CNN
The day after Donald Trump won the 2024 election, CNN anchor Jake Tapper and Axios correspondent Alex Thompson decided to co-author a book about what had led the Democratic party to defeat, with a focus on former President Joe Biden.
The deeply sourced reporters found what they call a “cover-up” of the former president’s “serious decline.”
The resulting book, titled “Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again,” is coming out on May 20.
The book’s publisher, Penguin Press, announced the project on Wednesday.
“What you will learn makes President Biden’s decision to run for reelection seem shockingly narcissistic, self-delusional, and reckless — a desperate bet that went bust — and part of a larger act of extended public deception that has few precedents,” Penguin said in a press release.
Biden, “his family, and his senior aides were so convinced that only he could beat Trump again, they lied to themselves, allies, and the public about his condition and limitations,” the press release stated.
“Toni Morrison once said ‘If there’s a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it,’” Jake Tapper said in a statement. “That’s what inspired this book: we wanted to know more about what we all just lived through. More than 200 interviews later, Alex and I have a much better idea. And soon you all will too.”
Tapper had a unique vantage point as the co-moderator of the June 2024 CNN debate that led Biden to drop out of the presidential race a few weeks later.
Tapper and Thompson write in the book that “what the world saw at Joe Biden’s one and only debate was not an anomaly — it was not a cold, it was not someone who was under or overprepared, it was not someone who was just a little tired. It was the natural result of an eighty-one-year-old man whose faculties had been diminishing for years.”
“Biden, his family, and his team let their self-interest and fear of another Trump term justify trying to put an at times addled old man in the Oval Office for four more years,” the authors write. “What was the extent of it? Was it a cover-up? Was it a conspiracy? We will let the facts speak for themselves.”
The day after Donald Trump won the 2024 election, CNN anchor Jake Tapper and Axios correspondent Alex Thompson decided to co-author a book about what had led the Democratic party to defeat, with a focus on former President Joe Biden.
The deeply sourced reporters found what they call a “cover-up” of the former president’s “serious decline.”
The resulting book, titled “Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again,” is coming out on May 20.
The book’s publisher, Penguin Press, announced the project on Wednesday.
“What you will learn makes President Biden’s decision to run for reelection seem shockingly narcissistic, self-delusional, and reckless — a desperate bet that went bust — and part of a larger act of extended public deception that has few precedents,” Penguin said in a press release.
Biden, “his family, and his senior aides were so convinced that only he could beat Trump again, they lied to themselves, allies, and the public about his condition and limitations,” the press release stated.
“Toni Morrison once said ‘If there’s a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it,’” Jake Tapper said in a statement. “That’s what inspired this book: we wanted to know more about what we all just lived through. More than 200 interviews later, Alex and I have a much better idea. And soon you all will too.”
Tapper had a unique vantage point as the co-moderator of the June 2024 CNN debate that led Biden to drop out of the presidential race a few weeks later.
Tapper and Thompson write in the book that “what the world saw at Joe Biden’s one and only debate was not an anomaly — it was not a cold, it was not someone who was under or overprepared, it was not someone who was just a little tired. It was the natural result of an eighty-one-year-old man whose faculties had been diminishing for years.”
“Biden, his family, and his team let their self-interest and fear of another Trump term justify trying to put an at times addled old man in the Oval Office for four more years,” the authors write. “What was the extent of it? Was it a cover-up? Was it a conspiracy? We will let the facts speak for themselves.”
