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Name: Original Sin
Rating: 4.5 (33 reviews)
Author: Jake Tapper, Alex Thompson

Jake Tapper, Alex Thompson

President Biden’s Decline and His Disastrous Second Run

4.5 (33 ratings)

20 mins

Brief summary

Original Sin delves into the intricate world of political power games and manipulation. Tapper and Thompson craft a revealing narrative about ambition and the moral intricacies faced by those in the corridors of influence.

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US Presidents Media Political Figures Biographies Crises & Scandals US Politics

Table of Contents

Original Sin
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What’s in it for me? A detailed exposé of President Biden’s disastrous 2024 presidential run

“We got so screwed by Biden as a party,” said David Plouffe, a political strategist who helped run Kamala Harris’s campaign in 2024. “He totally fucked us.”

Back in March 2020, Biden called himself “a bridge, and nothing else.” Four Biden advisers told Politico that it was virtually inconceivable he would run for reelection. He was already the oldest president in American history, and voters had long been questioning his cognitive fitness.

But by 2023, it became clear that Biden intended to run after all. Though he ultimately bowed out in July of 2024, the damage was done. It was too late for his successor, Kamala Harris, to beat Donald Trump.

How did this happen? Who enabled Biden’s decision? And who was lying to themselves –⁠ and each other –⁠ about Biden’s obvious deterioration?

The authors had all of these questions in mind as they interviewed hundreds of people around Biden. You’ll get to hear from many of them in this Blink. We’ll peek behind the curtain and uncover Biden’s decline, how his inner circle attempted to cover it up, and the ultimate consequences of their actions.

The writing on the wall

The warning signs of Biden’s decline began to emerge long ago. All the way back in 2019, there was a moment when Biden struggled to remember the name of his longtime aide, Mike Donilon. “You know, you know,” he said, groping for Donilon’s name. Biden had been working with Donilon since 1981.

The thing was, Biden had always been prone to gaffes. He would tell long, meandering stories and occasionally make inappropriate comments. But this was different.

Many of those closest to him said that Biden’s deterioration began in earnest after his son, Beau, died of brain cancer in 2015. Biden had seen Beau as his true heir, destined to one day be president. When he died, it broke something in Biden. A senior White House official told the authors that “parts of Biden’s brain and mental capacity seemed to dissolve like someone poured hot water” on them.

After Beau’s death, Biden very understandably began to cling to his other son, Hunter. He feared losing yet another child. So when Hunter was convicted of three felony charges in 2024, it set Biden back even further. One cabinet secretary described Hunter’s trial and conviction as akin to “a five-hundred pound weight dropping on the president’s head.”

That wouldn’t have been easy to handle, even for a much younger man. And by that point, Biden was in his early eighties. In addition to his cognitive decline, his physical fitness was steadily worsening. Biden’s voice was growing weaker every year, his gait stiffer, his body more feeble.

His aides were doing everything in their power to give him slack. They made sure he could almost always give talks with the aid of a teleprompter, and prepped him for hours. They walked close to him in public to camouflage his unsteady gait and prevent stumbles. And they carefully crafted his schedules such that most of his important duties happened around midday. And yet they couldn’t hide his deterioration from the public forever.

“Get up!”

To understand Biden’s decision to run for reelection, you must understand his personal mythology. It can be summed up in the phrase: “Get up!”

In Biden’s first memoir, Promises to Keep, he wrote that “this is the first principle of life, the foundational principle…. The art of living is simply getting up after you’ve been knocked down.”

The Politburo

Another key piece in Biden’s decline and its coverup was the inner circle surrounding him. Every president enters the White House with a team of loyalists –⁠ but Biden’s was particularly insular. Internally, they were referred to as the “Politburo” –⁠ an unflattering reference to the Soviet policymaking committee.

The Politburo consisted of Steve Ricchetti, Bruce Reed, and Mike Donilon –⁠ the aide whose name Biden forgot in 2019⁠. Donilon was particularly protective of Biden, and Biden valued his advice so much that other aides joked he could get Biden to start a war if he wanted. Ricchetti had been Biden’s chief of staff during Beau’s illness, and all of his children ended up working in the Biden administration. Finally, Reed was a policy wonk known as Biden’s “security blanket.”

The inner circle’s coverup

While the Politburo and other aides protected Biden, and the world, from the truth, so too did White House physician Kevin O’Connor. O’Connor documented Biden’s stiff gait and frequent coughing in mild terms. Notably, however, there was never any mention of a cognitive exam. To other physicians, that seemed strange. It’s widely considered standard practice to begin performing cognitive tests once a patient turns sixty-five. Biden was a day away from turning seventy-nine –⁠ and he’d already begun to show signs of memory loss. The only reason not to perform a cognitive test was if you were afraid of the results.

Aides were constantly scrambling to cover for him. When he misspoke, they rushed to make excuses and said that Biden “struggles to communicate nuance,” especially when he feels something strongly. They kept him from interviews as much as they could –⁠ a year into his presidency, he had done just 38. By contrast, Trump had done 116, Obama 198, and Bush 71 in their first years.

To run or not to run

By November 2022, Biden had privately told aides he intended to stand for reelection. Ron Klain, Biden’s Chief of Staff, initially questioned this, given Biden’s high disapproval ratings. But the 2022 midterms changed everything. Democrats performed better than they had in any other twenty-first century midterm, despite grim projections. Biden felt vindicated. He believed he had a special relationship with voters that politicians just didn’t understand. For the Politburo, it confirmed not only that Biden should run,⁠ but that he deserved to.

There was very little process involved in the decision. No formal meeting to discuss whether Biden was up for it, whether he could handle a taxing campaign cycle. When pollster John Anzalone spoke with Biden’s team, Anita Dunn cut him off: “We don’t need polling. The decision has been made. He’s running.” Anzalone was shocked. No assessment of his polling? No discussion of his vulnerabilities?

Classified

More devastatingly than any other event, Special Counsel Robert Hur’s investigation into Biden’s mishandling of classified documents exposed the president’s deterioration.

The case began, ironically, in November 2022, when Trump was under fire for his own mishandling of classified materials. Around that same time, Biden wondered in a 60 Minutes interview “how one –⁠ anyone –⁠ could be that irresponsible.” Meanwhile, Biden’s attorneys had found similarly classified documents in Biden’s garage and other locations –⁠ materials he’d improperly stored after his vice presidency.

Debate disaster

By 2024, Biden’s isolation had reached new heights. Cabinet secretaries who once met with Biden regularly went months without seeing him. Instead, they briefed other senior White House aides, who would then brief Biden. In one rare direct meeting, one cabinet secretary was shocked by how, in their words, “disoriented” and “out of it” the president seemed.

Of course, they couldn’t get away with the coverup forever. Eventually, some in Biden’s inner circle began to argue that the president needed to get out in public to allay voters’ fears about his age and prove he was up to the task.

Succession

The debate was the beginning of the end. Americans could finally see they’d been lied to about Biden’s health for months –⁠ years, even. David Plouffe, who was later brought on to assist the Harris campaign, said, “One of the great lessons from 2024 [is that] never again can we as a party suggest to people that what they’re seeing is not true.”

On the inside, the period between the debate and Biden’s dropout on July 21 was marked by extreme denial. White House leaders acted like the debate hadn’t happened. Aides became even more watchful for signs of disloyalty. When conversations turned uncomfortable, Biden cut them short or referred people to Mike Donilon.

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What is Original Sin about?

Original Sin (2025) is a damning, in-depth exposé of President Biden’s physical and mental deterioration, his inner circle’s attempts to cover it up, and the resulting catastrophe of Biden’s 2024 presidential run. Drawing from hundreds of interviews, it’s packed with shocking, candid commentary from behind the closed doors of politics’ upper echelons. Ultimately, it tells a disturbing tale of hubris, delusion, and deception –⁠ by Biden, the Democratic Party, and a coalition of his closest family and advisors.

Who should read Original Sin?

Politics buffs
Students of political science or communications
Fans of political and historical thrillers

About the Author

Jake Tapper is CNN’s chief Washington correspondent and the anchor of The Lead and State of the Union. He received an Emmy Award in 2009, is a three-time winner of the Merriman Smith Memorial Award for presidential coverage, and has moderated multiple presidential debates. He is a best selling author of both fiction and nonfiction books, including The Hellfire Club, The Devil May Dance, and The Outpost.

Alex Thompson is the national political correspondent for Axios and a CNN contributor. He previously served as POLITICO’s White House correspondent, where he co-created the West Wing Playbook newsletter. His reporting on the Biden administration earned him the White House Correspondents’ Association Aldo Beckman Award in 2025.

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