Original Sin

President Biden's Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again

By: Jake Tapper, Alex Thompson

Narrated by: Jake Tapper

From two of America’s most respected journalists, an unflinching and explosive reckoning with one of the most fateful decisions in American political history: Joe Biden’s run for reelection despite evidence of his serious decline—amid desperate efforts to hide the extent of that deterioration

"Explosive." —The New York Times

"[The] most significant book to date about Biden’s cognitive decline." — The Atlantic

"Superbly reported . . . Reads like a Shakespearean drama on steroids." — Los Angeles Times

"It’s hard to think of a book which has shifted the political dial to this extent in recent years." — Politico

In Greek tragedy, the protagonist’s effort to avoid his fate is what seals his fate. In 2024, American politics became a Greek tragedy.

Joe Biden launched his successful 2020 bid for the White House with the stated goal of saving the nation from a second Trump presidential term. He, 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. At his debate with Trump on June 27, 2024, the consequences of that deception were exposed to the world. It was shocking and upsetting.

Now the full, unsettling truth is being told for the first time. Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson take us behind closed doors and into private conversations between the heaviest of hitters, revealing how big the problem was and how many people knew about it. From White House staffers at the highest to lowest levels, to leaders of Congress and the Cabinet, from governors to donors and Hollywood players, the truth is finally being told. 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. The story the authors tell raises fundamental issues of accountability and responsibility that will continue for decades.

The irony is biting: In the name of defeating what they called an existential threat to democracy, Biden and his inner circle ensured it, tossing aside his implicit promise to serve for only one term, denying the existence of health issues the nation had been watching for years, dooming the Democrats to defeat. The decision to run again, the Original Sin of this president, led to a campaign of denial and gaslighting, leading directly to Donald Trump's return to power and all that has happened as a consequence. Rarely does hubris meet nemesis more explosively. Wherever you stand on the political spectrum, Original Sin is essential listening.

©2025 Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson (P)2025 Penguin Audio

Repetitive Anecdotes

This book didn’t have any mic drop moments that left me stunned. It just relayed numerous times Joe lost his memory. I didn’t get a huge sense that there was a large cover-up to hide his dementia. Tapper’s voice change to mimic Biden was terrible and insulting.

Pretty Damn Fair, and Foul, ouch!

I binged on this, two days to the finish. And the end was so well written/concluded: Biden himself making more of his emphatic delusional empty promises, and delivery on none of them. I feel for his demise, he couldn’t help it any more than any of us can, but the blatant lies by his family and staff and the media are disgusting, and repeated over and over. Geez, Katzenberg and Clooney sure look like chumps, big environmental agents yet fly across a third of the globe to attend a stupid dinner party to perpetuate their political agendas, the hell with this environmental bullshit, we want what suits us! Glad I stopped paying attention to their products. And stopped listening to the collective lying by everyone involved in the coverup. I guess most of us Americans are just the lemmings they said we are.

Beware the messenger

Just finished reading Original Sin by Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson. The book dives deep into the cover-up of Joe Biden’s mental decline by his inner circle and the media—and it doesn’t hold back… except when it comes to Tapper himself. He calls out everyone else but barely acknowledges his own role in running cover during Biden’s presidency. I remember watching Tapper downplay or ignore obvious signs—only now does he admit there might have been something to it. Kind of rich, considering he’s now profiting from the very thing he helped conceal. Thought-provoking read, but definitely left me questioning the messenger.

Unbelievable!

Talk about so many levels of just plain wrong and deception. This is elder abuse to the highest level. One of my questions is, why now Jake Tapper? It’s too late to tell all the findings that you were aware of previously, why tell the truth and expose the corruption now…it’s too late to change anything. All of the American people that followed the media and took your word and absorbed the scathing rebuke any time there was even a question about age, ability, health or cognitive ability, where is our resolve? Why now? Why is okay to report on it now?

Beyond whining

I had a tough time with Tapper’s narration: he is on the verge of yelling, like his TV performances, and it was completely annoying and negated much of the information which, of course, is damning. I made it through, but unlike many of the Trump- info books I’ve read, this came off as a 7th grader’s tirade to friends about getting a detention. It was a long and typical punch list of the ugly side of power & politics, but that voice made him sound like just another tattletale in the lunchroom.

Sad and scary

Sad to hear about just how far the president had diminished but frightening to learn how much people that should have helped him didn’t do that and let the reelection campaign even happen, not to mention how long they kept up the charade.

Riveting. Events are sequenced to finally make sense of the Democrats debacle prior to the last election.

The narration was adequate, writing mediocre, but I found this to be absolutely riveting. Listened every chance I got. I steered away from it because I find current politics disheartening; even sickening. I took a chance on a recommendation and was totally mesmerized.

The Fall of the House of Biden

There is a certain poetic justice to Jake Tapper taking up the pen to chronicle the twilight of Joe Biden’s political career. A veteran correspondent with deep roots in the Philadelphia region—a stone’s throw from Biden’s Delaware base—Tapper has, for decades, operated at the intersection of Biden’s orbit and Beltway media. In Original Sin, co-authored with CNN producer Lucy Thompson, he leverages this proximity to deliver the most intimate—and arguably most damning—account yet of the 46th president’s unraveling.

Much as Maggie Haberman’s Confidence Man offered an unparalleled psychological profile of Donald Trump, Original Sin benefits from Tapper’s sustained coverage of Biden’s long and often underestimated career. But where Haberman’s subject thrives in chaos, Tapper’s portrait is of a man increasingly swallowed by it. The result is a book that is less a hatchet job than a slow, clinical autopsy.

Original Sin positions itself as nonpartisan, and largely succeeds. Tapper and Thompson offer few detours into the theater of partisan recrimination. Donald Trump is not exonerated or excused; nor is Biden scapegoated for the broader ailments of the American gerontocracy. The authors keep their scalpel fixed on one body: Biden’s campaign and administration. What emerges is a meticulous—and often unsettling—study of political inertia, denial, and the fragile architecture of power propped up by loyalty and illusion.

The central narrative is constructed from over 200 interviews with aides, lawmakers, campaign staff, and administration insiders. The book’s most explosive revelations surround the President’s declining health and the concerted efforts by his inner circle to conceal it—from the public, from the press, and in some cases, from other members of the executive branch. The depiction of a White House operating in willful denial evokes a tragic echo of late-stage presidencies past, though rarely with such systematic obfuscation.

One of the more chilling sequences recounts preparations for the June 2024 debate—a performance so disastrously revealing that it effectively redrew the electoral map overnight. Tapper, who co-moderated the event, brings a sharp, almost forensic recollection to the lead-up and aftermath. In a moment that will no doubt enter campaign lore, the authors suggest that the debate was less a turning point than a rupture—one that exposed truths Biden’s team had long labored to suppress.

But for all its access and rigor, the book stumbles in its reluctance to fully interrogate the Democratic Party's complicity in Biden’s renomination. The machinery of the 2024 primary—the quiet sidelining of potential challengers, the DNC’s structural shielding of the incumbent, the chilling effect on would-be contenders—is acknowledged only in passing. It is a conspicuous omission in a book otherwise determined to identify the root causes of electoral failure.

Also underexamined is the decision to retain Kamala Harris on the ticket—a move portrayed here as more obligatory than strategic. Tapper and Thompson hint at private doubts within the party apparatus, yet stop short of exploring how those calculations may have amplified Democratic vulnerabilities heading into a volatile election year.

Even so, Original Sin is an urgent, unflinching contribution to the postmortem literature of modern presidencies. It offers not just a portrait of a man in decline, but of a political ecosystem unable—or unwilling—to course-correct. In its restraint, it avoids sanctimony; in its detail, it avoids ambiguity. This is not a book about betrayal or ideology. It is about the cost of refusing to see.

And in that sense, it may be the most American story of all.

Great behind the scenes access.

I really loved the book, great behind the scenes access. Now you need to do Trump.

Nothing new, except someone admitting what the public already saw

If you spent any time watching Joe Biden over the last 10 years-his decline was obvious. Much of this book is quoting the words we witnessed him speak-from confusion, to forgetting, to absolute gibberish. He, the whitehouse staff, and the media were complicit in refusing to admit the emperor had no clothes. The only thing this book adds to what we already knew-is one journalist refusing to continue the gaslighting the American public has continually faced concerning Joe Biden’s health status and cognitive abilities. All of those who enabled the deception should be held accountable. Not only were they dishonest for their own gain, power, and privileges-they are responsible for our current administration and all the consequences that accompany it.