ChatGPT's astounding hallucination: "Joe Biden did not withdraw after the primaries were over. He stayed in the race through the primaries and remained the nominee. Kamala Harris did not replace him as the Democratic nominee."

I was reading the NYT article, "Concern Grows Over Republican Congressman’s Mysterious Absence/A spokesman for Representative Thomas Kean Jr. said an unspecified 'personal medical issue' has led the New Jersey Republican to miss House votes."

The last vote Mr. Kean cast was on March 5.... [A] campaign spokesman said that Mr. Kean was “dealing with a personal medical issue” and would be “back to a full schedule soon.”... “He’s going to be totally fine”...

I went to ChatGPT just to ask about what sort of medical issue it might be. He needed to keep it secret. It's "personal" (embarrassing somehow?). And we know he'll be "totally fine" "soon." On reflection, I suspect there's some dissembling in there. I prodded ChatGPT to consider that Kean is ultimately going to withdraw from his re-election race and that what's going on now is a matter of timing. The primaries in New Jersey will happen on June 2d, he'll win, then withdraw, and then the Republican Party will be free to slot in whomever they want. 

ChatGPT was dubious about my hypothesis, so I said: "Just look at the last presidential election. The Democratic Party avoided a crowded primary because they let the incumbent look like he was going to go forward. When it was too late and the primary season was over, Biden withdrew, and the party got to put Kamala Harris in. I assume that was coordinated and the timing of Biden‘s withdrawal was done to spare the party a contentious primary season."

Here's ChatGPT's amazing answer:

That interpretation doesn’t really line up with how the 2024 cycle actually unfolded—or with the incentives the party was facing.

First, some grounding: 

• Joe Biden did not withdraw after the primaries were over.
• He stayed in the race through the primaries and remained the nominee.
• Kamala Harris did not replace him as the Democratic nominee.

So the specific sequence you’re describing—“incumbent clears the field, then withdraws late so the party can install a successor”—didn’t actually happen in that case.

Thanks for the "grounding," Chat.

"I got a call from a number of people, including the great Joe Rogan, and he said we have to do something about this."

"And I looked into it. I called Bobby... And it was really uniform support. And I said, so why would we wait three or four years to get it done?... Let's get it done immediately. And that's what happened. This is probably has never been anything that happened so quickly. Everybody is so strongly in favor of this. It's for a lot of people, but it's for the military in particular...."

"I want to thank Secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is fantastic.... And people love him. More importantly, your wife is here.... Real boss in the family. It's fantastic.... Joe Rogan — fantastic. We did an interview before the election. We had over 300 million people. And I said, oh, man, I hope Kamala doesn't do it and she didn't. He wanted her to do it and she didn't Some day, Joe's gonna explain why. I can tell you why. Because she didn't want to.... The executive order I'm signing... today.... directs the FDA to expedite their review of certain psychedelics already designated as breakthrough therapy drugs.... If these turn out to be as good as people are saying, it's gonna have a tremendous impact on this country and other countries too.... Usually with things like this, nothing ever happens, no matter how the research ends up. We're changing that...."

ADDED: Joe spoke:

🚨 WOW! Joe Rogan reveals President Trump IMMEDIATELY offered him FDA approval for a psychedelic treatment in a text chain

Because the data was SO CONVINCING and STUNNING

"I wanna tell everybody how this happened. I send President Trump some information."

"With one dose of… pic.twitter.com/dnqYVf96hN

— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) April 18, 2026

"If that’s what 'woke' means, it explains why most Americans don’t want to be woke."

"Transgender adults should have the freedom to live as they see fit and that includes the option to pursue elective medical procedures. But why should that choice come at taxpayer expense, especially for noncitizens? If the fiscal well-being of California isn’t incentive enough to crack down on such wasteful mismanagement of tax dollars, then maybe Newsom’s political future is. The outgoing governor seems determined not to learn from the failure of another California Democrat. The most devastating attack ad against Kamala Harris in 2024 featured her saying during her previous presidential campaign that she supported taxpayers picking up the tab for federal prisoners to receive gender transition care...."

Writes the Editorial Board of The Washington Post, in "Gavin Newsom chooses the wrong side of gender politics again/Sex changes for illegal immigrants might sound like a Republican ad, but it’s California policy."

"Did you and your team of lawyers miss important information about [Tim Walz] during the vetting process."

Oct 2024. Eric Holder explains that his vetting of Tim Walz for Kamala’s VP didn’t miss “anything of substance."

"Authentic guy with a great record."

They knew about Walz.

Everything they said about this guy in the 2024 campaign was a lie. pic.twitter.com/mRrOMBfSri

— Western Lensman (@WesternLensman) January 5, 2026

What's more likely?

They didn't vet him adequately.

They saw the problems, but went ahead anyway.

They saw and wanted what they saw.

 

pollcode.com free polls

"Ken Martin, the chairman of the D.N.C., said on Thursday that he had decided not to publish a report that he ordered months ago into what went wrong for the Democratic Party last year...."

"Mr. Martin will instead keep the findings under seal. He believes that looking back so publicly and painfully at the past would prove counterproductive for the party as it tries next year to take back power in Congress.... 'Here’s our North Star: Does this help us win?' Mr. Martin said in a statement. 'If the answer is no, it’s a distraction from the core mission.'... Some Democratic donors have demanded a more thorough accounting of how exactly the party and Ms. Harris spent $1.5 billion in 15 weeks en route to losing every battleground state in 2024...."

From "The D.N.C. Is Scrapping Its Report on What Went Wrong in 2024/Ken Martin, the Democratic National Committee chairman, ordered the autopsy months ago but is now said to believe that its release would be counterproductive for the party" (NYT).

"How do we squash the prejudice against female presidential nominees, which has always been with us, but became even worse after Kamala Harris got whomped by Donald Trump?"

Asks Gail Collins in a column with a title that asks a different question, "Where, oh Where, Will the First Female President Come From?"

Maybe it would be better to ask this other question, my question: When will we ever get to evaluate a female presidential candidate as just another presidential candidate? We've been nudged too many times to pick the woman because she is a woman. It makes people wary. I mean, really, why was Kamala Harris foisted on us?

So, yeah, she got "whomped." I'm collecting these colorful words that make losing seem violent but also fun. I'm thinking of George W. Bush taking what he called a "thumping" in the 2006 midterms, and Obama, after the 2010 midterms, saying he'd experienced "a shellacking."

Gail Collins is talking about whomping and squashing. Brutal words, but still polite. Euphemisms.

What's the etymology of "whomp"? It's the sound. A heavy, low sound. From the OED, quoting a 1960 issue of New Scientist: "The Sunday edition of the New York Times..whomped to the floor outside my apartment door."

"What is Demthink? It’s what you’d end up with if you trained a large language model solely on the inner monologue of people who..."

"... either work in Democratic politics or watch MSNBC for eight hours a day.... The problem with Demthink is not merely that it tends toward cynical triangulation. No, it’s that it tends toward triangulation that isn’t even politically effective because it’s so finely tuned for the in-group that it comes across as uncannily out-of-tune to everyone else."

Writes Nate Silver, purporting to read the collective mind of Democrats, in "Is America ready for a gay president? Kamala Harris and a subscriber have questions about Mayor Pete, and I have annoyingly nuanced answers."

I've already blogged about what Harris said in her book about not picking Pete for VP — here, 10 days ago — and I don't want to redo that. I'm blogging Silver's piece because of the idea of "Demthink" and I liked these examples of how wrong it can go:

"As for California Gov. Gavin Newsom, Harris wrote that he told her he was hiking and would 'call back' but 'never did.'..."

"Newsom addressed the excerpt during a news conference Friday in California, downplaying any tension with Harris and ribbing a reporter for asking about it. 'Trivial doesn’t even begin to describe how inconsequential my comments are about to be,' Newsom said, going on to confirm he was hiking and saying he missed a call from an unknown number. 'At that exact same moment, [I] was working with my team to put out a statement to endorse her. I assume that’s in the book as well.'"

From "Harris book ignites tensions with potential 2028 presidential rivals/In her upcoming memoir, Harris recounts her presidential campaign, offering blunt observations of top Democrats she could face as future opponents" (WaPo).

What a great line: Trivial doesn’t even begin to describe how inconsequential my comments are about to be.

ADDED: Also in that article: "Harris portrayed [Josh] Shapiro as overly ambitious and confident, a characterization that a Shapiro spokesman, Manuel Bonder, called 'simply ridiculous.'" What's wrong with being ambitious and confident... other than the worry that he'd outshine her? Anyone capable of serving as President is going to be "ambitious and confident." I assume Bonder mean it's ridiculous to think those qualities are bad and not it's ridiculous to think Shapiro has them. 

"Buttigieg 'would have been an ideal partner—if I were a straight white man,' Harris writes in a passage of her soon-to-be-released book...'"

"'But we were already asking a lot of America: to accept a woman, a Black woman, a Black woman married to a Jewish man. Part of me wanted to say, Screw it, let’s just do it. But knowing what was at stake, it was too big of a risk. And I think Pete also knew that—to our mutual sadness.'"

From "The Running Mate Kamala Harris Didn’t Dare Choose/'I love Pete,' she writes in her new book. But picking a gay man would have been too risky" (The Atlantic)(gift link).

What kind of leadership potential is this? She made the wrong decision, admits to not daring, and all because she presumes that we, the people, are prejudiced.

To take her at her word, she declined to pick the running mate she thought was the best because she thought we Americans were being asked "a lot" to accept her. But it was hard to accept her when she'd been pushed forward because of her identity and not because she was the best. Then she decides that we louts wouldn't accept a gay man even though he was the best.

What were she and Pete mutually sad about? How simultaneously hostile to minorities and eager to promote minorities we terrible Americans are?

"Former President Joe Biden’s advisers convinced the aging commander in chief to hold an early summer debate with Donald Trump last year by insisting it would allow him to reach the “widest audience possible'..."

"... a leaked memo reveals. The six-page document dated April 15, 2024 — 73 days before the disastrous forum that tanked Biden’s re-election bid — bizarrely capitalizes and bolds any references to the 46th president. 'By holding the first debate in the spring, YOU will be able to reach the widest audience possible, before we are deep in the summer months with the conventions, Olympics, and family vacations taking precedence,” reads the memo.... 'In addition, the earlier YOU are able to debate the better, so that the American people can see YOU standing next to Trump and showing the strength of YOUR leadership, compared to Trump’s weakness and chaos,' it continues...."

I'm reading "Biden advisers pushed early Trump debate to reach ‘widest audience possible,’ leaked memo reveals" (NY Post).

The bold and capitalized YOU and YOUR looks like something from a scammy advertisement aiming to separate weak-minded seniors from their life savings.

I don't for one minute believe the advisers believed the assertions in the memo. I will be presuming that they could see he was going to be incapable of appearing competent and that they needed to push him to release his hold on the nomination, and they only wanted to do that once the primaries were over and it was too late to do anything but advance Kamala Harris. So they conned him into humiliating himself in the debate and giving the media the basis for declaring him unfit — as if they just noticed — and demanding that he withdraw.

The advisers were not mistaken. They knew what they were doing. They were lying. And they were devious. Let me restate that. THEY knew what THEY were doing. THEY were lying. And THEY were devious.

That's my presumption. Prove me wrong.

"At the end of last week, the Democratic Party sent an email to members and supporters, asking them to chip in $30 each for its election fighting fund. The email was dressed up as a personal appeal from Kamala Harris...."

"Harris was so badly defeated by President Trump.... that the party’s power brokers might have thought better than using her to front their bid for campaign cash. Then again, those party bosses have also seen the polling that shows Harris, at least for now, is the overwhelming favourite among the party’s grassroots to be the presidential candidate in 2028."

I'm reading "The early frontrunner for the 2028 election? Kamala Harris/The former vice-president may run for governor of California. Or…" (London Times).

I laughed at this line "At 60, she is still young enough to have another run at high office...." Another? Like there's only one more chance for her to threaten us with a presidential candidacy — in 2028? She's only 60. She can go at least 4 more times. She can be there in 2028, 2032, 2036, and 2040! Imagine the 80-year-old Kamala Harris, well-seasoned, sharp as a tack.

Perhaps the Democratic Party must show her if it's going to use any individual person on this kind of fundraising email. Not to show her — when she's the party's most recent nominee — could be read as disrespectful. Ironically, that's the same motivation that got her the nomination last time and that led to dismal defeat. But there's no choice. They're boxed in. This is the corner into which they have painted themselves.

I'm making a new tag. 

"The book is a very, very harsh critique of Jill Biden and the first couple’s top aides....The book does not explore in much detail Kamala Harris’s role in the cover-up."

"If anything, it reveals how little Biden’s inner circle trusted or respected the former vice president — and how much she was insulated from the Oval Office as a result. According to Tapper and Thompson, she was seen by members of Biden’s inner circle as lazy and rude. 'Several quietly expressed buyer’s remorse,' they report, to the point where some believed he should have picked Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer to serve as vice president instead...."

From "A Damning Portrait of Joe Biden’s Loyal Inner Circle" (National Review).

"I was deputy campaign manager on Kamala Harris’s 2024 campaign. I’ve come up through a party that clings to TV ads and news releases..."

"... holding onto a media environment that stopped existing a decade ago. A party that thought Barack Obama’s cultural cool would last forever, and that young voters were table stakes. A party fundamentally mismatched with the task at hand. While we prattle on, concerning ourselves with those who already agree with us, the right has built an information machine aimed squarely at opt-out voters — people sick of traditional politics. Right-wing partisans, much like opt-out voters, don’t trust the mainstream media or Hollywood. They seek out alternatives. This helps generate demand. This demand is met with supply: a network of influencers, personalities, podcasters and TikTokers who both inflame their bases and push messages into nonpolitical subcultures.... They present right-wing cultural narratives on every issue set — and push messages into nonpolitical subcultures.... Meanwhile, the center-left’s attention and viewership is generally pointed squarely at the traditional press. Opt-in voters are more likely to trust mainstream institutions, after all. This leaves us relying on a news media industry that is neither a partisan ally nor reaches the voters we need. Our online ecosystem can’t sustainably thrive.... It leaves Democrats unable to influence the culture that really matters today...."

Writes Rob Flaherty, in "If You’re a Voter Reading This, This Essay Is Not About You" (NYT).

You got so much help you never learned to do for yourself. So sad!

ADDED: It's weird how the phrase "and push messages into nonpolitical subcultures" appears twice. I don't think it was intentional repetition, so I take it to mean that Flaherty is both careless in his writing and genuinely afraid of the phenomenon of messages pushed into minds. The nefarious "influencers, personalities, podcasters and TikTokers" are out there generating "narratives" — "on every issue set" — and pushing that material into vulnerable people. There's no sense that speakers have attracted listeners who will actually think and form preferences. That is, there's no sense that the "opt-out voters" are human beings worthy of democracy. They're victims who wander the dark streets of the internet and are raped by right-wing misinformation.

The NYT notices that Kamala Harris was protected from needing to state an opinion on the trans-athlete issue.

The observation is hidden away near the end of "How the War Over Trans Athletes Tore a Volleyball Team Apart.Blaire Fleming was a little-known college player. Then she suddenly became a symbol of injustice — to both sides of the controversy."

It's written like this, as if it was just a fluke that Harris never had to face this difficult, divisive question:

Following Biden’s exit from the presidential race last July, Kamala Harris seemed willing to address the trans-athlete issue. According to three people familiar with Harris’s campaign strategy, the campaign expected that the moderators would ask Harris about transgender children in sports during her September debate with Trump. The answer Harris’s advisers prepared for her, according to a person familiar with her campaign strategy, emphasized that trans children should be made to feel welcome in their schools but also acknowledged the concerns of parents whose kids, especially older ones, play competitive sports and want to make sure the competition is fair. But no one ever asked her, and the candidate didn’t bring it up on her own.

Oh? She "seemed willing"? I think if "no one ever asked her," it was because she never answered questions from the kind of people who would ask, and though she barely answered any substantive questions at any point, she only exposed herself to questions from interviewers who wanted to help her. So I don't think she "seemed willing" to address the issue! That she had an answer worked out, in case the question ever slipped through, proves virtually nothing, but I can imagine her circling around the abstract platitudes of making everyone feel welcome and simultaneously ensuring the competition is fair. The prepared answer is as puzzling as no answer at all.

On the topic of what actually is fair, I found this interesting material in the middle of the article:

Joe Rogan says the book — "Fight: Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House" — lied about how and why Kamala Harris missed appearing on his podcast.

Here's the video, cued to the right place, and I've got transcript underneath it, but if you want to read an article about it, with lots of quotes from the podcast, here's this, from the Hollywood Reporter: "Joe Rogan Says Harris Campaign Lied About Being Misled by Show: 'We Have the Receipts'/The podcaster details what he says really happened between his podcast team and the Harris campaign during their much-disputed booking effort: 'It's someone trying to cover their ass.'"

I recommend the original source, the video:

Transcript (from Podscribe, with my editing based on listening to the audio):

Truth is the most valuable thing. If you're speaking openly about something. If you're talking about something publicly, truth is the most important thing. As soon as you are willing to violate truth, to preserve something else... now I can't listen to you anymore... And obviously politics is the best example of that. I mean especially today. I guess it's probably a good time to talk about this. There was a thing that came out recently. There was a book, some book about the Kamala Harris campaign where they talked about her getting on this show, and they said a bunch of things that weren't true. They... supposedly talked to like 150 different people about... what happened with her coming on this show.... They didn't talk to us. Which is kind of crazy....

"When Donald J. Trump sued CBS for $10 billion days before the 2024 election, accusing the company of deceptively editing a '60 Minutes' interview with Vice President Kamala Harris..."

"... many legal experts dismissed the litigation as a far-fetched attempt to punish an out-of-favor news outlet.... In a preview of the interview that aired on 'Face the Nation,' CBS’s Sunday morning show, Ms. Harris was shown giving a different answer than the one she gave in the version of the interview that was broadcast the next evening on '60 Minutes.'... CBS News said that Ms. Harris had given one lengthy answer to Mr. Whitaker’s question, and that the network followed standard journalistic practice by airing a different portion of her answer in prime-time because of time constraints.... Mr. Trump’s legal complaint relied on a largely untested interpretation of a Texas law that prohibits deceptive trade practices in things like marketing products to consumers.... Regardless of the lawsuit’s merit... Paramount owns broadcasting licenses, [and] it needs the blessing of the Federal Communications Commission to complete its planned merger with Skydance...."

From "Paramount in Settlement Talks With Trump Over ‘60 Minutes’ Lawsuit/A settlement, if reached, would be an extraordinary concession by a major U.S. media company to a sitting president" (NYT).

That makes it sound like an attempt at bribery. Perhaps Trump needs to avoid settling this case.

I wasn't going to post this, but Donald Trump posted it. Whether that means the lip-reading is accurate, I don't know, but here it is:

Trump just shared this on Instagram pic.twitter.com/9pL2t2shYg

— Chief Nerd (@TheChiefNerd) January 12, 2025

It's shocking that a man in this mental condition is President of the United States.

I'm reading "Biden Calls Meta’s Ending of Fact-Checking Program ‘Shameful’/Responding to a question from a reporter, the president said he believed Americans 'want to tell the truth'" in the NYT.

You can see from the headline that the NYT is forefronting something he said that seems like something its readers will agree with. I think it's wrong and deceptive — shameful, really. He doesn't seem to understand the "community notes" approach to dealing with misinformation or the bias problem with the fact-checkers. 

But if you keep reading this article about yesterday's press conference, it gets worse and worse.

Politico finds what it calls "9 Political Issues That Bit the Dust This Year."

How do "issues" die? Based on this article, issues "die" when they don't work as Democratic Party hacks hoped. Thus, celebrity endorsements have died. The Kennedy mystique has died. Abortion — as a political issue — has died. The explanations may amuse you — or just annoy you. The lack of self-awareness is about exactly what you'd expect. For example, on the topic of celebrity endorsements:

In 2024, Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign took that to the next level, siphoning up much of the Hollywood and entertainment A-list, from Arnold Schwarzenegger to Bad Bunny. Vogue at one point compiled a list of 37 stars who endorsed Harris. President-Elect Donald Trump tried to counter with endorsements from the likes of Jason Aldean or Kid Rock, but he couldn’t keep pace. “We don’t need a star because we have policy,” Trump said at a rally in Pittsburgh. In some ways, he wasn’t wrong: Trump won without the elite sheen of Harris’ fleet of surrogates. If anything, her star-studded backers may even have hurt her campaign, giving credence to conservatives who cast her as an out-of-touch California elite. In a fractured country, with the monoculture all but gone, and with anti-elite sentiment building, it’s getting harder and harder for any celebrity — even Taylor Swift — to move enough voters to sway an election.

Are Joe Rogan and Elon Musk not celebrities? I guess to Politico, "celebrities" are only in the acting and popular music category. Politico won't admit that these people flocked to Kamala Harris because they needed to for their own selfish reasons — not because KH's campaign operated at some especially high "next level"! Their endorsements, unlike the endorsements of Trump by Joe Rogan and Elon Musk, did not represent any kind of knowledge or thoughtful judgment about the candidates. Maybe the way celebrity endorsements work on us is changing, even improving. But they didn't work for Kamala, even in massive abundance, so, to Politico, they died!

What the NYT is saying today under the heading "Trump Transition."

On the front page of the NYT website right now:

 

1. "Trump’s Night-Owl Tendencies Set Stage for After-Hours Diplomacy." When you click through, the  headline becomes "Trump’s Transition Business Largely Happens After Night Falls." I prefer the front-page headline because it focuses on Trump, the person.