Alex Thompson (1)

If you had eyes and followed politics in the last cycle none of this will shock you. It's a ticktock of decline that, in spite of the foreword saying it's not going to be an exposé of incompetence, really strikes no other note in the telling. The "revelations" amount to finger-pointing; you'd think we get to know who knew what, when and how they lied. Except nobody wants to be more explicit than handwaving to the "inner circle", and fewer still want to go on the record. What really stands show more out is that Tapper wants you to look only at Biden's "politburo" and refuses to see the media as accomplices in the coverup he's painting. They were just hapless and naive, it was perfectly normal to not question the most media reclusive president in modern times or the paper thin excuses they issued when he bungled and stumbled. That the most central figures and key quotes are all unattributed, shows an ongoing hesitancy and political toll in speaking out, and people are still covering their own asses first and foremost. The most outspoken people in this book already had a break with the Biden and Dem machine.

If you were thinking they had to have known, the answer is largely yes, and the fig leaf of ignorance is Biden being increasingly bunkered even from staff access. But the ongoing story of ignorance in the book is just hard to take at every level when anyone with sense could see them herding him starting even during his presidential run, let alone campaign. The real question the book does not address is a soul searching why the supposed fourth estate swallowed paper thin excuses. Why is it now so obvious to for instance say he signalled being a transitional one-term president, when the media fell over themselves to split verbal hairs to signal boost "he never said that"? At the fever pitch post debate disaster we're to believe that even Biden himself just didn't know the polling was bad! Nobody told him the real numbers, which is why he had embarrassing factually fraught moments and an insistence of staying in the fight until it was far too late. The worst the book would have you believe about him is that the man was too stubborn, but even then it was for the cause, so he's not really to blame either.

There's an air of "Lying for Jesus" in the handful of justifications given - think of the cause, think of the danger of a Trump presidency! Don't question, don't contradict, don't expose clear lies for being lies - because, what "dark forces" are you aiding by caring about the truth at a time like this? As lackluster as the soulsearching is, the real whopper is knowing that if he'd squeaked by (maybe by just staying sequestered throughout) all this lying to the people in general and base in particular would have been seen as entirely justified. It took repeatedly falling on his face, sometimes literally, for this to unravel - and bizarrely the book seems to hold that while being unfit to run again, at no point was the presidency itself compromised by the same man who couldn't string coherent sentences together and who got confused enough to not recognize friends and staff. Is the book really exposing a coverup or just creating another? show less

[3.75] As a journalist and communications professor for the past four decades, I’ve avoided sharing my political views in public settings. Attempting to review this book while still following this rule will be challenging, but here it goes.

First, a disclaimer. The thoughts I share should not be misconstrued as an endorsement or condemnation of Biden’s policies. Likewise, my thoughts should not be misconstrued as an endorsement or condemnation of Trump’s policies.

Examining “Original show more Sin” through a journalistic periscope leads me to conclude that Tapper and Thompson have delivered a well-researched and highly readable piece of enterprise reporting — a disturbing expose that surfaced at least a year too late.

I’ve read other reviews suggesting that the authors relied on “thin evidence” to reach two conclusions: Biden was in a state of alarming cognitive decline — and that his condition was doggedly covered up by staffers, relatives and political allies. I’m not sure how much more evidence these readers would need. The authors interviewed about 200 sources and documented dozens of instances — some previously reported — to bolster their premise. True, many sources would not speak on record, a fact that can understandably fuel skepticism about accuracy and agendas. But the facts laid out in this well-organized tome make a compelling case to back up the subtitle’s contention: Biden and his minions made a “disastrous choice” to run again.

The book chronicles the White House “groupthink” that clearly seeped into some quarters of Capitol Hill — and in many media circles.

And herein lies my biggest criticism with book. Tapper and Thompson should have devoted more time and energy into probing the contention that the media was complicit in what the authors have branded a “cover-up." Is it really enough to merely state that “Nobody would talk to us until after the election”? I think not.

The book makes a believable assertion that dozens of powerful policymakers, opinion leaders and elected honchos made deliberate and deceptive decisions to hide the "bridge president’s” cognitive woes. True, there are other instances in American history where voters were kept in the dark about ailments impairing presidents (think JFK and FDR). But as the tired saying goes, “two wrongs do not make a right.”

Rep. Susan Wild of Pennsylvania — a Democrat — asked a telling question as many members of her party debated whether Biden should remain on the ticket: how does one slam Donald Trump for “lying” when an airtight case could be made that power brokers in the Democratic Party lied to the American people about the cognitive condition of the world’s most powerful leader? Wild has a point. show less

This is a dispiriting book. We can be so easily deceived by our leaders, not to mention the media, who themselves may have been deceived and misled. To quote Karl Kraus: "Politicians lie to the press and then believe what they read.” ***

I remember my good friend, political scientist and historian, Andy, who insisted in 2020 that Biden would be a one-term president, a place-holder, if you will. I was a supporter of Andrew Yang, who, I thought, had the only good handle on the real problems show more of the economy (technologies assumption of traditional manufacturing jobs – something Trump doesn’t get either) and I worried that Biden wouldn’t have a handle on them and that we needed an eight-year candidate, not an automatic lame-duck one. Turns out

Jake Tapper’s book reveals things were far worse than I thought and he comes right out and blames Biden’s entourage for not revealing how bad things were until the last minute. This prevented a healthy debate among possible candidates at least two years before the election and it would have made Trump out to be the mentally deficient one. That horrible debate never would have happened.

Hah! But perhaps the real scandal is not that the family and staff hid all this deterioration from the public, but that the media was either completely incompetent or so liberal they didn't want the public to know fearing it might empower the MAGA camp. Then, of course, what they did report was labeled as "fake news” by the Biden White House. For example:

The numbers were undeniable. From January 1, 2023, to April 27, Biden had only four public events before 10:00 a.m., twelve full weekends with no public events, and only twelve public events after 6:00 p.m., most of which were off camera.
“The White House is basically hiding Biden as he auditions for another term,” Alex wrote.
The White House denied the story. Jen O’Malley Dillon gave a one-word statement: “False.”
The White House press team publicly labeled Alex a peddler of fake news.
That Biden and his team knew his physical or cognitive health would be a limiting factor, not signaling that earlier effectively blocked a robust primary process. That wasn’t just a political failure; it’s a democratic one.

It was also a huge media failure as Eugene Volokh pointed out in an essay:

[Journalists] job was to dig and find out—before things became evident, not after (and indeed some indications of Biden’s decline were indeed evident for some time before the debate). Alex Thompson, the coauthor of Original Sin, elaborated on this problem:
“I had one conversation with someone, this was after the election, while we were reporting this book, and this person said, ‘Listen, yes, we deserve blame for X, Y, Z. We were hiding him. We were.’ But this person also sort of got in my face, and they said, ‘Listen, the media deserves some blame, too.’ Like we were sort of amazed at some of the stuff we were able to spin and get on,” he said.
Thompson admitted there was truth to what the person was saying about the media and its lack of skepticism about Biden’s administration.
“They’re just like, ‘You guys should not have believed us so easily.’ And I thought that was like a really interesting, but I also think that’s true,” he said. “I think the media, . . . in a lot of ways, was not skeptical enough and did not remember the less[on] that, they do it to different degrees, but every White House lies.” *

But Democrats also had to share much of the blame. Bernie Sanders and Marianne Williamson had both complained about being shut out of the primary process by the DNC. Dean Phillips, who was concerned about Biden’s mental deterioration and was trying to get midwestern governors to challenge Biden, decided to run himself and soon discovered numerous roadblocks created by the Democratic leadership.

This comment by an insider sums up my feelings: “A year later, that official told us, “I blame his inner circle, and I blame him. 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. Even though he did so many good things for this country, I can never forgive him.””

According to Tapper and Thompson, in a Commonwealth Club show,** Biden never said that. It was something put out by his aides even as they knew he would be running again. During the later stages of the 2020 Democratic primary (late 2019), reports emerged that Biden told aides he might serve only one term — as a “bridge” president — and wouldn’t seek reelection in 2024. (nypost.com+politico.com) Shortly after these reports surfaced, Biden unequivocally denied that he was planning to serve just one term. Asked by reporters, he said: “No, I never have. I don’t have any plans for one term.” A campaign aide also called the one-term talk “just not true”. The whole point of the book and this interview is that we were lied to and he was hidden. Turns out whatever bridge anyone was talking about was really a cliff.

*[https://balkin.blogspot.com/2025/06/the-crisis-of-media-environment.html]

**Interesting Commonwealth Club interview with Thompson and Tapper: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KuHihDaZVJY

***The original quote is „Wie kommt das überhaupt, dass Kriege entstehen? Die Diplomaten belügen einander und glauben es, wenn sie es in der Zeitung lesen.“ Die Fackel, issue No. 406 (circa 1915. World War 1 followed shortly thereafter. Kraus was particularly disturbed by how propaganda, media complicity, and political self-delusion could spiral into catastrophe — a theme chillingly relevant in many later conflicts. show less

Political reporters are endlessly tenacious, and they will often do anything possible to get a scoop or a story angle that they believe is hidden. Any time spent watching the White House press corps, or any national political reporter in the US, will reveal this nature. And I watched more than my fair share of C-SPAN, live press conferences, and recorded events over all four years of the last administration. This title's authors watched perhaps the same videos, spoke to many sources, and show more came to an incorrect conclusion that Biden's mental faculties were inadequate. That impulse to be first--and it was one of the first post Biden-Harris books out on shelves--misrepresented what actually happened.

Joe Biden is a people person, and that is why he had more than 50 years of political success. He is a textbook extrovert who wants to meet every one he can, and prides himself on the networks he has built and the people that he knows. That the authors' focus was on how he forgot names and looked weak when he had Covid didn't mean anything about his fitness for office. It meant he was stretched too thin and didn't stop when he should have. That same guy is fine now, and could still be ably serving in office.

The one true error I identified in the title was an important one: the report on the President meeting Chuck Schumer at his Delaware home, presented as a pivot point when Biden was finally deciding to drop out of the race. The authors didn't get either Schumer's or Biden's take on this meeting, and those were the only two people in that beach house, so the conversation that they attribute to them isn't real. I would encourage the authors to try again, speaking to Biden himself, assuming their publisher would fund the production and distribution of a new edition. show less