vice president kamala harris gets tonight's last word. word. president biden saw more members of his own party calling for him to drop out of the race, the president capped this year's nato summit in washington with a high stakes press conference to say that it was a major moment for president biden and his

party is an understatement biden's question and answer session was watched by america's allies and adsaries, politicians of both parties here in the u.s. and around the globe >> i'm not hearing my european allies say, joe, don't run what i'm hearing them say is you've got to win. you can't let this guy come forward, it'd be a disaster. i think i said in one of his rallies recently where nato, i just learned about nato or something to that effect foreign policy has never been his strong point, and he seems to have an affinity to people who are authoritarian. that worries europe, that worries poland, and nobody including the people of poland think that if he wins in ukraine

he's going to stop ukraine so what i can say is i think i'm the best person to do the job. >> almost as important as the content of the president's remarks tonight is the president's energy, enthusiasm, his command of details >> the fact is that the consideration is that i think i'm the most t qualified persono run for president. i beat him once, and i will beat him again. secondly, the idea -- i served in the senate a long time. the idea that senators and congressmen running for office worried about the ticket is not unusual. and i might add at least five presidents running or incumbent presidents who have lower

numbers than i have now later in the campaign. so there's a long way to go in this campaign, and so i'm just going to keep moving. keep moving because i've got more work to do, so much to finish. s we made so much progress. >> now, the focus at this week's nato summit was supposed to be support for ukraine in russia's war of aggression. in a lot of ways it was, just indirectly. while the conversation among nato leaders this week will decide ukraine's fate in the coming months, the long-term future of ukraine and maybe the fate of the global order as we know it, could come down to domestic american politics. here was ukrainian president volodymyr zelenskyy himself saying just that earlier this week. >> ladies and gentlemen, let me -- and i want to be -- candid and frank.

now everyone is waiting for november. americans are waiting for november in europe, middle east, in the pacific. the whole world is looking towards -- looking to november. and truly speaking putin awaits november, too. >> putin awaits november. on this count putin may be right. the two presumptive nominees have disparate world views the 2024 election in november could be deciding factor whether the western world stands up for st democracy or lets it fall. those are the stakes. that is something acknowledged not just by president zelenskyy but by the nato summit itself. while themm leaders of nato's almost all 32 nations is aligne in support for ukraine, one of them notably is not, hungary's

prime minister viktor orban. prime minister orban spent today down in florida meeting with former president trump at his mar-a-lago resort, a meeting that comes just a week after prime minister orban became the first western leader to travel to moscow and visit with russian president vladimir putin in more than two years. that meeting was so out of boundsas compared to where the rest of dwrurp stands on the issue leaders of both the eu and nato itself released statements making clear orban in no way represented either of their organizations with his visit. so the european union and nato distanced themselves from orban, and donald trump embraces him. this is maybe not all that surprising. viktor orban, vladimir putin, and donald trump have a lot in common. in addition to what amounts to a sortou of strong man fan boy cl they are all members of, they

are all the intent of upending thete long-standing democratic mejmony. tonight donald trump and viktor orban had a powwow presumably planning what to do after november. so, yes, vladimir putin isaf waiting for november. so is zelenskyy, so is biden, and so is the world. >> i will not boy down to putin. i will not walk away from ukraine. i will keep nato strong. that's exactly what we did and exactly what we'll continue to do. now, the future of american policy is up to the american people. it's much more than a political question. it's more than that. it's a national security issue. don't reduce this to the usual testament that people talk about, issues of it being a

political campaign. it's far too important. it's about the world we live in for decades to come. >> joining me now are ben rhodes, former deputy national security advisor under president obama, mckay coppens, staff writer at the atlantic. and tommy, cohost of pod save america and pod save the world. i want to hear from all of you your impressions on what unfold saidio on-screens across the country and oacross the globe. ben, let me start with you. how didt president biden do? >> well, i think the press conference was kind of a miniature what has probably been going on in nato for the last few days, which is president biden was very cogent and focused on delivering a message about the centrality of nato, america's commitment to the liberal order, commitment to ukraine. he's obviously speaking also about issues related to china, foreign policy issues that have been on the agenda of nato the

last couple ofen days, but i al know nato the last couple of days the main topic of conversation outside the formal meetings, the topic of conversation in the hallways and among foreign leaders and i've heard from people in foreign governments has been about the political crisis here in theme democratic party and the question of what's going to happen in the election and what's going to happen with president biden. so at the same time he's delivering that substantive message, he's dealing with that political backdrop. in some ways nato, alex, is like a democratic caucus meeting. everybody's really nervous. they're probably saying some things in private that they're not saying in public. everybody's holding their breath watching that press conference, and i think comingha out of tha you still feel like we're in the same place to some extent. i'm sure he reassured some people with his command of issues but also reaffirmed some of the concerns about how vigorously he could prosecute the case against donald trump. and so we exit this summit in the kind of limbo that we

entered it. >> yeah, tommy, as white house national security spokesman i wonder how you looked at what unfolded. you know, we played that clip of the president saying i've not had any of my european allies come up to me and say, joe, don't run. what i hear them say is you've got to win. those two things are inextricably connected, right? what's your assessment how much the fears reportedly held by nato allies were allayed by the president's performance tonight? >> well, look, i think they're just worried about whether he wins or not. i don't know they were fully allayed tonight. i watched the press conference. this is a guy chairman of the senate relations committee, spent what, almost 12 years now getting the pdb every day. he knows his stuff. he also has a good story to tell when it comes to nato. in 2015 emmanuel macron said nato was brain dead. biden helped invigorate it, get

military hardware into ukraine, and push back against the russians. on the policy, on the substance like joe biden is in the absolute right place, and he knows his stuff. the concern, i think, from people like me and people who are worried about him winning this election is does he have the d stamina to prosecute the campaign against donald trump, and does he have the communication skill and the ability to explain himself better than he did at the debate? i thought obviously tonight was way better than the debate, but i don't know that it was great in terms of making an argument against donald trump. >> mckay, what did you think when you looked at -- you did some deep reporting for the atlantic about western europe's deep trepidation for november and they think a trump victory is a forgone conclusion. how did you look at the victory tonight and the president's performance? >> i found myself thinking of the conversations i had with european officials and germany and poland and estonia and nato

headquarters this past spring. thes recurring pattern in all these conversations we're terrify of trump being re-elected, we think it's more likely than not, and what it would mean a for the world, for the destabilization of europe, for the war in ukraine would be catastrophic. when they talked about joe biden, when i would ask them about biden, they would kind of start by saying, you know, on experience, on policy, on his breadth and depth of knowledge, we admire him. and he believes in nato, he believes in alliances, and we love all of that. but then they would kind of often ask, now, can i talk to you anonymous le, can i go on background? they'd say why is he running? is he really the best democrats can put forward to beat trump? and i think that news conference to mein showcased the reasons f

that ambivalence. i think biden show an ability to speak in great depth about these issues, certainly more so than donald trump ever could. at the same time his e performae was shaky. he cuts himself off, he interrupts himself, he loses his train of thought. he, you know, misspeaks, and i think my guess -- i have not been able to make contact with those people in the 20 minutes since the news conference ended, but myre guess is a lot of peop i spoke to in europe looked at that news conference and had their impressions of biden confirmed both good, bad, and ugly. >> i take everything mckay is saying characterizing the president's posture in this news conference, but i also saw him a bit more defiant and combative than certainly in the debate where you would expect him to be more combative. a couple of times he sort of leaned into the lectern and sort of challenging the press and all

of the detractors to come and find the ways in which he hasn't done a good job, come and show him the receipts for a president somehow weakened at least legislatively or in terms of accomplishments? did you feel it was effective? it feels we're in a twilight zone i'm not sure that much changed one way or the other, which to me suggests biden stays in the race. i'm unclear what else is going to happen here given the democratic party's reluctance to keep this fight going on much longer. >> yeah, well, i think it was, again, a mixed bag in terms of the defiance you talk about, alex. i thought as some of the work done campaigns in addition to foreign policy, i thought he was effective when the defiance was directed at donald trump or directed at corporations not paying their fair share. but, frankly, when the defiance is directed at the media or it's

very much about him and his accomplishments, or it's just about hisr own record, that's t just questions people are asking. you know, i think everybody's asking including european officials and other allied officials, i hear from them as well, too. the questions they're asking are about whether he can win this election, whether he has the kind of stamina and skill set required right now to beat donald trump,ed and whether he n serve out another four years, and whether that defiance is directed at what he wants to do in the future and not just directedno at what he's done in the past and defending what happened at thest nato summit. i don't think anybody doubts that was a productive nato summit, but that's not what we're debating here. and so that's where i think there's this kind of disconnect between the kind of psychology that you get from president biden sometimes in the white house it's about going after the detractors and arguing about the record the last 3 1/2 years.

nobody's actually questioning that. the question is aboutua what's e best way to go forward from here? and i think what nato reinforced is the stakes involved in that decision is not just the future on american democracy or the american people's future but literally the future of ukraine, european security, the future of the world order. all of this rides on the question on whether or not joe biden can get this done, and that's why it's worth having a question about it and that's probably why it's going on in a purgatory people don't like. >> really it does feel like thoseel are the stakes, that's where we're at. this conversation is very much not over. please stay with me. i have a lot more to ask you about later this hour. but coming up the news that is -- it is a news night. democratic lawmakers are reacting to president biden's

press conference and his argument for, as we said, remaining at the top of the party's ticket. one of them has a lot to say. he's come out very publicly in theou hours since or minutes sie the president finished his press conference. congressman jim himes of m connecticut, the top democratic on the house intelligence committee, joins me to give me his very shall we say interesting and controversial take on the president and his candidacy and his performance. he's going to join me right after the break. me right after the break.

the idea -- i served in the senate a long time. the idea that senators and congressmen running for office worry about the ticket is not unusual, and i might add there are at least five presidents running or incumbent presidents running who had lower numbers than i have now, later in the campaign. so there's a long way to go in this campaign, and so i'm just going to keep moving -- keep moving because, look, i've got more work to do. we've got more work to finish. we've made so much progress.

>> before president biden began his nato address tonight 14 democrats in the house and senate had already called for him to drop out of the race. by the time he answered the final question of his news conference, that number had risen to 16. among the democrats joining those calls tonight is congressman jim himes, the top democrat on the house intelligence committee who was out with a new statement. it reads it has been the honor of my career to work with president biden on the achievements that secured his remarkable legacy in american history. it is in consideration of that legacy that i hope president biden will step away from the presidential campaign. the 2024 election will define the future of american democracy, and we must put forth the strongest candidate possible to confront the threat posed by trump's promised maga authoritarianism. i no longer believe that is joe biden. joining me is congressman jim himes of connecticut. congressman, we'll get right to

it. what did you see tonight and in recent days that leads you to believe joe biden should step aside? >> it's not really about tonight, and one of the really sick aspects of this moment is that we are watching every speech, every rally, every debate and saying how did he do today, and that's not the way to think about the presidency of the united states. look, this was a really hard moment for democrats, and it's a hard moment for democrats because loyalty and love, and emotion are really important in politics. and by the way, there's probably no one for whom that's more important than the story telling irishman joe biden. it's why union halls erupt in ecstasy. it's why people cry when they

remember barack obama. it's loyalty and loyalty alone, unthinking loyalty that leads 70 million americans to continue to back an adjudicated felon, rapist, sexual assaulter who has promised an authoritarian regime. that's an excess of loyalty, and at the end of the day those things who are so important to politics must make way, as hard as it is to a very simple question, which is can we win this race and save our democracy? and it is so unsexy and so unromantic to say what about the polls, what about the cooke report? completely dashes the poetry of campaigning, but the reality is and i'm far from the only democrat who believes this, that the numbers, the trajectory, what americans feel in their bones right now suggests not only that joe biden would lose this race but that he or we would lose the senate and the

house. and the stakes are so high that we need to set aside that loyalty and that poetry and that romance and we all go down together in favor of some really hard-nosed analysis about whether this is the way forward. and, you know, you've been with the president on a number of occasions, and i have looked at those numbers. no president has ever been re-elected would the disapproval ratings that our current president love him as we do has. so i will not stay silent as i see a trajectory to an electoral loss that leads to the presidency of donald trump and all that he has promised. >> why did you wait to the speech was over? you said it didn't have to do wiz remarks tonight. was it nato? did you want to wait until the world stage had been cleared? can you talk a little bit more about the timing and whether you expect other democrats will come out with similar statements?

>> you know, it -- maybe it's a little old-fashioned but there used to be a statement that maybe partisanship and politics should stop at the water's edge. by the way, foreign policy is his strength as he demonstrated tonight. no, i very deliberately waited until after the nato conference to inject as i knew it would a political element into the discussion here. >> do you feel like the white house and specifically president biden is even open to hearing statements like yours given his posture tonight he was fairly combative at the suggestion he was no longer up to it, that he didn't have the stamina, that he wasn't going to win. is he in a position to even contemplate that, do you think? >> i've done a lot of political campaigns, alex, and the one attribute of almost every single

losing campaign and i've seen hundreds of them is right up until the moment you believe the numbers have lost, is when you win. as i said before you have to set aside the loyalty, the hope that maybe there's a job two years down the road, the emotion, the love because there is so much love for joe biden in favor of a cold hard appraisal of the facts. you just can't get away from that. and i know i'm unpopular because i'm asking us to step away from the love and the loyalty and just say that the numbers suggest we're going to lose. look, i respect people who have an opinion different than mine, but the underlying thesis here is that we'll turn this around. and i've heard for months and months and months that the problem is that we haven't communicated the remarkable legislative achievements, the biggest investment in our infrastructure ever, the fact for medicare recipients out-of-pocket costs are capped

at $2,000, the fact insulin is now capped at $3500 a month. i would just ask the people who love joe biden whether you believe, whether you have evidence in the next five months that story will be so exquisitely told by the president that we will turn around the polling, that we will turn what is right now a losing hand into a winning hand. and it pains me to say that because joe biden, his legacy is top ten presidential material. it is absolutely a remarkable legacy, but if you don't look at this in a cold, hard way you will be complicit in donald trump's second presidency. and i'm confident the bench is deep amongst democrats, it really is. i don't know who the next candidate is -- i'm not going

to, but i could name a dozen democrats who i believe would not only galvanize african americans, women, the youth vote, et cetera, but who i'm very confident could convey the message of the remarkable achievement that joe biden's administration did better than he's going to be able to do it. >> so i'm hearing from you the time for second chances, if you will, is over. the biden campaign clearly they had a very aggressive schedule -- the white house had a very aggressive schedule for the president today. they had a rare press conference. they had a sit down interview with nbc's lester holt on monday, but what i'm hearing from you is that skeptics including many in his own party have seen enough and heard enough, and the time has come for the president to hear from his party resoundingly that he should no longer be at the top of the ticket. my question to you is there's been so much hand ringing both,

you know, outside of capitol hill and inside capitol hill about how democrats handle this. is your expectation is that there are more like you to follow, more statements like this to follow in the next 36, 72 hours. >> alex, i don't know. i really don't know. this is not part of any coordinated effort. i don't know what my colleagues will do, and i respect each and every one of them. you ask about second chances, this is not a -- this is not an athletic endeavor where you get a mulligan, right? the country and democrats are in this moment where we're so pleased and perhaps not surprising the president did a reasonably good job on foreign policy, which he knows so well. but this is what we're focused on forgetting the fact that the presidency, an office i have never occupied and probably never will is so horrendously grueling i mean forget about a

debate with donald trump, the presidency is 24/7. you're awoken at 3:00 in the morning and the russians are fueling missiles, and by the way the iranians are doing something with hezbollah, and your political opponent has just accused you of being a traitor. i mean this is just a degree of stress that is unknowable to anybody but the president of the united states. and, you know, as much as i love and respect the man, this is not about whether he can, you know, give a good press conference, this is about whether you believe the trajectory both for the country three years from now when the russians are fueling missiles and iran is doing something, and the political opponents are calling him a traitor, is he able to be up three days straight and to make all the correct decisions, right? this is a job we're going to watch olympians in paris. this is a job like them requires as much perfection as providence will allow a human being, and people need to ask themselves whether that is the trajectory that they are witnessing right

now, and they need to be honest about it. they need to set aside the love and the loyalty and be honest because when you answer that question you're not talking about you, you're not talking about the president, you're talking about the united states of america and its future. >> congressman jim himes, thank you for your time. a big news night all around. appreciate it. >> thank you. coming up, while president biden was in washington trying to quints allies and members of his own party that he can still do the job of protecting western democracy, while that was happening, the republican presidential candidate was hosting the authoritarian leader of hungary at his house again. we'll have more on that next. (man) mm, hey, honey. looks like my to-do list grew. "paint the bathroom, give baxter a bath,

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there's nobody that's better, smarter, or a better leader than viktor orban. he's fantastic. as you know the prime minister of hungary and does a great job. he's a noncontroversial figure because he said this is the way it's going to be, and that's the end of it, right? he's the boss. >> four months ago that is how donald trump introduced a group of supporters gathered at mar-a-lago to his guest of honor, the authoritarian leader viktor orban. now, tonight the two men met

again at mar-a-lago just one week after orban met with another close friend of his, russian president vladimir putin. in a post on social media this evening orban said in his meeting with trump, negotiations with president trump about peace. good news of the day, he will solve it. back with me now are ben rhodes, tommy vietor, and mckay coppens. tawpie, good news. viktor orban and trump have worked out world peace. your reaction? >> that's wonderful to hear. i mean, you really have to wonder about someone who chooses to spend their time with viktor orban. i can't imagine he's a good hang, but donald trump when offered the opportunity to do anything in the world he finds himself with the most authoritarian leaders he can find already the world, talks about their invieblt to crush dissent and subvert democracy. so glad they figured it all out. >> there's biden with nato,

zelenskyy, and then literally a split screen moment for the global community with orban and trump meeting at mar-a-lago. this is fresh off of orban's meeting with putin. nbc reports that a source familiar with the trump/orban meeting assured any talk of orban effectively being a back channel to putin is nonsensical. do you think it's nonsensical? >> i don't think it's nonsensical at all, alex. first of all, it's not as straightforward because it's not just orban who went to see putin recently. putin is seeing xi jinping. he's seeing kim jong-un. he hosted narendra modi on the eve of the summit. i think he's trying to demonstrate, hey, i've got a team as well, and we want to totally overturn the order that is represented by nato itself. these are the stakes that is happening, and orban is something of a model for trump. he was elected prime minister and transitioning democracy and a single party system.

first of all, he was just in moscow. he was just seeing putin, right, and just days ago. and now what is he telling us, there's good news there's a peace plan. orban is telling us literally in that social media post, i talked to trump about what i talked to putin about, so he may not be some sort of formal on the payroll poperative going back through diplomacy, but i would be shocked if orban wasn't sharing some kind of message from putin or some kind of indication of his conversation with putin. you really think that viktor orban sat with vladimir putin for hours in moscow and then sat with donald trump in mar-a-lago, and didn't mention anything he talked to putin about. again, his instagram posts alone suggested they talked about ukraine because they said to talk about a peace plan. to me it highlights the stakes here between a block of countries and strang men really trump wants to be a part versus

whether or not trump wants to be part of the united states. >> it's an unnerving moment for the community. i want to get your thoughts on the segment we had going into this. we had congressman jim himes who's the top democrat on the house intelligence committee come out with a statement saying he believes president biden should remove himself from the top of the democratic ticket. first of all, for someone like jim himes who is very steeped in international affairs, house intelligence, obviously, this seems like a meaningful decision, and i wonder the degree to which you think it has an effect on the global community that's watching everything unfold here in america. i know from your reporting they are following on an almost granular level what is going on in the america right now. >> yeah, that was one thing that really struck me in my reporting in europe is how closely european officials especially people in nato are following

everything that's happening in this election. and they know the names of members of congress. they've met in many cases with them or with members of their staff, so i don't think it goes unnoticed when a senior democrat with the depth of experience that he has with intelligence, national security, foreign affairs comes out against biden. i think the question is going to be in the coming 24, 48 hours you asked him this cession, are we going to see some kind of dam break, right? there has been some reporting to that effect we might hear from many more democrats on capitol hill in the coming days. i think if that happens, you might be in a situation where you start to see some of president biden's friends and allies in these european countries who are admirers of his, who have contacts of his administration also leaning on him. to my knowledge that hasn't happened yet. we've seen a lot of kind of

anonymous anxiety in the reporting. will those people go on the record? will they start leaning on president biden to drop out given the stakes for the global community and that is what i'm going to be keeping an eye on the coming days. >> the congressman said his statements tonight didn't have anything to do with the press conference that the president just had, which i thought was quite interesting. on some level one might understand why he'll want to wait until the nato summit to do this, on the other hand the biden campaign and on lookers thought this was a chance for biden to was rect his candidacy. and by all initial accounts it wasn't a bad night for him. do you worry that the sort of pendulum keeps sort of incrementally swinging back and forth for way too long and becomes actually damaging for the ticket on hold, whoever's at the top of it unless someone

steps in? and do you think anyone is willing to step in? and by that, do you think barack obama is willing to step in here and get his hands dirty? >> well, look, first of all, i'm sure you don't like this going on too long, but i'd rather take a couple weeks, alex, and figure out whether we have the best person to run the campaign against donald trump. i don't know that -- this is pretty priced in that the debate was bad and the democrats are upset about this, and the democrats are having a debate about this internally, so i actually don't know it matters so much whether it's a couple more days or another week. the reality is there's sand running through the hourglass because there's a hard deadline with the nominating process. i think what you see from jim himes is that statement was clearly written before the press conference tonight. i thought one of the most powerful things he said is part of the challenge we don't want to feel like every single time joe biden is out on camera it's some kind of riveting test. the very fact that is the

dynamic is kind of a problem, actually. that you get through one of these things and it was slightly better than the abc interviews or inpendulum inches in one direction. the question is does the democratic party as a collective and that's most representative by elected officials in congress believe that they want to head into the election with joe biden as a standard bearer for the sake of winning the presidency and for the sake of not harming and hopefully helping down ballot democrats. and i think it does feel to me like there's obviously a lot of conversations happening behind closed doors. this is going to come to the forefront the next several days. >> tommy, are you that optimistic? >> i think it really depends on what happens in congress. i think hearing from someone as serious and thoughtful as jim himes is really important. i thought his message this is about patriotism, and this is about loving your country and putting that above loyalty is a really important and powerful message. because if joe biden runs in the

polls we're looking at now are accurate and we lose and trump is inaugurated president, joe biden is just a citizen like the rest of us. we all own this equally, and we are all enormously worried about what a second trump presidency will mean for this country, for nato, for taiwan. the whole world is watching this election, the stakes are that high. i'm glad we're having this conversation now. i'm glad it's before the convention. i hope joe biden is getting good information and he's not sort of saying bad polls for him aren't real and good polls for him are. that's a bit worrisome, but it does seem like the trajectory at the moment is leading more and more members of congress to say what they've been saying privately publicly, which is that he's not the best candidate to win this race. >> you know, mckay, you've done such deep reporting inside the republican party and in particular with republicans who

have bucked party orthodoxy. i'm thinking about mitt romney and your book about mitt romney, and i'm wondering if you see any common dna between the anguish of someone like that and what's happening inside the democratic party right now. >> yeah, the thing that i always come away from in my conversations with mitt romney and the handful of republicans like him is that it is just really hard to do this. it's really hard to do what jim himes just did. it's hard to speak out against the president who is leading your party. everything about the partisan ecosystem that these politicians live in incentivizes against that, right? your social -- your social life, your friends, your staff, your donors, the media you consume, everybody who's on your team wants you to just be a good soldier. you are expected to do what is

best for the leader of your party. so i think it's no small thing that we now have what is it 16 congressional democrats come out and call for president biden to step aside. i'm sure there are people in biden's inner circle who believe that comes from, you know, resentment or that they're haters or whatever, but i don't think that's true in most of these case. i think that these democrats are doing something hard. they are -- they are defying the partisan expectations that have been set for them. they're doing something that could very likely hurt them politically, and they're taking a risk. and i think that we should understand the statements that they're making and the things they're saying in that context. there is simply no good political incentive for them to go out on a limb and call for the sitting president in their own party to step aside. they're doing it because they

genuinely believe that he is not going to win this election and that the stakes are too high to not say that out loud. >> yeah, ben, to that end i think we can never take our eyes off the ball in terms of the stakes, right? and we're talking about this in the context of nato, which you guys have discussed on your podcast has been trying to retroactively -- preemptively trump proof the alliance and sort of talk about the alliance in a way that trump can understand if he's even listening, likening it to a club where you pay membership dues at dural. i don't know, do you pay membership dues at dural? i'm not quite sure. for perspective here the alternative is so catastrophically bad, we shouldn't lose sense of what was unfolding down at mar-a-lago today as we talk about the future of the democratic party. >> yeah. you can't trump-proof this scenario, alex. i mean, first of all, europe

cannot make whole the kind of defense support the united states provides to ukraine. europe even collectively its military strength is nowhere near entering the conversation with the united states. and so what that means is ukraine could be cut off, and ukraine could be subject to russian domination, and russia could push further into trying to destabilize other parts of europe. but beyond that, alex, the momentum of global politics we've seen this in the french election, it is teetering between a full swing of the pendulum in the direction of the trumps and the modis and the netanyahus and the orbans, and unfortunately we could go on and list a whole bunch of other strong men or could the pendulum edge back with people who want to at least protect the democracies that we have? that's what's at stake here because the message to the world is that pendulum swings hard in the other direction and the future of this world is going to be determined by hard strong men

nationalists like donald trump and vladimir putin and xi jinping, and that's going to be bad for your rights. that's going to be bad in terms of the corruption of those people. these are really kind of existential stakes for the kind of world we want to live in, and that's why it's important. that's why we can't just say everybody fall in, everybody keep your concerns to yourself. i think everybody needs to put your cards on the table particularly democratic members of congress here precisely because these stakes can't allow us to get this wrong. >> thank you all for spending the better part of this hour with me. i really, really appreciate your time and perspective. coming up, we will have more on president biden's fight for his future. we have some new reporting on what is happening inside the white house. that's right after the break. ene white house. that's right after the break

tonight president biden offered the strongest defense of his candidacy yet as he tried to

convince voters and members of his own party to stand with him. but new reporting today from "the new york times" michael schmidt reveals a small group of the president's long time white house campaign aides and advisers are considering ways to persuade the president to exit the race. there are reportedly three factors that are being considered. they said they have to make the case to the president that he cannot win against former president donald j. trump. they have it persuade him to believe that another candidate like vice president kamala harris could beat mr. trump. and they have to assure mr. biden that the process to choose another candidate would be orderly and not dissolve into chaos in the democratic party. joining me now is michael schmidt, investigative reporter for "the new york times." michael, thank you for being here. i do wonder since you were talking to those in biden's orbit whether they had any expectations for tonight and whether there was any particular hope they had for the president's performance. >> i'm sure that they hoped he would do well, and they knew this was a good opportunity to

showcase themselves again. i think this is realization there are larger forces at play here and that putting the toothpaste back in the tube from the debate performance is something that is far larger than an interview with george stephanopoulos last week than the question that was held today, and i think they've come to that realization in recent days and that they face a massive obstacle in themselves and i think what you saw tonight was a fair assessment of what the president thinks, and i think he's probably even more entrenched than we even appreciated. he is a stubborn person who has defied the odds throughout his entire career. he's gone further than i think he ever thought he could, and he's often done that as the underdog and now is in a massive political crisis and standoff with his own party as he stares him down. and i think those closest to him that have been with him for a long time are increasingly

realizing this, that it's an untenable situation, and that the biggest obstacle is convincing him that he has to step aside. >> michael, you mention one of it three sort of prongs of i guess the strategy to convince the president is convincing him that he's going to lose to mr. trump in november. what does that mean? because every time the president has given in his press conference, for example,statistics how his approval rating is under water and historic low, and unwinnable figure, that he's not doing well in swing states, battleground states, there's a reputation of those facts or insistence the polling isn't accurate. so what do those aides practically think it means to convince trump -- president biden that he will lose to trump in november? >> i think he has to acknowledge he has no direct path to winning, and i think you see the problem. that's why we're in the standoff that we're in. you just had someone on

television and jim himes regardless of what his politics is a fairly reasonable thoughtful person in washington to come out and call for the president of the united states to step aside. the way that jim himes views the world is not very different than a lot of his colleagues and a lot of other people in the house and the senate and at the top of the democratic party. and you have a president of the united states who said that the poll numbers, you know, he didn't take too seriously the poll numbers that looked bad and thought he could overcome the odds he had and also poll numbers as the best person to do this and kind of turned to have had both ways. at the end of the day he is entrenched, and he wants to move forward, and he is going to try everything he can to do that, and that is why we're in this situation. we're in the third week, we'll be entering the third week. it's been two weeks since the debate, and we'll be entering the third week where democrats

and people close to him are realizing all we're doing is talking about our armchair mental acuity, playing doctor here and saying, well, tonight he only fumbled three words, and he got four names right and he was good on foreign policy but he messed up -- that's not talking about the existential threat that democrats say donald trump poses the country. >> how optimistic are they they can stave off potential chaos in the party if biden does step down? >> well, i think there was a feeling certainly in the first week after the debate that -- that the pressure was going to be so great that biden was going to step aside, and folks like schumer and pelosi were not going to have to get more deeply involved in this, and that it was going to take care of itself. and i think what we've seen in the past few days is a realization said, no, this is not going to take care of itself in terms of biden stepping aside, that there is going to have to be something larger that

happens to go after that. look, himes said that he made his decision to go public after the nato summit was over and after the president was off the stage. it obviously was a moment that a lot of people were paying attention. it's hard to believe he took a decision like that without talking it folks, you know, his colleagues and stuff to know the impact of what he would be doing there. is there something larger afoot here? there's a report out tonight that several other democrats were preparing, you know, tomorrow to do similar things, but we are stuck in a standoff. >> we will see what happens tomorrow. michael schmidt with "the new york times," thanks for joining us tonight. that is our show for this evening. "way too early" with jonathan lemire is coming up next. how do you resure the american people you won't have more bad night on the debate stage or foreign policy? >> i'll tell you what the best way to