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Front Burner Transcript for January 10, 2025

Host: Jayme Poisson

JAYME POISSON: Hi, I'm Jayme Poisson.

[Music: Theme]

JP: The final days of a presidency often reveal a set of priorities. The kind you wouldn't necessarily be able to glean from a policy proposal or a speech. A moment for holders of the executive office to wrap up any unfinished business or fortify things against the incoming president with whom they might disagree on major issues. For example, Jimmy Carter spent his final days brokering a deal to secure the release of 52 American hostages in Iran, while George H.W. Bush issued pardons to those involved in the Iran-Contra scandal. Presidents Obama, Trump and Clinton would commute and pardon the sentences of more than 600 federal prisoners in their final days, which under Trump included the likes of former adviser Steve Bannon and the rappers Lil Wayne and Kodak Black. So as Joe Biden's tenancy in the White House comes to a close, we'll revisit his final days in office, what they reveal, and how he's likely to be remembered. Alex Shephard is a senior editor at The New Republic, and he's been writing about Biden through his presidency and beyond.

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JP: Alex, hey. It's always great to have you.

ALEX SHEPHARD: It's great to be back.

JP: So before we get into specifics, why do you think the final days of a presidency are so important? What can they stand to teach us?

ALEX SHEPHARD: I think that they've gotten more important as American politics has grown more dysfunctional. It's really uncommon over the course of any presidency now to have any period in which the leader of the country is fully unencumbered. It used to be that sort of the hundred days were looked at-- the first 100 days of an administration were looked at as this sort of agenda-setting moment. But as we've reached the sort of era of gridlock, dysfunction, you know, political polarization, you know, more and more, less and less happens during that period. So the end of the presidency -- what has, you know, been colloquially referred to as the lame duck period -- actually has sort of stood out as a place where presidents can kind of enact their will, and I think also make a sort of symbolic case for what their presidency is really about and also, I think, where they think that the party is headed sort of beyond them as well.

JP: Right. So, let's start with some of what we've seen Joe Biden do in recent weeks. He is the first president to vocally oppose the death penalty, and he recently commuted the sentences of 37 of the 40 people on federal death row.

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REPORTER 1: He declined to commute the sentences of three men: the mass shooter at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh where 11 people died; the killer of nine people at the Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015; and the Boston Marathon bomber.

JP: Biden has also commuted the sentences of nearly 1500 people and pardoned 39 others who had been convicted of non-violent crimes. This is the largest single day grant of clemency in modern American history. And how significant is that? What does that tell you? What does that say to you?

ALEX SHEPHARD: I mean, I think in a lot of ways, what it says is that this is and has been a priority for Democrats, but one that they've feared, particularly in this sort of era in which crime has become such a focus of GOP attacks. That, you know, that halting the death penalty or stopping the federal use of the death penalty is a priority. And I think in general, we've seen a slowing down of federal executions. But I think that for Biden, this was a moment to really assert that.

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REPORTER 1: Saying in a statement, "Make no mistake: I condemn these murderers, grieve for the victims of their despicable acts. But guided by my conscience and my experience as a public defender, I am more convinced than ever that we must stop the use of the death penalty at the federal level."

ALEX SHEPHARD: And I think that the response has also been interesting. It's been more muted here as attention has been focused largely on other pardons. At the same time, I think this is also probably the most effective way that Biden has actually sort of stymied a priority of the Trump administration. He had been advocating since his first term for a real increase in the speed of federal executions and had been largely stymied the first time around. But, you know, he and some people in his orbit were pushing this, I think, again, also as a kind of symbolic -- although, you know, also horrifyingly literal -- way of showing that they are, you know, quote unquote, "serious about crime." But Biden's actions here, as in, you know, some other areas, particularly when it comes to the environment, really do sort of slow down or perhaps even halt one of Trump's biggest promises.

JP: When you say that other pardons are taking up more of the attention, I'm assuming you're at least in part referring to one of Biden's most polarizing moves, the pardoning of his son, Hunter. Which is an intervention that he long said he wouldn't make, right? This decision has been subject to widespread criticism even within his own party. And I'm just curious, what do you make of him pardoning his son and the uproar around it? What do you think about it?

ALEX SHEPHARD: I have complicated thoughts about it. I think some of those thoughts are complicated by the conversations that I've been having with people within the Democratic Party. I think that, you know, as you head into a administration that I think most people are expecting to be, um, corrupt, for lack of a better term, and self-dealing. And, you know, you look back at the first Trump administration and the sort of lines between Trump's personal business, his family business and the actions of his administration were really blurred. At the same time, when you do look at the Hunter Biden case objectively, you know, it is a situation in which it's hard not to see a political angle, and that, you know, people who have committed similar crimes tend not to face jail time. Particularly not the, you know, I think decade or so that Hunter Biden was theoretically facing here. So, you know, I think that he was dealing with a degree of partisan lawfare, and that was the response.

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JP: Biden's chief of staff has said that he has a desire to, quote, "sprint to the finish line" of his presidency. For example, he spent the last few weeks jet-setting around the world, becoming the first American president to go to the Amazon rainforest.

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JOE BIDEN: Today, I'm proud to be here, the first sitting U.S. president to visit the Amazon rainforest, to recommit to protecting the rainforest like this one.

JP: He also took a trip to the West African nation of Angola.

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JOE BIDEN: You hear them in the wind and the waves. Young women, young men, born free in the highlands of Angola, only to be captured, bound and forced in a death march along this very coast, to this spot, by slave traders in the year 1619.

JP: But reporters have described him on these trips as weary; fragile. The New York Times reported on concerns that Biden wouldn't be able to make it up a steep staircase to a museum in Angola. He's 82, and obviously tired. Why do you think he's taken these kinds of trips in his final few weeks in office?

ALEX SHEPHARD: Well, I think that he's taking them because his legacy is in danger. And I think specifically his domestic legacy is actually probably the thing that you would want to hang your hat on if you were Joe Biden. I think this is a Democratic president who has, I think, changed the economy in ways that no other president, Democratic or Republican, has since Ronald Reagan. And he's done it in a way that is really interesting. He's prioritized unions and workers. He's, you know, re-emphasized antitrust for the first time since the, you know, before the Carter administration really. All of those things are amazing, but voters didn't care about any of it, right? Like, they rejected it by re-electing Donald Trump. And I think a lot of that was for stuff that Biden was... that was both out of Biden's control, and that the U.S. tended to do better at than the rest of the world in terms of fighting inflation. But that has meant that Biden is now focusing on this idea that he's this kind of statesman. And this is something that cropped up even before he dropped out of the presidential race, where he was kind of highlighting things like NATO, that he had strengthened NATO as president. Which is not necessarily a sort of winning electoral argument, even if it's true. But I think he's trying to cast himself as this sort of great statesman. Which was, in theory, I think, the premise of the Biden administration, right? So when he was running for office in 2020, it was as a guy who could restore America's place in the world and make it a safer and more stable place. However, I think that that's actually the part of Biden's legacy that is the most up for debate. You know, I think I would personally say that I think it's the area in which he's failed the most. So I think that, you know, for me, that this sort of world tour is actually an expression of weakness and not strength. It's a representation of the fact that Biden doesn't feel comfortable emphasizing his real domestic accomplishments, and he's sort of grasping at straws by casting himself as the sort of last great American statesman.

JP: On a more human level, do we have a sense of how he has been feeling these last few weeks? He lost his candidacy, then the presidency, in an election that was a referendum of him personally in many ways. And this is not just the end of his presidency, but a career in politics that has spanned the last half century. I can imagine that would actually be incredibly difficult for anyone to reconcile.

ALEX SHEPHARD: Yeah. I mean, I think that the story of Biden's half century in American politics is one of both personal and political tragedy, and then triumph and then tragedy and then triumph. And, you know, he's ending that cycle on a particularly low ebb and I think recognizes that to some extent. But what we've seen particularly since the midterms is a sense of the brittleness of Biden's political personality. And I think it's egocentrism as well. So what we're sensing, and certainly what reporting is coming out, and, you know, from talking to people who are in that orbit, I get the sense that Biden is extremely defensive. That he believes that if he had run, he would have beaten Donald Trump, which, you know, I think seems fairly ridiculous. And he's very protective of his kind of status as a transformative president. But I think it's worth actually going back to the 2020 campaign briefly, when I think partly to quiet concerns about his age, Biden emphasized himself as a bridge, a sort of Democratic bridge. This was partly a way of skirting the question of if he would serve a second term as a... you know, he would have left office an 86-year-old. But I think what we have to ask ourselves now is, okay, so a bridge to where, right? And I think that right now it seems like it was a bridge to nowhere. And I think Biden in these closing days, he's angry and defensive, but I think it's worth asking, you know, well, where did he leave the Democrats? And I think that, you know, it's safe to say that it's been a bridge to nowhere.

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JP: There are some really concrete policy actions that many people are pushing him to take in his final days in office. For example, measures that would protect more undocumented immigrants from deportation under Trump, or that would strengthen abortion access, or alleviate student debt, or protect federal lands. Even more niche asks like a pardon for the Native American activist Leonard Peltier. Given his position as this kind of lame duck right now, with very little to lose, why do you think he's not doing these things? What would he stand to lose by making some ambitious moves at this point?

ALEX SHEPHARD: Yeah, I mean, I think that there's a pretty strong argument that [chuckles] he should do all of the things that you just mentioned. But, you know, the problem that Democrats are facing right now, I think, is that they are in the midst of a larger existential crisis. So I think if this was eight years ago, you might have seen more internal pressure to do things like protect undocumented immigrants, right. And the issue for Democrats is that I think they are reading the most recent election as a sign that their kind of more permissive and inclusive rhetoric on immigration, particularly in the 2020 race, like, really cost them this time. I do think that there are some areas in which there will be a little more action from Biden. I think you mentioned protecting public lands. You've already seen Biden protect a lot of sort of the ocean from offshore drilling, in ways that I think will actually be pretty robust. I do think you'll see more environmental action. I do think that you'll see some more action on pardons. But there, too, you see a sense of defensiveness, right? I think that Biden's pardoning-- the pardons that Biden has issued are, with a handful of exceptions, probably the best thing that he's done during this lame duck session. But those are also, I think, meant defensively. He's probably also going to pardon his brother. And, you know, I think that those pardons -- the good pardons [laughs], for lack of a better term -- are there partly to kind of muddy the waters as he's also going to pardon his family members, possibly members of the January 6th Committee, possibly other Democratic leaders.

JP: I have heard a lot about the courts, and the hopes that President Biden might appoint as many federal judges as possible at both the district level and appellate level in his final days. This is something that Trump is unhappy about, though he did the same thing in his final days in office in 2020. And can you talk to me about why these judicial appointments are important and whether we've seen Biden do what many had hoped he would do on that front?

ALEX SHEPHARD: Yeah. So, I mean, the simplest answer for why the judicial appointments are so important is just that the legislative branch in America does not do very much anymore. And even when it does something, the laws immediately get embroiled in years, if not decades, of legislation. And again, also because you have a Supreme Court with a conservative majority that will probably be in place until, let's say, charitably, like the 2040s. So you want to have as many kind of, for lack of a better term, sort of liberal judges there. That said, we basically are running out of time, right? I mean, we already have a new Congress, so. And we already have a Senate. A small, but real Senate Republican majority. So, you know, Democrats' ability to confirm judges is pretty limited. And given the way that the Senate map looks, it probably will be pretty limited, you know, certainly until 2028, but possibly into the 2030s.

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JP: Let's come back to foreign policy and likely the biggest item of unfinished business -- the ceasefire in Gaza, the lack of ceasefire in Gaza. Team Biden has talked about a ceasefire as a real legacy opportunity for Biden, and they've said that there's real desire to get one done before they run out of time. But a deal does not appear any closer. I also struggle to understand their bargaining position here, given the fact that Trump, who is largely seen as being pretty favourable to Netanyahu, is taking office two weeks from now. So break this down for me. Do you think there's a world in which we see a last-minute peace deal between Israel and Hamas?

ALEX SHEPHARD: You know, the Biden administration has been saying that they've been working on a peace deal, and even that they're close to various ceasefire deals [JP: Forever, yeah.] since the fall of 2023. And they have not come close. And not only that, they have been, frankly, you know, hoodwinked by Netanyahu on a number of occasions, and I don't think there's any real reason here to see that this is any different. There's this sort of other concern here as well, which is, you know, I think that this area has been the one in which the Biden administration has been the most deluded, both about its sort of legacy, quote unquote, but also just public opinion and its larger standing. Which is just that, okay, let's say that the hostages do get released before Trump's inauguration. I don't necessarily think that that would alter Biden's legacy on Gaza, particularly among other Democrats. I think that there is a lot of very real anger at the way that the administration has handled this. Not just on the left, but even among rank and file Democrats as well. But, you know, you look back, for instance, at the... it's very loosely analogous, but the release of American hostages in 1981 that were being held by Iran. You know, Jimmy Carter ostensibly brokered that. But everyone basically recognizes now that those hostages were kept in Iran, you know, partly by, you know, via the machinations of Reagan, people connected to the Reagan campaign. And, you know, so okay, yes, they did get released on January 20th, 1981. But that's part of Reagan's legacy now, it's not part of Carter's. And I think that if those [JP: Right.] hostages get released even the next week, that will--

JP: Oh, Trump will...

ALEX SHEPHARD: Yeah.

JP: Yeah, he'll take credit for it. Sorry to interrupt you, Alex.

ALEX SHEPHARD: Yeah, yeah. No, that's right. Yeah. We just have, you know, I think it makes you feel a little crazy to hear this stuff when you have literal, like, good historical analogs.

JP: Speaking of Iran, let me ask you about this. There was a report by Axios a little while ago that senior members of the Biden administration have discussed the possibility of bombing Iran in the final days of his tenure, in a bid to keep the country from developing a nuclear weapon before January 20th. The implications of something like that would obviously be incredible. Why do you think something so drastic would be an option for Biden at this point, and is there any precedent for something like that?

ALEX SHEPHARD: No, there's no precedent of military action on this level happening in the lame duck, especially military action that would, I think, dramatically heighten the risk of regional war -- regional war that would almost certainly ensnare the United States pretty quickly. You know, I guess why they would do it is that they don't want Iran to develop a nuclear bomb on their watch, that they don't want the incoming Trump administration to flay them yet again for their weakness on Iran. I think that bombing Iran, and this would be disastrous for one big reason, which is just that for all the talk of Trump being a sort of 19th century isolationist, his administration is full of figures who are very, very much in favour of military intervention, particularly on Iran. So if the Biden administration were to put the region on the brink of war, I think that those officials would see this as an invitation to really get going here. And that also it would give a kind of bipartisan, uh, a kind of bipartisan endorsement of military strikes against Iran that would dramatically hamper Democrats' ability to criticize what I think would be, you know, probably a reckless action from the Trump administration.

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JP: With the caveat that presidents are obviously remembered differently depending on who's asking and answering the question, Biden will leave office the oldest president in his nation's history. What are the issues or moments that you think he will likely be remembered for that we haven't talked about yet?

ALEX SHEPHARD: I mean, I think that the most important one is actually his economic legacy. Which is ironic because it is the thing that probably cost Kamala Harris and the Democrats in November. But Biden's domestic policy work was, I think, extraordinary and novel in a lot of ways, where, yes, to an extent, it did, you know, it did herald a return to kind of New Deal-era emphasis on things like full employment. But I think it was also one of the first times that you've seen, you've seen the share of wealth of the sort of bottom quintile or, you know, bottom, bottom half, really, of American citizens, their wealth go up, that wages rose. And, you know, I think for all the talk of inflation, I think that that was still largely... it was mostly the result of the pandemic and not these kind of shifts, right? Because you saw it happen across the world. And that, theoretically at least, I think marked a kind of new era for Democratic policymaking that everyone has kind of acknowledged on both the left and the right. That the sort of Reagan, Clinton, quote unquote, "neoliberal consensus," you know, emphasizing free trade and deregulation, is mostly over. And the big question has been, well, where do you go next? I think that the Biden administration mostly answered that. On the other... The other point I would say too is that, you know, green energy or sort of climate change has been really difficult to get national lawmakers on board with for the last 20 years, and that Biden and the Democratic Congress found a way to emphasize green technology in a transformative way. And I think in a way that will actually be difficult for Republicans to undo. So, you know, on those points, I think that the administration deserves a lot of, you know, a lot of applause. But, you know, the big issue, I think, and the big question that Democrats-- that's keeping Democrats up at night right now, is that none of that stuff really mattered. That, you know, you saw a Democratic president who embraced unions in a way that a Democratic president hasn't for over half a century, and, you know, Trump, the Republican and Trump share of the union vote, grew. So I think that, you know, the problem the Democrats face now is that the best things that Biden did didn't benefit them electorally at all.

JP: Yeah. A final question for you. What relationship do you think Biden is going to have with the Democratic Party moving forward? So post-politics, presidents build all kinds of relationships with their parties. Barack Obama, for example, has become a kind of joker in the deck of the Democratic Party, right? Someone that enjoyed this massive popularity and now he's trotted out every now and again. Other former presidents have enjoyed more quiet lives post-presidency. Where do you think Biden will sit here?

ALEX SHEPHARD: The analog, I think, is Lyndon Johnson after 1968. Another president who did extraordinary things, whose legacy was undone by self-inflicted mistakes in the last, the last two years of one term. And, you know, I think that Biden will retreat back to Delaware. You'll see him on the beach. But, you know, I think as a tool for campaigning, you know, he, one, is just too old. Like he can't-- you can't trot him out for the midterm elections, I think. There's not a lot of evidence that he can do that kind of work. But also, you know, Obama... Obama is interesting because he still maintains a kind of network, right, of a sort of tree of legislators and aides and Democratic power brokers that, you know, when moments arise, he can kind of activate -- as we saw after the disastrous debate between Biden and Trump in June -- and influence the party. And Biden has always kind of been outside of that kind of power structure. So I think that the bigger question is what happens to the kind of figures within his administration, and where do they-- where does somebody like Antony Blinken, the secretary of state, you know, who I think is considered to be a pariah by many in the party given his handling of the post-October 7th situation in Gaza, you know, where do those people go? But for Biden, you know, he's going to be on the beach. And, you know, if he's around in 2028, he'll give a speech at the convention. But that's because every president [laughs] gives a speech at the convention if they can. But beyond that, you know, we've seen, we've seen for two years now that he's not an asset for Democratic politicians. And that's not going to change, particularly now.

JP: Okay. Alex Shephard, thank you, as always.

ALEX SHEPHARD: Thank you.

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JP: All right, that is all for this week. Front Burner was produced this week by Joyita Sengupta, Matt Amha, Allie Jaynes, Lauren Donnelly and Mackenzie Cameron. Music is by Joseph Shabason. Our senior producer is Elaine Chau. Our executive producer is Nick McCabe-Lokos. I'm Jayme Poisson. Thanks so much for listening. Talk to you next week.

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President Joe Biden's Final Days in office - Transcript

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