Key Points – Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson’s bestselling book, “Original Sin,” argues that former President Joe Biden’s cognitive decline was hidden by his inner circle, and his decision to run again in 2024, despite being unfit, was a disastrous choice contributing to his loss.
-At a recent Philadelphia event (May 28th), the authors defended their post-election reporting, stating over 200 sources, mostly Biden-supporting Democrats, only became candid then.
-Tapper described Biden as “non-functioning” during the pivotal June 2024 debate.
-The book and event also explore the historical precedent of concealing presidential health and critique the lack of process within Biden’s team regarding his re-election bid.
Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson talk ‘Original Sin’ in Philadelphia
PHILADELPHIA- For a bestselling book, Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson’s Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again has angered a lot of people across the political spectrum, for different reasons.
The book, by veteran CNN anchor Tapper and upstart Axios reporter Thompson, is sharply critical of former President Joe Biden and his inner circle for Biden’s decision to run for a second term in 2024 and for remaining in the race for too long, once it was clear he had declined to the point where it was affecting his ability to run, or serve as president. Tapper was one of the moderators of that fateful presidential debate last June, which was the beginning of the end of his presidency.
Furthermore, it argues that Biden’s family and staffers hid the extent of Biden’s decline and were less than honest about it when dealing with the press and the public. This, the book argues, is as much to blame as anything for the election victory by Donald Trump in 2024.
For many conservatives, the authors are part of the liberal media establishment that helped cover up Biden’s infirmity, and they only decided to write a book after the election was over. For a lot of liberals, writing about Biden’s decline is a distraction from Trump’s many misdeeds.
Both sides have criticized Tapper and Thompson for the same thing every political book author gets these days: They “held it for the book,” and didn’t report in real time when it would have made a difference. In this case, the authors did not even begin reporting until after the election was over. And staffers being more willing to go on the record after an election is over has happened for decades, including in numerous books Bob Woodward has written about different presidents.
Live in Philly
Tapper and Thompson addressed that and much more on Wednesday night in an event at the Free Library of Philadelphia, part of its Author Events series, where they were interviewed on stage by 6ABC news anchor Tamala Edwards. The event attracted a full house in the auditorium of the library, in Tapper’s hometown of Philadelphia.
“I think at the end of the day, whatever criticism’s coming from the right or the left, most normal people, the community of normies that embody the United States, for the most part, want to know what happened, because they have a right to know. We have a right to know.”
“We did this huge reporting project and talked to more than 200 people, almost all of them Biden-loving Democrats, and almost every single one of them after the election, which is only when we got candid and got honest about what we had all seen,” Tapper said at the event.
“What our reporting suggested was, what we all saw the night of the debate, you on your TV and me, with my own eyes, was somebody who was, for want of a better word, non-functioning, he could not articulate a sentence,” Tapper said. “It wasn’t just he couldn’t articulate a vision, he was having trouble just finding the right words.”
Thompson noted that “covering up the president’s health is a tradition as old as America,” from FDR’s wheelchair usage to JFK’s Addison’s Disease to Ronald Reagan’s memory issues late in his presidency.
The Point of No Return
The two authors disagree on when the “point of no return” was, for when it was too late for Biden to back out of running. Thompson thinks it was when the Robert Hur special counsel report came out in February of 2024, while Tapper believes it could have been even earlier.
“I think that there are any number of moments where somebody should have said, ‘I know you think that you’re the only one that can beat Trump, and I know you think that Trump is an existential threat to America, but you’re not up for this, for the rigors of a political campaign, and you’re not up for being president until January 2029,’” Tapper said.
“What was sort of shocking about this is how little process there was,” Thompson said of Biden running again. “No one was willing to get in his face, in part because they didn’t want to be seen as disloyal, and in part for their own self-interest.”
The authors agreed that Biden had lots of reasons for wanting to run again, from not wanting to appear irrelevant, to not having much to live for in the event of retirement, to Biden’s belief that he’s always, throughout his life, come back from long odds.
“People who run for president are wired differently than most humans,” Tapper said. “I mean, they think that they should run the world. Every one of them. And that is a daunting thing to think about.”
Thompson added that while Biden was long “one of the most loquacious, easiest quotes in all of Washington,” it was jarring when he was president, and not able to have that same “gift of gab.”
Was The Right Right About Biden?
Some on the political right, after the revelations in the Original Sin book, have taken something of a victory lap. Tapper, in a decision he discusses at the Free Library event, even apologized to Lara Trump, the former RNC co-chairwoman who is Trump’s daughter-in-law, for a particular viral moment.
Edwards, the moderator, pushed back on that, asking Tapper why he apologized to someone who had pushed numerous false conspiracy theories throughout the campaign.
“I’m not saying that I would vote for her,” Tapper said of Lara Trump. “I’m not testifying as to the quality or lack thereof of her character.
“Our reporting suggested that some of the cognitive issues started as far back as 2015,” Tapper said. “Her report suggested that some of the cognitive issues started as far back as 2017, and when we were done reporting the book and we had reached our conclusions, it became clear that her skepticism was warranted, and my pushback was, in my view, overly aggressive.”
“The fact that there are people on the right or the left who are bad faith actors does not make the moments where, whether it’s a perfect clock or not, they are correct and I am incorrect, any less correct.”
A lot of the conservative talking points about Biden’s health don’t hold up so well. It was frequently alleged, throughout Biden’s term, that the plan all along was to “switch Biden out at the last minute,” with some versions having Michelle Obama waiting in the wings. There’s no reporting in the book to back up the idea that a last-minute dropout by Biden was the plan all along, nor was it ever a live possibility that Michelle Obama would run. Also, contrary to all sorts of conservative assertions over the years, Biden has never been given a diagnosis of dementia or Alzheimer’s Disease.
What Media Cover-up?
The other thing often alleged is that “the media” went along with the cover-up about Biden’s health and condition. But this isn’t really true, either.
The issue of Biden’s age was reported on, very frequently, throughout his presidency, and once the 2024 campaign got underway in earnest, it was reported on a nearly-daily basis, on the front pages of the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post.
Sure, the White House and partisan liberal pundits pushed back hard on this, with many of them arguing, when the Times wrote about the Biden age issue frequently around the time of the Robert Hur report in early 2024, that it was a waste of time to even write about this because Trump, in every way, is way worse. (One MSNBC headline from February of 2024: “Hysteria over Biden’s age is a distraction from Trump’s authoritarianism,” was typical of the mood in that cohort at the time.)
But political beat reporters did some solid reporting on the issue at the time.
Mark Liebovich argued this in The Atlantic this week, stating that while the Tapper/Thompson book goes into much more detail and uncovers behind-the-scenes stories from staff, the Biden age story was a regular feature of American political coverage for many years.
“His advisers were not only hiding Joe Biden from the world, they were hiding the world from Joe Biden,” Tapper said at the event, noting that Biden either didn’t believe the poll numbers in the last days of his campaign, or never saw them at all.
“It’s probably easier to live in a world where you got done wrong than in the world where like, oh my God, they’re banning foreign students from coming to the United States because of this decision you made,” Tapper added.
About the Author:
Stephen Silver is an award-winning journalist, essayist and film critic, and contributor to the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Broad Street Review and Splice Today. The co-founder of the Philadelphia Film Critics Circle, Stephen lives in suburban Philadelphia with his wife and two sons. For over a decade, Stephen has authored thousands of articles that focus on politics, technology, and the economy. Follow him on X (formerly Twitter) at @StephenSilver, and subscribe to his Substack newsletter.
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