Welcome back to The Best & The Brightest, focused on the interlocking worlds of the White House, the Hill, the Blob, K Street, and the media. Below the fold, my conversation with East Wing whisperer Michael LaRosa about the real inside conversation about Feinstein, Kamala, Hunter, the re-election, and more. But first…

Alas, Tyson wasn’t very successful, because seven more members of the Florida delegation chose to endorse Trump instead—including Reps. Matt Gaetz, Anna Paulina Luna, Brian Mast, Greg Steube, Cory Mills, Vern Buchanan and John Rutherford. The main gripe was that DeSantis didn’t personally make the calls, but left it to Tyson. “Part of the problem with Tyson is that nobody knew who the fuck he was,” said one G.O.P. advisor to a member of Congress who was called. Tyson declined to comment.

But this has always been DeSantis’s problem. He lacks the personal touch, whereas Trump always calls, often for no reason at all. Steube, who recently suffered serious injuries falling off a ladder, told Politico that he made his decision in part because DeSantis, unlike Trump, never called to check in. (This frosty behavior hasn’t been helping DeSantis with donors, either.)

In the meantime, DeSantis is on a witch hunt to find out who in Florida’s division of emergency management sent out a test emergency alert to every Floridian’s phone at 4:45 a.m. this morning. Being woken up that early is like sitting through traffic on the George Washington Bridge. Could this be his Bridgegate? Chris Christie surely hopes so.

Long before that, however, we met in our 20s when he was a producer for Chris Matthews’ Hardball, before he went on to become a spokesperson for Nancy Pelosi during her speakership. On Tuesday, we met for breakfast at the Regency, which is where everyone has breakfast in Midtown. He’s also working with Facts First USA, which seems to be the most hawkish super PAC defending Hunter Biden from congressional investigations. Our conversation has been condensed and edited.

Michael LaRosa: The voters already rendered her capable to serve. They had a proper opportunity to replace her in 2018, twice, and they didn’t. Nobody was unaware of her age. The voters of California entrusted her with the office—they’re the only ones who have the right to take it away from her, or she can choose to step down. But otherwise, I think everybody should mind their own business, because there’s been plenty of elderly and sickly senators who were men and nobody called for their resignations, or called for them to step down. I think Thad Cochran was out for a long time. Ted Kennedy was out for a long time.

But this is a razor-thin majority for the Democrats.

It doesn’t matter.

Polls can be wrong, as you know. It’s her call. In the end, did we have this reaction when two Democratic senators recently suffered strokes? Or when Mark Kirk was out for a year after he suffered a stroke? Nobody was saying replace him, or he should step down. Or when Tim Johnson suffered a stroke? I know Strom Thurmond and Robert Byrd were in and out of the hospital. Did anyone say they should resign? Maybe, but there wasn’t this media backlash to it the way we’re seeing it now. I think Pelosi was right, nobody asked the men to resign when they were sick. Why are they doing this to the woman?

So you don’t think Biden should step in?

Absolutely not.

Let’s shift to 2024. Why hasn’t Biden announced yet?

Why should he? I think he should wait until January. I don’t think he should announce anytime soon. He doesn’t have any opposition. He doesn’t need to spend resources. Right now, the political media is completely focused on Trump and [Alvin] Bragg and then we’re going to have the G.O.P. debates once per month and all of the attention is going to be focused on Republicans trying to out-MAGA each other. Even without debates, it’s all about who can out-extreme each other. Look at DeSantis, all anybody is talking about is DeSantis and Disney or DeSantis and abortion. This is going to go on for a while. There’s no need for him to do anything.

Is this another “basement” campaign strategy?

No. What Joe Biden is good at is legislating and governing and government, itself. That’s been his life and he’s good at it, because he’s been the most effective and productive first-term president since Lyndon B. Johnson.

What about those who are reading into the delay as a sign of indecision?

Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan didn’t announce until January of their elections in 1980 and 1984. Bill Clinton didn’t announce his re-election until October of 1995. There’s precedent. Doesn’t mean he wants it any less. The man has run for president four times, and I think nobody would question whether he wants to be president or not.

Do the stories about Gavin Newsom and J.B. Pritzker making moves in case Biden doesn’t run bother the White House?

No, because those governors are loyal to the president, supporting the president, and have said so to the president’s face and to the first lady’s face. Governor Newsom came to the East Wing and had a long chat with the first lady about a lot of things, mostly around community colleges. There’s no worry.

Does the first lady want her husband to run again?

Yes, it was never a question. You don’t run for president for four years, you run for eight. I don’t think it matters what age you are, that’s sort of baked into the cake when you announce you’re running.

Why promise to be a “bridge” then?

Well, when he’s done being president, there will be a bridge to someone else. He didn’t say a bridge in four years, he said a bridge.

Is Jill Biden really as influential as has been reported over her husband’s decision making?

She has the most influence on her husband that we’ve seen in a first lady since Hillary Clinton. Now, they are both barrier-breakers in different ways. Hillary was a policy partner to her husband and that worked for them—they were each other’s first line of defense. They were intertwined because of their love of public policy and wanting to make changes. The Bidens’ marriage is just as powerful, however Jill does not want to be a policy partner to her husband. She will be the first one to tell you that he has plenty of advisers and plenty of experts around him, and does not consider herself to be a policy expert or a policy maker.

But she is his ultimate gut check. She has enormous influence on him because of how long their love story has endured and because of their personal trust they have in each other. They both know each other so well, it’s hard not to have that kind of influence over each other. But she’s not advising on troop levels in the Middle East or Afghanistan.

How should they deal with Biden’s age?

I think they should embrace it. There’s nothing to manufacture about one’s age. You are your age. They should lean into it. They should own it. They should shine a line on the problems and the weaknesses and have fun with it and be self-deprecating.

They can stop getting mad at reporters who write about how old he is. Stop taking it so personally. The fact is that he is 80, and the public and the media have a right to discuss that, as they did with Reagan, as they did with Bob Dole. People on both sides have such selective memories. My God, Ronald Reagan was able to inject humor into it during his famous debate with Walter Mondale. More of that. Nobody will forget Joe Biden and his record, how he saved democracy and restored institutions, so don’t take it so personally.

In the words of the great Cher, “If I could turn back time.”

It’s like the Aliyah song, “Age Ain’t Nothing But a Number,” from her first album.

Who do you think Biden would prefer to run against? Trump or DeSantis?

I don’t know who he prefers. What I can say is, the devil you know is better than the devil you don’t. What do we know? We have hard data on the public perception of Donald Trump and how voters, particularly independent voters view him. Independent voters have run away from him for three cycles in a row. That is a candidate you want to run against.

How does Trump’s indictment impact Biden’s re-election?

It doesn’t. There is no case you can make to persuade Trump supporters that he is unethical or criminal or doesn’t have their or the country’s best interest at heart, so it won’t affect the race.

You have to admit that the indictment turns off swing voters that ultimately decide elections and that helps Biden.

I think there’s a lot about Trump that’s already baked in the cake that turns off swing voters. This is just another notch on that belt.

Do you agree with the vice president’s supporter, Karen Finney, who told me earlier this year that the West Wing could be doing more to support Kamala Harris?

They already support each other. I don’t know what more could be done. I don’t know that there’s anything that the vice president wants to do that she’s not doing.

Could they make her more forward facing?

Is it the job of the number one to be promoting the number two? That’s called being vice president.

Are there regrets about how they rolled her out?

No, absolutely not. I think she’s a natural campaigner. I think she’s a natural number two. I think she seamlessly transitioned into that very well. I don’t want to say coverage of her is unfair, because it sounds whiney, but I think she is held to a tougher standard, not a higher standard, than other vice presidents in the past because she is seen as a natural heir to him in four years when he’s no longer on the ballot.

You are working at a super PAC, Facts First USA, that is helping to defend Hunter Biden.

The PAC isn’t just intended to defend Hunter Biden, it’s to shine a light on the hypocrisy of the G.O.P. investigations into the White House and their oversight of the administration. It’s definitely one of the most aggressive outside PACs in terms of fighting the Republicans who happen to be very focused on the president’s child. It’s not so much about Hunter, it’s about the Republicans using their majority and their power to irresponsibly attack the president’s family. They’ve made a conclusion and they’re trying to find some kind of evidence of wrongdoing that just simply doesn’t exist.

This is about inflicting political harm.

Look, it’s politics, and this is a campaign season. Republicans are going to use their platform to unfairly smear the president and his family, and Democrats are not going to sit by and take that from hypocrites like Jim Jordan and Jim Comer. I think the Republicans tried this in 2020 and it didn’t work. The former president was obsessed with the president’s family and used it as a cudgel and voters just didn’t buy it. Voters aren’t dumb. They also know that the president’s son struggled with addiction issues. There isn’t someone in America who isn’t affected by addiction. Attacking a child of a president, who is not employed by the White House, who doesn’t advise his father on politics or policy, who doesn’t campaign for his father, to attack and smear the son of a president, is unacceptable. Families who are not involved in politics should not be attacked.

He was a lobbyist. He was involved in politics.

He’s allowed to make money.

Yes, but his living depended on his relationships with the powerful, like his dad.

That’s a separate question. We could go back decades and decades of politicians where their kids live off their family’s name.

What if it involves foreign adversaries, like Russia and China?

You have to register to lobby for those entities. Look, there’s been an investigation into Hunter Biden since 2018, there’s already been one, and there’s a prosecutor in Delaware, appointed by Trump, who is conducting that investigation. If the shoe was reversed and Biden’s prosecutor was investigating Trump’s child when Trump was president, Trump would have fired that prosecutor. Biden hasn’t fired that prosecutor. He cares about the rule of law. He cares about not weaponizing the Justice Department, which the former president used as his law firm. That’s not what’s going on here. When that investigation ends, we’ll see what happens.

Do you think Hunter will end up testifying on the floor in an open house hearing?

I have no idea. Hunter is a Yale educated lawyer. He’s a successful businessman. He was appointed by a Republican president to sit on the board of Amtrak and was head of the World Food Program. I wouldn’t want to go up against Hunter.