Alex Thompson
speaker
143 appearances
15 recordings
7 series
first heard Apr 2025
last heard 2 Jun
Alex Thompson’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 1.
Appearances
Thanks for coming for everybody who's there. And he says, comes over to Clooney and says, hey, how you doing? Thanks for being here. And his aide, Biden's aide says, you know, George. And he's like, yeah, sure. Of course. How you doing? And it becomes very apparent to everyone there that President Biden does not recognize George Clooney.
And then the aide has to say, George Clooney, like underlying who this person is, one of the most recognizable faces in the world, the guy who was hosting the fundraiser for you, the guy that you gave a Kennedy Center honor to, the guy you've known for 20 years. And then he's like, sure. Hey, how you doing?
And he wasn't the only one, Clooney and those in that circle who saw something that upset them. Barack Obama saw something. Biden not at his best, where he had to jump in a couple times in these private meetings behind the scenes. And they all just kind of like convinced themselves, look, he's Biden's had a rough travel schedule.
He was in France. Then he was in Delaware for Hunter's trial. Then he's back to Italy for the G7.
No, he has Air Force One with a bedroom. Although one of his top aides says to me, like, there's a big difference between Joe Biden getting seven hours and Joe Biden getting eight hours of sleep, which is. OK, that's interesting.
It's not a defense. Right. So in any case, Clooney kind of just like goes back to movie world and files it away. It's like, OK, he's old and I guess, you know, he didn't get any sleep and it's been a crazy schedule. But then what happens at the debate? And then Clooney's like, this is what I saw.
So I will say, having watched it on TV, in addition to having watched it in person, it was worse in person. And it's pretty bad on TV. He shuffles out, seems really old. He starts talking. He's obviously got a cold. His voice is already thin and reedy before the cold. So he seems really, really old. I remember thinking like when it started, when he clearly was not, you know, primed and ready.
Why did they agree to do this at nine o'clock at night? Having kept Alex's reporting in the back of my mind about how he doesn't, you know, he's sometimes 4.30, that's the end of the workday for him. Why would they do this at nine o'clock at night? And then he gives the first horrible answer, which comes like in the first five or 10 minutes, the one where he says, we beat Medicare.
Because he's having trouble. It's not just we've all had colds and we've all forgotten names and we've all forgotten names. But this was a man who could not put thoughts together and who could not explain basics of his policy. I'm not a doctor. I can't diagnose what it was. But this was somebody who was not able to communicate like he himself was able to communicate even four years ago.
And I was shocked. We had iPads. Dana bashed my co-moderator and I so we could communicate with the control room because we can't talk. And I wrote... Holy smokes. Because I didn't know who was in the control room. I thought maybe, you know.
Well, I would have said something else. But, you know, I thought maybe Zaslav was there. I didn't want to offend anybody. But like, I was stunned. And then his answers were really bad. And even his best answers were barely serviceable. And it almost didn't even matter. I mean, Trump was Trump, you know, full of...
bombast and false claims and, but he was disciplined, you know, say what you will about Donald Trump. The only thing he said about what I think empirically is the very worst debate performance in the history of televised debate since 1960. The only thing Trump said was, I don't understand what he just said there. And I don't think he does either.
I don't know if it was humanity as much as when your opponent's blown himself up to get out of the way.
There is a degree to which Kamala was insurance for Biden. I don't think it was consciously so, but they would... If anybody ever said anything in internal discussions, not to Biden himself, but in internal discussions about should he run, et cetera, the answer was always, if it's not him, it's going to be Kamala Harris. You think she can win? You think she can be president? And that's a...
No, she's less popular than him, which she was until she became the nominee, and less capable.
Well, there are a lot of reasons for that. One of the reasons was – When Biden called Harris on July 21st to tell her that he was dropping out and she was supportive, you know, don't let them chase you out, Joe. And he said, no, I think I've got to do this. It's what's best. You know, are you ready for a kid? And she wanted to do it.
They sent over the note that he was going to put on social media. Doesn't mention her. She says, you know, you don't mention me in here.
Yeah. And he says, well, I was going to endorse you in an Oval Office address later in the week. So this is Sunday. He was talking about doing this Wednesday or Thursday. And she said that that would be interpreted as weakness. And so the Donnellans and Reschettis and Bidens talked about it and then came back and said, you know what we're going to do? We're going to put out this note.
And then like 15, 20 minutes later, we're going to put out the note endorsing. And so they did do that. Harris had made calls and was ready to go. Um, she decided she wanted to call, in addition to, obviously, the Clintons and the Obamas, and the Democratic leadership, she wanted to call any possible rival, anybody who might throw their hand into the ring.
And the first person she called, because the one they were the most concerned about, or maybe the one they thought was the most eager or ambitious, was Governor Shapiro of Pennsylvania. They called him, but he's on board immediately. And then they call around. The only two of the prospective Democratic...
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