Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson on President Joe Biden’s Decline, and Its Cover-Up

Nearly a year ago, a Presidential debate between Donald Trump and Joe Biden, moderated by Jake Tapper and Dana Bash of CNN, began the end of Biden’s bid for a second term. The President struggled to make points, complete sentences, and remember facts; he spoke in a raspy whisper. This was not the first time voters expressed concern about Biden’s age, but his decline was shocking to many, and suddenly Trump seemed likely to win in a landslide. New reporting by Tapper and Thompson reveals that the debate was no fluke at all. In “ How Joe Biden Handed the Presidency to Donald Trump ” (an excerpt from their new book “ Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again ”), they lay out a case that the latter half of Biden’s Presidency was carefully stage-managed by his top aides; Biden would often end the workday as early as four-thirty. “What [aides and] others would say is, ‘His decision-making was always fine.’ The job of the President is not just decision-making. It’s also communication,” Tapper tells David Remnick. “If you are a President . . . and you’re not able to go into a room full of donors and speak extemporaneously for ten minutes, then there’s something wrong. And that was happening in 2023.”