There was a concerted effort to hide Biden not just from the
public, not just from reporters, but from his own administration,
from Cabinet secretaries, from senior aides in the White House,
from Democratic members of Congress.
I wonder if that's really the theme.
The Democrats, and especially the Bidens, were so focused, so
obsessed by the phenomenon of Trump that this guy could even
try to get back into the White House that it kind of abrogated
them of all other responsibilities.
The focus on what they call the existential threat of Donald
Trump allowed them to justify almost everything.
Hello and welcome to the forecast.
It was one of the most jaw-dropping moments in American
presidential history. In just a few minutes of
faltering, incoherent, incomprehensible, President
Biden destroyed his own presidency and chances of re
election. It was the first presidential
debate against his opponent Donald Trump in late June last
year. To many watching at home, it
came as a shock. To others as confirmation of
what they had long suspected. To a small inner circle around
Biden, the truth had come out, A truth they had been trying to
hide from the world and perhaps even from themselves. 3 long
weeks later, Biden bowed out and handed the baton to his Vice
President, Kamala Harris. She breathed new life into a
badly wounded campaign, but not enough.
The question hanging over her campaign, over her defeat to
Trump, and still over the Democratic Party is why Biden
was allowed to seek re election in 2023, let alone continue to
soldier on until it was too late.
Who allowed this to happen? Who's to blame?
The Biden family, the staffers of the inner circle?
The media? The medics?
All of the above. Well, an explosive new book
called Original Sin by CNN anchor Jake Tapper and Axios
correspondent Alex Thompson has given us the inside account.
What it reveals are depths of deceit and self deceit.
On the whole, it makes painful reading for Democrats and yes,
gleeful reading for Republicans. I'm very pleased to have CNNS
Jake Tapper join us now from DC Jake, it's good to see you
again. It is an absolutely cracking
read. And they, as I said, a very
painful read, perhaps even for some Republicans.
You extraordinarily also hosted the debate in which Biden
faulted. So just to kick off this
interview, talk us through those moments and when you started to
realize that things were going horribly wrong for President Joe
Biden. Well, he walked out that night,
June 27th, in the debate that I Co moderated with Dana Bash, and
he seemed, you know, very old and we had gotten used to his
gait at that point from his degenerating spine.
He had a cold, so his voice was even readier and higher than
usual. But I didn't realize that things
were going truly off the rails until maybe his second answer,
when he really was having difficulty finding the words to
articulate his thoughts, his arguments to the American people
about why he should be re elected.
And shockingly, that got worse and worse to the point that at
the very end of it, he said we finally beat Medicare, which
makes no sense. And I think he was maybe trying
to say we finally beat COVID, but I'm not really sure.
And then it actually kept getting worse and worse and
worse. And it I was sitting.
So Dan and I were there at that desk, and as you know, in a
situation like that, you can't speak to the control room
because people will hear you. They can say anything they want
to you, but you can't say anything back.
So they had given us an iPad so that we could write notes to
them and they could read them back in the control room.
I didn't know who was back there, so I kept it clean.
But I wrote back. I wrote to them, holy smokes,
because I just was shocked like everybody else.
That's quite tame, isn't it? Holy smokes.
Well, it's not what I was thinking, but again, I didn't
know. I didn't know who was back.
There, there. There are lots of extraordinary
details in your book. And one of them occurred on the
day of the debate, which is that there was, you know, both
candidates were allowed to do a walkthrough, you know, looking
at the arena while they were joust against each other later
in the day. And, you know, they often
candidates often turn up late. Maybe it's the cool thing to do.
And, and I think Trump turned up at, you know, 6:00 or so.
The debate was going to be recorded at 9:00.
Astonishingly, Biden said, I don't need to turn up.
And then he finally showed up, You know, I think at 8:20, I
mean, just before the broadcast. I mean, that attitude of I don't
really need to do this the way that other people are doing it
and then to falter in this way. What does that tell you?
What did that tell you? It tells me that there was a a
degree of hubris and delusion that the president was
experiencing that is remarkable even to this moment.
You're quite right in how you describe it.
And as you know from doing these things, walkthroughs are very
normal. Candidates just like to see
which is their camera, what happens, what happens when the
other guy is speaking, etcetera, etcetera.
And Biden by 8, by 820, he still hadn't been there.
Actually, he didn't show up till 8:30 and it was truly shocking.
And the Biden campaign explained it as like, he doesn't, you
know, he's done a lot of these debates.
He's 82. He's been in public life since
1970. He's done a lot of these
debates. He doesn't need to do it, which
is just just, it's, it's stunning.
And then when you consider obviously what happened after
that, even even more stunning because it, it gets into the
arrogance of his decision. He thought ultimately, and This
is why they wanted to do an early debate in June as opposed
to 1 after Labor Day in September or October.
He thought all he would need to do was stand on stage next to
President Trump and whatever concerns the American people had
about his age, his acuity, inflation, the border, that
would all melt away because they would see how how crazy Donald
Trump was. And that's obviously not what
happened. I wonder if that's really the
theme. The Democrats and especially the
Bidens were so focused, so obsessed, so deranged, if you
like, by the phenomenon of Trump that this guy, you know, who
tried to overturn democracy, who by that stage of the debate had
been convicted of a crime, you know, could even try to get back
into the White House. That it kind of abrogated them
of all other responsibilities. He was bad enough.
And that Vadnais of Trump was was in was big enough to get
them back into the White House. The focus on what they call the
existential threat of Donald Trump allowed them to justify.
And by them, I mean the Biden family and his top aides and the
Democratic Party to a large extent allowed them to justify
almost everything. It allowed them to justify
putting somebody as nominee who his own cabinet secretaries told
us in this book that he could not be relied upon for that
proverbial 2:00 AM phone call for a national security crisis.
He he wouldn't be up to it, some cabinet secretaries told us.
It allowed them to justify not having a competitive primary.
It allowed them to justify not doing interviews, not having
press conferences. If if you think that you are the
only answer to a question that poses an existential threat to
the free world, you really can get away with anything in your
own mind. Your book is called Original
Sin. What is the original sin?
The original sin, as these more than 200 Democratic insiders
explained to us, in their view most of them was the decision to
run for re election. When Joe Biden ran for
president, there was an implicit promise that he would run as a
one term. 4 aides did a strategic leak to Politico in
December 2019 saying he would only serve one term when he was
getting a big, you know, a three person endorsement from Cory
Booker, Kamala Harris and Gretchen Whitmer in I think
March of 2020, he, he talked about being a bridge to the next
generation and yet he decided, no, you know what, I'm I'm going
to go for two. And that decision, even when
polls were already showing that vast numbers of Americans, 10s
of millions of Americans, had concerns about his age and
acuity, was the original sin. And from that flowed everything
else, every other bad decision. And Jake, do you think that when
they said, because I remember that that implication of serving
for one term as a bridge, I remember that really well.
I don't remember him actually enunciating it, spelling it out,
but that was the implication. And no one ever abused us of
this being wrong at the time, right?
But do you think that they thought they believed that or
were they lying at the time when they said when they implied that
it would be a one term president?
I think that it is the decision of politicians in an election,
which is like the decision of a of a car salesman in a showroom.
What do I have to do to get you to leave the showroom in this
car today? And I think they just figured
that they had to make the implied promise it would OK,
he's old, but it's just going to be one term.
But what they didn't count on is, and our reporting suggests
that as far back as 2015, after the death of his son Beau, there
was a psychic toll being taken on him.
In 2017, 2018, he was losing his train of thought.
He was forgetting things. 2019-2020 during that campaign
aids would describe for us a good functioning Biden and also
a non functioning Biden. And then throughout his
presidency, that non functioning Biden would rear his head
increasingly. And by non functioning, I mean
forgetting the names of close friends, not able to identify
George Clooney who he'd known for decades, not being able to
come up with the names of top aides, losing his train of
thought in an alarming way. We all lose our train of
thought. We all forget names.
I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about to a degree
that it was unsettling and suggested something cognitively
was going on and this was going on behind the scenes, was going
on in front of cameras to a lesser degree, but behind the
scenes with increasing frequency.
I have to say, not recognizing George Clooney did come as a bit
of a shock. I mean, I think there's probably
no one on the planet who doesn't recognize George Clooney.
But but to be serious for a second, you said that from that
original sin flowed all these bad decisions.
But these bad decisions also ended up in deceit, in actual
planned deceit. Tell us about that.
Well, I mean, some of the examples of the intentionally
planned to see are told to us by members of the Biden
administration. One person, high-ranking
official in the White House leaving because they didn't want
to be part of it. And because this person told us
there was a concerted effort to hide Biden not just from the
public, not just from reporters, but from his own administration,
from Cabinet secretaries, from senior aides in the White House,
from Democratic members of Congress.
There's a, there's a, a Cabinet meeting in October 2023.
That's the last one for almost a year.
Cabinet secretaries told us that he they, that they were kept at
Bay When one of them had a meeting with him somewhere in
between that Cabinet meeting and the June debate, that person was
shocked. He seemed disoriented.
He seemed out of it. They couldn't believe what was
going on. When those people who felt
somehow excluded from the presence of the president that
something was wrong in the system, when they raised the
alarm bells, what happened to them?
Well, they were cut off. This was, you know, Joe Biden is
not alone among politicians in being spiteful and demanding
loyalty. He's certainly not the first one
like that, and he won't be the last.
But when people raised issues like that, they were shown the
door. There's a pollster named John
Anzalone who had been with Biden as far back as when Biden ran
for president the first time in the 1980s.
And Anzalone was kind of shunted to the side because he was
raising questions about the administration's policies on
inflation and on the border. And then when Biden, before
Biden announced that he was running for re election, he had
a talk with a couple members of the White House team, including
Anita Dunn, who was a senior advisor.
And he was he was expecting that he would be asked to do some
polling on whether or not Biden should run for re election.
Just, you know, we are a data-driven political world
these days. I don't have to tell people in
the government of Keir Starmer how data-driven politicians can
be. And Anzalone was shocked because
Anita done said, we're not, we're not polling for this.
The decisions already been made. And he he couldn't believe it.
And he was further and further excommunicated from the group.
Congressman Dean Phillips, he runs against Biden.
He says just to get this out in the open that there is a real
problem behind the scenes. He's basically defenestrated and
excommunicated from the Democratic Party.
Person after person that with they raise their head.
Then Anvil falls down on the special counsel Robert.
Her is the first person from outside the Democratic Party to
have a long sit down with Joe Biden.
He's investigating him for his handling classified information
and he can't believe this rambling old man.
And he says in his report in February 2024 that he's not
going to prosecute him because a jury would find President Biden
a well meaning elderly man with a poor memory.
He gets shellacked, as does the attorney general.
The The administration goes to war against its own Justice
Department. So what does some of the devices
that the administration or the inner circle around Biden came
up with to try and limit the kind of visible damage of his
frailty? Well, some of them started out
innocent enough. Any politician wants to be
portrayed as in in as positive a light as possible.
And certainly running for president during COVID, as much
of as COVID was a disaster and tragedy for the world, was a
benefit to Joe Biden because he he didn't have to travel all
that much. He could do a lot of zooms.
But by 2021-2022, the teleprompters that he was
relying on, the note cards he was relying on became something
of a crutch and and people would point it out, Conservatives
especially would point it out how much he was relying on these
things and how odd it was. But it was even worse behind the
scenes because he would go to a fundraiser of 40 or 50 people,
and the campaign would demand that he'd be allowed to have a
teleprompter just to make impromptu remarks for 10
minutes. People thought it was weird.
People thought it was disconcerting.
Bill. Bill Daley, former Obama White
House chief of staff, went to one of these events and couldn't
believe it. He was trying to get a
Democratic governor to run against Biden because he didn't
think Biden was going to make it.
And he had loved Joe Biden. He was Biden's political
director during his 1988 presidential campaign.
What really amazes me is that you know when when some people
were clearly raising the alarm bells.
I mean, George Clooney after not being recognized by the
president, who we've known for years, wrote a very searing
op-ed piece in one of the papers.
Ari Emmanuel, the the famous Hollywood agent, you know, was
screaming at the back of a Democrat fundraiser meeting, I
think, or some, some party meeting, you know, saying the
president's not up to it, he should bow down, etcetera.
You know, when when there was clearly clamour for all this,
you know, why didn't they go to the next level?
You know, why did people in Congress, in the media not stand
up and say this can't go on, especially when the opponent is
someone who was styled by the White House as being a danger to
democracy? Well, I mean, the question kind
of answers itself because why were a bunch of politicians not
behaving bravely and independently?
I mean, that's the answer to the question.
They're because they're politicians.
They're in fear of voters. And Democratic voters to this
day are angry about any discussion of this.
How come you're not covering Donald Trump?
I mean, that is what the Democratic Party is going to
have to reckon with as they also have to deal with the fact that
this is a calamity and a tragedy that most people with
functioning eyes and ears now recognize was a major cover up
and a major problem for the country.
And that's I don't, I don't envy them having to negotiate those
waters. As a journalist, I don't have to
worry about pleasing a base. But I hear from the angry
Democrats. They have to appeal to them.
We talk a lot about the difference around Donald Trump,
you know, when he's got his cabinet meeting and people have
to put up their hand and tell him how wonderful he is.
You know, did did the Democrats around Biden fear Biden or Jill
Biden as much as the Republicans around Trump fear Trump?
I think it was there. Obviously there was a degree of
that. There was also a degree of
loyalty. There was also a degree of if I
do anything, I will be helping Donald Trump.
Joe Biden's running for re election.
He is the president. There is no viable alternative
candidate. The Biden people would would use
Kamala Harris, the vice president who at the time was
even less popular than Biden, as an excuse.
How can you get rid of Joe Biden?
Look at Kamala, you want Kamala to be the nominee.
So I think there there were a lot of factors.
We after all contain multitudes. But I do think the existential
fear of Donald Trump and being seen as in any way helping
Donald Trump really guided the decisions of a lot of these
people. But also keep in mind a lot of
them have their, you know, very few of the people who work for
Joe Biden were near retirement age themselves.
Most of them were young enough to either want to run for
president themselves or want to keep working and making some
money for their families, and this is not a popular thing to
do. There's a whole chapter in your
book called Jill Biden, then the first lady, of course, How
guilty was she and how guilty were the people around both her
and Joe Biden? First and foremost, I think you
have to lay this at the feet of the president.
Joe Biden was the one who made the decision to run for re
election. Joe Biden is the one who, at
least to some degree, was aware of his deterioration.
I'm 56, I know what I'm capable of doing now and what I'm not
capable of doing now as opposed to 1015 years ago.
I know when I forget a word. I know when I forget a name.
I'm well aware of this and I I think Joe Biden has to be
acknowledged was the one driving this train.
That said, doctor Jill Biden, the the first lady, former first
lady was part of the deal. She was part of the team that
tried to make sure that by the her husband was portrayed in as
positive and misleading away as possible.
One of her top aides, Anthony Bernal, was perhaps the most
powerful first lady chief of staff in the history of the
United States. Anthony Bernal was basically a
Co chief of staff to the White House when it came to how Joe
Biden was portrayed. So I think those two obviously
bear most of the responsibility. Hunter Biden, the president's
son who has had struggles with addiction and the law.
He was basically a functioning family, chief of staff making.
The president or encouraging the president, encouraging his
father to fight back, to go after his critics.
He was very responsible as well. And then there's a group that
people in the White House, people in the administration
would call the politburo. These are the very top Biden
aides, most loyal Biden aides, Mike Donnellan and Steve
Roschetti. There were others who were part
of this group of top aides that were part of the cover up, but
nobody outside the family more so than Donnellan and Roschetti.
Jake Sullivan, the former national security adviser, gave
an interview to the Financial Times earlier this year, and he
said that when he saw the debate performance that you and Dana
Bash chaired in June of last year, he was deeply shocked.
It came as a complete surprise to him out of the blue that the
president could be this fortunate.
That begs belief, doesn't it, from someone who is always with
the president in the Oval Office for all these years on matters
of national security? I think it is fair to say that
Biden was most animated and most engaged on issues of national
security and less so on issues like the immigration or
inflation. That said, I personally find it
hard to believe that it was a complete and utter shock to Jake
Sullivan. Now that that might be, and you
alluded to this in your introduction, that might be
because of a degree of self delusion and self deception.
I don't think Jake Sullivan is one of the conspirators trying
to portray the president in in a way that was misleading, but I
also think it's quite possible that he was willing to discount
or immediately ignore what he was saying.
He claims, for example, there's a scene in the book where
President Biden in December 2022 is not able to come up with Jake
Sullivan's name, even though he's his national security
advisor. He calls him Steve, and then
he's not able to come up with the name of his communications
director, Kate Beningfield. He calls her press.
Jake Sullivan claims he doesn't remember that.
Does that mean he really doesn't remember it?
I can't speak for him. I think the human capacity for
self denial is quite strong. The Republicans and people
around Trump have for long referred to the Biden family as
the Biden crime family. Now that of course was deemed to
be, you know, far fetched, typical Trump talk, etcetera.
But when it comes to deceit and cover up, we can argue whether
that's a crime or not. But when it comes to deceit and
cover up of the president's cognitive abilities, they sort
of have a point, don't they? I don't know how much of the
cover up can be called criminal. I'm not an expert on the law.
I'm we, we do not allege a criminal cover up.
It was, it's certainly a scandal and it's certainly appalling.
When the Republicans talk about a Biden crime family, they they
mainly talk about ways that Biden's brother and his son
Hunter cashed in on the on the Biden family name.
And there's certainly a lot of smoke there.
I don't know if there's any fire.
There's certainly a lot of sleaze there.
I don't know if there's any criminality, but but this might
be. And if this is what you're
driving at, I agree with you. Truly the most appalling thing
that the Biden family ever did. And of course, when you talk
about self enrichment, you know, the the Trump family can't
really start that conversation without some red faces.
OK, but but just to get back to the, you know, to the cover up.
I mean, one of the things that I found really shocking from your
book is the detail that, for instance, as of November 2021,
the annual medical check UPS or medical reports into the health
of the president did not include a cognitive section.
He never took a cognitive test, even though they're pretty
standard in the United States for anybody.
After they turned 65 and President Trump took one,
famously, he would recite man, woman, television.
Whatever it was, it became something of a comic staple, his
reciting that list of of nouns. I can't get into the head of Doc
O'Connor, the White House physician who was very, very
close to the Biden's. And in fact, some people think
too, too close to the Biden's. But I will say that Dr. Jonathan
Reiner, who is an advisor to the White House physician's office,
he has said that the only reason you would not give a test like
that is because you don't want to know the answer.
Now, I know, having spoken to her, that Nancy Pelosi was one
of the people who finally delivered the message to Joe
Biden that he had to bow out. But what was the role of people
like her over time in the run up, you know, before the
disastrous debate, what was the role of Barack and Michelle
Obama? You know, the Obamas are close
to the Biden's apparently. What was their role in telling
him or trying to tell him that the game was up?
Well it's interesting because they all had their different
roles and they did not work in the cohesive unit that some
people I think suspect it might even be great if politicians
work that collaboratively. Collaboratively.
Pelosi was early on calling for Biden to run for re election.
And keep in mind that Nancy Pelosi is 2 years older than Joe
Biden, so her take on his cognitive abilities may have
been shaped by that perspective. And beyond that, she stepped
down as Democratic leader of the House of Representatives after
the midterms of 2022, so she didn't really interact with him
much in 2023 or 2024. She, after the debate, was
something of a vocal passive aggressive nudger of the
president to leave. Although she never directly said
it, she would say things publicly and then also, when she
had this secret private meeting with him, tell him he needed to
look at the polling. He needed to look at the what
the American people were saying in the polling.
And this isn't one of the most fascinating parts of this whole
debacle. There were three pollsters that
were really, really good, Jeffrey Pollock, Molly Murphy
and Jeff Garin, names that don't mean anything to anybody outside
politics in the United States, but they were really good
pollsters. They did not work on the
campaign. They were hired by the campaign
and they never talked to Joe Biden.
They never directly presented their their findings to Joe
Biden. They always gave it to Donnellan
and Roschetti. And then Donnellan especially
would interpret and massage the polling.
And so Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, the Democratic leader, Hakeem
Jeffries, the House Democratic leader who replaced Pelosi,
Obama, their campaign from the debate to Biden dropping out on
July 21st, 2024. Their campaign was, have you
looked at the data? Have you looked at the polling?
Because the polling, as Chuck Schumer told Biden in a very
intense conversation, the polling suggested he only had a
5% chance of winning. The big thought that occurs to
me in all this is that there's an enormous amount of deference
in your Republic about the the office of the president who kind
of sometimes behaves like an elected monarch.
And you could argue that the current one wants to be, you
know, treated a bit like a monarch.
But the deference towards the president is that what was going
on here with Biden? I'm glad you brought it up
because while I do prefer my country to yours, and I do
prefer many of our institutions, especially the 1st Amendment,
which I bet you envy to to to yours.
I do think that your system, because of Question Time,
because of the parliamentary process, because of the fact
that if you are the leader of the party and you're not
measuring up, you know who's coming for you, right behind
you. I think this could not have
happened in Great Britain. I I just don't think that your
system would allow it. And I think our system is flawed
in such a way that our political parties are very weak and and
our presidents are very powerful and our Congress are, are, are,
you know, our legislature is emasculated to the degree that
that that is, that is shocking. So I don't think, I don't think
it would have happened in the UKI.
Just covered the conclave in Rome and they they prevent
Cardinals who are older from 79 from voting for the next Pope.
You know, there is no such age limit in America.
And you mentioned in your book endless examples of legislators
and indeed, presidents, you know, who are unbelievably old
and passed it, frankly, whose ailments get covered up.
You know, in Reagan's case, it was Alzheimer's.
You know, in FD Rs case, it was the polio at first in in Woodrow
Wilson's case, it was something else.
This is a theme of which Biden is just the latest iteration.
Latest and perhaps the worst since Woodrow Wilson had a
stroke while in office. President Wilson and his wife,
Edith Wilson basically just propped him up and served as
president for some time. It is a problem in this country.
And I too am very keen on that data point from the conclave.
And I was just remarking, when did the Vatican become more
forward leaning and progressive than the United States
government? And that rule has been around
since I think 1970. But they have something there.
Look, my dad is 85, my mom is 82.
Love him dearly, love to be with them, but we just have to
acknowledge that while not everybody at age 80 is unable to
be president, most of us are. Jake Tapper, thank you very much
indeed. The book is called Original Sin.
We just spoke to one of the authors and that's it for the
forecast. I hope you enjoyed it.
See you next time.