AMNA NAWAZ: Joe Biden's cancer diagnosis has led to an outpouring of well wishes and sympathy, but it comes at a time of renewed questions about the full picture of the former president's health.

Joining me now for more on that and the day's political news is Amy Walter of The Cook Political Report With Amy Walter and Tamara Keith of NPR.

Great to see you both.

TAMARA KEITH, National Public Radio: Hello.

AMY WALTER, The Cook Political Report: Good to be with you.

AMNA NAWAZ: Tam, let's start with the news of the former president's diagnosis there.

Of course, we wish him a successful treatment and a quick recovery ahead, but that news does follow an intense period of scrutiny about his health while in office and while running for reelection, spurred by a new book coming out this week and also the release of the special counsel's audio interview with him.

How has all of this changed the conversation, politically speaking?

TAMARA KEITH: I'm not sure how much it has changed the conversation because this has been a topic of much discussion going back well more than a year ago before that debate that went so terribly bad for President Biden, causing him to ultimately drop out of the race for president.

If you go back two years, three years, voters were saying that they thought he was too old to run for reelection.

He was America's oldest president at the time, and voters made it very clear they thought he was too old.

They made that clear well before the Democratic establishment acknowledged that that was a reality that he was struggling.

And the debate obviously drove that home.

We now have the next oldest president of the United States in President Trump.

There is a heightened focus on a president's health, especially when the president is older, but whoever the president is.

And so I think that in some ways this is going to put the focus on President Trump's health, as well as on former President Biden's health and the book about what may or may not have been hidden from the American public.

AMNA NAWAZ: Amy, when you look at the renewed questions here, this also means more questions for other Democrats, right, all the potential contenders for 2028, what they knew.

Is this something they, the party have to reckon with?

Is this something voters care about?

AMY WALTER: Yes, I do think that the point, Tam, is that voters had been making it very clear, Democratic voters had been making it very clear for weeks, months, maybe even a couple of years that they thought that Biden was too old for the job.

And when you hear Democrats criticize Republicans, often they say, look, Republicans have put personality, Donald Trump's personality, or the party ahead of the country, and that we, as Democrats, they say, would never do that.

But it's become pretty clear that they did just that, which is their concerns, whatever concerns that many around Donald Trump had, the concerns they were hearing from their own constituents wasn't enough for them to stand up and say, hey, we should do something.

We should either, one, get a serious primary challenge to Donald Trump, or two, organize enough Democrats to go to the president and ask him not to run for election.

That didn't happen.

So if you were running in 2028, what is you have a base of voters who are disappointed, dispirited, and really distrustful of the system.

Many voters we talked to during the 2024 campaign, you would hear them say, especially younger voters, the system seems so broken and nobody is really trying to fix it.

Instead, they're doing all they can to protect the establishment.

I think, if you were running in 2028, not only do you need to acknowledge that, but, as a Democrat, you would need to say, here are the ways in which we will be more courageous in standing up truth to power, as well as the authenticity of that individual candidate and ways in which they will challenge accepted institutional beliefs or systems.

AMNA NAWAZ: Tam, meanwhile, quickly on this, if we can, we have also seen Republicans pounce in a way that should have been expected, maybe.

But Donald Trump Jr. has posted online, claiming that the diagnosis here was part of a wider cover-up around Mr. Biden's health.

He's also repeating unfounded claims that Biden clearly had dementia.

Is this the kind of thing that you see picking up steam among Republicans?

TAMARA KEITH: Well, President Trump himself has now also made unfounded claims about how President Biden must have known that he had cancer long before this was made public.

I think that we are in territory as a country where we have been for a very long time, which is there is intense interest in presidents' health, and presidents often conceal the full facts about their health from the American people.

President Kennedy did.

There are questions about President Reagan.

There are obviously questions about President Biden.

This is a longstanding issue where the public wants to know.

The White House is under pressure to release information, but it's private health information.

And we don't know what we don't know.

And I think it's pretty safe to bet that we don't have the full picture as the American people.

AMNA NAWAZ: Amy, let's turn now to Capitol Hill, where we have seen the president's mega tax bill advance out of the Budget Committee late on Sunday night.

That was just two days after it failed in that same committee, some Republicans calling for even deeper spending cuts.

They changed their votes from no to present so we could move forward.

Is there any pushback from the so-called fiscal hawks anymore?

AMY WALTER: Yes, I mean, this was their pushback, was to essentially say, well, we got some things that we wanted.

But, at the end of the day, this is not a fiscally conservative piece of legislation.

It's not going to be budget-neutral.

It is not going to reduce the deficit in that way, so that, at the end of the day, these fiscal hawks are going to have to support something that is not going to be as conservative as they would like.

You're going to have moderates who are going to have to support something that is going to cut especially programs that they feel very strongly about, say, Medicaid, more than they would like.

That is the reality of having a four-seat majority and trying to cram pretty much 1,000 different things into one big, beautiful bill.

The balancing act here is incredibly challenging.

And the bottom line, I think, Amna, for these Republican members is, they know this is the one legislative train that's leaving the station.

And if they don't get on that train together, nothing is going to pass in this Congress.

They will have nothing to talk about in 2024 (sic) in terms of any sort of legislative accomplishment.

AMNA NAWAZ: Tam, we have seen President Trump in the past get involved to help make things happen, whether it's the speaker fight or getting people to change their votes, getting on the phone.

What do we know about his role in this particular effort?

TAMARA KEITH: Well, I can tell you that two White House officials have confirmed to me this afternoon that he will be going to Capitol Hill tomorrow morning to meet with the House Republican Conference.

And let that arm-twisting begin.

His message is pretty simple.

He wants unity.

He wants a win.

He has not gotten into a lot of the nitty-gritty details about exactly what's in the package.

He wants the win.

He wants this legislative train to get to the station.

He wants to be able to celebrate and have the Rose Garden signing.

And he is -- as former officials have told me, he is the ultimate closer, right?

He has been able -- multiple times, we have been here on this set talking about, oh, my gosh, how are the Republicans going to bridge this terrible divide between the moderates and the conservatives?

And then Donald Trump gets on the phone and they can't say no.

And part of the reason is that he's powerful.

Part of the reason is that he brought them to the dance.

And part of the reason is that failure just simply isn't an option.

They won with him.

Failure is not an option.

So they're finding a way.

But, so far, this has been the easy part.

The hard part is coming and this drama is going to play out for a while.

AMY WALTER: Yes, because they have to go to the Senate.

(CROSSTALK) AMY WALTER: Then the Senate makes changes, right.

And this is how reconciliation works, right?

AMNA NAWAZ: Thirty seconds left here, Amy.

What happens?

AMY WALTER: Right.

The House goes, oh, yes, yes, we got it done.

The Senate goes and makes changes.

Then they have to resell those changes back to members who are going to be very skeptical about some of those changes.

I have been around a long time.

I have seen this in every administration.

Every administration that has a House, a Senate, and a White House gets one big shot to do one big thing.

And they usually do.

It can be really messy.

It can take a lot longer than they had hoped.

Obama got Obamacare, Trump got his tax cuts.

Bill Clinton got his budget reconciliation bill.

The not-so-great piece for the party in power, though, is every single one of those pieces of legislation ended up being an anvil in the midterm election.

AMNA NAWAZ: Yes.

AMY WALTER: It was actually not as positive with swing voters as it was with the base.

AMNA NAWAZ: Let's see what happens with their one big shot.

Amy Walter, Tamara Keith, thank you so much.

AMY WALTER: You're welcome.

TAMARA KEITH: You're welcome.