What's next after Democrats' gamble on 2024 election? | The Excerpt
On Tuesday’s episode of The Excerpt podcast: Paste BN Washington Bureau Chief Susan Page looks ahead to the next weeks and months after President Joe Biden's historic decision. Plus, Vice President Kamala Harris secures the delegates needed to become nominee. Delta Air Lines continues to see major disruptions after last week's IT outage. Paste BN Domestic Security Correspondent Josh Meyer recaps a tense hearing over Secret Service failures surrounding the assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump. Police snipers and AI cameras will watch over the Paris Olympics. Simone Biles headlines Team USA after finding a better work-life balance.
Hit play on the player below to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript beneath it. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.
Podcasts: True crime, in-depth interviews and more Paste BN podcasts right here
Taylor Wilson:
Good morning. I'm Taylor Wilson, and today is Tuesday, July 23rd, 2024. This is The Excerpt.
Today, we look at what's next for Democrats in the wake of Biden's decision to drop out. Plus, lawmakers grilled ahead of the Secret Service over the assassination attempt on Donald Trump. And we discuss how French authorities are preparing security measures ahead of the Olympics.
♦
It's been less than two days since President Joe Biden's historic decision to bow out of the presidential race and Vice President Kamala Harris made her first public remarks yesterday following the decision, as she's moving quickly to lock up the Democratic nomination for President. And she paid tribute to Biden during an NCAA event at the White House.
Kamala Harris:
Joe Biden's legacy of accomplishment over the past three years is unmatched in modern history.
Taylor Wilson:
So where do Democrats go from here? I caught up with Paste BN Washington Bureau Chief, Susan Page for the latest.
Susan, you've been quite a regular here on The Excerpt in recent days. How are you?
Susan Page:
I'm good. There's been so much happening in politics.
Taylor Wilson:
Yes, very busy time. So, Susan, you write that Democrats are making one of the biggest gambles in American political history. Those are strong words. Why is that?
Susan Page:
Well, let's not forget how unprecedented this is. Democrats had an incumbent President who won every state primary and was in an unchallenged position to be renominated. And just about 100 days before the election, they have pushed him out, over his initial objections, and moving towards settling on somebody else. That hasn't happened before. That is a huge gamble, choosing change and disruption over certainty. And that's because the signs of a real disaster in November were forming.
Taylor Wilson:
You and I have talked about all the criticisms thrown at Biden over his age and mental acuity. How does Biden's decision in this shifting race now change the conversation around age in this election?
Susan Page:
Well, now, Donald Trump is the old guy on the ticket, not Joe Biden. Trump is 78 years old. He has more vigor and energy than Biden was displaying, but he also has some mental slips. He gets names wrong, he starts to ramble. That hasn't gotten as much scrutiny as it might because Biden's verbal slips were worse. But now I think we will see more scrutiny of Donald Trump, if and when he makes those verbal slips. So that issue has just turned around 180 degrees.
Taylor Wilson:
Susan, it's been a year really of division in some ways for Democrats. We've especially seen that as it pertains to the war in Gaza. Does this decision from Biden now make Democrats more unified, or do many of these cracks still remain?
Susan Page:
Some of those cracks do remain, and I am quite certain we will continue to see demonstrations at the Chicago Convention over the issue of Israel, the war with Hamas, and the treatment of Palestinians in Gaza. That hasn't changed. But Democrats are also pretty united behind wanting to defeat Donald Trump, and that has enabled them to forge a kind of unity quickly, that if it holds, will prove to be remarkable.
Taylor Wilson:
And Susan, we're all trying to kind of guess what's next. What will these next few days and weeks look like as we approach the Democratic Convention in about a month? And do we have any historical precedent for what these next few months might look like ahead of the election?
Susan Page:
Looking ahead to the convention, we'll be seeing if this early consensus around Kamala Harris persists and remains, gets stronger, or if somebody challenges it. That's of course still possible. The other thing we're looking for is for her to choose her running mate, and we've got three or four names that have bubbled to the surface. We think that may come sooner rather than later. And finally, we're looking to see if Democrats go ahead with their plan for a virtual nominating process that would get the President and the vice presidential nominees picked even before anyone gets to Chicago.
There's no perfect precedent of what's going on, but probably the closest one in modern times was the 1968 race. And that was, you'll remember, Lyndon Johnson the incumbent Democratic President decided in March that he would not seek another term. You then had an active process, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. emerging as the likely nominee. Then he is assassinated in June, and you go to the convention, Hubert Humphrey, the Vice President eventually wins the nomination. But enormous protests in Chicago, some of them violent, and at the end of the day when the election came around, Hubert Humphrey lost to Richard Nixon.
Taylor Wilson:
Susan Page is Paste BN's Washington Bureau Chief. Thank you, Susan.
Susan Page:
Thank you.
Taylor Wilson:
Meanwhile, Harris successfully moved yesterday to shore up the support she needed to secure the 2024 Democratic presidential nomination, potentially avoiding a bitter internal party dispute. A Paste BN count of delegates shows Harris has secured endorsements in excess of the 1,976 delegates needed to become the party's nominee in the first round of voting. Shortly after Harris confirmed her intention to seek the Democratic nomination, the Biden campaign morphed into the Harris campaign. What was previously known as the Biden for President Campaign filed a notice with the Federal Election Commission changing its name to Harris for President, making Harris's presidential bid official. Harris also picked up a key endorsement yesterday, that of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, as major democratic figures appear to be uniting around Harris.
♦
While much of the global aviation industry was disrupted by Friday's CrowdStrike outage, Delta Air Lines seems to be having a uniquely difficult time recovering. According to the company, the impact on its crew scheduling software is largely to blame. Delta and its subsidiary, Endeavor Air, together canceled nearly 4,500 flights between Friday and Sunday. And as of this morning, we're already posting more than 1,000 additional delays and cancellations, according to the flight tracker, FlightAware.
According to the Department of Transportation, which classifies Friday's IT failures as controllable disruptions on the part of the airline, Delta is required to honor its customer commitments. Those include re-booking passengers whose flights are canceled or significantly delayed on other services at no additional costs, as well as providing hotels and meals and ground transportation vouchers for eligible travelers. The DOT says it has received hundreds of complaints from Delta customers who did not receive those accommodations, and it's investigating those claims. According to cybersecurity firm, CrowdStrike, an update to its software affected Microsoft's Windows Operating System, which many airlines rely on for reservations, flight scheduling, and other functions.
♦
The House Oversight Committee held a hearing yesterday centered on the failure to prevent the recent assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump. I spoke with Paste BN Domestic Security correspondent, Josh Meyer for more.
Josh, thanks for hopping on.
Josh Meyer:
My pleasure.
Taylor Wilson:
So Josh, let's just start with some of the basics. Who is Kimberly Cheatle and what was the purpose of this hearing?
Josh Meyer:
So Kimberly Cheatle is the director of the Secret Service, which is part of the Department of Homeland Security. And she was subpoenaed to testify because of the Secret Service failures in the July 13th near-assassination of President Trump at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.
Taylor Wilson:
Yeah. I mean, lawmakers pressed her on a lot of aspects of this assassination attempt. Republican Congressman Pat Fallon even accused the Service of being outsmarted. What accusations did he make here exactly, Josh, and how did Cheatle respond there?
Josh Meyer:
This was basically a litany of accusations by the lawmakers. Congressman Pat Fallon, Republican of Texas, said that he personally reenacted the shooting in Texas several days later and found that, I believe it was in 15 out of 16 shots from the same range, the same angle, and the same distance with a similar gun, an AR-15 style rifle, that he was able to hit Trump. And he accused the Secret Service of being outsmarted by Thomas Matthew Crooks, who was the shooter. And he said, "How did a 20-year-old loner with a week's notice pick the absolute best location to assassinate President Trump, when the entire Secret Service missed it?" And then he said, "Director Cheatle, on your leadership, your agency got outsmarted and outmaneuvered by a 20-year-old. How can we have any confidence that you could stop trained professionals from a nefarious nation state?"
Taylor Wilson:
And how did Cheatle respond there?
Josh Meyer:
She said, "Those are absolutely questions that we need to have answered." And then Fallon responded, "But the fact of the matter is we can't have that confidence in the Secret Service."
Taylor Wilson:
One curious moment came when Cheatle indicated that the Secret Service distinguishes between suspicious behavior and a threat. What exactly did she say on this point?
Josh Meyer:
It was a little hard to decipher. The way she described it was there's a lot of people wandering around rallies like this that have backpacks or even a rangefinder, this little device where you can find out how far an object is from you. And shooters, snipers, hunters use those to figure out distances. But she said that basically somebody who's lying on a roof, pointing a gun at somebody, that's threatening behavior.
And that's what happened in this case. There was a sniper on the roof; he was identified by people. And the question is, why didn't the Secret Service counter snipers on another nearby rooftop, take him out before he was able to get off at least five shots, and as many as eight shots, including hitting President Trump in the right ear, killing one other person, and injuring two men?
Taylor Wilson:
Josh, you and I talked just last week about this delay in removing Trump from the stage after he had been shot. How did Cheatle account for this?
Josh Meyer:
That was one of the things where she didn't really have a lot of answers to that. She said that that's one of the things that's under investigation by several things, by Homeland Security, by the Homeland Security Inspector General, by the FBI and others. But she said that the Secret Service acted professionally and did what they were supposed to do to get him off the stage. One of the bigger questions, of course, was why was Trump allowed to take the stage at all to begin with when they had this threat? They didn't know he was a gunman at the time, just somebody who was acting suspiciously.
Taylor Wilson:
And several lawmakers called for Cheatle's resignation during this hearing. Is that in the cards, Josh? And what's next for her?
Josh Meyer:
It's not looking good for her. I mean, she's supposed to be very close with President Biden and First Lady Jill Biden. She was part of their protective detail when Biden was Vice President. But she acknowledged colossal failures on the part of the Secret Service and said repeatedly, "That the buck stops with me. I'm not making any excuses." And the people that were calling for her resignation weren't just Republicans like they were at the outset. This was ranking Democrat on the committee, Jamie Raskin, and a whole lot of other Democrats as well.
Taylor Wilson:
And in terms of the ongoing search for answers, what's next on the FBI's investigation and this internal review the Secret Service is carrying out?
Josh Meyer:
Well, we don't know. I mean, one thing that Cheatle did say, Taylor, was that they're not going to wait until they have all the facts before they write a report. They said it could take 60 days. She said that they're going to be recalibrating their security protective responses, their protective footprint, and also notifying lawmakers as soon as they find out information that they think is important and that they need to know about. So it's going to be an ongoing process.
Taylor Wilson:
Josh Meyer covers domestic security for Paste BN. Thanks, Josh.
Josh Meyer:
Thanks, Taylor.
♦
Taylor Wilson:
French authorities will be watching for a number of potential danger signs with the help of artificial intelligence at the Paris Olympics and Paralympic Games. Powerful security cameras positioned at Olympic sites and AI-assisted software will be used to detect trouble in real-time. Organizers of one of the world's most watched sporting events have planned an extensive security operation, targeting threats including extremist plots and cyberattacks, civil unrest, and even opportunistic thieves. The effort may see extra scrutiny after the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump. The French security net involves special anti-terrorism measures and legislation, tens of thousands of extra police and military personnel, and heightened patrols near landmarks and tourist sites.
Behind that confidence lurks the memory of past mass casualty attacks in France and elsewhere. In 2015, Islamic State militants killed 150 people in one night in Paris. Some 86 were murdered the next year in Nice when an ISIS-inspired attacker plowed a truck into a crowd on the French Riviera. In 2017, a lone gunman rained fire onto an outdoor concert in Las Vegas, murdering 60 and wounding more than 400, among other incidents. By the time competition starts, up to a million people will have had their backgrounds checked for any links to extremism or radicalism. Many of them are ordinary Paris residents who live or work near the Seine River, where about 90 boats carrying athletes will be paraded during the Game's Opening Ceremony on Friday.
♦
One of the biggest stars of the Paris Games will be gymnast Simone Biles, and she's back after her issues with the so-called twisties at the Tokyo Games three years ago. That's when gymnasts feel their inner sense of balance isn't working correctly and can cause dangerous disorientation in the air. That nearly ended her career. But Biles, in the time since, has worked at rebalancing her life, and that's helped her on the mat too. Gymnastics remains a priority, but she's found a way to make her life outside the gym a priority as well.
As Biles watched her friends have weddings and babies, as she got married and her husband's career took off, she realized there are no second chances on those rites of passage. And she told Paste BN Sports ahead of these games, "Life is not slowing down anymore. I could make sacrifices before, but now I'm at a point where some of these sacrifices I can't make anymore. Life is moving on with or without me. I'd rather ride that wave." You can read more with a link in today's show notes, and follow along with Paste BN Sports in the build-up to Friday's Opening Ceremony.
♦
Thanks for listening to The Excerpt. You can get the podcast wherever you get your audio. And if you're on a smart speaker, just ask for The Excerpt. I'm Taylor Wilson, back tomorrow with more of The Excerpt from Paste BN.