapted from the book that, as he requested an interview with Biden on several occasions, his aides said the former president was working on a memoir that would conflict with his book. One aide screamed at him, according to Pager. 'Others texted furiously, trying to figure out how I had obtained Mr. Biden's phone number,' he writes. His follow-up calls went straight to a voicemail that just said, 'Joe' before the number was taken out of service.
Fox News
08-07-2025
- Politics
- Fox News
Kamala Harris aide urged 'The View' hosts to ask again after VP flubbed question on differences with Biden
Former Vice President Kamala Harris' aides implored the co-hosts of "The View" to try asking Harris a second time about what she would have done differently from Joe Biden during the October 2024 interview on the ABC show, according to a new book. "As you showed the famous clip there on 'The View,' she gives that answer, and our book reports her aides backstage, head in their hands. They try to get the hosts to actually do the question again, to hopefully revise her answer, which she never does," Josh Dawsey of the Wall Street Journal told MSNBC's "Morning Joe" on Tuesday, explaining that Harris was unwilling to differentiate herself from Biden. Dawsey, Washington Post reporter Isaac Arnsdorf and New York Times reporter Tyler Pager's new book, "2024: How Trump Retook the White House and the Democrats Lost America," was released on Tuesday. Harris sat down with the co-hosts of "The View" in October 2024, as liberal host Sunny Hostin asked the former vice president if there was anything she would have done differently than Biden over the course of their administration to date. Harris responded, "there is not a thing that comes to mind." Her response quickly went viral and was widely viewed as a misstep, given Biden's unpopularity and Harris passing up a chance to create some respectful distance. Hostin initially asked Harris about the biggest specific difference between a potential Harris presidency and Biden's presidency. The then-vice president said the two were obviously two different people and said she planned to focus on home healthcare. The new book explains that Harris aide Stephanie Cutter asked two of the co-hosts to try asking Harris the question again. "Backstage on The View's set in Manhattan, Rob Flaherty, a deputy campaign manager, put his head into his hands and swore. During the next commercial break, Stephanie Cutter went to cohosts Whoopi Goldberg and Ana Navarro to ask them to try the question again, but Harris didn't get a second chance. After the interview, Harris knew she'd messed up and asked how big the problem was," the authors wrote. An adviser said her answer on the liberal ABC talkshow was "the defining error of the campaign," the authors reported. Harris didn't give the answer she prepared with her aides, which according to the authors, praised Biden and emphasized that she didn't want to look back and critique their administration. The prepared answer also acknowledged that she was her own person. Her aides also encouraged her to mention that she planned to appoint a Republican to her cabinet, which the former vice president did mention towards the end of the interview. Dawsey said during the MSNBC appearance on Tuesday that Harris didn't want to create public distance from Biden. "She thinks it won't be authentic, she believes that it wouldn't work," he said.
Telegraph
08-07-2025
- Politics
- Telegraph
No writer can explain Trump – and it's fuelling a useless genre
Could the 2024 election have gone differently? Or was the United States always fated to re-embrace its rococo leader? That's the question posed in 2024, the latest in a long line of books that promise to illuminate last year's confusing and chaotic US election – one that started with a Democrat candidate refusing to cede to a fresher face, and ended with the least fresh face of them all moving back into the White House. Josh Dawsey, Tyler Pager, and Isaac Arnsdorf – reporters for The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and The Washington Post, respectively – have assembled their sources to retell the campaign from start to finish. Their book is structured around a series of what-ifs, moments in which the political wind might have changed course, and consequentially so. What if Ron DeSantis had gathered more support and donations and beaten, or at least threatened, Trump in the primary? What if the Democrats had been beaten in the 2022 midterm elections? This approach feels remarkably similar to the Democrats' coping strategy during the first Trump administration. With each setback or accusation lodged against Trump – Russiagate, impeachment hearings, his diagnosis with Covid – a pleading wish emerged: 'Is this going to be the thing that finally takes him down?' (It was the same, after his administration, with the sexual assault allegations, the indictments, the felony verdicts…) No controversy seemed to ever stick or even slow him down considerably. So, in 2024, we get retreads of those familiar what-ifs: Dawsey, Pager, and Arnsdorf dig into the accusation that Trump was hoarding classified documents at Mar-a-Lago, as well as rumours about his manoeuvres against rivals such as DeSantis and Nikki Haley; they also explore Biden's indecision about running in 2024, which the Democrats so grossly mishandled. And yet instead of explaining the backstory of such what-ifs, mostly we only get useless details – ones that seemingly signal just how many people these award-winning journalists have spoken to, rather than providing any real insight. We hear about the time Trump's senior adviser Chris LaCivita mistakenly bought a woman's coat for himself while on the campaign trail, as well as the time when he had his picture taken holding a cigarette, in front of a hotel's 'No Smoking' sign. Without such necessary context, the book also misses opportunities to clear up misinformation – particularly with the attempt to assassinate Trump in July last year. We might have heard about the security failures that allowed Thomas Crooks – a figure who remains obscure, because the authors dig up no new information about him – to go unobserved that day. All we get is an anecdote about Trump's eccentric request for a head CT, because 'it's like an IQ test. They tell you that your brain is good, so I just want to have that.' (At the least, the book can be quite funny.) Some of the book's revelations have also been broken already, by other books in this relentless genre. Details about the efforts to hide Biden's decline in health will be wearingly familiar to readers of Alex Thompson and Jake Tapper's Original Sin, which made headlines in May and does a more substantial job of reporting on the election. But there's little new on that cover-up here. The book is cluttered with such filler. But the skimpiness of context most shows through with the authors' account of October 7. The authors are, impressively, the first to take the war's effect on the election seriously. Gaza was never a marginal issue, as some like to claim – and the authors convincingly argue how it affected the Democrats' ability to recruit grassroots volunteers and to motivate the reluctant youth vote. But they leave the war as a problem that rocked the campaign rather than analyse responses to it. There's an interesting story to be told here about how the US has gone from harbouring widespread, casual Islamophobia post 9/11, to ambivalence towards what felt like never-ending wars in the Middle East, to increased support, in the past few years, for the Palestinian cause. The prominence of universities, changing perspectives on American imperialism and the exhaustion of a generation of soldiers have all changed attitudes towards Israel-Palestine relations considerably – though you would never know this reading 2024. That lack of analysis means the subtitle – 'How Trump Retook the White House and the Democrats Lost America' – vastly over-promises. I'm not sure the authors know. With little analysis and scattered attention, the reading experience of 2024 resembles that of scrolling through headlines, opinion pieces and faulty polling. It wasn't a fun experience last year, and I can't say I would recommend it here either. ★★☆☆☆
Fox News
06-07-2025
- Politics
- Fox News
Hunter Biden told Joe 'I sure would love having you back' prior to his exit from 2024 race: Book excerpt
Print Close By Hanna Panreck Published July 06, 2025 Former President Joe Biden's son, Hunter Biden, told the former president that he would love to have him back, according to an excerpt from a new book, as the former president weighed his political future after his June 2024 debate. "Hunter called in from Los Angeles and made clear that he supported whatever decision his father made. But he told him, 'I sure would love having you back.' What Hunter meant was that being president took up all his father's time. He often told people that he had more of an interest in his father abandoning his campaign than anyone," the book excerpt, published by The Wall Street Journal, read. Biden exited the 2024 race after a disastrous debate performance in June. According to the excerpt, Hunter Biden watched the debate from his home in Los Angeles and reacted to his father's stumbles with, "What the f---?" DOJ RELEASES SPECIAL COUNSEL DAVID WEISS' REPORT ON HUNTER BIDEN "He had never seen his father so out of it, and worried about his well-being. A few days later, when Hunter arrived at Camp David for a visit, he told his father, 'I love you' and 'Get some sleep,'" the WSJ excerpt read. The new book, "2024: How Trump Retook the White House and the Democrats Lost America," written by Jason Dawsey, Tyler Pager and Isaac Arnsdorf, is set to be released on July 8. The Wall Street Journal's excerpt also detailed a call the president had with his aides after the Supreme Court issued a ruling on July 1, 2024, that found presidents have substantial immunity for official acts, but not for unofficial acts. CLICK HERE FOR MORE COVERAGE OF MEDIA AND CULTURE The former president believed the ruling was substantial and wanted to respond. Former chief of staff Jeff Zients convened Biden's aides on a call to discuss how the former president would respond, according to the excerpt. "Suddenly an unidentified voice piped up from Biden's screen and recommended an Oval Office address. At first, some aides had no idea who was speaking. It soon became clear the voice belonged to Hunter Biden, who the White House staff had not known was on the call," the WSJ's excerpt read. White House Counsel Ed Siskel had concerns about Biden speaking from the Oval Office, but Hunter Biden jumped in and argued his father had every right to use the room's "powerful imagery" to issue his response. "Siskel told colleagues Hunter's presence was inappropriate," the excerpt continued. CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP Print Close URL
