DAVID FOLKENFLIK, HOST:
This week, Vice President Kamala Harris will take center stage at the Democratic National Convention as the party's presidential nominee. She would not have been at the top of the ticket, however, were it not for an unusually early televised debate with the Republican nominee Donald Trump. Biden's largely halting and rambling performance on June 27 ignited a firestorm. Many prominent Democrats pushed Biden to quit the race, and he ultimately did. As Democrats exult over their new candidate and momentum in the polls, we wanted to take a look back at how we got here and what it means. Wall Street Journal reporter Annie Linskey covers the White House, and now she covers the campaign. Annie Linskey, welcome to the program.
ANNIE LINSKEY: Hi there.
FOLKENFLIK: There have been a fair number of stories over the last years in a variety of outlets about Biden's age, his mental acuity, whether he was perhaps just too old to stand for reelection. Even so, three weeks before that debate, you and your colleague Siobhan Hughes published a story that, in a sense, crystallized the case that his age was affecting his performance. How did you know that it was an important enough point that you wanted to put it in the paper?
LINSKEY: Well, David, we started doing that reporting in February, actually. So it was months before the story was in the paper. And we started doing it after special counsel Robert Hur issued a report about Biden's handling of classified information that had a number of bombshells in it, but one of them was he had observed that the president had a faulty memory. And I think for us at the journal, that really intensified reporting around this question of, how is the president's age impacting the way he's doing his job?
FOLKENFLIK: How serious did you find that to be the case?
LINSKEY: We spent a lot of time on this reporting, and as we met with people who had met with the president, people who were briefed on meetings with the president, and they told us that they found the president would be forgetful and would forget key facts or names or that he would pause for long periods of time, that he would lose his train of thought as he was speaking, that he would rely on notes for very standard parts of a conversation. This is from people who were used to meeting with presidents and found this behavior concerning.
FOLKENFLIK: Then a few weeks later, you and your colleagues at the Journal follow up with another story, and it reflected how Democrats in Congress, as far back as 2021, saw the president stumbling and speaking in a disjointed way. That feels like it was then kind of held back from those of us in the public these recent years. How open a secret was this in official Washington?
LINSKEY: Well, I think after the debate, there was a reckoning among a lot of people, Democrats and Republicans, but particularly among Democrats who had been quite protective of the President and who were after the debate willing to say, oh, wait a minute, now I'm sort of reassessing some of the behavior that I witnessed.
FOLKENFLIK: What did the White House do to try to shape or shield the public's perception of the president?
LINSKEY: I mean, this White House has been so different from other White Houses. As reporters covering him, he really didn't have the kind of close access that you typically have. Of course, that is his right. He can do whatever he wants. It is fine. But I think that is one way in which some of his decline was shielded. But there were other more obvious ways. I mean, the president did not do town hall meetings. Barack Obama, for example, did over 100 town hall meetings. Biden, I think did three.
He wasn't having these unscripted exchanges. He didn't do interviews, like lengthy interviews, or didn't do very many of them. And so that also prevented you from seeing what a lengthy back and forth would look like. Now, he did occasionally have press conferences. They were typically about 20 minutes long. The thing about these press conferences is the press team chose in advance, for the most part, who was going to ask him questions, and then they can cut it off.
FOLKENFLIK: In recent days and weeks, former President Trump has given interviews, has done press conferences, in which you wouldn't simply call his answers rambling, but at times, I think it's fair to say incoherent and non-responsive. What does your experience in trying to cover President Biden teach us about how we should think about former President Donald Trump and his fitness for service?
LINSKEY: For us, it was quite instructive to sort of look at the public examples to tell a part of the story, that it wasn't as if there's somebody different when the cameras are off or when you're dealing with leaders across a table, that the sort of public persona of somebody who is being captured on television so often that personality comes across behind closed doors as it does in front of closed doors.
FOLKENFLIK: I wanted to focus this conversation almost exclusively on President Biden because, of course, he's the sitting president of the United States. You cover the White House, Annie Linskey. What has your reporting told us about his ability to do this for another 4.5 years, but his ability to be the sitting president right now?
LINSKEY: Well, I mean, this is a story that we're continuing to report, and you know, you're right. He continues to be the president. You know, I will say that the reporting that we did, there was not a suggestion that the president is senile. There was a sense that his age was impacting his quickness, his memory. It's something that we have a deep responsibility to chronicle and something that we are continuing to report on.
FOLKENFLIK: Annie Linskey covers the White House for the Wall Street Journal. Thanks so much for joining me.
LINSKEY: Thank you.
FOLKENFLIK: In a statement yesterday, White House spokesperson Andrew Bates cited Biden's legislative achievements, and said in part, quote, "Joe Biden has always said that it is fair for reporters to ask about his age and has always confidently put his values and record to the American people." Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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