What do you think of this speech?
I thought this speech was wonderful.
The things that I wrote down were not in our
group of sort of the select quotes.
My one of my, the 11 of the ones that
moved me was one that goes to what Lawrence said
earlier, where he said nowhere else on earth could a
kid from Pennsylvania with a stutter rise to sit behind
the Resolute Desk as president United States.
I thought that was so Biden.
It was at that so Biden moment.
I thought his gratitude and the expressions of gratitude for
the office, talking about I love, you know, I Revere
this office, but I love my country more.
This is somebody you think about the student council kid
that you went to high school with, the people who
really loved student council.
This was their mission and their passion.
He's that guy and he's somebody who devoted his life,
his whole adult life to politics.
But this was selfless.
This was selfless on a level.
I think that's important in a way that we talk
about George Washington being selfless and saying I could keep
doing this for me because I think I can, but
I'm going to stop doing it because I think that
there are choices.
There were two.
This is also quote America's going to have to choose
between moving forward or backward.
I've made it clear I believe America is an inflection
point.
As Rachel Maddow point out, this is one of those
moments in history when we have to determine our fate
as a nation, our decade and our for decades to
come.
America's going to have to choose between moving forward or
backward, between hope and hate.
Also very Biden and then I think this other piece
here where he talked about allowing new voices and younger
voices into the room.
He says there's a time and a place for long
years of experience in public life.
There's also a time and a place for new voices,
fresh voices, yes, younger voices.
And that time and place is now over the next
six months.
I'm focused on doing my job as president.
I thought that was wonderful, Jen, just to build on
Joy's point about sort of the, the, the, the lines
that are so Biden.
I give my heart and soul to our nation.
Like so many others, I've been blessed a million times
in return by the love and support of the American
people.
I hope you have some idea of how grateful I
am to all of you.
Lawrence was talking about this earlier, but he I mean,
he always says he's black Irish.
He'll, he'll say like, I make it hit by a
bus tomorrow, which he says all the time.
But he is grateful and grateful for the role he
has played, grateful for the people.
And one of the things that's one of the lines
that struck me was it's about we the people, we
net.
We can never forget that.
I draw strength and I find joy in working for
the American people.
And I circled that in part because, as Rachel was
saying, it was about a view of the presidency.
And I think in this dark moment or what years
we've all lived through, you sometimes forget that people get
into public service largely from all sides of the political
spectrum because they want to do good, because they want
to make people's lives better.
And there's differences of view on on how to do
that.
And that's OK.
But he very much got into public service because he
wants to do good and fight for the people from
Scranton.
That's who he is.
And I actually think that phrase, if they had a
good enough speechwriter, could have been written and delivered by
most presidents in history, right?
That's the belief.
That's why people get into that, why they run for
office, because they represent the American people.
The other thing that struck me, and I circled it
when he talked about reforming the Supreme Court because as
Lawrence knows, as you all know, this is not a
phrase that would have come out of the mouth of
President Joe Biden, even while he's been President Joe Biden.
And it was a reminder, I think, that leadership is
about being consistent and people knowing what to expect from
you.
It's also being open to evolving.
And his grandchildren being in the room is, is a,
is a real symbol of that.
I mean, he talks to them every day.
He always picks up the phone if they call.
It does not matter what he's getting briefed on or
who's in the room.
It can be 5 generals.
It doesn't matter.
And he has evolved on many things overtime as great
leaders do.
Obviously Supreme Court reform is one.
I remember when I was working for President Obama, when,
when Vice President Joe Biden and I was texting with
Shayla Murray when during this, she was his communications director
at the time when he did the interview, I think
it was on Meet the Press.
I can't remember where he based came out in support
of gay marriage before President Obama came out publicly and
I text her said this seems to be going well.
And she said Oh well, you've not made it to
the end.
Not that it wasn't going well because of that position,
but because he got out ahead of President Obama.
And the point is he has been consistent and who
he's fighting for, but he has also shown the ability
to evolve and evolve with the need to change based
on a range of issues that have impacted and faced
our country.
I mean, it's interesting that Jim mentioned the Supreme Court.
The story broke in the Washington Post, I think, on
his last day on the campaign trail.
I think it was last Wednesday or Tuesday or Wednesday
every every day feels like 11, but that that he
was considering that he was going to throw his weight
behind legislation to reform the Supreme Court, especially in the
area of term limits and ethics reform.
And to the degree that he he had all of
this poetry and all this pros to remind us who
are as a country.
He also has this forward-looking vision for a future where
the Supreme Court isn't what it is today.
Well, and I think the Supreme Court as it currently
stands as part of what he he sees as a
threat to basic democracy in the country, right?
I mean, this is someone who in his career as
the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee in 1980s five
confirmed Antonin Scalia, right?
He believes in the institution.
He said, you know, I may not agree with, I'm
paraphrasing, I may not agree with Scalia's politics, but it's
Reagan's choice to make, you know, to install him as
associate justice.
He has come a long way since then, right?
The Supreme Court has also come a long way since
then.
And I think it's, you know, we talk about the
the twilight of this presidency.
He speaks to a lot of different topics in this
speech, talks about Ukraine, He talks about Gaza, he talks
about climate.
But the Supreme Court is a very specific thing that
he spends a little bit of time on.
I will try and find the actual excerpt.
The I'm going to call for Supreme Court reform because
this is critical to our democracy.
The fact that he calls it out in this, you
know, 13 minutes speech, that's one of the last two
big ones he's going to make is an indicator that
it's a real priority for this administration.
And it'll be really interesting to see because I think
we talk about NN December and January are critical moments
for the survival of our democracy.
And the Supreme Court could very well play a key
role in that.
And so if there is going to be any reform,
time is of the essence.
When when he left, dropped out of his first presidential
campaign in 1988.
One of the things he said, and I'm going to
show this at at 10:00 tonight, Ron Klain's going to
join us at 10:00 tonight and I think give us
the long term perspective we we need on this.
But one of the things he said is when he
dropped out of the presidential campaign is he needed to
get back to Washington to fight the direction Ronald Reagan
was sending the Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court was in his withdrawal speech then.
And you know, there's the Scalia vote.
It's so interesting how that's evolved.
The Scalia vote, I think was close to unanimous, if
not unanimous in the Senate, right?
Because the the theory was the president gets the Supreme
Court justices they want.
Chuck Schumer, who was a Judiciary Committee member, made a
big thoughtful speech around during the Bush presidency 2005.
So around there saying, you know, I think we might
want to start to consider what these judges actually think,
like maybe we should vote on that basis as opposed
to just rubber stamping them to where we all are
today.
And and Joe Biden moving to where we are today
on Supreme Court reform is, is such an important endorsement
for something that surely will end up being carried out
by the Harris administration because you're going to need more
Democrats in the Senate to do it.
You're going to need more political strength to do it.
But for him to begin this crusade about the Supreme
Court is very important because the truth is in part
of Lindsey Graham's secret life.
He respects Joe Biden as a United States Senator and
his view of the Supreme Court and and the all
of the principles that Joe Biden has historically applied to
the Supreme Court.
You mentioned you're going to have Ron Klain.
I'm Ron Klain.
I think of when I think about, you know, the
people that have so much riding on how this speech
went just as sort of the most the most expert
person in that category.
Lawrence, how did you feel about the speech personally?
You know, it's it's it's a hard speech.
It's a hard speech to watch the those speeches for
for the end of a career.
It's not.
There have been many last hurrahs.
We have never seen the last hurrah of a 52
year electoral politics career.
There has never been a weight greater on someone delivering
their final speech as a candidate.
Technically this is his final speech as a candidate.
He, he tweeted it on Sunday, but this is the
first time he has spoken the words that he is
withdrawing from the campaign.
And as someone you know who, who knew him, he
the ultimate compliment for him is something that people know
about in, in congressional staff is that I worked on
Senator Moynihan staff.
Ron Klain was on Senator Biden staff.
And the ultimate compliment you can get is that your
senator is loved, and I mean loved by other staff,
not by his own staff.
A bunch of them have that.
A bunch of them have that devotion.
Joe Biden had much more devotion, respect, admiration and love
in those thousands of Senate staffers up there than just
the ones who were working for him.
Let me bring into our coverage our friend and colleague
Stephanie Ruhle.
Steph, what?
What are you thinking now?
What have you've had more time to probably read through
it than than we have.
What leaps out at you?
You know, it was an extraordinary speech and it's a
reminder that Joe Biden is both the president of the
United States, but he's also the leader of the Democratic
Party.
So for the last few days when we're hearing critics
say, well, if he's dropping out of the race, how
could he possibly be in any condition to be president
of the United States?
Those people are silenced tonight.
He gave that speech as the commander in chief and
there's no one who watched that who thinks he possibly,
you know, he can't possibly see out the rest of
his term.
But what he did was take a long look at
this campaign and how important this next election is and
realized as the head of the party, he's not the
best person to be in that fight against Donald Trump.
And, you know, today there was a call with 44
big, big sort of classic Democratic donors like Wall Street
executives, business people, people from sports and entertainment.
And they were speaking to to the head of the
Finance Committee, excuse me, the the head of finance for
Kamala Harris's campaign.
And I spoke to a number of people after the
call and no one was saying, we're so glad that
we pushed President Biden out.
Every person I spoke to said we stand with all
his policies.
He has been an extraordinary president.
But one of the things they're so excited about and
energized, they have somebody in this fight who Joe Biden
is going to pass the torch to who they think
can really win.
So I just want to make that point because there's
so much anger out there, these these donors and influencers
who pushed Joe Biden to step aside.
I spoke to so many tonight who are grateful for
everything he's done, who believe in his policies, and are
excited to see what Kamala Harris is going to do
next.