CNN’s Jake Tapper and Axios’ Alex Thompson claim their new book, Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again, exposes the massive cover-up of President Joe Biden’s cognitive decline. But the duo are continuing to cover up the story, and nowhere is that more apparent than in the latest excerpt release.
Throughout Biden’s presidency both men played a role in ignoring or covering up Biden’s glaring signs of decline. Tapper accused Lara Trump of “mocking [Biden’s] stutter” when she questioned Biden’s mental health. Two years prior, Tapper said Biden is “sharp … mentally.” More examples of Tapper’s involvement in the cover-up can be found in this linked article by The Federalist’s Shawn Fleetwood. As for Thompson, he once dismissed Biden saying “God Save the Queen, man” after a speech on gun violence as just a “weird phrase” Biden likes that has been “weaponized by the GOP to insinuate the 80-year-old president is in mental decline.”
Now, desperate to salvage their reputations, Tapper and Thomas are attempting to reposition themselves as truth-tellers — pretending they were somehow unaware of the very scandal they helped cover up. But in pointing fingers at others while continuing to conceal key facts themselves, they only confirm their ongoing complicity. Their book doesn’t exonerate them, it merely reinforces exactly why they can’t be trusted.
A newly released excerpt features an anonymous cabinet member admitting, “For months, we didn’t have access to [Biden].”
According to this anonymous cabinet member, “There was clearly a deliberate strategy by the White House to have him meet with as few people as necessary.”
During one “rare meeting,” as described by Thompson and further detailed in the book, the secretary “was shocked by how the president was acting. He seemed ‘disoriented’ and ‘out of it,’ his mouth agape.”
A second anonymous cabinet secretary said “access” to Biden “dropped off considerably in 2024” while a third told Thompson and Tapper: “I don’t think he has dementia. But the thing is, he’s an old man. The president can give you four to six good hours a day.”
To put that into perspective: While the southern border was overrun with illegal aliens, wars raged in Gaza and Ukraine, and Chinese spy balloons were flying overhead, the president of the United States was only really functional for four to six hours out of a 24-hour day. Those around him knew something was amiss, according to the book — yet said nothing.
They were complicit in the greatest scandal of this century, and yet Tapper and Thompson are protecting them by hiding their names in a book that purports to expose the cover-up?
By granting anonymity to officials who stayed silent and perpetuated a constitutional crisis, Tapper and Thomas are doing exactly what they’re now pretending they didn’t do — covering up the massive scandal.
Such a decision only proves what this project really is about: rehabilitating their image and trying to restore a shred of credibility after they lost it. Tapper and Thompson are willing to report just enough about the cover-up to sell a book but not enough to serve the public. Because if the duo truly cared about accountability and exposing the cover-up, the American people would know exactly which senior officials let this happen — and said nothing.
Brianna Lyman is an elections correspondent at The Federalist. Brianna graduated from Fordham University with a degree in International Political Economy. Her work has been featured on Newsmax, Fox News, Fox Business and RealClearPolitics. Follow Brianna on X: @briannalyman2
