Biden-Trump tell-all book: Harris was 'dumbfounded' election night | CUOMO

New book comes out tomorrow called Fight Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House, details the drama unfolding behind the scenes in the last year's presidential election. One of the authors, Amy Parnes, joins me now. Congratulations on the book. So why do you want people to read the book? The first cell is the shock that the ticket, Walls and Harris, felt on election night. What do you know? Well, we know that they were shocked, completely surprised by the events that unfolded on election night. They thought they were going to win. And, you know, when they were told that they were losing in the final hours and that they had lost, there was complete silence and shock and they were just dumbfounded by what was happening. But, Chris, I think people should read this book because John and I are journalists in the truest sense. We call balls and strikes. We are not one sided. This is a book that Democrats can learn from. This is a book that Republicans will enjoy because you can watch the train wreck. Everyone gains from reading this book. I like the cell. The role of Biden, the role of Biden, Amy, there are two schools. One is he was resistant to the change and stayed resistant throughout. The second was he was resistant to the change. And then he said, all right, I'm going out, but it's going to be Harris and that he didn't want a primary. What did you find out? Yeah. Well, so we know that there is a secret meeting going on in the final minutes before President Biden drops out at the time. It's at the Naval Observatory. It's in Kamala Harris's pool house there. Her advisors, her closest advisors, are gathered and they're talking about what happens when and if Joe Biden drops out. We find out that he does drop out there and one of her aides rushes in to, you know, to be with her. Biden doesn't want to immediately endorse her. He wants to kind of let his let the moment sink in and then endorse her a couple of days later. And she says, no, I need your endorsement right now. Do you believe the which story do you believe more that he that Pelosi and the party said it has to be Harris or that Biden wanted to pick who it would be? I think that Pelosi and the party, they were very squeamish on Harris going in. We have reporting in the book that says he goes, she goes. I think they wanted a lot of people wanted a primary and but it was it was a little too late for that. Yeah, I had a guy trying to convince me that it was Obama and Ron Klain had picked them out. What did you find out about Obama's role in this? Obama was very quiet, obviously, but he was talking to Nancy Pelosi. We found out there were a couple of calls happening within those 24 days. He was, you know, trying to take the pulse of people. He was in listening mode, too. He was talking to his former partner and asking what his plan was. And so he was very involved. But behind the scenes, you didn't see him so much. In this book, we report what was exactly happening. Yeah. And I had heard what you have here, that Obama had floated the governor of Michigan and the governor of Maryland. And when I heard that at the time, Whitmer and Westmore, I thought they should have flipped it or I thought it should have been Shapiro and he. But of course, that's what would happen if they played out the process. Did you get any particular insight into what made the short primary or the open convention an impossibility? It was just too short of a time frame. And, you know, President Obama was calling people at the time. He called people like Jim Clyburn to find out where he was. Jim Clyburn knew that call was coming and he said, OK, I have to quickly get behind Kamala Harris. And that's sort of how that unfolded. And I think he wanted I think President Biden, President Obama rather, wanted to kind of see how this all unfolded. He didn't want to he didn't want his finger on the pulse. But he also didn't think that Kamala Harris could win. Do you believe that Democrats hid that Biden wasn't up to running again? I think every Democrat has a story. And we talk about some of that in here, where they saw President Biden not in the best terms. We did tell, for instance, Congressman Swalwell, who was there looking at him. They came face to face at a congressional picnic. And the congressman had to cue Biden as to who he was. This is someone who ran against him in 2020. He's very vocal. He's out there. Someone like President Biden in Biden's heydays, he would know who he was. He didn't know. You know, we have other details in the book about a makeup artist coming in on his international trips to kind of prep him before meetings with foreign leaders. We have all of these details in the book. It's a really fascinating read. Well, thank you for the rigor. And thank you for reporting and recording. And now I hope everybody reads it. Amy Parnes, you're always welcome here. Good luck to you and Mr. Allen.