Democracy was one of the things aides were willing to sacrifice to keep him in power, according to the book delving into the decline of former President Joe Biden.
“Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again,” written by Jake Tapper of CNN and Alex Thompson of Axios, relies on insiders who shielded the public from seeing Biden in decline.
In a new interview, Thompson said Biden aides believed “picking up the slack” for the former president was preferable to allowing President Donald Trump to return to the White House, according to the New York Post.
In the interview, Shannon Bream of Fox News noted one passage of the book that captured the mindset of aides who believed Biden “just had to win, and then he could disappear for four years. He’d only have to show proof of life every once in a while. … His aides could pick up the slack.”
Thompson noted that one source in the book is “basically admitting he shouldn’t be running again.”
“Well, this person went on to say that when you’re voting for a president, you’re voting for the aides around him. But these aides were not even Senate-confirmed aides. These are White House aides,” Thompson said, according to the Huffington Post.
“These were unelected people. And one of the things that really I think comes out in our reporting here is that if you believe — and I think a lot of these people do sincerely believe that Donald Trump was and is an existential threat to democracy — you can rationalize anything, including sometimes doing undemocratic things, which I think is what this person is talking about,” Thompson said.
Thompson called the aides running the Biden White House the “Politburo,” which included Jill Biden, Hunter Biden, and aides Mike Donilon, Steve Ricchetti, and Bruce Reed, the Post reported.
Thompson claims the “politburo” contained the “ultimate decision-makers” as Biden drifted into decline.
I’m old enough to remember when Jack Tapper squashed anyone who questioned Biden’s cognitive decline aka full blown dementia.
In full blown hypocrisy Jack Tapper has written a book ‘Original Sin’ Biden’s Decline, It’s Cover Up And His Disastrous Choice To Run Again.
There is… pic.twitter.com/FMK1kD1S7m
— Patriot Lady (@angelwoman501) February 26, 2025
Should Biden’s handlers face repercussions?
In writing about the book for Rolling Stone, Sean Woods wrote, “The Biden presented in the book is both familiar and tragic, a King Lear on the Potomac with a Lady McBeth at his side in Jill Biden.”
“The small cohort of longtime aides — dubbed the Politburo by insiders — protecting the president from the press, the American people and, it seems, reality, could be cast in a community theater version of ‘The Death of Stalin,’” he wrote.
“I blame his inner circle, and I blame him,” one senior administration official is quoted in the book as saying. “What utter and total hubris not to step aside and be a one-term president, as he said he would, and have an open primary when there was time to let the process play out.”
“Hubris is a theme that runs throughout the book. Tapper and Thompson present compelling evidence for a plot to cover up for an octogenarian politician in steep physical and mental decline,” Woods wrote.
A nugget from Original Sin b/t Josh Shapiro, Biden, and Jill Biden. https://t.co/ez29eLVJyx pic.twitter.com/t5Cu6jfQgX
— Alex Thompson (@AlexThomp) May 20, 2025
“One can’t help but wonder how Team Biden thought running for re-election was the best thing for the man, not to mention the country. It was malpractice and a scandal of the highest order..
“Given what’s depicted in these pages, it’s more than fair to ask: Who was leading America after 4:30 p.m., when, sources told Tapper and Thompson, the president’s workday often ended after the early bird special?”
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