The recently released Original Sin, filled with fresh allegations about former U.S. president Joe Biden’s mental decline, addresses the Biden administration’s failure to disclose the president’s struggles with memory, mobility, and factual recall. The book takes a swipe at several members of Biden’s team, Democratic officials, and his family, but they give themselves a pass. Somehow, the professionals who covered Biden are supposed to be excused for ignoring his inability to do the job he campaigned for in 2020 and thought he could continue until age 86 in 2028.
Jake Sullivan and Ron Klain, presidential advisors, protected the president and would probably have lied to do so. That goes with the territory, and most of the press know this to be the case. It may not be suitable for them to misinform the public about the president’s capacity, insist he is doing backflips, running circles around his much younger aides, or putting in 14-hour days. Still, those responsible for exposing these lies work for news organizations that should be actively investigating, revealing the truth, and determining the validity of claims about a healthy, eighty-plus-year-old man.
The authors of Original Sin (President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again), Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson, present a strong case for why this whole affair stank. The two men represent two sides of the press’s willing participation in the attempted fraud of the American people and the intended cover-up. Thompson, who often asked questions about the state of Biden’s health and even pressed former vice president Kamala Harris for specific policy positions when no one else would stand in contrast to the better-known Tapper who anchors on CNN, a network that covered Biden conventionally as if he presided over his administration like most of his predecessors. It would not be unfair to suggest Tapper dismissed some questions about Biden’s acuity and probably contributed more to the cover-up than most.
The press’s efforts to avoid accountability speak to a larger problem. Rather than blame the president, his family, or his team, they need to look inward and recognize their complicity in wanting to stop Donald Trump at all costs; they sold their reputations, soiled their profession, and underserved the country so many of them claim to love. Tapper interviewed Lara Trump on his show and browbeat her about ridiculing Biden’s alleged stutter.
“How do you think it makes little kids with stutters feel when they see you make a comment like that?” Tapper asked her.
“First and foremost, I had no idea that Joe Biden ever suffered from a stutter,” Lara Trump responded. “I think what we see onstage with Joe Biden, Jake, is very clearly a cognitive decline. That’s what I’m referring to. It makes me uncomfortable.”
Tapper responded by going into his patented pious mode.
“I would think that somebody in the family would be more sensitive to people who do not have medical licenses diagnosing politicians from afar,” he shot back. “Plenty of people have diagnosed your father-in-law from afar, and I’m sure it offends you. You don’t have any standing.” (Tapper laughably tries to rewrite history in book on Biden’s decline – Joe Concha in the Washington Examiner).
When asked recently about this, Tapper confessed to a lack of journalistic curiosity regarding Biden’s decline. The book aimed to suppress, as Charles W. Cooke described on The Editors (National Review podcast), a deliberate, conscious, and concerted effort to conceal the state of the U.S. President—an action detrimental to an open democratic society and American governmental security. You need only have eyes. A supermajority of Americans by 2023 had concluded that Biden was too infirm to serve as President of the United States. Who are these journalists trying to kid? (In light of Biden’s recent diagnosis, we should not be surprised if more surfaces about just how unhealthy he was while embarking upon another campaign).
Something more insidious motivated their actions: anything done to block Trump’s return to the presidency protected democracy. If you were part of an industry trying to shield democracy from the threat of another Trump administration, you acted heroically. This idea allowed journalists, Democrats, Biden family members, and administration lackeys to lie about Biden’s condition.
There was plenty of reckless and irresponsible journalism based on this justification. This writer has documented them in several articles covering the 2024 campaign. Just before the debate debacle, famous figures like Joe Scarborough of The Morning Joe tried to convince viewers that the Joe Biden of 2024 was the “best Biden ever.” Repeated efforts from CNN reporters insisted that footage showing Biden frozen, wandering, or slack-jawed was “cheap fakes.” No one had to play with the images. The only cheap fakes were the journalists who were part of the fraud. There will be more books and much discussion about this as Biden’s health issues continue to mount. Some may back off to show Biden sympathy after his recent cancer diagnosis, but the problem will not vanish.
Those who served in Biden’s cabinet and hope to run for president in 2028 will find the road rocky. Pete Buttigieg, Harris, and others in regular contact with the former president must answer questions about what they knew and saw. Governors who aren’t involved in Washington politics will probably avoid criticism for not supporting Biden’s re-election campaign, especially given concerns about his health and ability to serve another term. Harris still has dreams of becoming president. She has never come clean about what forced Biden out in July 2024, only four months before the election. After Robert Hur’s classified document report became public, she impugned him, saying it was unbecoming of his office and that he acted out of political partisanship. Hur appears to be the one government official with integrity.
On May 17, Congress released tapes of Hur’s interview with Biden. They showed Hur treating a hesitant, slow, and confused Biden with great kindness. Where does Hur go to reclaim a reputation smeared by those who willfully undermined his fair and judicial investigation? During 2024, the press gleefully reported on Trump’s court cases, puffed up that they were saving democracy. Instead, they oversaw the worst scandal in the history of the American press. Instead of doing their jobs, they put their thumb on the scale and became accomplices to lying to the American public. Imagining a worst-case scenario for the fourth estate defies imagination.
Every Republican faced the following question during the 2024 election: Do you believe the 2020 election was stolen? From now on, it would be instructive if the press asked every Democrat what they knew about Biden’s mental decline and when they knew it. This story deserves a full-scale reckoning. I fear those who took part will continue their whitewash, avoiding the stern look in the mirror the story demands.
Dave Redekop is a retired elementary resource teacher who now works part-time at the St. Catharines Courthouse as a Registrar. He has worked on political campaigns since high school and attended university in South Carolina for five years, where he earned a Master’s in American History with a specialization in Civil Rights. Dave loves reading biographies.
