A senior White House aide resigned over concerns about President Joe Biden’s cognitive decline, revealing efforts to shield his condition from staff and the public. The aide’s account, featured in the upcoming book Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again, exposes internal attempts to conceal Biden’s deterioration.
The anonymous aide stated, “[W]e attempted to shield him from his own staff, so many people didn’t realize the extent of the decline beginning in 2023.” Expressing admiration for Biden’s decency, the aide added, “Still, it was a disservice to the country and to the party for his family and advisers to allow him to run again.”
CNN’s Jake Tapper, co-author of the book, highlighted the extent of the deception: “The White House was lying not only to the press, not only to the public, but they were lying to their own cabinet.” He emphasized that the administration misled “White House staffers” and “Democrats in Congress about how bad things had gotten.”
Tapper and co-author Alex Thompson began their investigation after the 2024 election, interviewing over 200 individuals, predominantly Democrats. Tapper noted, “Almost all of whom wouldn’t be honest with us, or wouldn’t be candid with us, until after the election.” He added, “Now we have anecdotes and facts about what was really going on behind the scenes, with details that Democrats wouldn’t share with us until after Election Day.”
However, Tapper has received significant criticism for what many see as his own complicity in dismissing signs of the former President’s decline. During a live interview with President Donald Trump’s daughter-in-law, Laura Trump, in 2020, Tapper chastised her as a bully when she raised concerns that Biden was “very clearly” suffering “cognitive decline.”
“How do you think it makes little kids with stutters feel when they see you make a comment like that?” the CNN host asked, painting concerns over Biden’s mental acuity as mocking the then-President for a reported stutter.
“First and foremost, I had no idea that Joe Biden ever suffered from a stutter. I think what we see on stage with Joe Biden, Jake, is a very clearly a cognitive decline,” Trump responded to the heated question.
“I think you were mocking his stutter,” Tapper replied instead of acknowledging the difference or addressing Trump’s larger point. “I think you have absolutely no standing to diagnose somebody’s cognitive decline.”
The recent resurfacing of this exchange has led many to call out Tapper for his perceived “hypocrisy.”
“It is just patently insulting that Jake Tapper is trying to rewrite history while lining his own pockets in the process. He was very much a part of the media cabal who defended Biden,” Fox News contributor Joe Concha said in a recent interview.
“He blamed a stutter, he called Lara Trump a conspiracy theorist when she appeared on his show for simply pointing out the obvious that Joe Biden had no business being anywhere near the Oval Office years ago,” he continued.
“But now that Joe Biden is expendable in the eyes of Democrats, and you know the books are going to come, the leaks are going to come, it’s all a CYA for everybody involved,” Concha added. “Now people are trying to profit off of it.”
