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Thursday morning at the first hearing of the House impeachment inquiry against President Biden, Rep. Byron Donalds looks into a series of text messages between the president's son Hunter and brother Jim that say things like: "You've been drawn into something purely for the purpose of protecting dad." Donalds asked expert witnesses: "If you saw a text message like this in a potential money laundering operation or potential pay-for-play operation, would you be looking for information related to money going from son to father?" "It is worth investigating," said Eileen O'Connor, a former assistant attorney general at the Justice Department's Tax Division. "I would agree," said forensic accountant Bruce Dubinsky. "I would investigate this." REP. BYRON DONALDS: On the screens in the room, we have an organizational chart from the I.R.S. investigative team looking into the business practices of Hunter Biden and his associates. This org nation chart is from 2014. In my former life, I was in community banking. I'm comfortable with looking at organizational charts. When I first saw this chart, the first thing I thought about was a developer. Not to demean developers in America, but developers typically have multiple companies that float with various business interests and business lines. But the funny thing is, that in the business dealings of Hunter Biden, there is no real estate. None at all. So in your professional experience looking at this organizational chart of business structure, what do you see here? BRUCE DUBINSKY, FORENSIC ACCOUNTANT: I see a very complicated structure of entities that are interrelated and would give me concern, if I were an investigator. I would want to know what is going on in these entities, who is behind them. How is the money moving between them and what's the substance of the transactions, what's really going on here? DONALDS: Is it in the interest of this committee now in an inquiry phase to find out all of the flow of money between these entities and what the purpose was? DUBINSKY: Absolutely. DONALDS: Next slide, please. For my colleagues on the other side, we'll start talking evidence now. This is now a slide of the organizational chart of the Hunter Biden business companies and with associates from 2018 from the same I.R.S. investigators who were broke down the business structure in 2014. Does this slide cause you the same concern? DUBINSKY: Yes, it does. DONALDS: Let's talk about some more. Actually, one point I want to make on this. Ladies and gentlemen, I know it's kind of small so I would love to submit all this for the record. I would love my colleagues on the other side to see this. In 2014, one of the key owners was Devon Archer who testified and who was under deposition under oath by the Oversight Committee, and in 2018 Devon Archer is no longer listed but his wife Christa Archer is now listed. When you see a situation where ownership interest moves from one spouse to the other is that a concern of some level of fraud, potentially? DUBINSKY: I would call it a red flag. That's something I would look at. Again, try to get to the bottom of what happened there. Was it transferred, was there money behind it? What was going on? ... DONALDS: This is the WhatsApp text message between Jim Biden and Hunter Biden. It clearly says, "Anyway, we can talk later but you've been drawn into something purely for the purpose of protecting dad." This is between Hunter Biden and Jim Biden. Last time I checked, the father of Jim Biden and Joe Biden has now passed away. I assume it is Hunter Biden saying to Jim Biden, the president's brother, you have brought into this for the sole purpose of protecting dad. Miss O'Connor do you think this text message would lead this committee to get further information about the business dealings of Hunter Biden and how that actually links to Jim Biden, the president's brother, and why they are so concerned with protecting dad, aka, Joe Biden, aka, the president of the United States? EILEEN O'CONNOR, FORMER DOJ INVESTIGATOR: Yes. DONALDS: Thank you. Next slide, please. This is a text message between Hunter Biden and Naomi Biden. Everybody knows this one. This is a famous one that says, "I hope you all do what I did and pay for everything for this entire family for 30 years. It's really hard. But don't worry, unlike pop, I won't make you give me half your salary." If you saw a text message like this in a potential money laundering operation or potential pay-for-play operation would you be looking for information related to money going from son to father? DUBINSKY: Absolutely, without a doubt. DONALDS: Thank you. Next slide. This is a fun one. Ladies and gentlemen, this one is from 2018. This is about four months before Joe Biden launched his campaign for president of the United States, December 2018. The highlight is this is a text message between Jim Biden and Hunter Biden. Hunter Biden was in a bad way, by the way. He was really strung out. He lost a bunch of money and needed help. Jim Biden says, "This can work, you need a safe harbor. I can work with your father alone." It will probably take several months and everybody can read the text. If you saw a text message like this between the president's son and brother wouldn't you be concerned about them trying to give plausible deniability for the president of the United States to not have any knowledge of said business dealings? O'CONNOR: It is worth investigating. DUBINSKY: I would agree. I would investigate this. DONALDS: I yield back.

RealClearPolitics president and co-founder Tom Bevan, Washington bureau chief Carl Cannon and national correspondent Susan Crabtree join Andrew Walworth to discuss the results of the GOP debate on today's RealClearPolitics Takeaway podcast.

At today's hearing on The Basis for an Impeachment Inquiry of President Joe Biden, House Committee on Oversight and Accountability Chairman James Comer delivered the following monologue. REP. JAMES COMER: Since assuming our Republican majority in January, the House Oversight and Accountability Committee has uncovered a mountain of evidence revealing how Joe Biden abused his public office for his family's financial gain. For years, President Biden has lied to the American people about his knowledge of and participation in his family's corrupt business schemes. At least ten times, Joe Biden lied to the American people that he never spoke to his family about their business dealings. He lied by telling the American people that there was an absolute wall between his official government duties and his personal life. Let's be clear: there was no wall. The door was wide open to those who purchased what a business associate described as The Biden Brand. Evidence reveals that then-Vice President Joe Biden spoke, dined, and developed relationships with his family's foreign business targets. These business targets include foreign oligarchs who sent millions of dollars to his family. It also includes a Chinese national who wired a quarter of a million dollars to his son. Joe Biden also lied to the American people about his family making money in China. He has continued to lie about it even when the House Oversight Committee uncovered bank wires revealing how the Bidens received millions from Chinese companies with significant ties to the Chinese intelligence and the Chinese Communist Party. Just this week, we uncovered two additional wires sent to Hunter Biden that originated in Beijing from Chinese nationals. This happened when Joe Biden was running for President of the United States. And Joe Biden's home is listed as the beneficiary address. To date, the House Oversight Committee has uncovered how the Bidens and their associates created over 20 shell companies – most of which were created when Joe Biden was Vice President – and raked in over $24 million dollars between 2014-2019. We've also identified nine members of the Biden family who have participated in or benefited from these business schemes. What were the Bidens selling to make all this money? Joe Biden himself. Joe Biden is The Brand. And Joe Biden showed up at least two dozen times with business targets and associates sending signals of access, influence, and power to those prepared to pay for it. The American people demand accountability for this culture of corruption. They demand to know how these schemes have compromised President Biden and threaten our national security. They demand safeguards to be put in place to prevent public officials from selling access to their public office for private gain. Under the leadership of Speaker Kevin McCarthy, House Republicans have now opened an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden. By opening an impeachment inquiry, our investigation is now focused on whether President Biden engaged in impeachable offenses under the U.S. Constitution. It empowers Congress, elected by The People, to continue providing the answers, transparency, and accountability that the American people demand and deserve. In recent history, Democrats inflicted much damage on the credibility of congressional investigations by peddling the Russia Collusion Hoax. But this Committee, under this majority, will not pursue such witch hunts based on manufactured allegations, innuendo, and no real evidence. Today, the House Oversight Committee will examine over two dozen pieces of evidence revealing Joe Biden's corruption and abuse of public office. This includes e-mails, text messages, bank records, and testimony of Biden business associates. We will hear from legal and financial experts about this evidence and crimes that may have been committed as Joe Biden was sold around the world. The House Oversight Committee, along with the Committees on the Judiciary and Ways and Means, will continue to follow the money and the evidence to provide accountability so that Americans know their public offices are not for sale. I now yield to Jim Jordan, the Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee for his opening statement.

MSNBC contributor and former RNC chairman Michael Steele reacted to the second 2024 Republican presidential primary debate hosted by FOX Business and called it "the most amazing crap show" he has seen in politics. "The whole campaign it is setting itself up to be a Donald Trump bloodbath on the constitution, on democracy because he's going to continue to appeal to the lowest common denominator because seemingly no one knows how to counter that narrative," Steele lamented. MICHAEL STEELE: It was a load of crock. A black man sitting talking about there is no racism, there's no discrimination. So there's no racism? There's no discrimination? This debate was just a farce. I've been sitting here listening to folks, and I have to give you all plaudits for actually trying to do analysis of what was the most amazing crap show we have seen of a debate and I have done a lot of debates in my 45 years of politics. This thing was an embarrassment. It was a national embarrassment. It was a political embarrassment for the Republican party. Donald Trump didn't have to show up. There is no reason for Donald Trump to even come near these folks because they can't touch him. He'll be at 60% in two weeks for sure, there is no doubt about. And the reality when you have a candidate who can talk about slavery, when you have two candidates arguing over curtains, when you have another candidate sitting there saying Putin is a bad guy, but I still love him. Where do you go? You are standing in political hallowed ground. At the Reagan library. And this struck me more than anything else. You have these guys standing here in this library, Reagan took Russia to task. Reagan bankrupted Russia. He put it on a sneeze. Broke it. And not one of them could even talk about that. Not one of them could connect that dot to this current moment of what is happening with Ukraine. And that says a lot about this troop of candidates and the state of this party. And the other takeaway is Democrats -- I don't know why you are tied with these people. How does that happen? What are you doing? Why can't you communicate coherently to the American people you got this, and then you have what we have done over the last two years? I don't get it. So this is the whole campaign it is setting itself up to be a Donald Trump bloodbath on the constitution, on democracy because he's going to continue to appeal to the lowest common denominator because seemingly no one knows how to counter that narrative.

MSNBC's Rachel Maddow, reacting to the second Republican presidential primary debate, said the current Republican party does not want "to do politics" like you would in a healthy democracy. Former Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele agreed with Maddow's take that Republicans would prefer a strongman over "doing politics." MADDOW: Let me put my theory of the case to you. And I don't think you will agree with it which is why I'm putting it to you, because I would really like to hear your rejoinder to it. I feel like what is happening in this Republican primary, and what's happening in Republican politics right now, is that the Republican party, the Republican base, the Republican electorate has effectively decided they don't really want to do politics anymore. And they're not all that interested in what politics is, and governing, and political campaigning, and policy competition, and all that stuff. They're not interested in it. They would prefer to have a strongman, a particular strongman who they already know and like, and prefer to have that. And that is what they want instead of politics. So you get all these other candidates up, there and they're having a political fight they are talking about politics, and they are behaving like politicians whether or not they have been politicians before, but they are doing politics. And the Republican party says no to all of them, almost in equal measure, because they prefer a strong man who is going to end politics, and do something that is not about democratic political competition. So, the Democratic party has their candidate, they've the incumbent president, they're putting up a political campaign and that appeals to sort of Democrats, generally speaking, small-d Democrats. But the Republican party is driven by something more fundamental, and it makes all of these candidates look as small as they look. That is my theory of the case but I bet you don't agree. MICHAEL STEELE: You're wrong. You would lose some money on that one. I actually do agree with that.

Republican presidential candidate Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) delivered an impassioned monologue at the FOX Business presidential debate on America overcoming slavery and discrimination. SEN. TIM SCOTT: America has suffered because of slavery, but we've overcome that. We are the greatest nation on Earth because we faced our demons in the mirror and made a decision. So often we think that all the issues, you talk about crime and education and health care, we always think that those issues go back to slavery. Here's the challenge though: Black families survived slavery. We survived poll taxes and literacy tests. We survived discrimination being woven into the laws of our country. What was hard to survive was Johnson's Great Society where they decided -- to put money, where they decided to take the black father out of the household to get a check in the mail. And you can now measure that in unemployment, in crime, in devastation. If you want to restore hope, you've got to restore the family, restore capitalism, and put Americans back at work together as one American family. Our nation continues to go in the right direction it's why I can say I have been discriminated against, but America is not a racist country. Never, ever doubt who we are. We are the greatest country on God's green Earth and, frankly, the city on the hill needs a brand new leader. And I'm asking for your vote.

While discussing Wednesday night's GOP debate on The Steve Malzberg Show, Republican strategist Ford O'Connell, agreed with the host that Univision moderator Ilia Calderon's performance was problematic. "This gives me like PTSD back to the dem debate in 2020 when Jorge Ramos was asking questions. She was asking all the wrong questions. She's asking about dreamers, she's asking about amnesty. That's not going to fly at the Republican debate. And frankly given where we are due to Bidenomics, you're basically saying we need to import people to take away American jobs? I mean she was at the wrong debate, I just don't know how else to say that."

Another weird question from Fox host @iliacalderon - asking Pence to address DHS warnings about violence against people who identify as LGBTQ. pic.twitter.com/r2cdToKcHi

- Mary Margaret Olohan (@MaryMargOlohan) September 28, 2023

Republican presidential candidate Gov. Ron DeSantis predicted a terror attack in the U.S. that will be traced back to a porous border. "People are coming from China, Russia, Iran. All of our enemy countries, they're coming across the border. I hope I'm wrong but if I had to bet my life savings I would bet that there will be a terrorist attack that happens in the future of this country that's going to be traced to that," DeSantis said in an interview with FOX News host Sean Hannity following the debate.

CNN discusses the second GOP presidential debate. GOP strategists Alyssa Farah, Scott Jennings, and David Urban discuss.

Former NJ Gov. Chris Christie made his final plea to voters to leave the Trump era behind at Wednesday's GOP primary debate:

SERIOUSLY? Fox pretends it's a game show and asks candidates to play Survivor by voting one other candidate "off the island" pic.twitter.com/69J0yAu1HA

- TheBlaze (@theblaze) September 28, 2023 CHRIS CHRISTIE: I think I'm the only one on the stage that's been clear about this. I vote Donald Trump off the island right now. The reason I vote him off the island... Every person on the stage has shown the respect for Republican voters to come and express their views honestly, candidly, and directly and to take your questions. I have respect for every man and woman on the stage. Vivek, put your hand down for a minute, would you? I still got time, dude. Chill out. Look, this guy has not only divided our party, he's divided families all over this country. He's divided friends all over this country. I've spoken to people and I know everyone else has who have sat at Thanksgiving dinner or a birthday party and can't have a conversation anymore if they disagree with Donald Trump. He needs to be voted off the island and he needs to be taken out of this process.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom put an end to chatter that he might enter the race for the 2024 Democratic presidential nomination during an interview that will air in full Sunday on NBC's "Meet The Press." CHUCK TODD, NBC NEWS: The filing deadlines haven't passed. If President Biden doesn't run, why should we consider you a likely candidate? GOV. GAVIN NEWSOM: I think the vice president is naturally the one lined up, and the filing deadlines are quickly coming to pass. And I think we need to move past this notion that he's not going to run. President Biden is going to run and looking forward to getting reelected. I think there has been so much wallowing in the last few months, and handwringing even, in this respect. But we're gearing up for the campaign. We're looking forward to it. TODD: I understand, but you hear these calls, privately. What do you tell these donors who are wallowing? NEWSOM: It's time to move on. Let's go! TODD: And am I supposed to interpret that comment about the vice president that if, for some reason, the president chose not to run at this point, everybody rallies around her? NEWSOM: That's the natural -- it's the Biden-Harris administration, maybe I'm a little old-fashioned. TODD: You respect that? NEWSOM: Maybe I'm a little old-fashioned about presidents and vice presidents. I was a lieutenant governor, so I'm a little subjective.

This new ad from the Biden campaign will begin airing this weekend as President Biden travels to the G-20 summit in India. The ad highlights his February trip to Ukraine, which it says displayed the "quiet strength of a true leader." BIDEN CAMPAIGN: It was the first time in modern history that an American president went into a warzone not controlled by the United States. He entered Ukraine under the cover of night, and in the morning, Joe Biden walked shoulder to shoulder with our allies in the wartorn streets, standing up for democracy in a place where a tyrant is waging war to take it away. In the middle of a warzone, Joe Biden showed the world what America is made of. That's the quiet strength of a true leader who doesn't back down to a dictator.

On 'The Ingraham Angle,' Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) criticized the Biden Administration for prioritizing Ukraine aid over aid to Maui after the wildfires: "My move is to say that the only nation building we ought to be doing, Laura, is building this nation. And I can't believe that it's so hard for the white house when asked about are we going to first support our citizens who are in the midst of a natural disaster and have all these needs or first prioritize the citizens of some other country. They can't just say America? Why is it so hard? Why isn't the answer yes, of course, we are going to start with Americans because this is the United States of America. They seem to forget who they're serving. Who they have been elected to serve. Listen, this is not hard. We should be prioritizing Americans first. We should be rebuilding this nation we should not be engaged in this wild nation building endeavor overseas like Ukraine, like Afghanistan, like Iraq, these people have learned nothing."

Presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. accused the DNC of disenfranchising Democratic voters from choosing the party's presidential nominee and how the party's rules are designed to hurt his campaign. ROBERT F. KENNEDY: It's pretty clear that the DNC does not want a primary. I don't want to say that they want a coronation but that's I think that's a fair way to put it actually. Essentially they are fixing up the process so that it makes it almost impossible to have democracy function. They're effectively disenfranchising the Democratic voters from having any choice in who becomes president, the Democrat nominee. So two of the things they've done today is they've moved the Iowa primary, they made rules that if anybody campaigns in Iowa, or any candidate sets foot in the state of Iowa or sets foot in the state of New Hampshire, then none of the votes that are cast for that candidate will be tallied. In other words any delegate that I win in New Hampshire or Iowa would go instead to the president. Now they're trying to change it so that if I campaign in New Hampshire that none of the votes cast for me in Georgia will count. That's significant because it's hard tow in the nomination without Georgia. They are rigging it so that you know effectively, we are looking at the tabulations now that look like if you add up all the super delegate that they control and all the automatic delegates that just go to the party and go to the president, I would have to win almost 80 percent of all of the states in order to beat President Biden even if he only wins 20 percent... If the DNC is going to make it, it's going to rig it so that it is simply impossible for anybody to challenge President Biden, you know I need to look at other alternatives. Because I can't go back to the people who support me and to my donors and say you know I'm in this to make a point. I need to show them a road to victory... I want to see what the DNC does. I want to see if they make it a fair contest. I'm not asking to make it a hundred percent fair, I'm asking that there at least be you know a chance that it'd be plausible for somebody else to win other than their you know chosen elected candidate.

Senior Political Commentator David Axelrod gave his opinion on whether President Biden should run for reelection in 2024: "Well, look, I've been very clear from the beginning. Let me say one thing as a preface to this. Phil said something important, which is hooking up, connecting up with the nation's mood. You can't jawbone people into feeling better. You can't jawbone people into thinking that whatever they're experiencing isn't what they're experiencing. And I think that the president has to find a way to talk about the things that he's done in a context other than kind of asking for a report card from the American people, because if that's what he does, it's pretty clear right now that that's not going to work out well. If he takes more populist bent on the fights that he's fought and why he's fought them, I think he has a better chance. But in terms of your question, Poppy, I've been very clear from the beginning. If you gave me Joe Biden and lopped 15 years off of him and gave me this record, I would be very confident about the next election polls notwithstanding. That is not the case. And navigating this age issue is hard because people are not just saying, how is he performing now? They're also trying to postulate how he'll perform when he's 83, 84, 85, and that's a difficult question to answer. But he is running. I mean, he's made clear that he is running. And I can tell you that the mood of Democrats is that as long as he is running, no one wants to challenge him and weaken him in what many Democrats consider an existential fight with Donald Trump. Now, if Trump went away, I think the feeling might be different. I don't know. But no president has ever been benefited from a primary challenge and presidents generally win primary challenges. So, I think this is in Joe Biden's hands, and he has to decide whether he can complete this task and win this election and prevent what many people fear would be a disaster for the country. And if not, then he should step aside. But what I think and what other people think is not terribly important, what he thinks is because he's kind of in control here."

Bill Maher in an interview with MSNBC host Ari Melber talked about the media coverage of Trump supporters, saying the media doesn't understand how Trump's base is fighting against "crazy on the left." Maher also said that the Hunter Biden scandal "stinks to the high heavens" and that the media coverage would be a lot different if it were Donald Trump Jr. MAHER: I think it would be helpful if the people who watch this would see that. Just crack a window a little bit, and you maybe understand why people would - you have to try to understand why half the country is looking to Donald Trump as some sort of savior. Yes, it's not what we think, but, you know, people are not self-deporting in this country. Half the country isn't going away. Even if the Democrat wins the next time, they'll still be here, and they'll still have these views. And some of them are not crazy... I mean, after I was on Joe Rogan the other day, and yes, I don't understand how they can equate this equivalency between Trump and Biden, and in a lot of cases I guess Joe's now for Trump, pretty much out there saying it. Do I love everything about Biden? No, but, you know, I just don't understand how they can look at what Trump did. Does the Hunter Biden scandal stink? It really does. Stinks to the high heavens. I mean, that's real corruption there, that a lot of the left-wing media will not cover. But it's nothing like what Trump did. I mean, there's just no equivalency. You can say, what-aboutism for anything, but like I said to him, you just can't tell unlike things apart if you see that the same way. But, you know, they also shouldn't cover up what [Hunter Biden did]. If Don Jr. had done the things that Hunter Biden did, he would be [in the news] every day. If they found cocaine in the White House? Whose could it be? Who does cocaine around here? We can't figure it out.

With new COVID cases on the rise, are Americans ready for a return to debates over mask mandates, school closings, and vaccine safety? We also take a look at whether an increasingly partisan press is healthy for American democracy and how congressional redistricting may help determine which party wins the House in 2024. RealClearPolitics president and co-founder Tom Bevan, Washington bureau chief Carl Cannon, and senior elections analyst Sean Trende join moderator Andrew Walworth on today's RCP Takeaway podcast.

Former ambassador and Trump advisor Ric Grenell told SiriusXM host Megyn Kelly that Gov. Ron DeSantis is running a "radical" and "homophobic" primary campaign. GRENELL: Go take that video [ad] that he did. He was literally making fun of Donald Trump for having a speech after the Pulse Nightclub [shooting]... trying to say that gays and lesbians should be protected. And he made that clear. There's also parts of that video that he pushed out there from the Log Cabin [Republicans] annual dinner where [Mitt] Romney said we're going to outreach to gays and lesbians who are conservative. There's a whole bunch in that video that crosses the line. That wasn't just about protecting children under the age of 18, that was going after gay adults. That's unacceptable. I've worked way too hard and in my career, to allow a presidential candidate to dial us back like that. I believe that Ron DeSantis ruined his chances for 2028. Nobody wants to see a homophobe take over the Republican Party again. And I know I'm gonna get attacked for this, but the reality is, is that he was wrong. And I hear very clearly from the gay supporters of Ron DeSantis that that was a mistake, that they're trying to dial that back, that Casey DeSantis was furious about it, all of these things. Well then speak up say that it was a mistake, say that it was wrong. But I'm not going to sit back and allow this migration… Thank God for Donald Trump and Melania Trump who also are not going to let us go there. I am going to be able to give you specific rhetoric, and I think that his rhetoric on the campaign trail has crossed the lines from protecting children into going after gay adults…I think it's rhetoric in a lot of speeches and a lot of times when he's out there, he crosses the line when he's talking about these issues.

GOP presidential candidate Gov. Ron DeSantis on Thursday talked to FOX News host Jesse Watters about a "reckoning" to hold people accountable for COVID failures. GOV. RON DESANTIS: In the state of Florida, we obviously fought back against that when it was happening but we have enacted permanent protections. You have a civil right as a Floridian to breathe clean air without someone telling to you put on a mask. Whether it's your business you go to, whether it's a government agency, nothing, no mask mandates. No mandates on school children. No COVID vax mandates. And we've even banned gain of function research. I think part of the problem with this is a lot of these leftists they think that these lockdown policies worked. They did not work. Nobody has been held accountable from Fauci on down. I've promise to bring a reckoning to CDC, NIH, FDA, all these agencies that lie to the American people repeatedly. Because if we don't have a reckoning or accountability they are going to try to do it again and that's exactly what you see in some of these jurisdictions around the country. We all have to rise up as Americans and just say no. WATTERS: What would a DeSantis reckoning look like? DESANTIS: Well first of all you take something like an FDA. They're basically a subsidiary of Big Pharma. We are not going to allow people in the FDA to leave the FDA and cash out in pharma. It's like a revolving door. That's why you have them approving an mRNA vax for six-month old babies for COVID. There was no evidence to support that. They're doing it because of that relationship. We are going to clean house at places like the CDC. They didn't follow the science during COVID; they followed the narrative during COVID and that was very, very destructive. So we will clean house with personnel. You're going to have people in with me like my like my Surgeon General in Florida, Dr. Joseph Ladapo. You'll have people like Jay Bhattacharya from Stanford. These were people that were right about COVID from Day 1. They were pilloried by a very poltiicized scentific establishement but they have stood their ground and they have been proven right. Those are people that need to be in position not the political actors that we've seen over the last 4 or 5 years.

CNN's Van Jones on Thursday said the "whispers are finally up" in reaction to a recent poll showing Biden losing ground in the 2024 presidential race. "I think a lot of Democrats look at these numbers and say, the whispers are finally showing up in this data," Jones said. "People are talking behind their hand. They worry about Joe Biden. Joe Biden's like that grandpa that you love, that you believe in, you owe a lot, but you start to wonder, you know, would you give this grandpa a high-stress job for six more years or would you want something else for him?" "That's what's being talked about," Jones continued. "And people are scared to come out and talk - and say anything about it." VAN JONES, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: If Jim Messina says that we're bedwetters, invest in Pampers and Depends because a lot of people are terrified that Joe Biden is in real trouble and that you can't talk about it. So, that's what's going on. Listen, Jim is right, anybody who wants to argue against Jim Messina is going to waste their time. He's got to have the right numbers, the right data. And it may, in fact, be true that a year from now things look very different because there's been a year of a real campaign and all this kind of stuff. But right now, today, I think a lot of Democrats look at these numbers and say, the whispers are finally showing up in this data. People are talking behind their hand. They worry about Joe Biden. Joe Biden's like that grandpa that you love, that you believe in, you owe a lot, but you start to wonder, you know, would you give this grandpa a high- stress job for six more years or would you want something else for him? That's what's being talked about. And people are scared to come out and talk - and say anything about it. But I think it's important for us to have this conversation now. I think this may be the bottom for Joe Biden. He may go up as the economy improves. But right now the economy is getting better and fears about the economy are getting worse. We've got to be honest as Democrats that there's real pain out there at the base of our party. People still don't feel these policies yet. And we're going to have to make the case stronger. We can't just say, hey, don't worry about it. We have to make a stronger case for the help that's on the way than we have so far.