Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson on President Joe Biden’s Decline, and Its Cover-Up
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This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. Nearly a year ago, last June, we sat down to watch the presidential debate between Donald Trump and Joe Biden. It was the first and only debate, and it was moderated by Jake Tapper and Dana Bash of CNN.

Biden struggled to complete sentences, to remember facts. At times he made no sense at all. He spoke in a raspy whisper. Making sure that we're able to make every single solitary person eligible for what I've been able to do with the COVID, excuse me, with dealing with everything we have to do with. Look, if we finally beat Medicare.

Biden had been elected as the oldest person ever to hold the office. And prior to the debate, there were moments when his deterioration was certainly worrying. But the debate itself left him exposed, unmasked. There could no longer be any doubt at all and no concealment. Joe Biden was an old man getting older, and Donald Trump was likely to win in a landslide. After the debate, Biden's people said in effect...

Nothing to look at here. The president had a cold. He had a bad day. We all have bad days, right? But it was hard to watch that debate and see it as a fluke. For millions of Americans, the willing suspension of disbelief collapsed right then and there. Who could believe any longer that Joe Biden, no matter what you thought of his achievements as president, could fulfill those duties for another four years? We know how this story ended, but there's a lot we didn't know until now.

Reporting by Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson makes clear that the debate night was not a fluke at all. Their new book is called Original Sin, President Biden's decline, its cover up and his disastrous choice to run again. Jake Tapper is CNN's lead Washington anchor, and he interviewed Biden many times going back to his years in the Senate.

Alex Thompson is a national political correspondent for Axios. An excerpt of their book has appeared in The New Yorker, and we'll dig deeper into this story, which has had such immense consequences for the country, its politics, and its future. Jake and Alex, I'm not a fortune teller, but I'm going to guess in advance that one critique of your book and the critique of all the coverage of Biden's decline and fall can be summarized in the question,

What took you so long? But before we launch into the details of your book, let's wrestle with that question of why now? Why so late? I think a lot of us have covered Joe Biden's aging and the accompanying inabilities to do things the way he used to do throughout his presidency. But what we uncovered yesterday

After the election was over, when all the people that we had been talking to for months and years and all of the people who had been saying, he's fine, he's fine, he's fine, he's fine, were suddenly willing to talk about what had been going on. But it was only after the election that we were able to get the inside point of view. Before that, the only insider point of view we really got was from the Her report.

when the special counsel said what he saw behind closed doors, sitting down with Biden for an extended period of time. Robert Herr, who investigated the handling of classified documents, and he famously used the phrase that described Biden, a well-meaning elderly man with a poor memory. Before that, it was all a lot of, he's fine, he's fine, he's fine. But now, Alex and I have spoke with more than 200 people after the election, and unencumbered by their fears of

If I say this, then Joe Biden won't get elected or Kamala Harris won't get elected. They were much more candid. And look, it's very important that folks were noting that, you know, he tripped on stage at a graduation at the Air Force Academy. But comparing that to him not being able to conjure forth the name of George Clooney or recognize George Clooney.

Somebody he'd known for decades and somebody throwing him the most lucrative fundraiser in the history of the Democratic Party. Those are two different things. Noting that he, you know, mistakenly thought that in 2021, he'd had a conversation with Francois Mitterrand as opposed to Emmanuel Macron. We all saw that and we noted it and we talked about it. But that compared to him not knowing the name of one of his top advisors in December 2022, I

There's a difference. And what we found by writing this book was that everything that we saw was going on in front of the camera. It was much worse behind the scenes. And what you're saying is that while it was happening in real time during Biden's presidency, the sources who were in the position to know who actually knew and saw this were.

We're not speaking clearly to journalists on any basis. Is that what we're suggesting? Yes, I don't think they were speaking honestly. And as Biden's decline became precipitous, they also began to close ranks. And the circle of people that had access to the president shrank considerably over

at the end of 2023 and throughout 2024, up and leading to the debate. Well, describe what that circle became and how did it shrink and who was around him? So I'd say the people they were, you know, excising were both longtime aides, cabinet members, senior officials,

And basically what happened is they the very, very inner circle. And I put in that category, if you want to put names to it would be like Mike Donnellan, Steve Reschetti, Andy Tomasini, Anthony Bernal, Jake Sullivan, Tony Blinken. You know, basically they said, you brief us, we'll brief him.

was the message. Anthony Blinken was on this show in his last day in office as Secretary of State, and I asked him about the aging question, and he answered it in the following way. He said, basically, when I was in the room with him, he was doing what you would want of a president. I think if I felt that he wasn't up to the job,

You know, that's something that I would have... You would have had that conversation with her. I would have had that conversation, but... And you didn't. But I saw everything that I experienced myself...

when it came to grappling with all these issues, when it came to debating them, when it came to looking at them from every angle, when it came to making decisions, when it came to having judgments, his were strong, his were sound. So when you saw that debate with Trump, is that what he says in private or was he just doing that on the record for a podcast? I mean, first thing I will just say is it's sort of telling that not just Tony Blinken, but basically every single speaker

senior advisor, with the exception of few, they'll always say, well, when I was with him, when I saw him, which is giving them plausible deniability. There's also a couple other things to unpack with that. One is that the issues that animated Joe Biden the most in his presidency are

were national security issues, was NATO, was the Middle East, was Ukraine-Russia. And so I don't doubt that he was most engaged and also that those meetings, when they scheduled them, were in peak performance time, noon, one o'clock. But the other thing that Blinken says... Well, hang on, Jake. Yeah. Peak performance time, you're suggesting, is just a couple of hours in the middle of the day? Not a couple, but...

10 to 4 is what Alex's reporting was in 2023. And that, I think, is even generous because he was not in the Oval Office every day from 10 until 4. What was he doing? I mean, he spent a lot of time in the residence. You know, and he would be on the phone, right? And we have...

months of the internal calendar, which is called the block calendar, which shows how much his schedule, especially beginning in late 2023, when he was not traveling, was restricted. There were some days when he would go up to the residence, have dinner, and be down at 4.30 p.m. And you hear this argument a lot from

Not just the Politburo, which is what some of the administration came to calling Tom Donilon and Steve Ricchetti, the two top aides. And not just the first family's eyes and ears, Anthony Bernal and Annie Tomasini. But what...

Others would say, oh, his decision-making was always fine. His decision-making was always fine. Okay. The job of the president is not just decision-making. It's also communication to the population. One top aide said to us, the job is making hard decisions and communicating them to the American people. And this aide said, he was always able to do number one. Number two was a struggle, and it got worse throughout his presidency. But number two is...

So much. Yes, you want the person to be able to make good decisions, but you also they need to persuade. They need to cajole. They need to be able to the American people need to have faith in this person. Our Western leaders need to have faith in this person. And he lost a lot of that. And presumably to campaign for the presidency when that moment came.

Yeah. And if it hadn't been for COVID, who knows if that would have even worked in 2020. I mean, COVID, as one aide told us, was a huge tragedy and disaster for the American people, but a gift to Biden in 2020 because it enabled him to basically have a very...

inactive campaign schedule that was largely dependent on him doing Zooms. Alex, you write in the book about cabinet meetings during Biden's presidency, and those meetings seemed almost entirely scripted. I mean, were they written down? Were they really scripted? And talk about the orchestration of those sessions. Very much so. And this is something that came after the election in which members of the cabinet told us that they found the cabinet meetings disturbing.

And frustrating and that the White House would ask them, what are you going to ask? What if he asks a certain question? What is your answer going to be?

And it wasn't just when cameras or the press was brought in for a brief photo op. It was even afterward where there were literal, as they described it to us, as there were literal scripts where the cabinet meeting was a very scripted affair. And members of the cabinet afterward came away feeling a little disturbed, right?

And this was, you know, as early as 2021, but it became worse over time. Did they ask pointed questions, Jay? Did they press the issue? No, no. And in fact, so in October 2023 is the last cabinet meeting, I think, until September 2024.

And that period begins what one cabinet secretary of several we spoke with described as the weird period where they were kept at bay. They didn't get a chance to interact with the president. There were exceptions to this. Blinken, the secretary of state, and Austin, the secretary of defense. But for the most part, a lot of these secretaries were just completely kept at arm's length.

And one of them said that during that period, spring of 2024, the secretary did have a meeting with Biden, and he was mumbly and incoherent and difficult to understand. And this person left the cabinet, that meeting, this cabinet secretary left that meeting upset and disturbed. But no one came forward. When they would complain internally, they were told, he's fine, be quiet. And this is a real...

This is a larger topic for what we all need to reckon with when it comes to the American presidency today and the degree to which one person is bestowed with so much power and surrounded by individuals like

whose own power depends on that person maintaining power, regardless of whether or not it's good for the White House, the party, or the country. But that power and the fear of what happens. Look at Robert Herr came forward, did his job. He wasn't able to get a job for months. Dean Phillips came forward, said Joe Biden should be challenged in the primaries. He's not up to this. He was essentially defenestrated. I mean, there was a real price to coming forward.

Were the scripted cabinet meetings, as you call them, the case from the very beginning of the presidency, or did that become more noticeable late in the presidency? It started at the beginning, but it became more and more scripted throughout. A lot of the tools that may have started out innocently enough for Joe Biden, every White House—

Indeed, any successful person is surrounded by people to help make them look as good as possible. Right. So a lot of those tools, note cards and teleprompter, et cetera, that were put there innocently enough for a 79-year-old president at the beginning of his term became crutches of

And ultimately tools of the cover up by the end, because if you are a president, if you're 80, 81 years old and you're not able to go into a room full of donors and speak extemporaneously for 10 minutes, then there's something wrong. And that was happening in 2023.

And Bill Daley, former Obama chief of staff, he went to one of those and he was distressed. He tried to get other Democrats to run in the primary against Joe Biden. He reached out to Pritzker. He reached out to Newsom or Beshear. And nobody would do it. It's a fool's errand to take on an incumbent president in a primary, generally speaking. But...

People saw this and they were disturbed. So, again, some things might start off like, look, we're just trying to help the president. He wants a teleprompter. No big deal. All of a sudden, he can't answer questions at a fundraiser in 2023. Jake Tapper of CNN, and I'm speaking also with Alex Thompson of Axios. Our conversation continues in a moment. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported by Odyssey.

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Go to quince.com slash radio hour for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. That's Q-U-I-N-C-E dot com slash radio hour to get free shipping and 365 day returns. quince.com slash radio hour. It might be enticing to try and sleep through the next four years, but if you're wondering how to survive a second Trump term while staying fully conscious, Pod Save America is here to help you process what's happening now and what comes next.

I'm Jon Favreau and Tommy Vitor, Jon Lovett and Dan Pfeiffer and I wade hip deep into the week's political news and fish out some political analysis you can trust. Yes, Tommy's shoes get ruined. Yes, he'll do it again tomorrow because the endeavor is worth it. And so is your sanity. Tune into Pods of America wherever you get your podcasts and on YouTube. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. I've been speaking today with the authors of Original Sin, President Biden's decline, its cover up and his disastrous choice to run again.

The book is by Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson, and an excerpt of the book appears on newyorker.com. The book recounts the actions of staff members who deliberately concealed Biden's decline from the public and the silence of those who witnessed it. The book also raises some enduring questions about how our political system works and how candidates are vetted or not. I'll continue my conversation with Alex Thompson, a Washington reporter for Axios, and Jake Tapper of CNN.

There's never been a cognitive test released to the public, I believe. What did you uncover in your reporting on that score? Well, I would say that Biden's personal physician, his name is Dr. Kevin O'Connor. He's been with him for so long. He even helped with Joe Biden's sons, Beau Biden's cancer treatments. They're essentially almost like a family doctor.

which gave some people concern that he was too close. And he basically said, I don't need to give the president a cognitive exam. Now, you'll remember maybe that during Trump's first presidency, he underwent a cognitive exam. Now, they claim he aced it. They obviously said he's like, fine, fine, fine, fine. But they actually sort of defiantly said, we don't need to conduct one.

And Biden's personal physician said, well, I see him every day. And the cognitive exam is made for physicians who only see their patients every several months. And if you doubt that he is cognitively capable, listen, he is doing the job. And so they never did a cognitive exam, despite the fact that a lot of doctors start doing regular cognitive exams when someone is 65.

And Joe Biden, when he was inaugurated, was in his late 70s. We get in a little bit to the Biden family lore and the way they look at the world, but there's a lot of not wanting to acknowledge realities. Can you give an example of that?

I mean, I'll go into what happened with Beau Biden in 2014. In their own memoirs, the Bidens acknowledge that in summer of 2013, Beau Biden was diagnosed with essentially lethal brain cancer. He underwent brain surgery. It was glioblastoma. They acknowledge that it was likely he was not going to live.

He was a sitting attorney general of the state of Delaware. In February of 2014, with a year left on his term, they had a doctor, his doctor, come out and publicly say that he had a clean bill of health.

And some of that was just, we want him, you know, political reasons, but some of it was their own sort of internal denial that Bo was going to make it. Bo was going to do it. That he was never going to die. Right.

And to acknowledge this lethal form of brain cancer was acknowledging his ability to was acknowledging that he was going to die. But that was a personal issue. The stakes were. Well, he was sitting. He was the chief law enforcement officer of the state of Delaware, hiding the fact that he was debilitated. My my understanding, my understanding, Jake, is that the pivotal moment.

of decision-making comes. Earlier, Joe Biden had suggested that he might be a bridge figure, that his great success was to beat Trump, to introduce a great deal of legislation and executive orders that would set the country in a different direction. Look, I view myself as a bridge, not as anything else. There's an entire generation of leaders you saw stand behind me. They are the future of this country. They're the people of our country.

That would have been the moment for Joe Biden to declare victory and hand the baton over to someone else or at least start the process of doing so. Instead, as I understand it, that moment of victory in the midterms spurred Joe Biden to stay in the race. Am I getting things right here, Jay? A hundred percent. And one of the most important parts of understanding Joe Biden is understanding the

his refusal to accept defeat. And it's look, it's one of the things that we love about politicians or any sort of public figure. He gets knocked down, he gets back up again. And that's part of the ethos of Joe Biden, right?

In this case, he didn't have that. The midterms went better than expected, better than they had for Clinton or Obama in their first terms. Now, I think that a lot of the reason for that was despite Joe Biden, not because of Joe Biden. It was because of and this is according to his own personal.

Paul Sturz and people close to him, he did better than everyone thought in the midterms because there was a very engaged Democratic electorate because of the overturning of Roe v. Wade that year. And because Trump had gotten involved in a lot of primaries and backed not the best candidate for the general election, whether Blake Masters in Arizona or Herschel Walker in Georgia.

But regardless, yeah, the midterms weren't as bad. Now, sometimes in presidential history, the truth teller is the spouse that the president's wife, who's known the president long before he was the leader of the free world, is able to speak the truth directly and privately to her husband. And what was the role of Jill Biden in all this?

Certainly not a truth teller. I can tell you even people that served in both the Obama and Biden administrations noted how different the roles between the two were. But in this case, they saw Jill first and foremost as protector. Other Biden aides have described Jill Biden as one of the most powerful first ladies in American history. And they would say that

that even though she does not acknowledge that her husband was in decline, that inherently, like just implicitly, she was picking up his slack. Well, just preceding the publication of your book, last week there was the spectacle of Joe Biden and Jill Biden appearing in advance of your publication. Yeah. Clearly as a way to get out in front of it, to be honest. And they appeared on The View yesterday.

And nothing that I saw, and I watched the program, nothing in that program would dissuade me from the view that it would have been a bad idea for Joe Biden to

risk being president into his mid-80s. Mr. President, since you left office, there have been a number of books that have come out, deeply sourced from Democratic sources, that claim in your final year there was a dramatic decline in your cognitive abilities. In the final year of your presidency, what is your response to these allegations, and are these sources wrong? They are wrong. There's nothing to sustain that.

Number one. Number two, you know, think of what we're left with. We're left with a circumstance where we had an insurrection when I started. The nonsense of civil war. We had a circumstance where we were in a position that we, well, the pandemic. Jill Biden seemed to control the conversation.

And Joe Biden did the best he could. And you have to have some human sympathy for it, but not a whole hell of a lot of confidence in his ability to carry out the hardest job in the world. And imagine thinking, A, Joe Biden, the Joe Biden we all saw on The View or the BBC interview, is capable of being president until January 2029. Right.

That's because that's what they think, the Biden first couple and Reschetti and Donilon. That's what they think. And also imagine thinking that the best prebuttal to our book, which quotes extensively Democrats. Prebuttal? That's a new word for sure. Extensively quotes Democrats describing what they saw behind the scenes and how much it upset them, that the best way to prebut our book is to put him out there.

Imagine thinking that. I mean, you know, this isn't an episode of The Twilight Zone where all of a sudden he swims in a pool and emerges with the energy of a 12-year-old. Like, he is still 82 and looks and sounds every day of it. I just want to add one thing to that, which is, in some ways, the bigger scandal, in my mind, is what if he'd won? Yeah.

Because, yeah, but I can hear the hair being ripped out of people's head as they say that they're saying if he had won, it would have been a hell of a lot better than what we're experiencing now. Speak to that. Sure. And I understand that perspective completely. But basically, if he had won their life, I mean, people in the Biden world believe there would have been a constitutional crisis because clearly the people in his inner circle are

were not willing to cede power and were completely of the belief that he was on top of it all. And increasingly, members of the Democratic Party were becoming suspicious of

that he was not up to it. And there is more to being president than not being Donald Trump. And I think, and that sort of speaks to the frustrating choice Democrats in the country faced in this last election. You had somebody that even members of his own administration believe that he was not up to doing the job he was running for, for four more years, versus someone that they

believe sincerely was going to hurt the country in significant ways. Well, I know we excerpted this part of your book, but it's worth going through the narrative of what George Clooney experienced with Biden, not because he's, you know, a famous movie star, but because he was a huge Democratic Party fundraiser and

and encountered Biden even before you did in the fateful debate. Tell me the story, Jake, if you would, of Clooney's, in a sense, conversion that led him to write a pretty damning piece in the New York Times op-ed page. So, as you note, he's not just a movie star. He is a Democrat, a very proud Democrat.

and has been involved in some of the biggest fundraisers ever, including in the spring of 2024 at Radio City Music Hall. And then I think that raised $27 million. Katzenberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg was running the fundraiser. And then he wanted another, Katzenberg wanted another fundraiser. This one would raise $30 million, which would be the most money ever raised for a Democratic presidential candidate. And Clooney said, sure, tell me where to go. So it's June 20th.

And Clooney has shown up. He was in Italy filming a movie. He and Julia Roberts are co-hosting this thing. So, um,

He's there and he sees Obama walk in and there's Obama, same old Obama. He loves Obama. A little grayer, but, you know, same guy. And then Biden walks in and he's shocked. He hasn't seen Biden since December 2022 before he got a Kennedy Center honor, George Clooney. He sees him. He can't believe how slow he's walking, how much he's shuffling. And then Biden walks over and he's saying, hey, how you doing? Thanks for coming. Hey, how you doing? Thanks for coming for everybody who's there.

And he says, comes over to Clooney and says, hey, how you doing? Thanks for being here. And his aide, Biden's aide says, you know, George. And he's like, yeah, sure. Of course. How you doing? And it becomes very apparent to everyone there that President Biden does not recognize George Clooney. And then the aide has to say,

George Clooney, like underlying who this person is, one of the most recognizable faces in the world, the guy who was hosting the fundraiser for you, the guy that you gave a Kennedy Center honor to, the guy you've known for 20 years. And then he's like, sure, how are you doing? And he wasn't the only one, Clooney and those in that circle who saw something that upset them. Barack Obama saw something

Biden not at his best, where he had to jump in a couple times in these private meetings behind the scenes. And they all just kind of like convinced themselves, look, he's

Biden's had a rough travel schedule. He's tired. He's on a lot of flights. He was in France. Then he was in Delaware for Hunter's trial. Then he's back to Italy for the G7. But I'm sorry, he's not flying in a middle seat in Congress. No, he has Air Force One with a bedroom. Although one of his top aides says to me, like, there's a big difference between Joe Biden getting seven hours and Joe Biden getting eight hours of sleep, which is okay. That's interesting. But that's not encouraging either. It's not a defense. Right. So...

In any case, Clooney kind of just like goes back to movie world and files it away. It's like, OK, he's old and I guess, you know, he didn't get any sleep and it's been a crazy schedule. But then what happens at the debate? And then Clooney's like, this is what I saw. OK, so let's talk about the debate. Jake, you are sitting, you are just feet away from Trump and Biden now.

And you've interviewed these guys many times. You spend your life watching this political drama and reporting on it. Describe the experience of sitting there and what you're seeing and what you're hearing and how it strikes you. So I will say, having watched it on TV, in addition to having watched it in person, it was worse in person. And it's pretty bad on TV.

He shuffles out, seems really old. He starts talking. He's obviously got a cold. His voice is already thin and reedy before the cold. So he seems really, really old. I remember thinking like when it started, when he clearly was not, you know, primed and ready. Why did they agree to do this at nine o'clock at night? Having kept Alex's reporting in the back of my mind about how he doesn't, you know, he's sometimes...

4.30, that's the end of the workday for him. Why would they do this at 9 o'clock at night? And then he gives the first horrible answer, which comes like in the first five or ten minutes. The one where he says, we beat Medicare. Because he's having trouble. It's not just

We've all had colds. And we've all forgotten names. And we've all forgotten names. But this was a man who could not put thoughts together and who could not explain basics of his policy. I'm not a doctor. I can't diagnose what it was. But this was somebody who was not able to communicate like he himself was able to communicate even four years ago.

And I was shocked. We had iPads. Dana bashed my co-moderator and I so we could communicate with the control room because we can't talk. And I wrote, holy smokes, because I didn't know who was in the control room. I thought maybe, you know. Holy smokes as well? Well, I would have said something else, but I thought maybe Zaslav was there. I didn't want to offend anybody, but I was stunned.

And then his answers were really bad. And even his best answers were barely serviceable. And it almost didn't even matter. I mean, Trump was Trump, you know, full of bombast and false claims. But he was disciplined. You know, say what you will about Donald Trump. The only thing he said about what I think empirically is the very worst debate performance in the history of televised debate since 1960, the only thing Trump said

I don't understand what he just said there, and I don't think he does either. President Trump? I really don't know what he said at the end of that sentence. I don't think he knows what he said either. It was a rare moment of restraint and humanity on Trump's part, never to be equaled again. I don't know if it was humanity as much as when your opponent's blown himself up to get out of the way. That's fair, too.

We'll talk about what happened after that debate in just a moment. My guests today are Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson, and this is the New Yorker Radio Hour. Stick around. WNYC Studios is supported by Focus Features and Indian Paintbrushes, The Phoenician Scheme, an epic comedy adventure from Wes Anderson, the director of Grand Budapest Hotel in Asteroid City, and starring Benicio Del Toro, Mia Threepen, Michael Cera, Tom Hanks, Scarlett Johansson, and Jeffrey Wright.

The Phoenician Scheme is the story of Zsa Zsa Korda, the most mysterious, most elusive, most wanted man in the world, as he races to survive assassinations, win back his daughter, and pull off the greatest scheme of his lifetime. With the clock ticking and danger around every corner, this mastermind has only 72 hours to reclaim his legacy and maybe, just maybe, find redemption along the way. The Phoenician Scheme is Wes Anderson's most daring adventure yet.

Don't miss The Phoenician Scheme, rated PG-13, in select theaters in New York and Los Angeles, May 30th, everywhere June 6th. It might be enticing to try and sleep through the next four years, but if you're wondering how to survive a second Trump term while staying fully conscious, Pod Save America is here to help you process what's happening now and what comes next. I'm Jon Favreau and Tommy Vitor, Jon Lovett and Dan Pfeiffer and I wade hip-deep into the week's political news and fish out some political analysis you can trust.

Yes, Tommy's shoes get ruined. Yes, he'll do it again tomorrow because the endeavor is worth it. And so is your sanity. Tune into Pods of America wherever you get your podcasts and on YouTube. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. And I've been speaking this hour with Jake Tapper of CNN and Alex Thompson of Axios. Their new book is called Original Sin, President Biden's Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again.

And it's a book, by the way, that Biden and people close to him have been dreading for a long time. Earlier in the program, we mentioned how Biden once referred to himself as a bridge, a bridge to a new generation of leaders. That was during the 2020 campaign. Some of us took that remark to mean that Biden intended to stay in office for just one term. But somewhere along the line, he became convinced that only he could beat Donald Trump. And he stayed in the race until it was way too late.

Now, Alex, one of the reasons that Biden wanted to run again, it's said, is that he and his close circle of advisors didn't really view Kamala Harris as a worthy successor. That's what you write. Biden called her, and the quote is, a work in progress when he was speaking in private. First of all, where did that come from? And tell me about that atmosphere. Yeah, well, you know, it's funny that our title is Original Sin, but...

A few senior Biden people said, well, you know, the original sin actually was picking Kamala Harris because his heart was with Gretchen Whitmer. And the political case, particularly after the murder of George Floyd by a policeman, was made by Ron Klain, Cedric Richmond, James Clyburn, that...

He needed to pick a black woman and she was the most vetted and the most prepared. She had also been friends with Beau Biden, which goes a long way with Joe Biden. And once she's in there, you know, the scars of the 2020-2019 Democratic primary, they may have healed between the principles. Describe those scars. So Kamala Harris goes in the first debate and she says, um,

that Joe Biden's previous opposition to busing in schools basically makes him disqualified. She essentially insinuates that his past stances were racist. Mm-hmm.

Well, Joe Biden may get over it. Joe Biden's family and the team around him never fully get over it. Yeah, Jill Biden was said to be particularly furious with Kamala Harris for that debate performance. And there is this atmosphere, not just during the 2020 campaign, but in the White House as well, that, yes, you need to help Kamala Harris. Like you need to like, but don't go out of your way.

Don't go above and beyond because it could be seen as disloyal. There is a degree to which Kamala was insurance for Biden. I don't think it was consciously so, but they would, if anybody ever said anything in internal discussions, not to Biden himself, but in internal discussions about should he run, et cetera, the answer was always, if it's not him, it's going to be Kamala Harris. You think she can win?

You think she could be president?

And that's a... And the insinuation there is that... She's not capable of winning and not capable of being president. It's capability not because of her demographic reasons, not because she's black and a woman and all that, and the prejudices. No, she's less popular than him, which she was until she became the nominee, and less capable. Now, you say in your book that who Biden really wanted to be vice president was Gretchen Bittmer. It's interesting to me that...

Gretchen Whitmer did not emerge at all. Kamala Harris was rewarded for her loyalty in a way that she got Biden's approval once he stepped down. And there was no process. Nobody stepped in. Nobody dared to do that. Well, there are a lot of reasons for that. One of one of the reasons was when Biden called Harris on July 21st to tell her that he was dropping out.

And she was supportive, you know, don't let them chase you out, Joe. And he said, no, I think I've got to do this. It's what's best. You know, are you ready for a kid? And she wanted to do it. They sent over the note that he was going to put on social media. Doesn't mention her. She says, you know, you don't mention me in here.

She did say that. Yeah. And he says, well, I was going to endorse you in an Oval Office address later in the week. So this is Sunday. He was talking about doing this Wednesday or Thursday. And she said that that would be interpreted as weakness. And so...

The Donnellans and Reschettis and Bidens got, you know, talked about it and then came back and said, you know what we're going to do? We're going to put out this note. And then like 15, 20 minutes later, we're going to put out the note endorsing. And so they did do that. Harris had made calls and was ready to go. She decided she wanted to call, in addition to obviously the Clintons and the Obamas and the Democratic leadership, she wanted to call any possible candidates.

Anybody who might throw their hat into the ring. And the first person she called, because the one they were the most concerned about or maybe the one they thought was the most eager or ambitious, was Governor Shapiro of Pennsylvania. They called him, but he's on board immediately. And then they call around. The only two of the prospective Democratic possibilities who don't endorse her that day are Gretchen Whitmer, who is kind of like taken aback by all of it,

And J.B. Pritzker, the governor of Illinois. Pritzker kind of calls around that day, is anybody going to run? I think if anybody else had run, maybe Pritzker would have run. But he certainly was not going to be the only one running against the incumbent vice president, the first ever black woman vice president in history. So by the next day, it was a done deal. Whitmer and Pritzker were on board. Obama announced that he was on board, and that was that.

We know the role that Nancy Pelosi played in helping to ease Joe Biden out. It was...

quite masterful and Machiavellian all at once. And she was on the show and described that in no uncertain terms. They still hate her, though, the Bidens. Oh, my God, do they? The person, the relationship that remains at least somewhat of a mystery to me is the role of Barack Obama. I want to know what the relationship was at this point between Obama and Biden, because it seems to me from reading your book is that Biden never stopped

loving Barack Obama and resenting him deeply. There's great suspicion there. Am I right? Yeah, it's a great way of putting it. And that I don't think Obama has any intense feelings one way or another towards Joe Biden, but Biden certainly does. Now, there are both political and personal reasons for this. The first on the political end is Biden and his inner circle are

have never gone over the fact that Obama preferred Hillary to him in 2016.

Joe Biden wrote about in his memoir. It has been this sort of like loyalty moment of who is with us and who is against us. And the fact that Trump won in their own heads was evidence of that their version or their way of politics was right and the Obama smarty pants people were wrong.

And the other thing from the Obama perspective is that, one, he feels like what he says to Joe Biden isn't heard because, and he's used these words, Joe's still pissed at me about Hillary. Like he knows, but Biden will not listen to him. There was this kind of like mythology that some people posited on MSNBC that

Obama had gotten George Clooney to write that op-ed, which is not true. George wrote it on his own. But beyond that, Obama told him not to publish it, that it was just going to get Biden's backup. So there is a degree to which, A, he thinks like, this guy just doesn't listen to me at all. The best thing I can do is just be here and say... So he never got involved in trying to convince Biden not to run a second time? No. He checked in on him in 2023. Yeah.

and just tried to reaffirm to Biden how much tougher this was going to be and how tough Trump was going to be. Thought Biden was Biden. Thought Biden was old. Thought Biden was who he is. But that's the degree to that, that he said anything. He would talk to Schumer. He would talk to Pelosi. He would talk to Hakeem Jeffries. And he would guide them. The polling became very important.

to the crowd that was trying to, the real top crowd trying to get Biden out of the race, Pelosi, Jeffries, Schumer. What did it, what was the tripwire? Why did he finally hang it up? I think what did it are two things. One, Schumer telling Biden about the meeting that the Democratic senators had with the Politburo, with these top aides, in which a lot of people expressed concerns. And ultimately at the end, John Fetterman, who was a Biden supporter, a dead ender,

Says who's with me. And there were maybe five Democratic senators out of a 51 senator caucus that were with Biden. Schumer told that to Biden and Biden did not know that because Donilon had not told him and Reschetti had not told him. And then the second thing was Mignon Moore, who set up the Democratic National Committee, longtime respected Democratic operative.

She had, when she took the job to run the DNC, started this ad hoc committee called the What If Committee. And that was just to prepare for anything. And one of the things the What If Committee did was keep track of the delegates, especially after the debate. And the What If Committee conveyed to Reschetti and Donilon, Biden can still win the nomination at the convention, but it will be tight and it will be ugly.

And I think that those two things, your senators have abandoned you because he thought Biden always thought of himself as a creature of the Senate. And you can win, but it's going to be a very hideous victory. I think that just convinced him. Plus, by the way, he made this decision while he was really sick with COVID, which could not have encouraged him that he was up to this over the next few weeks. Alex, it's not a faint memory. I remember very distinctly

that you would watch Donald Trump on the stump during the campaign and wild things would come out of his mouth. I mean, really wild things, causing people to say, well, wait a minute, when we're comparing cognitive decline, Donald Trump sounds like he's debilitated in some other distinctly troubling way. How do you compare? Again, we understand that neither one of you are...

But how do you compare Donald Trump, who's now going to be 79 very soon and there'll be parades, his cognitive status as opposed to Joe Biden's? I mean, Donald Trump has revealed – and I wrote this back in 2023 – Donald Trump has revealed almost nothing about his personal health. Right.

And he didn't do that in 2016 either. He is now, he is older when he was inaugurated than Joe Biden was when he was inaugurated. And we have no knowledge. And part of me is like, I don't want to just be like the old president's reporter, but it is troubling that the oldest president inaugurated we ever had, we really don't know a lot about his health background.

But the other sort of, I think, implicit thing in your question, which I found while I was covering this 2023 and 2024, was just because Trump is all those things doesn't mean that Biden's cognitive state is not worth of equal scrutiny either. And I think some Democrats were not receptive to that reporting until it was very, very late in the game. And it was undeniable. Yeah.

Look, I'm 56. I am not capable of doing things that I could do when I was 35. And I don't just mean, you know, running up and down a basketball court. Like I'm not as cognitively sharp now. Am I wiser? Sure. Uh, so I get that argument, but at a certain point, uh,

When I have aged past my cell date, CNN will show me the door or whoever I'm working for at the time. But the presidency and politics in general is the only world in which there is no one, no boss to do that. It is the voters. It's up to the voters. And the voters can be snookered in an era of tribalism. They can be told it doesn't matter if so-and-so is a kumquat. All that matters is that he's not the other guy.

And so we are not only in a gerontocracy, we're in a gerontocracy where tribalism makes it easier to do. I mean, it's still amazing to me that after everything that happened with Biden, Kay Granger, who was the chair of the House Appropriations Committee, somehow managed to quietly step down from leadership and then just check herself into a home for dementia and

with while still drawing a congressional salary as if she was showing up to work every day. And Republicans in Congress, some of them knew about it. And they would just say, oh, it's so sad. It's so sad. Yes, it's very sad. But also, why is she drawing a congressional salary? A final question, Alex. Do you have the impression that Joe Biden will go to the end thinking he was dealt with unjustly?

Yes. And I think a lot of the people around him will also feel that way. And I think they'll also go to the end believing that he could have won. I also think part of that, beyond his own sort of chip-on-the-shoulder, Scranton Joe Biden-ness, I think is also to—because to acknowledge the alternative would be too painful. Yeah.

The book is Original Sin. The authors are Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson. Thank you so much. Thank you, David. Thank you. You can read how Joe Biden handed the presidency to Donald Trump at NewYorker.com. It's an excerpt from the book Original Sin. Jake Tapper is the lead Washington anchor for CNN, and Alex Thompson is a national political correspondent for Axios.

I'm David Remnick, and that's the New Yorker Radio Hour for today. I want to send a special welcome to our new listeners in Louisville. I hope you enjoy the show. See you next time.

The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Our theme music was composed and performed by Meryl Garbus of Tune Yards, with additional music by Louis Mitchell and Jared Paul. This episode was produced by Max Balton, Adam Howard, David Krasnow, Jeffrey Masters, Louis Mitchell, Jared Paul, and Ursula Sommer, with guidance from Emily Botin and assistance from Michael May, David Gable, Alex Barish, Victor Guan, and

and Alejandra Deckett. And we had additional help this week from Jake Loomis. The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the Cherena Endowment Fund.

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