When the book “Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again” was announced, I was intrigued.
It wasn’t because I imagined it would shed real light on the cover-up of Biden’s decline; the cover-up was done poorly enough that anyone with eyes could see it, and most of these books tumbling out now about how it all fell apart are simply “Rashomon” exercises in various Biden insiders telling their self-exculpatory version(s) of the story.
Nor did I believe it might identify what the “original sin” in Biden’s campaign(s) was. Was it choosing to run again? Choosing to run the first time? Obama choosing Hillary over Joe in 2016, which would have meant that — had he been elected — he would have been on his way out of the White House falling asleep, drooling, in his vichyssoise — not seeking another term in it? Or Obama picking Biden over Tim Kaine as running mate in the first place, thus saving Uncle Joe’s political fortunes by the deus ex machina of the vice presidency?
None of that really matters now, and as Biden has exited stage far left, it’s clear the original sin was probably electing him to the Senate in 1972. No, what interested me was the two authors of the book: Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson.
To say that this was an odd couple on a book about Biden’s decline was an understatement; it was a little bit like Hunter S. Thompson and Ned Flanders going on a road trip together.
Jake Tapper, as CNN viewers and those delayed in airports over the past four years (that Venn diagram is pretty much just a single circle at this point) know, spent the Biden presidency pretending the 46th commander in chief was fit as a fiddle. Meanwhile, over at Axios, Thompson was one of the few people in Washington actually looking into Biden’s mental state — and finding some alarming things.
Theoretically, then, “Original Sin” could be an interesting dichotomous study in how most of the media willfully got it wrong while Thompson and a few others were actually reporting the story that was right in front of our eyes.
From what we’ve seen from excerpts — and from a new report indicating that a public relations firm is being dispatched to handle the book’s rollout — it will not be that. Instead, expect more of Now the Truth Can Be Told™.
That’s problematic enough that, according to The Daily Beast, the authors “have hired a crisis PR expert as they drop revelations of Joe Biden’s cognitive decline from their new book.”
Is Jake Tapper a lying about not noticing Biden’s decline or was he too incompetent to notice?
“To promote the book, which is out May 20, the two have signed up crisis communications expert Risa Heller and her firm Heller Co. to help navigate the rollout, according to an article on Breaker Media, co-written by former Daily Beast reporter Lachlan Cartwright,” the outlet reported Thursday.
“Heller has represented controversial figures across media and politics, including former CNN chief Jeff Zucker, convicted Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes, and former Rep. Anthony Weiner, who was ousted twice from public life over sexting young women and a minor.”
Why on earth, given one of the hottest nonfiction titles of the summer reading months, would you hire a crisis PR firm to help navigate things?
SUPERCUT!
Before profiting off the media conspiracy to hide Biden’s decline, @jaketapper helped run it pic.twitter.com/j5m7h4JVA3
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) February 27, 2025
Oh, yes, that’s why. But don’t worry — he looks back on this sort of thing “with humility.”
“Now Biden’s out, CNN anchor admits he covered up ex-Pres’ ‘non-functioning’ side
Jake Tapper says criticism aimed at him ‘FAIR’ adding: ‘I look back on it with humility’. pic.twitter.com/YEosYH5F4T
— D. Scott @eclipsethis2003 (@eclipsethis2003) May 15, 2025
As, I’m sure, did Elizabeth Holmes, Anthony Weiner, and Jeff Zucker. And, to be fair, it’s not like Tapper was the only one who was doing this:
Joe Biden is sharp as a tact supercut.
None of these people should still have a job on TV. pic.twitter.com/nd856DI1yi
— Insurrection Barbie (@DefiyantlyFree) May 15, 2025
However, Tapper is taking the most heat from this; as the New York Post reported, even Fox News was lambasting him, with John Roberts and Joe Concha saying Tapper and his network “tied itself in knots in trying to either dismiss this or cover it up” during Biden’s presidency.
“It is just patently insulting that Jake Tapper is trying to rewrite history while lining his own pockets in the process. He was very much a part of the media cabal who defended Biden,” Concha said.
“He blamed a stutter. He called Lara Trump a conspiracy theorist when she appeared on his show for simply pointing out the obvious that Joe Biden had no business being anywhere near the Oval Office years ago.
“But now that Joe Biden is expendable in the eyes of Democrats, and you know the books are going to come, the leaks are going to come, it’s all a CYA for everybody involved,” he added. “Now people are trying to profit off of it.”
And make no mistake, from what we’ve seen from the book, there’s no mea culpa; it’s out May 20, but the excerpts basically say what we all knew. One described aides noting Biden may need a wheelchair for a second term; another said he didn’t even recognize who George Clooney was at that infamous fundraiser.
If you didn’t know this was probably what the situation was, you are blind and deaf and probably not American. Or Joe Biden.
An advance book review from The New York Times is hardly any more exonerative:
Tapper is an anchor for CNN (and also served as a moderator for the presidential debate); Thompson is a national political correspondent for Axios. In an authors’ note, they explain that they interviewed approximately 200 people, including high-level insiders, “some of whom may never acknowledge speaking to us but all of whom know the truth within these pages.”
The result is a damning, step-by-step account of how the people closest to a stubborn, aging president enabled his quixotic resolve to run for a second term. The authors trace the deluge of trouble that flowed from Biden’s original sin: the sidelining of Vice President Kamala Harris; the attacks on journalists (like Thompson) who deigned to report on worries about Biden’s apparent fatigue and mental state; an American public lacking clear communication from the president and left to twist in the wind. “It was an abomination,” one source told the authors. “He stole an election from the Democratic Party; he stole it from the American people.”
Um, Jake: You are aware those people could have been talked to before the election, right? Either one?
They may not have been as forthcoming, because of course they wouldn’t have been. That’s why it’s called “journalism.” Now, it’s just people minimizing their role in the trainwreck — and naturally, they’re going to be chatty about it.
As pundit Caitlin Sinclair very recently noted in a (too accurate) viral video, Washington, D.C., is not a town so much as “a LinkedIn page with a drinking problem.” Of course these Biden functionaries are willing to tell Tapper and Thompson everything — and much more –now, and probably not in entirely accurate terms, because they’re going about securing their next job — and even if someone is an “anonymous source,” it’s probably not hard to guess who it is.
However, Tapper pressing them four years ago — like his co-author was busy doing, and getting ostracized for it because few journalists dared to do it — would have gone a long way to ending this charade. Not only did he do the opposite, he had the audacity to pretend he did as much as Thompson to expose this mess when he created it in the first place.
Oh what a tangled web we weave, Mr. Tapper , when first we practice to … cover up for a sham of a president, so the only politician to stand for the American people in two generations doesn’t win the election … and then get around to “deceive.”
Forget crisis PR. Has anyone considered witness protection?
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