Jake Tapper’s new book on President Joe Biden’s cognitive impairment and decline inadvertently reveals clues that the “Original Sin” was actually an effort to elect an unfit Biden as early as 2020. The book’s thesis is that the then-vice president's cognitive decay was detected and hidden from the public — and supposedly the press — when Biden ran again in 2024. 

The new book, "Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again," is co-authored by Tapper, who is an anchor with CNN, and by Axios reporter Alex Thompson. The central contention of the best-selling book is that Joe Biden’s mental decline occurred most significantly years after Biden’s 2020 election — during the years of 2023 and 2024 —and resulted in a cover-up by the president’s inner circle and his allies which led to President Donald Trump’s own victory in 2024.

The book nevertheless contains numerous details suggesting that Biden’s lack of physical and mental fitness for the job was actually present as early as 2015, was documented and recorded in 2017, and was concealed — at times even by Tapper and his colleagues — as Biden ran to unseat Trump in 2020.

Defining the "Original Sin"

“The decision to run again, the Original Sin of this president [Biden], 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,” the book jacket states, with the book arguing that “the original sin of Election 2024 was Biden’s decision to run for reelection — followed by aggressive efforts to hide his cognitive diminishment.”

Tapper repeated this framing last week during a media appearance, saying that the idea for the title came from a Democratic source after the 2024 election, with Tapper then contradicting himself to suggest he had come up with the title prior to November’s vote.

“It’s called ‘Original Sin’ because right after the election we started talking to Democratic sources who were telling us how horrible things were, not just in front of the cameras and all those clips you showed, but how much worse it was actually behind the scenes,” Tapper said on The Megyn Kelly Show podcast last week. 

“And one of them [the sources] said to me that the original sin was that Biden should not have run for reelection to begin with — which then necessitated the cover-up of how bad things actually were. And that term ‘original sin’ just stuck with me. When Alex and I talked about doing the book, I think the day before Election Day, I already thought ‘Original Sin’ would be the perfect title because it gets at how momentous a decision this was, how momentous a mistake this was — to run for reelection, and then, of course, the cover-up.”

The authors’ note for the book states that “readers who are convinced that Joe Biden was little more than a husk from the very beginning of his presidency, barely capable of stringing two sentences together, will not find support for that view here.”

Yet, sprinkled throughout the book are details demonstrating that Biden may have already experienced a severe decline prior to winning the 2020 election.  In recordings of discussions with Biden's ghostwriter in 2017 working on "Promise me, Dad", a deterioration after the death of his son Beau Biden in 2015, was captured and suggested Biden's mental confusion at the time. 

The legacy media fawned over Biden's book. The New York Times said "Biden splices a heartbreaking story with an election story and a foreign affairs story. And in so doing, he offers something for everyone, no matter which strand draws you in." Vanity Fair gushed that the book was "a brisk, often uplifting read, a consequence of its author’s congenital jollity and irrepressible candor."

The new book states: “This isn’t hindsight. Everyone saw it happening. Throughout 2023 into 2024, Biden’s gait grew stiffer, his voice softer. … Since at least 2022, he has had moments where he cannot recall the names of top aides whom he sees every day. He can sometimes seem incoherent. He is increasingly prone to losing his train of thought, occasionally speaking so softly that he cannot be understood, even if he’s talking directly into a microphone.”

Despite Tapper's caveat about not applying this theory to an earlier version of Joe Biden, certain recorded observations, such as his stiffer gait, softer voice, the failure to remember the names of close aides, the incoherence, the loss of his train of thought bordering on incomprehensibility, were also already happening in 2020, either in public or as inadvertently revealed in the new book.

“What the world saw at Joe Biden’s one and only 2024 debate was not an anomaly. It was not a cold; it was not someone who was under or overprepared. It was not someone who was just a little tired. It was the natural result of an eighty-one-year-old man whose capabilities had been diminishing for years,” the book jacket contended. “Biden, his family, and his team let their self-interest and fear of another Trump term justify an attempt to put an addled, old man in the Oval Office for four more years.”

Later, Special Counsel Robert Hur would come to the same conclusion.

Aides: Biden’s brain “seemed to dissolve” after Beau’s 2015 death

The facts as laid out in the book show that nearly the exact same could be said of the 2020 election — that a seventy-seven-year-old Biden and his inner circle allowed blind ambition, vanity, and fear of Trump cementing his place in history with a second consecutive term to justify their attempt (this time a successful one) to catapult this “at times addled old man” into the Oval Office for his troubled four-year stint.

Tapper told Kelly last week that Biden’s inner circle in 2023 and 2024 “justified to themselves what they had done in terms of misrepresenting how the president was… by saying that there was this existential threat of Donald Trump, and only Joe Biden could beat Donald Trump, and that justified everything in their minds.”

Unmentioned then by Tapper — and pointedly disavowed in the front section of his book — was the fact that Biden and his team did the same thing for the same reasons in 2020.

Kelly probed that narrative, and Tapper told the conservative podcaster that there was “degression or regression, whatever you want to call it, deterioration since 2015” and that, when writing the book, “one of the things that emerged was that there were two Bidens: one was the fine Biden, serviceable, adequate; and the other one was a non-functioning Biden, and that's the one we saw the night of the debate [in 2024].” Tapper said that “that non-functioning Biden…showed up as far back as 2015, after the death of Beau.” Tapper said the non-functioning version of Biden also showed up in 2017 and in 2019 and 2020 as well.

In their 314-page book on Biden’s mental decline and its cover-up, the authors largely dispensed with the events of 2020 within the first 27 pages of their book. Neither Tapper nor Thompson responded on the record to questions submitted to them by Just the News through their publicist.

The new book leaves clues that Joe Biden’s mental deterioration can actually be traced back as far as 2015, when his son Beau Biden — then the attorney general of Delaware — died from brain cancer.

“Those close to him say that the first signs he was deteriorating emerged after the death of his beloved son Beau in 2015. … His grief seemed to break something inside him,” the new book states. “A senior White House official at the time told us that ‘parts of Biden’s brain and mental capacity seemed to dissolve like someone poured hot water on [them].’ … Others close to Biden noticed it too. ‘Beau’s death aged him significantly,’ said a longtime Biden confidante. ‘His shoulders looked smaller. His face looked more gaunt. In his eyes, you could just see it.’”

“Before Beau died, he was one hundred percent sharper,” one unnamed senior Biden White House official reportedly told the book's authors. “Beau’s death wrecked him. Part of him died that never came back after Beau died. Was he the same guy he was in 2009? Of course not.”

Tapper also disclosed to Megyn Kelly last week that “that the non-functioning Biden, according to our reporting, showed up as far back as 2015, after the death of Beau, where one top aide said that that tragedy, the loss of Beau, was like watching somebody pour water on sand. That was the effect on his psyche.”

Ghostwriter tapes reveal Biden’s “failing” cognitive capacity as far back as 2017

Tapes reviewed by Special Counsel Robert Hur detailing conversations between Biden and his ghostwriter Mark Zwonitzer convinced Hur that Biden was already facing mental challenges in 2017, the new book said, with the book purporting to offer insights into why Hur chose not to charge Biden with the mishandling of classified information.

“Hur and his team listened to every one of the Zwonitzer tapes. Repeatedly, Biden referred to classified materials that he seemed to share with his ghostwriter. Beyond how damning they were, the tapes revealed something else important to the case,” the new book says. 

“Biden sounded very old and diminished," the book says. "In 2017, he grasped to remember things, he sometimes had difficulty speaking, and he frequently lost his train of thought. Hur and his team wondered: What would a jury make of this man? Biden was really struggling in 2017. … His cognitive capacity seemed to have been failing him."

Between the way Biden sounded on these tapes and his own interview of Biden, Hur and his team thought it would be tough to get a unanimous jury to conclude that he knew what he was doing was illegal and that he intended to break the law.”

The February 2024 report by Hur set off a firestorm of denial, as Hur declined to bring charges against what a jury would see as a "well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory." 

“Mr. Biden's memory was significantly limited, both during his recorded interviews with the ghostwriter in 2017, and in his interview with our office in 2023,” Hur wrote, adding, “Mr. Biden's memory also appeared to have significant limitations, both at the time he spoke to Zwonitzer in 2017, as evidenced by their recorded conversations, and today, as evidenced by his recorded interview with our office. Mr. Biden's recorded conversations with Zwonitzer from 2017 are often painfully slow, with Mr. Biden struggling to remember events and straining at times to read and relay his own notebook entries.”

In the interview with Hur, Biden misstated the year former President Donald Trump was elected and was confused about which year his own vice presidency ended. Mr. Biden was quickly corrected by his attorneys in the room. Throughout the Hur interview, Mr. Biden appears to be reaching for words he cannot find. Twice, the phrase "fax machine" eludes him, and he confuses Iraq and Afghanistan for Iran. 

Democrats dutifully attacked the Hur report. Vice President Kamala Harris didn’t just call special counsel Robert K. Hur’s report “gratuitous, inaccurate and inappropriate” when it came out in February. She also claimed in public that Hur was “clearly politically motivated” and impugned his integrity.

Covering up Biden's decline in the 2020 campaign

The book includes several new anecdotes confirming what could be seen by everyone with access to a television in 2019 and 2020 — Joe Biden had lost more than just a step and was mentally struggling with the basic requirements of a presidential campaign.

“During an eight-day, grueling bus tour in Iowa in December 2019, Biden gave his aides pause. While doing prep, he struggled to remember the name of longtime aide Mike Donilon. ‘You know, you know,’ he said, groping for it. His aides side-eyed one another — Donilon had worked with Biden since 1981,” the book says, revealing that Biden had forgotten the name of a decades-long close aide and friend.

The authors would later point to an instance in December 2022 where Biden seemed to forget the names of National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan and White House Communications Director Kate Beddingfield as evidence that “the presidency was wearing on him in serious ways.” 

“It wasn’t the only time aides worried during the 2020 presidential primary," the book says.

"Biden’s campaign team saw that he was not always the guy he’d been as VP. His debate performances had never been commanding, but aides now found themselves white-knuckling their way through them. And his team often shied away from tough interviews, even though Biden had spent his career being one of the most press-friendly senators. He struggled to communicate the way he once had. In his office, campaign aides would whisper about how he was not always 100 percent, but there was no way to have that conversation with him or his most senior aides. It was almost taboo,” the new book says. 

“It was as if there were two Bidens. He’d have high-energy rallies and then events where his own staff winced at his meandering and subdued performance. Still, Good Biden was far more present than Old Biden. Some aides became alarmed, though, after that bus tour through Iowa in December. With the caucuses just weeks away, Biden hit the trail hard but had trouble bouncing back.”

Tapper's book added: “At events in Iowa in January 2020, aides privately noted that voters were seeing a diminished man who was not as he had been just two months earlier. Voters were coming out of Biden’s events less likely to support him. Precinct captains disappeared or said no thanks after attending a Biden rally. His team knew he wasn’t the best speaker, but they believed his decision-making remained sharp, and that he was the best candidate to defeat Trump. That’s what mattered most in the end.”

The book is peppered with anecdotes that support the view that his decline was earlier-than-admitted. Reportedly, in 2020 he forgot the words of the Declaration of Independence; struggled to explain his plan for the coronavirus outbreak; and verbally meandered with non sequiturs, such as saying "You know, there’s a, uh, during World War II, uh, you know, where Roosevelt came up with a thing, uh, that, uh, you know, was totally different than a, than the, it’s called, he called it the, you know, the World War II, he had the war, the-the war production board," he said, faltering. Democrats remained publicly mum; Biden at any age was better than Trump.”

The “Covid Cocoon” and Biden’s “basement campaign”

The book included a chapter subtitled “The Covid Cocoon” detailing how the deadly COVID-19 pandemic was a blessing for the Biden campaign, allowing a severely physically and mentally diminished candidate to run what was often derisively referred to as a “basement campaign.”

“It was terrible to admit, but Biden’s own aides would say that while the COVID-19 pandemic was one of the worst things to happen to the world, it was one of the best things to happen to Biden’s presidential hopes,” the book states. 

“They doubted Biden could have otherwise kept up the pace of campaigning through November. As pandemic lockdowns became widespread in March 2020, Biden could avoid that grueling travel and campaign remotely from Wilmington. He could rest. Close aides pushed for events to start in the afternoon, if possible.”

The Trump campaign did its best to argue that Biden’s basement campaign was meant to conceal his mental decline. “Joe Biden says they are keeping him locked in the basement ... are they worried he will wander off and get lost?” the Trump War Room tweeted on April 7, 2020. 

The account later tweeted on May 26, 2020 that “Joe Biden emerged briefly from his basement today and explained that he is hiding from tough questions because ‘it's working pretty well.’”

“#BarelyThereBiden is still hiding in his basement instead of answering tough questions. The media will never admit why he is hiding from the press, but we will: He can't finish a sentence, even with notes,” the account tweeted on June 16, 2020. The campaign added six days later that “Biden is hiding in his basement, refusing to hold a press conference. Why? Because he does not have the strength, stamina, and mental fortitude required to lead this country.”

While these critiques were likely largely or entirely true, they were not enough to overcome the cover-up by Biden’s team and a largely silent media.

Biden used teleprompter for media interviews in 2020

The Trump campaign, and conservative media in 2020 repeatedly contended that, due to Biden's mental infirmities, Biden was using a teleprompter to conduct the most basic campaign activities, including media interviews. The new book confirms that there was at least one instance where that was indeed the case. While teleprompters are commonly used while giving speeches, they are not used in media interviews, which portray spontaneous and honest answers to questions.

“Campaign leadership confronted them to end the practice. It put the campaign press team in an awkward position that Fall, when they were forced to dodge questions about whether Biden had ever used a teleprompter during interviews,” the book alleges.

This teleprompter saga was a repeated line of attack by the Trump campaign. “Here's a photo of the teleprompter Joe Biden will likely be relying on this morning to answer questions about Tara Reade,” the Trump War Room tweeted on May 1, 2020. Reade had made allegations of sexual misconduct involving Biden. The Trump campaign account tweeted six days later that “during a TV interview … today, Joe Biden was asked about Tara Reade's interview with Megyn Kelly. Biden appeared to read a pre-written answer from a teleprompter.”

The Trump War Room argued on June 21, 2020 that “it's been 80 days since Joe Biden held a press conference. He's just not up for it. Biden advisor @SymoneDSanders could not explain why Sleepy Joe refuses to take questions from reporters without the help of paper notes or pre-written answers behind his basement camera.” The Trump War Room again contended that “Joe Biden just got caught using a TELEPROMPTER during a TV interview. It's not the first time!” in a September 2, 2020 tweet.

Team Trump said “Biden fumbled in a livestream conversation in May before instructing his staff offscreen to ‘put that back on,’ ‘keep it down,’ and then ‘go back to the top.’ He’s been caught waving to staff off screen to scroll the teleprompter, asking, ‘let me go to the second thing.’ He got caught reading long-winded answers off a script – his eyes and his cadence gave it away – in an interview with MSNBC." The tweet added that "He even needed a script to invite Kamala Harris to be his vice president." 

Biden's disastrous Town Hall-styled campaign ad

The book also repeats what one Democrat with inside knowledge of the Biden campaign called “gaslighting” by the Biden team related to efforts by the future president’s inner circle to hide the candidate’s decline ahead of the Democratic National Convention in August 2020.

“The Democratic National Convention in Milwaukee was looming, and the team in charge of creating the content was grappling with not only how to do it during a once-in-a-century pandemic, but also how to do it with an aged president whose communication skills were starting to founder,” the book says. 

“A creative team worked up a plan. Biden would sit in a room with several monitors beaming the faces of real Americans in front of him so that they could discuss issues of importance. The videos came back, hours of footage. Some on the team couldn’t believe their eyes.”

One top Democrat reportedly told the authors that the resulting videos were "horrible” and that Biden “couldn’t follow the conversation at all.” A second Democrat reportedly told the authors that “I couldn’t believe it. It was like a different person. It was incredible. This was like watching Grandpa, who shouldn’t be driving.”

The book says that “a special team was brought in and told to edit the videos down to make them airable, if only a few minutes worth” and that they “had to get creative” to make the videos even passable.

The second Democrat reportedly told the authors, after viewing the campaign ad framed as a "town hall," that “I didn’t think he could be president. This was when some top Democrats entered an angry phase. I became disillusioned with the entire apparatus. Because what I was seeing on this video in 2020 — that means people working for him every day see this.” 

He went on to tell Tapper that he assessed four years after the deceptive video editing, that the Biden team had “been gaslighting us.”

Trump: “Barely There Biden”

Trump’s 2020 presidential campaign launched a “Barely There Biden” website as part of the Trump team’s concerted effort to focus attention on Biden’s repeated public verbal gaffes and seeming mental decline ahead of the November election.

The “Barely There Biden” website noted that Biden admitted in December 2019 that "I'll find myself searching for a second" to find words and "attributed that to being tired."

It also pointed out that Stuart Jay Olshansky, a professor of public health at the University of Illinois at Chicago, told The Washington Post in December 2019 that “the only test that hasn't been done is the cognitive functioning test." The website also noted that, according to Bloomberg News, then-Rep. Tim Ryan, D-Ohio, said in September 2019 that "I just think Biden is declining” and that “you see it almost daily." Biden refused to take a cognitive ability test up to the bitter end. 

The Trump War Room account also repeatedly referred to “Joe Biden's brain freezes” which occurred in viral videos. “We’re urging the media to carry Sleep Joe's events in full and give Americans what they deserve: a thorough examination and vetting of a man who wants to be president. Don't let the media play defense for Basement Biden's Blunders anymore,” the account tweeted on June 16, 2020.

“Biden’s handlers must be worried, because they rarely let him speak to the media in unscripted settings,” the Trump campaign said. “He went 89 days without holding a press conference, and relies on notes, pre-written answers, or the teleprompter when he does interviews from the safety of his home… Biden just isn’t playing with a full deck. He is too weak and confused to serve as President.”

Book barely touches on Biden’s “Viral Clips” in 2020

The new book contains a chapter subtitle on “Viral Clips” that is just half a page long and is written almost exclusively from the perspective of the Biden campaign’s digital director.

“Rob Flaherty, who previously served as digital director for the presidential campaign of former Texas Congressman Beto O’Rourke, joined the Biden campaign in December 2019. By then, already aware of Biden’s occasional verbal stumbles, he observed how quickly Republicans clipped any such moment — real or imagined, fair or unfair,” the authors wrote. 

“It’s always tough to push back on misinformation, Flaherty knew. He also understood that for every unfair and bogus clip, there were real ones. The campaign convened a focus group to determine the best way to fight these video," the book disclosed.

"By blasting a targeted audience with images of Biden looking stronger and assertive, the campaign quelled doubts about his age, and refocused the viewer on challenges to the authenticity of the viral clips [used by Trump opponents.] But the bogus videos were tough to counter because the underlying preexisting belief they reaffirmed — that Biden seemed old and prone to misspeaking — was true.”

Tapper repeats Biden’s “stutter” excuse: "I own that"

“Every time he comes on stage or they turn to him, I’m like, ‘[sharp inhale of breath] Joe can you get it out? Let’s get the words out, Joe.’ You kind of feel bad for him,” Lara Trump had said during a January 2020 event.

Tapper brought her onto his show in October 2020 to rake her over the coals for her comments, asking her, “How do you think it makes little kids with stutters feel when they see you make a comment like that?”

“First and foremost, I had no idea that Joe Biden ever suffered from a stutter,” Lara Trump replied. “I think what we see on stage with Joe Biden, Jake, is very clearly a cognitive decline [...] That’s what I’m referring to. It makes me uncomfortable to watch somebody on stage search for questions and try and figure out an answer.” She said “of course I wasn’t” making fun of Biden for having a stutter. Tapper echoed the Democratic talking points of the week, insisting that “I think you were mocking his stutter.” Tapper added “and I think you have absolutely no standing to diagnose somebody’s cognitive decline.”

Lara Trump said that “what I’m saying Jake is you can clearly see that Joe Biden is struggling at many times on stage, and it’s very concerning to many people that this could be the leader of the free world. That is all I’m saying. I genuinely feel sorry for Joe Biden.” “I appreciate it,” Tapper replied, adding sarcastically, “I'm sure it was from a place of concern. We all believe that.”

Tapper claims he apologized last week for his October 2020 criticisms of Lara Trump. Tapper now admits that Lara Trump was right and said that he apologized to her prior to the book tour.

“Knowing what I know now, obviously, I feel tremendous humility about my coverage," he now says. "That Lara Trump interview, for example, et cetera… She saw something that I did not see at the time. 100 percent. And I own that,” Tapper said on her podcast, adding that he called the Trump daughter-in-law and told her that “you were right.”

“The first time I saw the coverage of Lara Trump's comments, which were interpreted as her mocking Joe Biden's stutter, was in January 2020. I read it in the conservative media. I read it in The Daily Mail, and that's where I saw that her comments were being interpreted that way. After those comments were publicized, it got a lot of coverage, and Sully Sullenberger wrote an op-ed in The New York Times criticizing her about this, so that's the context for that — that I was following up on a story that had been out there months before,” Tapper told Kelly in explaining why he had wrongly attacked Lara Trump over her comments. 

Tapper continued to display his excuse or contrition, saying “This is also in the context of October 2020, a very intense time. People on the Biden side are saying crazy things about Trump. People on the Trump side are saying crazy things about Biden, including Don Jr. suggesting that Joe Biden is a pedophile — so that is the larger context.”

The Daily Mail article which Tapper appeared to have cited as the source of where he had learned about the stutter controversy states that it was published at 1:37 p.m. on January 17, 2020 — hours after Tapper had already tweeted about it.

Tapper admitted to Kelly last week that Lara Trump’s 2020 comments about Biden’s cognitive decline “have aged well. My comments have aged poorly. I own that.”

Another clue dropped: Biden’s Cabinet meetings were “terrible” from the start

Suggesting more proof that Biden’s cognitive decline was in full swing prior to the start of his presidency, the book revealed that Biden’s Cabinet meetings — which began to be held in early 2021 — were “terrible” from the start, in part because Biden was not fully mentally present for them.

“The Cabinet meetings were terrible and at times uncomfortable — and they were from the beginning,” an anonymous Biden Cabinet secretary reportedly told the authors. “I don’t recall a great cabinet meeting in terms of his presence. They were so scripted.”

It would come as no surprise to those in the conservative or libertarian-leaning media that Biden’s Cabinet meetings were a disaster from day one, since they had long argued — based on extensive public evidence — that Biden’s cognitive decline had taken a toll on his fitness to be president prior to his election in 2020.

“Nobody flagellates Jake Tapper more than Jake Tapper, okay? Like, I get it. I understand. I am fallible. I make mistakes,” Tapper told Megyn Kelly last week. “It’s not just the Biden coverage. I mean, I go back and I look at like, I wish I had been covering terrorism more before 9/11. I wish I had covered the WMD with more skepticism. I mean, you know, there’s a million things. This is definitely among them. And conservative media absolutely has every right to say, ‘We were hip to this and the legacy media was not.’”

The conservative media has consistently argued that Biden was physically and mentally unfit to be president in 2020 — a contention that cuts against the main thesis of Tapper’s book, that the most relevant decline occurred only in 2023 and 2024. Conservative claims about a much earlier cognitive decline seem vindicated by a number of facts scattered throughout the book’s very own pages.

Tapper's book never touches on the fact that reporters and producers interviewing Biden at the time must have seen the teleprompter in use, but never asks those reporters why they failed to disclose this important fact. 

This, in turn, damaged the press' credibility in a way, say some observers, from which it would never fully recover.