00:00And now they're admitting what we had been saying all along.
00:06Joe Biden wasn't running the show.
00:09And now they're admitting to it.
00:11I would say the right wing meme about Joe Biden was that Dr. Jill Biden was sort of the shadow
00:18president sort of running the country.
00:19What your book shows is that that's not totally far off.
00:23It's not Jill Biden, though.
00:24It's this group, this group of tight advisors around Joe Biden who I want you to talk about that you
00:29call the Politburo, which is an interesting word choice.
00:31Tell me about the word choice and then tell me about those people who were really calling the shots around
00:37the president.
00:38So the Politburo, not a term we came up with, a term from within the Biden administration, as the name
00:43would suggest, is a tightly held group of senior advisors.
00:49Mike Donilon and Steve Reschetti, foremost among them.
00:52You also have individuals floating in and out.
00:55Ron Klain, who's chief of staff for the first couple of years of the president's term.
01:00Anita Dunn.
01:02Some senior individuals on the staff of Jill Biden, the first lady.
01:08Anthony Bernal, the chief of staff.
01:09Perhaps the most powerful first lady chief of staff ever.
01:13And then another woman named Annie Tomasini.
01:15And so we would assess that it's basically the Bidens, Joe, Jill and Hunter, and this tight group of aides.
01:24And they weren't like a star chamber.
01:25They weren't like all friends or allies.
01:27They all just had their different portfolios and did what they did.
01:30And these were the individuals that helped steer the government.
01:34Now, is that different from any other president?
01:38On one level, no.
01:39On one level, obviously, a first family has its priorities and every president has aides.
01:46But on another level, yes, definitely.
01:48There was more power vested in these individuals, according to cabinet secretaries that we spoke with,
01:54who said that at best, Joe Biden was the senior member of a board and that the Politburo was cordoning
02:02him off starting basically in 2023.
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