 It's almost inevitable that Donald Trump is going to be prosecuted either in a state court or a federal court. And I think that when that moment comes, that's going to be a watershed for Joe Biden. The fate of Richard Nixon in many ways defined Gerald Ford's presidency. And when he pardoned Richard Nixon, he ended up losing to Jimmy Carter in 1976. I think the stakes are just as great here for Joe Biden. That was our guest Chris Whipple, the author of The Fight of His Life Inside Joe Biden's White House, the first major book to take aim at the Biden presidency. I'm Mark Up to Grove. And I'm Mark Lawrence, and this is With the Bark Off. Chris Whipple is an author and Emmy award-winning documentary filmmaker. He appears frequently as a political analyst on MSNBC, CNN, and NPR. And his previous books include The Gatekeeper, How the White House Chiefs of Staff Define Every Presidency, and The Spy Masters, How the CIA Directors Shape History and the Future. For The Fight of His Life, Chris spent two years talking with White House insiders, including Joe Biden himself, to provide a look at how the administration is faced enormous and, in many cases, unprecedented challenges. Some that came in the wake of the chaotic Trump presidency, and others that have arisen since. Chris, welcome and thanks so much for joining us on With the Bark Off. Before we jump into the Biden presidency itself, I think it's important to talk about the transition, this extraordinary transition between the Trump and Biden White Houses. This certainly had to be the most challenging transition in all of American history, since Trump, of course, never conceded defeat and refused to cooperate with Biden or his team. I wonder if you could put that moment in historical perspective, and perhaps talk about the strains that this situation placed on Joe Biden and his team. Well, as you say, I mean, it was the most fraught and contentious and dangerous transition since the Civil War. And it's an incredible story. You would think at this point that you've read everything that could possibly be told about that story. And yet, I found to my amazement that a key part of the story hadn't been told, and so I devote a couple of chapters to it in the fight of his life. And what happened essentially is that a small group of Trump officials in the White House carried out the transition as a sub-Rosa operation under Trump's nose and without his knowledge. And principally, there was a deputy chief of staff named Chris Liddell, a New Zealander who came to the U.S., wound up running the Romney transition, ended up in the Trump White House, and if not for this guy Liddell, who quietly kept the wheels of the transition turning during the final days of the Trump presidency, we might not have had a transfer of power. So it's an amazing story, I think. Again, I was surprised that nobody else had told it. What is the greatest revelation about the transition that you came upon? The Chris Liddell thing, Chris, is amazing, just knowing that there was somebody who was working surreptitiously to ensure that there would be a smooth transition despite Trump's orders not to cooperate. But what did you find that was most revelatory as you dug into this? You know, Mark, it's hard to single one thing out. It was just such an astonishing sequence of events. And, you know, I even have a, one of the scenes I like is the private Zoom session that Ron Klain had a month before the inauguration with 19 of the 22 living White House chiefs of staff, after which, in the wee hours of the morning, Trump tweeted out, be there, be wild. It's going to be wild, as we all know. But one of the fascinating things was Mark Meadows in the midst of all this, the final chief of staff for Trump who, again, I describe not so much a chief of staff as a kind of clad handing matriot D who would do anything Trump asked him to do. But he was a yes man to everyone. He wanted everybody to think he was doing their bidding. And astonishingly, at one point, the head of the Biden transition, Ted Kaufman, sends a fax to the White House. By law, the chief of staff is required to sign it along with the incoming transition director. Kaufman was convinced there was no way in the world this would ever happen. He'd be shot, you know, if Trump learned about it. And yet, suddenly, Ted Kaufman's fax machine clanked to life and in came this document signed by Mark Meadows authorizing the transition. Kaufman has it framed on his wall. He still can't believe it. Weird things like that were going on. Inexplicably, Meadows was giving this guy Chris Liddell, his deputy, the green light, to go ahead and do it. Just don't tell the boss. I should point out to our listeners that Ted Kaufman is Joe Biden's neighbor in Delaware and worked for years and years with Joe Biden on Capitol Hill at one point as his chief of staff. Very, very close to Joe Biden and one of the... Again, I was really lucky to have got access to most of Biden's inner circle and nobody knows Biden better than Kaufman and I got to know him pretty well. Chris, you talked about that Zoom call, that extraordinary Zoom call with 19 former chiefs of staff who are giving Ron Klain counsel as he attempts to take on the role for Joe Biden. That's got to be an amazing thing to have witnessed. You are an expert on chiefs of staff having written your book, The Gatekeepers. Talk about that conversation and what Ron Klain most took from it. I heard about it through my sources and this is a tradition that goes back to Rahm Emanuel when he came in as Barack Obama's first chief of staff. There was this tradition of all the former chiefs coming together and giving advice to the new kid on the block. So they did it for Ron Klain and it was in the middle of the COVID pandemic, of course. So it was all done virtually instead of in the chief of staff's office. But 19 of the 22 living chiefs were there including two of Trump's chiefs. Trump would not have been pleased if he had known this. And yet, so Mark Meadows was not there and neither was Ryan's previous, but Kelly and John Kelly and Mick Mulvaney were on the call. There was a lot of really interesting advice given to Klain, but one of my favorite things which you may appreciate was the advice from LBJ's chief of staff, Jim Jones, who was 28 years old, as you know, when he became White House chief of staff. LBJ didn't really have a chief, but that's a long story. But Jones had the title and his advice to Ron Klain was to, he was worried about Joe Biden's age. Jones was 82 years old at the time of the call and he said, you know, I recognize him. I see myself in the president, the incoming president. I'm an expert at stumbling, going up the stairs. I see it with this guy and you've got to take care of him and make sure he's rested and that he's up to this job. Chris, tell us a little bit more about President Biden's relationship with Ron Klain or perhaps a wider array of characters who surround Biden in his White House. How are these individuals shaping the Biden presidency and perhaps managing his appearances in public to cope with some of the kinds of problems that you're getting at? Well, it's an extraordinary collection of talent, I have to say. And in a way, you think back to JFK's, the best and the brightest. You know, it's a really competent, qualified group of people and maybe Ron Klain most of all. I mean, I think every living White House chief of staff would tell you that no one has ever been better prepared than Ron Klain to be chief of staff. He worked for nine, count them, nine previous White House chiefs of staff. He knows the job cold. He knew it coming in. He knows Capitol Hill. He's politically savvy. And he has a very, very strong relationship with Biden, which, and as you guys know, that's the most important relationship of all. They're kind of like an old married couple. You know, they don't see eye to eye on everything, but it clicks. And one of, when you ask Klain, ask Ron about it, he'll say, you know, I go in there. He's a lawyer and he says, I go in there and I'll give five arguments for option A and five arguments for option B. And the president will say, well, what about C? What about B plus? Biden tends to think in terms of his fingertips, his gut, anecdotes, people he's he's encountered. He has and claims kind of the straight ahead more lawyerly one of the pair. But it but it works. One of the many challenges, Chris, that Biden has faced from the Trump hangover is his discomfort in your words with the Secret Service, many of whom are mega sympathizers. You write that he had a strained relationship with the Secret Service to only get worse as he settled into the presidency. And that seems like a pretty big problem when you're the president of the United States. Talk about the state of the relationship between Joe Biden and his Secret Service detail. I was stunned to hear this. It's it's really a troubling thing as far as I'm concerned. And it really it really goes back to if you go if you rewind to the transition. Joe Biden has always had a very good relationship with his Secret Service detail and he was close to the head of his detail during the transition. That officer, for whatever reason, was transferred out. Biden ended up with a much larger security detail as president as presidents always do. And he quickly discovered that that some of some of that detail were mega sympathizers. Now, if you think about it, maybe that shouldn't be shocking because the Secret Service is full of white ex cops from the South who tend to be deeply conservative. And so it should maybe that shouldn't be surprising. But it bothered Biden on a couple of levels. I mean, he, you know, he felt that for one thing he always he always considered himself a real friend of cops. You know, he'd always had traditionally police unions were in his corner. They backed him for election. He he's proud of everything he's done to to increase police pensions and other things he's always felt comfortable with with cops. It's just bothered him. Joe Biden felt that he should be able to persuade these guys to be in his corner and a couple of major police unions back Trump during the 2020 election. So it bothered him on a couple of different levels. But to me, the most troubling level is the notion that that Joe Biden can't necessarily trust his Secret Service detail to keep his secrets. That's the way he felt. And I think that's a really troubling situation. So what do you do about that? Because if that's the case and you're president of the United States, how do you fix that problem? Well, that's it's it's a very good question. I mean, he certainly has he certainly can find ways of transferring agents out of his security detail, presumably. Why he hasn't done that in this case is is a is a very good question. And I'm not sure we know. And it could this is speculation, but he but it could well be that he doesn't want to he doesn't want to be perceived as somebody who's being political himself that we're trying to create some kind of Praetorian guard is loyal to him. That's speculation on my part. But what we do know, we know more than enough about the troubles of the Secret Service in recent years. And Trump tried to politicize and to some extent, succeeded in politicizing the Secret Service. All you need to know is that Tony or not, oh, his his most loyal agent was promoted to deputy White House Chief of Staff, which was a bald political move that tells you everything you need to know. So the Secret Service, I think, is in need of a shake up. And maybe while the Republicans under Kevin McCarthy are looking for Hunter Biden's laptop, maybe the Democrats of the Senate should be looking at the Secret Service. Chris, you've said that up to this point, the Biden story is, as you've put it, a tale of two presidencies year one and year two. Let's talk for a minute about year one, a period, as you see it of challenges of some setbacks. So this surely one of the most striking setbacks of that first year was the collapse of Afghanistan. Talk a little bit about that episode and why it turned into such a debacle, at least from a public opinion standpoint for Joe Biden. Well, it really is, I think, a tale of two presidencies, the first year and the second year. And in the first year, they came in facing the most daunting set of challenges since FDR's time, I think, only to be confronted with all sorts of unexpected crises from inflation to supply chain problems. The Delta variant and everything else. With Afghanistan, you know, Jake Sullivan, the National Security Advisor has a favorite expression that he stole from Mike Tyson, which is everybody's got a plan until they get punched in the mouth. Well, they got punched in the mouth by Afghanistan. Trump bears plenty of blame for leaving them in effect with Mission Impossible, I think, because he, by promising that the US would get out by May 1st. He really presented the Biden administration with an almost impossible situation. I think the Afghan Armed Forces were not going to last much longer in any event. But from the outside, obviously the Afghanistan withdrawal was chaotic and shambolic and choose your adjective, but from the inside it was even more fraught. And there was plenty of dissension and, well, there was certainly plenty of debate and disagreement, particularly in the immediate aftermath of the withdrawal. I don't know anybody else who's been able to sit down and quiz not only Tony Blinken and Ron Klain, but also Mark Milley and CIA director Bill Burns about this. But I was lucky enough to do that for the book, and I lay it all out or try to. And what it came down to, I mean, Tony Blinken said in no uncertain terms that everything we did in Afghanistan was based on an intelligent assessment that proved to be terribly wrong, which is that the Afghan government and armed forces would last for 18 months. I went over to CIA and talked to Bill Burns about that, spent an hour with him in his office up above Langley talking about this, and he had a very different version of that. I mean, he said that the CIA was clear eyed about the fragility of the Afghan government and armed forces. He said that if you, you know, their prediction depended on when you asked. But if you told, if you told the CIA that the US would pull out two legs of the stool, namely the US military and the contractors who kept the Afghan armed forces up in the air. The prediction was nothing like 18 months. It was it was that would be real trouble almost immediately. Mark Milley gave me yet another assessment saying that that he, his recollection was that the intelligence predicted the Afghans folding around Thanksgiving. So, there was a lot of that behind the scenes which I think is original reporting in my book. At the end of the day, I think that this was a whole of government failure. I mean, it was a failure at every level. And you can argue about the decision to withdraw, but it was the execution that failed. And part of it was the US military being completely clueless about the ability of the Afghans to fight. And so I think another another major factor was that essentially we were trying to evacuate with only 700 troops on the ground. You can't do that. And that never would have happened if they hadn't expected the government to last much longer than it did. Clearly things got better in year two last year, as Biden found his rhythm in the White House. So what changed? Well, I think everything changed when Vladimir Putin launched the invasion of a democracy in the heart of Europe. I mean, this was the moment that Joe Biden was trained his whole life to confront. This is a guy who who spent his whole career during the Cold War taking the measure of then Soviets and now Russians. And he was uniquely prepared for this, I think. And I report a lot of previously untold stories in the walk up to the invasion, including a story involving Tony Blinken, eviscerating Sergey Lavrov at a ministerial meeting and Kamala Harris meeting privately secretly with with Volodymyr Zelensky and and fearing that she might never seem alive again. It's, it's a great story. A really important story as we all know. That was the beginning, I think of the change in Joe Biden's fortunes, but of course, he then was able to get on a roll with a number of bipartisan legislative victories culminating in the, the, the measure that really revived his presidency. And in my view, and that was the inflation reduction act that Chuck Schumer and Joe Manchin were able to hammer out. That's been portrayed as mansion and Schumer freelancing and coming to Biden's rescue but as I report in my book. And this was aided if not abetted if not orchestrated by the team in the White House, including Ron Klein, they were in it every step of the way. And so that's a great story as well. Chris, going back to year one, just for a minute talk about why it was that the Biden presidency had so much difficulty with build back better with this ambitious agenda of domestic programs. That, as you say, seemed to get somewhere in year two, but why was it such a struggle in year one? Yeah, the thing that hurt Biden that the most after Afghanistan during the first year was was that long, ugly tug of war over the bipartisan infrastructure bill and build that build back better as it was then known. This was a Capitol Hill sausage making ads at its ugliest. And it really was was a long. It triggered if or at least accelerated a long decline in Biden's approval rating. And one of the problems was that the two the two bills were were linked and the progressives didn't want bipartisan infrastructure without build back better and all of the progressive measures that went along with it. Biden as a result, sent mixed signals conflicting signals and I think he looked feckless and indecisive for months while that happened three times he went to Capitol Hill and the expectation was that he was going to finally put bipartisan infrastructure over the top. And and he didn't. And there's a great scene in the book, I think, when Joe Biden gets on a plane in October to go to Rome, and then the Glasgow empty handed without his the crown jewel of his legislative agenda which was built back better with all of its climate friendly provisions. And I went to see Ron claim that Saturday just as Biden took off and spent the afternoon with him and it was really stunning to me because it was as though Ron claim was was resigned to it. You know, Biden had just said that his presidency the fate of his presidency was linked to Congress passing these two bills. And they hadn't. And claim was telling me he he put the odds at 5050. He was basically telling me that, you know, the Biden presidency was was was in the balance. It seemed to me. So it's it's remarkable how they they were able to manage the turnaround. And as I say, I think it's a great story. I think the Biden presidency is a is a political thriller. And of course we don't know the the ending to that thriller yet. Clearly, one of Biden's greatest failings was the Afghanistan withdrawal. Chris, but what do you see as his greatest accomplishment. Well, I think, you know, there are there are a number of defining tests of this presidency and the first one would have to be the coven, the once in a century pandemic, and his handling of that. The second is is is Biden's rallying of NATO to face down Vladimir Putin and defend Ukraine. And there's a there's a third defining tests that he's yet to pass. And that is what happens to Donald Trump and the MAGA movement. And I think that it's almost inevitable that Donald Trump is going to be prosecuted either in a state court or a federal court. And I think that when that moment comes, you know, that's going to be a real. That's going to be a watershed for Joe Biden, you know, the fate of Richard Nixon in many ways defined Gerald Ford's presidency. And when he pardoned Richard Nixon, he ended up losing to Jimmy Carter in 1976. I think the stakes are are just as great here for for Joe Biden. But to answer your question of what what his greatest achievement has been, I think you'd have to say it was rallying Ukraine rallying NATO to defend Ukraine against Vladimir Putin. What is his view of Zelensky you you write in the book that it's there's there's a little bit of ambivalence there to talk about that a little bit if you would. Well, I think the Biden White House, no less than the rest of the world was was surprised by the way Zelensky rose to meet this moment. This, you know, again, everybody's used the comparative to Churchill. I think that surprised Joe Biden, it certainly surprised Kamala Harris who, who when she met privately with him at the Munich Security Conference right before the invasion was literally turned to a to an aid and said I wonder if we'll see him alive again. So, I think that Zelensky surprised Biden, just as we've all been surprised, but he's also been somewhat exasperating because there's Biden is trying to walk this geopolitical tightrope and avoid getting into a nuclear confrontation with Russia and and Zelensky no less than Churchill is determined to drag the US into this war, or at least get all the weapons systems he can possibly get and defend Ukraine's airspace. So I think that that's been a tricky path for Biden, a tricky tightrope for Biden to walk. I'm sure that I think he he's he's been surprised by by Zelensky's courage, like we all have. And Chris, it seems to me keeping that balancing act going is going to be no small challenge. What do you think are the, you know, the problems that worry Biden most in connection with Ukraine as we move forward into the second two years of his presidency. I think the thing that makes him lose sleep is the possibility that there still could be a use of nuclear weapons in Ukraine. I've talked to Bill Burns about this at length and the CIA director and Burns and Biden see eye to eye on this and it keeps them both up at night, I think. Burns talked to me about how he really feels that prevailing in Ukraine is almost existential for Vladimir Putin. And when at one point we were talking about it and he said, well, I wonder if now that Putin is withdrawn to those provinces in the east, whether he would, whether he would negotiate with with Zelensky and I said do you really think he would ever do that that he could find a modus vivendi a way of a way of coexisting with Zelensky and I said no, I don't think he would. In other words, he would eventually come back to trying to conquer Ukraine. So I think that nobody will talk about this but you can be sure that there's a constant wargaming exercises going on trying to anticipate what we would do in the event that Putin did the unthinkable. And I think that's for Joe Biden. I think that's his biggest challenge. Chris, let me go back to Donald Trump for a second. While Joe Biden succeeded Donald Trump as president, he is still very much front and center in the Biden presidency. And you write in the book, he knows his presidency will be and this is a quote from you judged on whether his attorney general chose to prosecute the former US president who tried to strangle democracy. I was interested in the book to first of all learn that Donald Trump left Joe Biden a very gracious note in the in the Oval Office after he left. We don't know the contents of that but we do know that Trump took three days to write that two page handwritten letter. But but give us a sense of Biden's view of Donald Trump and his stance on whether Merrick Garland should prosecute Donald Trump and for the for the crimes he's committed. Well, first of all, it that was an extraordinary scene of the discovering the letter from Trump as Joe Biden did on on his first day and that afternoon of when he walked into the Oval Office as president for the first time and was told about this letter and he opened the drawer and he pulled it out and he read it as his as his most senior advisors looked on and looked up and said that was gracious, shockingly gracious. You can only imagine what what he what Trump might have said I I of course want to know did he did he in that letter acknowledged that Biden was president. Did he, you know which he has has not done to this day. But you wonder if he had done that why Biden would not have revealed that to the American people as a means of showing the weakness of Trump's stance is his argument that he won the election. I was interested in that to Chris and I wonder if how generous you can be without conceding defeat. Well, you know the fact that the letter was was that there was a letter left for Biden has been publicly known. I revealed in the book that that he spent three days writing it. But none of us knows the the contents of that letter. I think that one thing I could tell you is that this something that shocked Joe Biden more than anything else probably during his presidency was the staying power of Trumpism. I think I know that from from the people who know him well that he thought this would pass. You know, it wasn't he wasn't that he thought this was Gore Bush in 2000. But he thought that he had a mandate he won by 7 million votes and that this would fade and it was shocking to him that it hasn't. So I think I can tell you that I can't get inside his head and tell you what he thinks Merrick Garland ought to do. But I think it's just an inescapable political fact inescapable reality that everybody talks about this being a by the book decision that will be based on the law and the facts alone by. A very neutral person like Merrick Garland. That's just not the truth. And at the end of the day, it's a it's a it's a decision with tremendous political significance. And so I think that, again, it's it's a real test of the Biden presidency. I'm not saying that Biden will pick up the phone and tell Merrick Garland that hey, you've got to pull the trigger here. That's not the way it works. But that decision is going to be momentous. The 2022 midterm elections, of course, have been widely understood as at least a partial tentative indication that Trump is a maybe on the decline. Do you think that President Biden drew at least some confidence from the outcome of the elections that would affect his calculations with respect to how he should handle Donald Trump going forward or or frankly any number of other issues. Yeah, I can't. I can't say how I think it might affect whether or not Merrick Garland decides to prosecute Trump. But I think that the there's no question about the fact that the midterm elections were a very big deal at the White House. They really feel they have the wind at their backs. And I think that, you know, it's interesting. One of the stories I tell is that in the in the afterward to the book, we did a I did a hasty afterward right after the midterm elections. And but one of the stories I tell is how Biden during the midterms wanted to go everywhere and talk about everything. He wanted to talk about his his complete legislative record from day one to up to the midterms and Ron Klane and the political staff sat him down. And they said, Mr. President, you're going to go to the places where you're going to do the most good. Number one and number two, you're going to be talking about reproductive rights and MAGA and Biden to his credit took that advice and the rest is history. One of the most consequential decisions that Joe Biden has made was naming Kamala Harris as his running mate. And you write that she has chosen to model Biden's vice presidency under Barack Obama. But you quote, Biden is telling a close friend that he sees her as a work in progress. How would you characterize Kamala Harris in her current role? Well, the the relationship between Joe Biden and Kamala Harris is complicated and fascinating to me. You know, by all accounts, according to the people who were in the in these meetings and who who know them both well. Early on, Biden had a real there was a real warmth that he had that he displayed toward her. There was a real bond there. He appreciated that she brought a completely different set of views and world and experience to to the job. He when a meeting started and she wasn't there, he would look around and say, where's Kamala? They were thrown together in the beginning of the presidency by COVID. Neither was traveling much and they spent a lot of time together. But things got more complicated. When the troubles began for for Kamala Harris and particularly with the the assignment to take take on the northern triangle. The root causes of immigration to the southern border or trip to Guatemala, which was widely panned everybody's probably forgotten about it by now but it was. You know, she fumbled that question from NBC's Lester Holt about the border and and was was widely criticized. This took a toll on on the vice president's office and a number of her allies started saying publicly that she'd been given this impossible portfolio. It was it was it was too difficult. She had the northern triangle and she had voting rights and voting rights as we all know was a very, very heavy lift. Indeed. So word got back to Joe Biden that not only were these allies complaining but the second gentleman. Doug Emeloff was complaining to a lot of people. And this just annoyed the president. You know, he hadn't asked her to do anything he hadn't done as vice president. He was in charge of the northern triangle under Obama. But that was when he turned to a friend and said, you know, she's a work in progress. Now, having said that, I think, you know, their relationship may have improved. This was early in the first year. I know that he has has given her a number of important national security assignments. He's centered in the Munich Security Conference on the eve of the invasion. She's by all accounts, she's been hitting her stride in the national security issues. But it's a complicated relationship. Chris, the big question, of course, that looms out there these days with respect to Joe Biden is will he or won't he will he or won't he run for a second term? What's your answer to that question? I think almost without a doubt. Andy Carr had once told me something that that rang true and that is if anybody tells you they're leaving the White House voluntarily, they're probably lying to you. You guys, of all people should appreciate this because when was the last time a president walked away voluntarily. LBJ. There is something about being in that office and that makes presidents reluctant to walk away and and so I don't, I don't think there's any doubt about Joe Biden has spent his entire career. Every four years he has either thought about running for president or run for president since he's been able to and I think he's got unfinished business. Chris, just going back to the 2022 midterms for a moment, what do you think are what is what is Joe Biden's sense of his major assets when he's out on the campaign trail, you know, running for reelection that became clear perhaps to all of us as a result of what happened recently in the midterms. Well, he's always had this this this connection with the American people I think he's you know he's he's certainly we've we've all heard the cliche Scranton Joe I mean this is somebody who who knows how to speak to people about difficult issues in ways they can understand. I think that's that's been his superpower. But the other is that Joe Biden has been constantly underestimated at every turn throughout his his career. And I think that we're seeing an example of that as he as he's hit the two year mark. In an interview with Biden for the book, he told you, I'm quoting Joe Biden here, our democracy isn't perfect. It never has been, but every generation has opened its doors a little wider American history tells us that from some of our darkest moments we've made some of our greatest progress. It's the test of our time to do that again now. Do you think Biden has delivered on that promise. You know, let me just say about my interview with Joe Biden that that I thought he was really remarkably revealing. And this is this is someone who talks constantly about Charlottesville. And Joe goes back to Charlottesville in his mind. That was a president had said terrible things before, but they've never gone that far. This was as as Mike Donilon his wordsmith put it to me this was a door he felt he had to close. And so he hasn't. In a way that's an unfinished task, isn't it. He hasn't closed that door entirely. Donald Trump is running for president. He is more powerful. I think also underestimated more powerful than people. People like to think. Yes, he's had a rough couple of months or whatever it's been since he announced his reelection, but no one should underestimate Donald Trump either. And then the and the iron grip he has on on that Republican base and his willingness to do whatever he has to do to take down anyone who tries to take away the mantle. So I think he's still dangerous. I think Biden believes he's dangerous. But I'm not sure that's the that's not the only reason that Joe Biden is running. But it's it's one reason and he's beaten him before. Chris, I think it's obviously. Unfair to ask you about Joe Biden's legacy as president. Given that he's only halfway through his first term. But still, how do you think in 20 or 50 years will be talking and thinking about the presidency of Joseph Biden. You know, John Podesta used to whenever, whenever anybody brought up Bill Clinton's legacy, he would throw them out of his office. He didn't want to he didn't want to hear anybody talking about legacy too soon. He would he would be saying it maybe too soon to say what Joe Biden's legacy is. But I think I think that ultimately. Joe Biden will be remembered for the way he stood up to a dictator who invaded a democracy in the heart of Europe and put us all on the brink of of nuclear war. I there's no greater test that I that I can think of than that. I said at the beginning that when he came into office he faced the most daunting set of challenges since FDR will arguably this is as as dangerous a situation. Since since FDR. So, I think he'll ultimately be judged by that obviously the the pandemic. And and Trump. But I think ultimately Ukraine will be will be his legacy. Chris, what do you expect from the Biden presidency for the next two years until the election of of 2024. Well, I think that now comes the hard part. As if it wasn't pretty hard up to now, he he has to do a number of things he has to try to avoid a recession. He's got to try to bring inflation under control. He's got to implement all the legislation that was passed during the first two years because none of it matters really until the rubber meets the road. He has to confront. MAGA the continuing the fact that, you know, it may or may not be in its death throws. He's got to keep NATO. United against against Putin and in defense of Ukraine and that's that's no small task. And I think he feels that he's not done when it comes to his some of the progressive elements of his of his legislative agenda, some of the things that were thrown under the bus with build back better. I think he'd still like to achieve some of those things and and I don't. And I think he's a guy who who believes it when he says that he thinks he can get bipartisan stuff done. And he he succeeded in doing quite a bit in the second year. So he's got a full plate and it's but but the challenges are enormous. I think so it's going to be the next two years are also going to be a fascinating time. Well, Chris, we look forward to having you back for what may be part two. Well, Chris, thank you so much for helping us to think through the first couple of years of the Biden presidency. Indeed, we'll see where it goes from here. Congratulations on publication of the fight of his life inside Joe Biden's White House. Thank you so much for making time to be with us. Honored to be with you guys. Thanks for having me. My thanks to our sponsors, the Moody Foundation and St. David's Healthcare and as always to you for joining us. If you've enjoyed this episode, subscribe, rate and review us on Apple podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen to your podcasts. I'm Mark up to Grove. See you next time.