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Joe Biden’s apparent physical and mental decline, his fateful decision to run for reelection, and the Democratic Party’s unwillingness to question that decision until it was too late are all back in the news in a big way, thanks to a new book due out next week from Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson. In Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again, Tapper and Thompson report on Biden’s downfall both before and after his disastrous debate, including a detailed accounting of his age and how his ego caught up with him, as well as how he was shielded and enabled by aides and loyalists. Below is a running list of some of the biggest revelations reported in the book.
Biden aides looked into possibility he would need to use a wheelchair
Per Axios, Tapper and Thompson write that “Biden’s physical deterioration — most apparent in his halting walk — had become so severe that there were internal discussions about putting the president in a wheelchair, but they couldn’t do so until after the election.”
Per the book, Biden’s physician, Dr. Kevin O’Connor, had warned that if the president had a bad fall in 2023 or 2024, he might have to use a wheelchair while he recovered. Not surprisingly, Biden’s aides thought that it was untenable, politically, for him to use a wheelchair during his reelection campaign.
Biden’s doctor had argued for more rest time
As Axios summarizes:
[Dr. Kevin O’Connor] had long privately expressed concern about the toll the presidency was taking on Biden’s health. The doctor often argued with Biden’s political officials to get more rest time into the president’s schedule. O’Connor sometimes quipped that Biden’s staff members were trying to kill him, while he was trying to keep him alive.
David Plouffe said that ‘Biden totally fucked us’
Per the authors’ book excerpt in The New Yorker:
“We got so screwed by Biden, as a party,” David Plouffe, who helped run the Harris campaign, told us. Plouffe had served as Senator Barack Obama’s Presidential campaign manager in 2008 and as a senior adviser to President Obama before largely retiring from politics in 2013. After Biden dropped out of the race, on July 21, 2024, Plouffe was drafted to help Harris in what he saw as a “rescue mission.” Harris, he said, was a “great soldier,” but the compressed hundred-and-seven-day race was “a fucking nightmare.”
“And it’s all Biden,” Plouffe said. By deciding to run for reelection and then waiting more than three weeks after the debate to bow out, Plouffe added, “He totally fucked us.”
Many top Democrats blame Biden for Kamala Harris’s election loss
Report Tapper and Thompson, per the Washington Post, among the 200 people they spoke to:
No one thought that the Harris campaign had been without error, but for the most knowledgeable Democratic officials and donors, and for top members of the Harris campaign, there was no question about the father of this election calamity: It was Joe Biden.
Of course, this could also be interpreted as these people wanting Biden to get the most blame.
Biden didn’t recognize George Clooney
Tapper and Thompson report on what happened at the now-infamous Hollywood fundraiser that helped prompt actor George Clooney to write an influential op-ed against Biden’s reelection bid. According to the excerpt of the book published in The New Yorker, when Biden arrived at the party, his visible frailty stunned attendees, including Clooney, whom Biden didn’t seem to recognize even though they had known each other for years. Here’s the book’s account of that awkward exchange:
“Thank you for being here,” the President said to guests as he shuffled past them. “Thank you for being here.” Clooney felt a knot form in his stomach as the President approached him. Biden looked at him. “Thank you for being here,” he said. “Thank you for being here.”
“You know George,” the assisting aide told the President, gently reminding him who was in front of him. “Yeah, yeah,” the President said to one of the most recognizable men in the world, the host of this lucrative fund-raiser. “Thank you for being here.”
“Hi, Mr. President,” Clooney said.
“How are ya?” the President replied.
“How was your trip?” Clooney asked.
“It was fine,” the President said.
It seemed clear that the President had not recognized Clooney.
“It was not O.K.,” recalled the Hollywood V.I.P. who had witnessed this moment. “That thing, the moment where you recognize someone you know—especially a famous person who’s doing a fucking fund-raiser for you—it was delayed. It was uncomfortable.”
“George Clooney,” the aide clarified for the President.
“Oh, yeah!” Biden said. “Hi, George!”
“Clooney was shaken to his core,” Tapper and Thompson write.
Biden also forgot the names of top aides
Per the New York Times, the book describes Biden forgetting the names of top aide Mike Donilon, national security adviser Jake Sullivan, White House communications director Kate Bedingfield, and DNC chair Jaime Harrison. The authors also report that Biden once confused HHS secretary Xavier Becerra with DHS secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.
Aides scripted Cabinet meetings for Biden
According to the book, Biden’s aides scripted much of the internal meetings even when there was no media attending them.
Former Obama White House chief of staff Bill Daley tried to convince governors to primary Biden
Per the book, Daley quietly tried to convince Democratic governors Andy Beshear, Gavin Newsom, and J.B. Pritzker to take on the president, but none were receptive.
The book offers a damning view of Democratic inaction — and ongoing fear of speaking out — about Biden’s decline
Tapper and Thompson report that “no Democrats in the White House or leaders on Capitol Hill raised any doubts, either privately with the president or publicly, about Biden’s second run” in the aftermath of the 2022 midterms. As the New York Times’ Reid Epstein notes in his look at the book’s revelations:
Nearly a year after pressure from Democrats forced Mr. Biden to drop out of the presidential race, the book shows that the party remains unwilling to reckon publicly with its choice to back Mr. Biden as its nominee for as long as it did.
The reluctance of many Democratic leaders and insiders to voice criticism without the cloak of anonymity, even after their devastating defeat, suggests a lasting fear of speaking out. It also points to an awareness that saying now that Mr. Biden should not have run in 2024 could prompt questions about why they said nothing when it mattered.
