Hello and welcome to the Americano podcast, a series of discussions about American politics, power and prejudices.

This year, 2024, is an election year in America, a presidential election year. And so we will be doing two podcasts

a week, rather than our usual one, because we want to and because we know you can't get enough

Americano in your life. Today we are going to be talking, of course, about the news that yesterday,

the 21st of July,, a Sunday, Joe Biden announced

that he would be withdrawing from the presidential election. And for this podcast, I'm not

going to be the host. I'm going to be a guest. Kate Andrews is brilliantly hosting.

And it will be me in conversation with Tim Stanley. Let's get straight to it.

Freddie, last weekend we had a near assassination attempt. This weekend, we have the Democratic nominee for president dropping out of the race.

Joe Biden is staying on as president, but he has decided not to continue his campaign, and he has endorsed his vice president. Talk us through another wild weekend. It's not boring, is it? Not at all. No, there's a lot going on in American politics, and it's quite hard to keep up. Joe Biden's announcement yesterday was expected on Friday.

A lot of talk from Washington that was going to happen on Sunday.

Some pretty well-sourced journalists saying that would happen.

And then on Saturday, there would seem to be some sort of pushback from the White House talking about, you know, don't just believe everything you watch on the news, telling

White House staff that. And then on Sunday, I think quite a lot of White House staff were

taken by surprise by the news because they weren't told about it. The first they heard of it was

on social media. And so it's sort of not a surprise yet it's still a shock.

And I think the sort of amusing thing at the moment is watching the Democrats who are very good at message discipline, kind of pumping out this line that he's a great patriot for doing this.

Barack Obama called him a patriot of the highest order.

Patriot, I should say.

I shouldn't use the American pronunciation. And of course,

you know, comparing Biden to a latter-day George Washington, someone who falls on his sword for the greater good. That's all rubbish, of course. Biden has been bitterly fighting to survive. He's apparently reportedly very angry at

senior Democrats who have turned on him, particularly Barack Obama, with whom he famously has this

...