#robert costa

Richard Luscombe at The Guardian:

Joe Biden has said it was his “obligation to the country” to drop out of the 2024 presidential election and prevent what he said would be “a genuine danger to American security” if Donald Trump won a second term of office. The US president gave his reasoning for stepping aside in at-times an emotional interview with CBS News on Sunday, his first since quitting the race in July. He explained that losing the confidence of senior House and Senate Democrats, who feared his unpopularity would hurt them at the polls in November, had weighed on his mind.

Ultimately, Biden said, it was a combination of circumstances that led him to make his momentous decision not to seek re-election, which subsequently saw Vice-President Kamala Harris taking over the Democratic ticket and catching or surpassing Trump in several battleground states, according to new polling data. “Although I have the great honor to be president, I think I have an obligation to the country to do the most important thing you can do, and that is we must, we must, we must defeat Trump,” he said. Biden said he did not take the decision lightly, and made it in consultation with his family at home in Delaware. At the time, he said, he still believed he could win in November, but events had “moved quickly” after weeks of pressure and growing unease inside his party that, at 81, he was too old for the rigors of a second term.

Those fears were heightened by his disastrous debate performance against Trump in June. “I had a really bad day in that debate because I was sick. But I have no serious problem,” Biden said, denying he was impaired by any cognitive issue. “The polls we had showed that it was a neck and neck race, it would have been down to the wire. But what happened was a number of my Democratic colleagues in the House and Senate thought that I was gonna hurt them in the races and I was concerned if I stayed in the race that would be the topic. “I thought it would be a real distraction. [When] I ran the first time I thought of myself being a transition president. I can’t even say how old I am. It’s hard for me to get out of my mouth. Things got moving so quickly. And the combination was… a critical issue for me still… is maintaining this democracy.”

Speaking to CBS News’s Robert Costa on CBS Sunday Morning today for President Joe Biden’s first TV interview since his July 21st withdrawal announcement, Biden stated that the reason why he withdrew 3 weeks ago was due to the fact that he had “an obligation to the country” to defeat Donald Trump by dropping out of the race and endorsing Kamala Harris to be his successor.

From the 08.11.2024 edition of CBS's CBS Sunday Morning:

Former US Vice President Mike Pence provoked anger on Tuesday for visiting the memorial of Heather Heyer, a Charlottesville native killed by White supremacists in 2017 while participating in an anti-racism demonstration.

His aide Marc Short told CBS News that the former vice president “took a moment today to go down and visit the mall where Heather Heyer was slain, and to sign the wall, where [there is] a public plaque in honour of her life and memory.”

Mr. Pence’s visit to the memorial was however, not well-received owing to his earlier stance, when he failed to condemn then-President Donald Trump for suggesting that white supremacists, neo-Nazis and other hate groups did not deserve complete responsibility for the Charlottesville violence.

Heyer was killed while peacefully protesting against the white nationalists’ "Unite the Right" rally, when self-avowed white supremacist James Alex Fields Jr. deliberately drove his car into a crowd of anti-fascism protesters. In 2019, he was convicted of federal hate crime charges and was sentenced to life in prison.

Mr. Trump insisted there were “some very fine people” and some “bad” people on both sides in Charlottesville, drawing swift backlash and raising questions as to how his administration will be viewed over race relations.

We’re continuing to learn more about Donald Trump’s mental instability.

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley was so worried about Trump’s mental state that after the January 6th attack on the US Capitol by pro-Trump terrorists, Gen. Milley took steps to prevent the deranged Trump from starting a nuclear war. Gen. Milley also privately contacted China’s top general to reassure him that the US was not about to go to war.

Woodward/Costa book: Worried Trump could 'go rogue,' Milley took secret action to protect nuclear weapons

"You never know what a president's trigger point is," Milley told his senior staff, according to the book.  

In response, Milley took extraordinary action, and called a secret meeting in his Pentagon office on January 8 to review the process for military action, including launching nuclear weapons. Speaking to senior military officials in charge of the National Military Command Center, the Pentagon's war room, Milley instructed them not to take orders from anyone unless he was involved.

"No matter what you are told, you do the procedure. You do the process. And I'm part of that procedure," Milley told the officers, according to the book. He then went around the room, looked each officer in the eye, and asked them to verbally confirm they understood.  "Got it?" Milley asked, according to the book.  

"Yes, sir."  

[ ... ]

Milley's fear was based on his own observations of Trump's erratic behavior. His concern was magnified by the events of January 6 and the 'extraordinary risk' the situation posed to US national security, the authors write. Milley had already had two back-channel phone calls with China's top general, who was on high alert over the chaos in the US.

No matter how bad you think Trump’s mindset is – he’s actually worse than what you think.

For Trumpsters having hissy fits over the evacuation from Afghanistan in August: Your boy wanted to hurriedly withdraw all US troops 7.5 months before President Biden did.

Milley's fear that Trump could do something unpredictable came from experience. Right after Trump lost the election, Milley discovered the President had signed a military order to withdraw all troops from Afghanistan by January 15, 2021, before he left the White House. 

The snide and baseless GOP accusations about Biden having dementia are just a smokescreen to distract attention from Trump’s own mental and emotional debilitations. Biden has had a stutter all his life but can think and write clearly. Trump’s writing is best exemplified by his adventures with Sharpies on official documents and hurricane maps.

Donald J. Trump is a raving lunatic with woolly caterpillars crawling in his brain. He is unfit for even the most minor elected office in the US. Yet Republicans at every level are kowtowing to him and taking their cues from him. They should not be trusted with power any more than Trump.

Julianne McShane at Mother Jones:

In his first interview since dropping out of the election last month and endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris as the Democratic nominee, President Joe Biden said he believes Trump is a threat to democracy whether he wins or loses in November. “If he wins this nomination—excuse me, this election—watch what happens,” Biden told Robert Costa of CBS News. “He’s a genuine danger to American security.” “There’s little regard by the MAGA Republicans for the political institutions,” Biden said later in the interview. [...] “If Trump loses,” Biden told Costa, “I’m not confident at all” that there will be a peaceful transfer of power, he said. “He means what he says—we don’t take him seriously. He means it. All the stuff about, ‘If we lose, it’ll be a bloodbath.'” (Trump has also said: “If this election isn’t won, I’m not sure that you’ll ever have another election in this country.”)

In an interview with CBS’s Robert Costa on CBS Sunday Morning yesterday, President Joe Biden rightly stated that Donald Trump is “a genuine danger to American security” regardless of whether he wins or loses.

From the 08.11.2024 edition of CBS's CBS Sunday Morning:

Internal White House records from the day of the attack on the U.S. Capitol that were turned over to the House Select Committee show a gap in President Donald Trump's phone logs of seven hours and 37 minutes, including the period when the building was being violently assaulted, according to documents obtained by CBS News' chief election & campaign correspondent Robert Costa and The Washington Post's associate editor Bob Woodward.

The lack of an official White House notation of any calls placed to or by Trump for 457 minutes — from 11:17 a.m. to 6:54 p.m. — on Jan. 6, 2021 means there is no record of the calls made by Trump as his supporters descended on the U.S. Capitol, battled overwhelmed police and forcibly entered the building, prompting lawmakers and Vice President Mike Pence to flee for safety.

The 11 pages of records — which consist of the president's official daily diary and the White House switchboard call log — were turned over by the National Archives earlier this year to the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack.

The records show that Trump was active on the phone for part of the day, documenting conversations that he had with at least eight people in the morning and 11 people that evening. The gap also stands in stark contrast to the extensive public reporting about phone conversations he had with allies during the attack.

The House panel is now investigating whether Trump communicated that day through backchannels, phones of aides or personal disposable phones, known as "burner phones," according to two people with knowledge of the probe, who, like others interviewed for this report, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive information. The committee is also scrutinizing whether it received the full log from that day.

The records show that former White House chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon — who said on his Jan. 5 podcast that "all hell is going to break loose tomorrow" — spoke with Trump twice on Jan. 6.

A spokesman for the committee declined to comment.

In a statement Monday night, Trump said, "I have no idea what a burner phone is, to the best of my knowledge I have never even heard the term."

A Trump spokesperson said that Trump had nothing to do with the records and had assumed any and all of his phone calls were recorded and preserved.