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Will Michelle Obama take on Trump? · The Front

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: From The Australian. Here's what's on the front. I'm Claire Harvey.
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: It's Monday, July won Australian Border Force allegedly gave a
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: group of failed asylum seekers a speed vote and told
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: them to return to Indonesia. That story is live at
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: the Australian dot com dot au right now. Anthony Albanezi
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: has summoned rogue Senator Fatima Payment to the lodge and
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: kicked her out of caucus, the group of labor MPs
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: who vote on party policies. That's after she crossed the
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: floor to vote for a Greens motion recognizing Palestine as
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: a state. Does Joe Biden have Parkinson's will he stand aside?
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: And if so, for whom? Is Michelle Obama really a
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: possible savior for the Democrats? After Donald Trump wiped the
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: floor with a hesitant, confused Joe Biden in the presidential debate,
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: we charted the way forward with Foreign editor Greg Sheridan.
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: If you're into American politics, or frankly, even if you're not,
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: there's one topic of conversation you've been thinking about for
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: the past few days.
• 1:24
  Speaker 2: Hi, Claire, how are you?
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: What on earth is going on with Joe Biden when
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: we do.
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: When Biden and Trump passed from the stage, honestly, we.
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: Have nothing to talk about. I rang our foreign editor
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: Greg Sheridan, who's an expert at the huge spectacle of
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: American elections, because this election just became seriously weird with
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: the first and maybe the only presidential debate, this was
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: Democrat's worst nightmare.
• 1:56
  Speaker 3: Just a day oun from mister Biden's debate performance, foks concerns.
• 2:00
  Speaker 4: About his aid, Donald Trump emerged as the winner of
• 2:03
  Speaker 4: the debate, where he was seeing more nimble and disciplined
• 2:06
  Speaker 4: compared to twenty twenty.
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: Yes, cannot be real life. It just can't. Well America. God, Well,
• 2:20
  Speaker 2: I was watching it with my laptop on my knees
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: because I was blogging throughout, and it was a joy.
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: There's never been a presidential debate like it. The deranged
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: versus the demented.
• 2:30
  Speaker 5: We got to take a look at what I was
• 2:31
  Speaker 5: left when I became president. Mister Trump loved me. We
• 2:35
  Speaker 5: had an economy that was in free four. The pandemic
• 2:38
  Speaker 5: was so badly.
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: Biden's cognitive capabilities have been in obvious decline for a
• 2:44
  Speaker 2: couple of years, and friends of mine who worked for him.
• 2:48
  Speaker 2: People in the administration always say, oh, no, Privately, he's
• 2:51
  Speaker 2: tough minded and he knows what he's doing. And I
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: believe he is still kind of compassmentous in the broad sense,
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: but just plainly not up to any kind of demanding job.
• 3:04
  Speaker 5: When I'm going to do is fix the taxis. For example,
• 3:07
  Speaker 5: we have one thousand trillionaires in America, I mean billionaires
• 3:10
  Speaker 5: in America.
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: And when he started speaking, his voice was so raspy
• 3:15
  Speaker 2: and thin and quiet, and you think, where is the
• 3:20
  Speaker 2: preparation here. He's allegedly had a week of preparation, and
• 3:23
  Speaker 2: you think the first just before he went on stage,
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: you think he'd have a gargle with listerine or something
• 3:29
  Speaker 2: and make sure his voice was clear and strong, I mean,
• 3:31
  Speaker 2: his voice got a bit better.
• 3:32
  Speaker 5: Able to about his debt. We'd be able to help
• 3:34
  Speaker 5: make sure that all those things we need to do, childcare,
• 3:37
  Speaker 5: elder care, making sure that we continue to suppent strength
• 3:41
  Speaker 5: in our healthcare system, making sure that we're able to
• 3:43
  Speaker 5: make every single solitary person eligible for what I've been
• 3:48
  Speaker 5: able to do with the with the COVID.
• 3:52
  Speaker 2: But the whole thing was just incomprehensible, really, And then
• 3:55
  Speaker 2: he had so many moments where he just couldn't gather
• 3:58
  Speaker 2: his thoughts and stuff bald and so forth. That was cruel.
• 4:02
  Speaker 2: You felt sad for him, But on the other hand,
• 4:04
  Speaker 2: you also felt outraged that this was what American democracy
• 4:08
  Speaker 2: was presenting. The administration thought this was a reasonable president
• 4:11
  Speaker 2: to be president.
• 4:13
  Speaker 5: With dealing with everything we have to do with What
• 4:20
  Speaker 5: if we finally beat medicare.
• 4:24
  Speaker 6: Thank you, President Biden. President Trump, Well.
• 4:27
  Speaker 2: He's ready.
• 4:27
  Speaker 7: He did beat Medicare, he beat it to death, and
• 4:29
  Speaker 7: he's destroying Medicare because all of these people are coming in.
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he'd spent a week of prep at the presidential
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: retreat Camp David, being presumably coached by his advisers and
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: doing mock debates. Maybe that's what had made his voice horse.
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: But did you get the sense in the early minutes
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: of the debate that he seemed like somebody who had
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: done a lot of prep and had been coached.
• 4:55
  Speaker 2: No, And that's what struck me about it. So Sarah
• 4:57
  Speaker 2: Palin was not an impressive Vice president cdential candidate in
• 5:01
  Speaker 2: the end, and didn't really have an intellectual mastery of
• 5:03
  Speaker 2: the issues, but she did exceptionally well in her debate
• 5:06
  Speaker 2: against Joe Biden, oh man.
• 5:09
  Speaker 3: And it's so obvious that I'm a Washington outsider and
• 5:13
  Speaker 3: someone does not used to the way you guys operate,
• 5:16
  Speaker 3: because here you.
• 5:16
  Speaker 7: Voted for the war, and now you oppose the war.
• 5:20
  Speaker 2: And she did that by memorizing about thirty or forty answers.
• 5:25
  Speaker 2: So you know for sure what issues are going to
• 5:27
  Speaker 2: come up, And it doesn't matter what form the question takes.
• 5:31
  Speaker 2: The question is about Iran or something. Here's your prepared
• 5:34
  Speaker 2: answer on Iran. Now, it just seems that Biden is
• 5:37
  Speaker 2: simply too old to hold even ten or fifteen formulations
• 5:42
  Speaker 2: in his head.
• 5:44
  Speaker 6: Out of the issue of immigration and border security, President Biden,
• 5:47
  Speaker 6: a record number of migrants have illegally crossed the southern
• 5:50
  Speaker 6: border on your watch. Why should voters trust you to
• 5:53
  Speaker 6: solve this crisis?
• 5:55
  Speaker 5: Because we worked very hard to get a bipartisan agreement
• 5:58
  Speaker 5: that not only changed all of that made sure that
• 6:01
  Speaker 5: we are in a situation where you had no circumstance
• 6:05
  Speaker 5: where they could come across the border with the.
• 6:07
  Speaker 2: Number of border the special prosecutor who looked into his
• 6:09
  Speaker 2: handling of documents recently, who said, look, this is an
• 6:13
  Speaker 2: older man with a very poor memory and I don't
• 6:16
  Speaker 2: think we can prosecute him because he will just be
• 6:19
  Speaker 2: able to say I can't remember anything that's okay. That
• 6:21
  Speaker 2: doesn't make him a bad person or anything. We're all
• 6:23
  Speaker 2: going to get there eventually, but that doesn't make it
• 6:26
  Speaker 2: fit to be president of the United States.
• 6:29
  Speaker 5: What I've done since I've changed the law, what's happened.
• 6:33
  Speaker 5: I've changed it in the way that now you're in
• 6:35
  Speaker 5: a situation where there are forty percent fewer people coming
• 6:38
  Speaker 5: across the border illegally. It's better when he left office,
• 6:42
  Speaker 5: and I'm going to continue to move until we get
• 6:44
  Speaker 5: the total ban on the total initiative relative to what
• 6:49
  Speaker 5: we're going to do with more border patrol and more
• 6:52
  Speaker 5: asylum officers.
• 6:54
  Speaker 6: President Trump.
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump is seventy eight. Joe Biden is eighty one.
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: He'll turn in November. But they seemed as though there
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: was a lot more than three years between them, didn't they?
• 7:07
  Speaker 2: They sure did. So. I know a lot of folks
• 7:09
  Speaker 2: in their eighties who would be perfectly okay on a
• 7:13
  Speaker 2: debate stage. And the West has had many leaders in
• 7:16
  Speaker 2: their eighties Conrad Adenauer in West Germany and Winston Churchill
• 7:19
  Speaker 2: and so and gentlemen, I am known nearing the end
• 7:24
  Speaker 2: of my journey, I hope.
• 7:26
  Speaker 7: I still have some services to render.
• 7:30
  Speaker 2: And that was before modern science kept everyone fitting healthier
• 7:34
  Speaker 2: for a lot longer. Trump tells Manifold lies, but Trump
• 7:40
  Speaker 2: is just a liar.
• 7:42
  Speaker 3: Will you pledge tonight that, once all legal challenges have
• 7:46
  Speaker 3: been exhausted, that you will accept the results of this election,
• 7:50
  Speaker 3: regardless of who wins, and you will say right now
• 7:54
  Speaker 3: that political violence in any form is unacceptable.
• 7:58
  Speaker 7: Well, I shouldn't have to say that, but of course
• 8:00
  Speaker 7: I believe that it's totally unacceptable. And if you would
• 8:03
  Speaker 7: see my statements that I made on Twitter at the time,
• 8:06
  Speaker 7: and also my statement that I made in the Rose Guard,
• 8:08
  Speaker 7: you would say one of the strongest statements you've ever seen,
• 8:11
  Speaker 7: in addition to the speech I made in front of
• 8:13
  Speaker 7: I believe the largest crowd I've ever spoken to, and
• 8:15
  Speaker 7: I will tell you nobody ever talks about that. They
• 8:18
  Speaker 7: talk about a relatively small number of people that went
• 8:21
  Speaker 7: to the Capitol and in many cases were ushered in
• 8:24
  Speaker 7: by the police.
• 8:25
  Speaker 2: You know that he's in touch with reality. It just
• 8:27
  Speaker 2: says things that aren't true. What the problem seems with
• 8:31
  Speaker 2: Biden is that he just doesn't seem to be able
• 8:33
  Speaker 2: to distinguish reality from fantasy. So he keeps saying that
• 8:38
  Speaker 2: unemployment was fifteen percent when he took office, and everybody
• 8:42
  Speaker 2: keeps pointing out through him that that's wrong. It was
• 8:44
  Speaker 2: less than half that. And actually Trump's performance, by Trump's standards,
• 8:49
  Speaker 2: was astonishingly disciplined and very effective, and the contrast with
• 8:53
  Speaker 2: Barden was quite shocking.
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: So let's talk about the Trump that we saw that night.
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: I thought, at any moment he might say, look, this
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: man's got dementia. Clearly he kind of string a sentence together,
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: but he didn't really go there, did he. There was
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: one moment where he said, President Biden doesn't really know
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: what he just meant.
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  Speaker 7: By the end of that sentence, I really don't know
• 9:17
  Speaker 7: what he said at the end of that sentence. I
• 9:19
  Speaker 7: don't think he knows what he said either.
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: Look, but he didn't go for the throat in the
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: way that we might have expected him to. Do you
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: think Trump is trying to appeal to a different demographic?
• 9:30
  Speaker 2: Well, I thought Trump was, by his standards, simply astonishingly
• 9:35
  Speaker 2: self disciplined. So the rules which were designed to help
• 9:39
  Speaker 2: Biden actually helped Trump enormously. Four years ago when they debated,
• 9:43
  Speaker 2: every time Biden started to faulter, Trump started to shout
• 9:46
  Speaker 2: at him.
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  Speaker 4: The issue is the American people should speak. You should
• 9:50
  Speaker 4: go out and vote. You're in voting, now vote and
• 9:54
  Speaker 4: let your senators know how you feel. Vote now in
• 9:58
  Speaker 4: a fact that make sure you were in fact, let
• 10:01
  Speaker 4: people know. Senator, I'm not going to answer the question again.
• 10:04
  Speaker 7: Answer that because the question the question was left.
• 10:11
  Speaker 2: And that meant that Trump was sort of providing a
• 10:14
  Speaker 2: blanket of protection for Biden. His mangled sentences were never
• 10:18
  Speaker 2: exposed because Trump was always interrupting him. So that not
• 10:21
  Speaker 2: only saved Biden, but it made Trump look really nasty
• 10:26
  Speaker 2: and like a playground bully. Now some of his supporters
• 10:30
  Speaker 2: like that, but it turns off a lot of normal people,
• 10:33
  Speaker 2: turns off independent voters and so on. Now, the rules
• 10:36
  Speaker 2: here were that if you spoke out of turn when
• 10:39
  Speaker 2: you were not supposed to be speaking, they would mute
• 10:41
  Speaker 2: your microphones. So Trump accepted that, and basically he didn't
• 10:45
  Speaker 2: try to talk out of turn. But not only that,
• 10:48
  Speaker 2: Like you, I expected him to be much tougher on
• 10:51
  Speaker 2: Biden's gaffs, but I think it was a conscious decision
• 10:56
  Speaker 2: that he would be restrained and just let Biden speak
• 11:02
  Speaker 2: for himself, if you know what I mean. Biden quite
• 11:05
  Speaker 2: rationally tried to go Trump a few times, said you
• 11:07
  Speaker 2: slept with a thorn stave, got the morals of an
• 11:10
  Speaker 2: alley cat and all that.
• 11:12
  Speaker 5: How many billions of dollars do you ow in civil
• 11:14
  Speaker 5: families for molesting a woman of public, for doing a
• 11:18
  Speaker 5: whole range of things, of having sex with a porn
• 11:21
  Speaker 5: star on the night while your wife was pregnant.
• 11:25
  Speaker 2: I mean, what are you talking about?
• 11:28
  Speaker 5: You have the morals of an alley cat.
• 11:30
  Speaker 2: But for once in his life, Trump didn't rise to
• 11:32
  Speaker 2: the debate.
• 11:32
  Speaker 7: I didn't have sex with a porn star number one,
• 11:35
  Speaker 7: number two. That was a case that was started and moved.
• 11:39
  Speaker 7: They moved a high ranking official, a DOJ, into the
• 11:42
  Speaker 7: Manhattan DA's office to start that case.
• 11:45
  Speaker 2: Then Trump is so much more effective when he is
• 11:48
  Speaker 2: talking about the issues and talking about Biden's record. He
• 11:51
  Speaker 2: didn't want the debate to be all about Trump. Oddly enough,
• 11:55
  Speaker 2: even though Trump is a tremendous narcissist, he wanted the
• 11:57
  Speaker 2: debate to be about Biden, and it was tremendously to
• 12:01
  Speaker 2: Biden's detriment.
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: Coming up after the break. So who can the Democrats get?
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: While I've got you, we'd love you to get more
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: of this journalism by subscribing to The Australian at the
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: Australian dot com dot au. We'll be back after the break.
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: Not surprisingly, the Democrats are starting to panic. But they're
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: in a confusing situation now Greek because Biden has got
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: the majority of votes at the primaries, the contests where
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: registered Democrats choose which candidate they want. How could Joe
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: Biden be replaced if the Democrats do want that? Is
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: this going to be a matter for Joe Biden himself.
• 13:00
  Speaker 2: It has to be a matter for Joe Biden himself.
• 13:01
  Speaker 2: There isn't provision in the constitution that if the cabinet
• 13:05
  Speaker 2: decides the president is infirm, they can replace him. There's
• 13:09
  Speaker 2: no chance of that happening. But of course Pidon I
• 13:11
  Speaker 2: think is a very mixed grill. I think he's been
• 13:13
  Speaker 2: a pretty poor president. But one quality that he has
• 13:16
  Speaker 2: in abundance superabundance his stubbornness and orneriness. And he has
• 13:22
  Speaker 2: that almost insane self belief which any leader has. He'd
• 13:27
  Speaker 2: never won a presidential primary. He was always also ran
• 13:30
  Speaker 2: and so on and then circumstances just worked for him
• 13:33
  Speaker 2: perfectly when the Democratic Party needed a mainstream person to
• 13:37
  Speaker 2: run against Trump. And it's going to be hard to
• 13:40
  Speaker 2: convince Biden that his position is untenable. So I think
• 13:47
  Speaker 2: a lot of senior Democrats are trying to persuade him
• 13:49
  Speaker 2: to stand aside. But unless they persuade him, he is
• 13:53
  Speaker 2: the nominee. I think one reason he chose Amala Harris
• 13:56
  Speaker 2: as his vice president and then has kept her in
• 13:59
  Speaker 2: the shadows all through her term is that he never
• 14:02
  Speaker 2: wanted the vice president to be seen to be an
• 14:05
  Speaker 2: alternative to him. There's a very long tradition of that
• 14:07
  Speaker 2: in all presidential politics. Richard Nixon chose first Spireau Agnew,
• 14:10
  Speaker 2: then Gerald Ford because he thought they were both such
• 14:13
  Speaker 2: mediocre underheads that nobody would ever want them to be president.
• 14:17
  Speaker 2: Eisenhower chose Nixon on the same basis. Really, Franklin Roosevelt's
• 14:22
  Speaker 2: vice presidents until he got to Harry Truman were absolute shockers.
• 14:27
  Speaker 2: Leaders generally systematically get rid of alternatives, and then there's
• 14:30
  Speaker 2: a terrible moment of truth when the leader has to
• 14:33
  Speaker 2: go that you don't have any alternatives.
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: One of the alternatives on paper at least is Krmla Harris.
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: She's the vice president. She's a former lawyer, district attorney,
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: then she was a senator. She on the surface, greg
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: has appealed to demographics that the Democrats need, for example,
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: people of color in the United States. She has Indian
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: and an African American heritage. Why is she not the
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: dream candidate who the Democrats are now turning towards with hope.
• 15:01
  Speaker 2: You can't really pick a politician on the basis of
• 15:05
  Speaker 2: ticking identity politics boxes. So when Bill Clinton was president,
• 15:10
  Speaker 2: he was terrified that Colin Powell was going to run
• 15:13
  Speaker 2: against him for the Republican because Powell was just a
• 15:17
  Speaker 2: magnificent public figure whom everyone in the United States loved.
• 15:22
  Speaker 2: He was also African American. Kamala Harris Joe Biden picked
• 15:27
  Speaker 2: her because she was a minority box ticker. But the
• 15:31
  Speaker 2: problem is Kamala Harris has shown those signs of being
• 15:34
  Speaker 2: a very effective politician. She came absolutely nowhere in the
• 15:38
  Speaker 2: Democratic primaries. She might, in theory appeal to African Americans,
• 15:43
  Speaker 2: but they didn't vote for her. I think very cruelly
• 15:46
  Speaker 2: Joe Biden gave her the assignment of solving the problem
• 15:49
  Speaker 2: on the southern border, and that's been an absolute catastrophe.
• 15:53
  Speaker 2: So she dabbled in that for a while and then
• 15:55
  Speaker 2: ran away from it. She has a lot of difficulty
• 15:59
  Speaker 2: managing people. There's been just repeated shocking staff turnover in
• 16:04
  Speaker 2: her office, and her poll numbers aren't terrible, and this
• 16:07
  Speaker 2: is one of the problems. If they could persuade him
• 16:11
  Speaker 2: to stand aside, would they then have a contest in
• 16:14
  Speaker 2: which they could pitch one of their good governors or
• 16:18
  Speaker 2: would it automatically fall to Kamala Harris. Imagine if Gavin
• 16:22
  Speaker 2: Newsom from California and Gretchen Whitmer from Michigan were suddenly
• 16:27
  Speaker 2: in a truncated kind of primary contest or convention contest
• 16:31
  Speaker 2: with Kamala Harris. The Democrats then would project disunity and
• 16:36
  Speaker 2: chaos and in a sense without being two censorious. This
• 16:40
  Speaker 2: is where Joe Biden's I think you've got to say
• 16:43
  Speaker 2: selfishness has left the Democrats because it's very hard to
• 16:47
  Speaker 2: get an elegant dismount now. Whereas if he'd said a
• 16:50
  Speaker 2: year ago, I had one job, which was to stop Trump.
• 16:54
  Speaker 2: I've done that now. Now I'm handing avident to a
• 16:57
  Speaker 2: new generation of Democrat leaders, and I've got one for
• 17:00
  Speaker 2: vice president, but I'm not going to interfere in the
• 17:01
  Speaker 2: primary process. We've got fabulous Democrats. Blah blah blah. You.
• 17:06
  Speaker 2: I mean, that's what Ronald Reagan did at the end
• 17:07
  Speaker 2: of his second term, and his successor, George Herbert Walker
• 17:10
  Speaker 2: Bush one a very convincing election as a result. But
• 17:14
  Speaker 2: Biden is now, whatever happens, it's just going to be
• 17:17
  Speaker 2: very messy.
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: It seems there is a dark horse in this race,
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: which is Michelle Obama, whose name is being mentioned, including
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: by some senators. Is she a real prospect to consider
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: herself a candidate for the Democratic nomination if all those
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: things do happen, greg Or is that a complete red herring?
• 17:36
  Speaker 2: No, I think she is a very real prospect. She's
• 17:39
  Speaker 2: a very real prospect, and she could very well win,
• 17:41
  Speaker 2: and if she won, that's democracy. Now, I think her
• 17:46
  Speaker 2: candidacy would be regressive because her qualification is that she
• 17:53
  Speaker 2: was the spouse of a president and has a tremendous
• 17:57
  Speaker 2: celebrity identity. Now, let me hasten to say, the absolute
• 18:03
  Speaker 2: prime progenitor of this is Donald Trump. So Donald Trump
• 18:07
  Speaker 2: went from reality TV to politics and in a sense,
• 18:10
  Speaker 2: he was a genius. I'm no big fan of Trump's
• 18:14
  Speaker 2: by any means. Now, Michelle Obama, really in terms of
• 18:17
  Speaker 2: public policy, has a thinner resume than Barack Obama had
• 18:22
  Speaker 2: when he ran. But she's a very convincing media performer.
• 18:26
  Speaker 2: It'd be hard for Trump to beat up on her
• 18:28
  Speaker 2: without looking like a horrible bully. So she could certainly
• 18:32
  Speaker 2: unite all the factions of the Democratic Party. No one
• 18:35
  Speaker 2: would be wanting to be beating up on Michelle Obama,
• 18:38
  Speaker 2: So I think she is quite seriously in the mix.
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: Lucky for you agree, you're not the White House chief
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: of staff, but if you were, what would you be
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: telling Joe Biden to do.
• 18:50
  Speaker 2: Joe Biden has to stand down. There's still quite a
• 18:54
  Speaker 2: few months before the election. If he had an address
• 18:59
  Speaker 2: to the name next week in which he said, I've
• 19:02
  Speaker 2: given my whole life to this nation. I love this nation.
• 19:05
  Speaker 2: I serve the nation. The nation doesn't serve me. It's
• 19:09
  Speaker 2: clear to me now that I'm not in the best
• 19:11
  Speaker 2: position to contest the election against Trump. You'll still get
• 19:14
  Speaker 2: a lot of criticism for not having done it beforehand,
• 19:17
  Speaker 2: but there will be a wave of characteristic American sentimentality.
• 19:23
  Speaker 2: I mean a lot of things in Joe Biden's past
• 19:25
  Speaker 2: you wouldn't really like when he was plagiarizing British politicians,
• 19:29
  Speaker 2: or when he was a friend of the ku Klux Klan,
• 19:31
  Speaker 2: and when he was opposing bussing and all the rest
• 19:33
  Speaker 2: of it. When he was tremendously anti abortion. Now he's
• 19:36
  Speaker 2: tremendously pro abortion. But none of that will matter. But
• 19:40
  Speaker 2: probably he would then want to coronate someone if he could,
• 19:45
  Speaker 2: and that would be very tricky. All of that, complex
• 19:48
  Speaker 2: and difficult as it is, will be much easier than
• 19:53
  Speaker 2: continuing to run. Having said all of that, having said
• 19:56
  Speaker 2: all of that, is still possibly could win the election.
• 19:58
  Speaker 2: I wonder whether this might not mean that the judge
• 20:01
  Speaker 2: decides to put Trump in jail, because if Trump is
• 20:04
  Speaker 2: likely to win the election, that makes him a much
• 20:06
  Speaker 2: bigger threat to democracy in the view of the Democrats
• 20:09
  Speaker 2: then he was two weeks ago. You know, Peter Jennings
• 20:13
  Speaker 2: one set of Trump, the world needed Captain America and
• 20:16
  Speaker 2: instead we got the incredible hult. Think about the incredible
• 20:20
  Speaker 2: hold is you can't blow him up, You keep raining
• 20:22
  Speaker 2: down weapons on top of him, and he's still theirs.
• 20:24
  Speaker 2: This could move into intense warfare, Biden could be persuaded
• 20:28
  Speaker 2: to stand aside. As a kid, I used to watch
• 20:30
  Speaker 2: World Championship Wrestling and the commentator used to say, this
• 20:34
  Speaker 2: is World Championship Wrestling, where anything can happen and probably will.
• 20:38
  Speaker 2: That's American politics at the moment.
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: Greg Sheridan is The Australian's Foreign editor. Relatives of missing
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: woman Bromwyn Winfield believe her body is in Lake Ainsworth
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: on the New South Wales Far North coast. That's the
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: revelation in a new episode of our cold case investigative podcast, Bromway,
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: available now to The Australian's subscribers at Bromwyn podcast dot com.