What did the Democrats know and when did they know it?
Original Sin; President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again, by Jake Tapper and Axios’ Alex Thompson
I have talked to his pollsters more than he ever has and they did not think that. After talking to Biden, Chuck Schumer thinks that he shouldn’t be in the race. He says, “I’ve talked to your pollsters. They give you a 5% chance of winning.” And Biden did not know that because all the polling was interpreted through the spinmeisters around him, Donilon and [Steve] Ricchetti, and Biden’s shocked to hear that. I talked with a pollster who said that it was probably more like 1%.
Tapper: He still thinks that. He thinks he could have won. He went on The View to prebutt this book, we think. He was asked about it. And he said, “Well, look, I still got 7 million more votes than Donald Trump.”
“He can do it. He’s a game day performer. He’ll do it.” He became the best vice president in history after everybody wrote him off. Everybody wrote him off in 2019, 2020 and then he beat Donald Trump. He is the only one that has ever beaten Donald Trump. That theology took root. The President of the United States has a theology. Who is going to challenge that?
And he says in one of his memoirs, “Get up” was what his father used to say to him. And that’s the way you measure a man, your ability to get up. That became a theology, and not just a mythology. And like any theology, skepticism was not permitted. And that is the inner circle of Biden.
He has been knocked to the floor many times, but has always got up, even if he has a stutter or his wife and daughter were killed in an accident.
It is one of several shocking moments reported in the new book, Original Sin; President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again, by CNN’s Jake Tapper and Axios’ Alex Thompson. It chronicles Biden’s decline over his time in the White House, as well as efforts by his top staff to keep that decline hidden from voters.
This White House official said that was intentional so that they did not realize the extent of the decline. You also saw the schedule become much tighter and more restricted.
Source: This new book explores how Biden’s inner circle kept his mental decline from voters
What Biden’s Inner Circle Can’t Explain: The Mental Decline Of A-Sensitivity Benedovich Detrow
Thompson: The one top aide who left the White House said that they intentionally shielded him from other members of the administration, other members of the cabinet, other senior White House officials. The inner circle became smaller and smaller over time.
Detrow: You referred to the framing of the cover up. He’s giving speeches. He is in public. He’s carrying out the duties of the presidency. And yet, as you reported, there is a concerted effort to wall him off. What was happening in that circle of aides?
He didn’t recognize George Clooney. He knows that person well and they’re not only people he’s known for more than a decade, but they’re also someone that has raised millions of dollars for him and co-hosted that very event. He is one of the most recognizable people in the world. I’m discussing that. I’m talking about what we saw at the debate, that non- functioning, I- cannot-articulate-a-sentence Biden.
Source: This new book explores how Biden’s inner circle kept his mental decline from voters
Why are so many people surprised by the debate about Biden’s performance in 2020? How did we know he wasn’t good at the presidency?
Not being able to have a conversation is what we are talking about. You aren’t able to come up with the right information at the right time.
It was not possible to come up with the names of top advisers or close friends. I would say look, we’re all human. We all forget names. Everyone loses their train of thought. People who are aging are something that we all watch.
In the last week, a spokesman from Biden’s office said that they are waiting for someone to point out where Biden had to make a presidential decision because of his mental decline.
Thompson: If it wasn’t a cover up, then why were so many people surprised by the debate? Our reporting begins in fall of 2023, and it shows that there were two Bidens: one was functioning and the other was not. And that goes back to 2019. He was almost always working with Biden.
Even though he wasn’t the winner, the inner circle still thinks that he could have won and done well as president until January 2029. At this point, it is just delusion. I mean, we can see it. We talked to a top Democrat who thought he wasn’t great. He was not on top of things. And look, this is a guy we’ve seen in public life. He’s been in public life since 1972. So, we have seen him age.
I mean, we had all seen him aging. We had all seen him tripping and misspeaking. We had all seen evidence of decline, but the Biden team, family and senior advisors were telling everybody, not just media and not just the public, but also Democratic donors and members of Congress: “He’s fine. He’s fine. He’s fine.
Biden, Donilon, and the First “Holy Smokes”: How a Democratic Candidate Formed to Obey Medicare
There was only one or two commercial breaks so Dana Bash and I use the iPads to write to the people in the control room. And I wrote, “Holy Smokes,” during that first rambling, awful non-answer where he said, “We finally beat Medicare.” I just couldn’t believe it.
Biden’s office said in a statement that he has been diagnosed with an “aggressive” form of the cancer, which has spread to the bone. Biden, 82, was seen for further tests last week after a finding of a prostate nodule.
Tapper and Thompson joined All Things Considered host Scott Detrow on Thursday to discuss the process of writing the book and why they felt now was the right time to publish.
The issue? One of Donilon’s close aides for decades, Biden had a White House desk right next to the Oval Office at one point.
The year is 2019 and presidential hopeful Joe Biden is on a campaign swing in Iowa. During the event, Biden struggles to remember the names of one of his aides, Mike Donilon.
There are some instances of Biden’s decline in “Original Sin.” In 2019, during a bus tour in Iowa, Biden struggled to remember the name of Mike Donilon, a campaign strategist and White House adviser who had worked with him for nearly four decades. Biden forgot the words of the Declaration of Independence in 2020. The truths we hold are self-evident. All men and women are created by the, you know, you know the thing.”) He could not summon the names of his national security adviser and communications director, who were standing nearby, one day when he was in the White House. Biden did not recognize Clooney, and was reminded of who he was at the Hollywood fund-raiser.
When Biden’s diminishment began, “Original Sin” is not definitive, only that there were signs for several years and that it became worse around periods of family turmoil. For some, it started in earnest in 2015, with the passing of the president’s eldest son. “Beau’s death wrecked him,” one senior White House aide tells the authors. “Part of him died that never came back after Beau died.” The collapse of a deal to cut gun charges for Hunter Biden proved to be an “inflection point” where the president suddenly and steeply declined, according to Jake Tapper and Thompson.
Biden was going to have a poor performance in the debate on June 27, 2024, but according to Tapper and Thompson there were many more examples of him having a poor performance. “What the world saw at his one and only 2024 debate was not an anomaly,” Tapper and Thompson write. “It was not a cold; it was not someone who was underprepared or overprepared. It was not someone who was just a little tired.”
US President Joe Biden was going to have a poor performance in the 2024 Presidential debate, but his top staff kept his mental decline from voters, CNN’s Jake Tapper and Axios’ Alex Thompson said. During a 2019 bus tour in Iowa, Biden struggled to memorise the name of Mike Don, a campaign adviser and White House adviser who had worked with him for four decades.