Latest / The Fourcast / Did Biden's inner circle ‘cover up’ his declining cognitive health?

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Did Biden's inner circle ‘cover up’ his declining cognitive health? · The Fourcast

• 0:00
  There was a concerted effort to hide Biden not just from the
• 0:03
  public, not just from reporters, but from his own administration,
• 0:06
  from Cabinet secretaries, from senior aides in the White House,
• 0:09
  from Democratic members of Congress.
• 0:11
  I wonder if that's really the theme.
• 0:13
  The Democrats, and especially the Bidens, were so focused, so
• 0:18
  obsessed by the phenomenon of Trump that this guy could even
• 0:22
  try to get back into the White House that it kind of abrogated
• 0:25
  them of all other responsibilities.
• 0:28
  The focus on what they call the existential threat of Donald
• 0:32
  Trump allowed them to justify almost everything.
• 0:39
  Hello and welcome to the forecast.
• 0:41
  It was one of the most jaw-dropping moments in American
• 0:44
  presidential history. In just a few minutes of
• 0:47
  faltering, incoherent, incomprehensible, President
• 0:51
  Biden destroyed his own presidency and chances of re
• 0:54
  election. It was the first presidential
• 0:56
  debate against his opponent Donald Trump in late June last
• 0:59
  year. To many watching at home, it
• 1:01
  came as a shock. To others as confirmation of
• 1:04
  what they had long suspected. To a small inner circle around
• 1:08
  Biden, the truth had come out, A truth they had been trying to
• 1:13
  hide from the world and perhaps even from themselves. 3 long
• 1:17
  weeks later, Biden bowed out and handed the baton to his Vice
• 1:21
  President, Kamala Harris. She breathed new life into a
• 1:24
  badly wounded campaign, but not enough.
• 1:28
  The question hanging over her campaign, over her defeat to
• 1:31
  Trump, and still over the Democratic Party is why Biden
• 1:35
  was allowed to seek re election in 2023, let alone continue to
• 1:40
  soldier on until it was too late.
• 1:43
  Who allowed this to happen? Who's to blame?
• 1:45
  The Biden family, the staffers of the inner circle?
• 1:48
  The media? The medics?
• 1:49
  All of the above. Well, an explosive new book
• 1:53
  called Original Sin by CNN anchor Jake Tapper and Axios
• 1:57
  correspondent Alex Thompson has given us the inside account.
• 2:01
  What it reveals are depths of deceit and self deceit.
• 2:05
  On the whole, it makes painful reading for Democrats and yes,
• 2:09
  gleeful reading for Republicans. I'm very pleased to have CNNS
• 2:13
  Jake Tapper join us now from DC Jake, it's good to see you
• 2:17
  again. It is an absolutely cracking
• 2:19
  read. And they, as I said, a very
• 2:21
  painful read, perhaps even for some Republicans.
• 2:25
  You extraordinarily also hosted the debate in which Biden
• 2:29
  faulted. So just to kick off this
• 2:32
  interview, talk us through those moments and when you started to
• 2:36
  realize that things were going horribly wrong for President Joe
• 2:39
  Biden. Well, he walked out that night,
• 2:43
  June 27th, in the debate that I Co moderated with Dana Bash, and
• 2:48
  he seemed, you know, very old and we had gotten used to his
• 2:53
  gait at that point from his degenerating spine.
• 2:58
  He had a cold, so his voice was even readier and higher than
• 3:01
  usual. But I didn't realize that things
• 3:04
  were going truly off the rails until maybe his second answer,
• 3:09
  when he really was having difficulty finding the words to
• 3:13
  articulate his thoughts, his arguments to the American people
• 3:18
  about why he should be re elected.
• 3:22
  And shockingly, that got worse and worse to the point that at
• 3:27
  the very end of it, he said we finally beat Medicare, which
• 3:32
  makes no sense. And I think he was maybe trying
• 3:35
  to say we finally beat COVID, but I'm not really sure.
• 3:39
  And then it actually kept getting worse and worse and
• 3:42
  worse. And it I was sitting.
• 3:44
  So Dan and I were there at that desk, and as you know, in a
• 3:48
  situation like that, you can't speak to the control room
• 3:53
  because people will hear you. They can say anything they want
• 3:55
  to you, but you can't say anything back.
• 3:58
  So they had given us an iPad so that we could write notes to
• 4:01
  them and they could read them back in the control room.
• 4:04
  I didn't know who was back there, so I kept it clean.
• 4:06
  But I wrote back. I wrote to them, holy smokes,
• 4:10
  because I just was shocked like everybody else.
• 4:12
  That's quite tame, isn't it? Holy smokes.
• 4:15
  Well, it's not what I was thinking, but again, I didn't
• 4:17
  know. I didn't know who was back.
• 4:19
  There, there. There are lots of extraordinary
• 4:21
  details in your book. And one of them occurred on the
• 4:23
  day of the debate, which is that there was, you know, both
• 4:26
  candidates were allowed to do a walkthrough, you know, looking
• 4:29
  at the arena while they were joust against each other later
• 4:31
  in the day. And, you know, they often
• 4:33
  candidates often turn up late. Maybe it's the cool thing to do.
• 4:36
  And, and I think Trump turned up at, you know, 6:00 or so.
• 4:39
  The debate was going to be recorded at 9:00.
• 4:42
  Astonishingly, Biden said, I don't need to turn up.
• 4:45
  And then he finally showed up, You know, I think at 8:20, I
• 4:47
  mean, just before the broadcast. I mean, that attitude of I don't
• 4:51
  really need to do this the way that other people are doing it
• 4:54
  and then to falter in this way. What does that tell you?
• 4:57
  What did that tell you? It tells me that there was a a
• 5:00
  degree of hubris and delusion that the president was
• 5:06
  experiencing that is remarkable even to this moment.
• 5:12
  You're quite right in how you describe it.
• 5:14
  And as you know from doing these things, walkthroughs are very
• 5:17
  normal. Candidates just like to see
• 5:20
  which is their camera, what happens, what happens when the
• 5:23
  other guy is speaking, etcetera, etcetera.
• 5:25
  And Biden by 8, by 820, he still hadn't been there.
• 5:29
  Actually, he didn't show up till 8:30 and it was truly shocking.
• 5:36
  And the Biden campaign explained it as like, he doesn't, you
• 5:39
  know, he's done a lot of these debates.
• 5:40
  He's 82. He's been in public life since
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  1970. He's done a lot of these
• 5:44
  debates. He doesn't need to do it, which
• 5:46
  is just just, it's, it's stunning.
• 5:50
  And then when you consider obviously what happened after
• 5:52
  that, even even more stunning because it, it gets into the
• 5:57
  arrogance of his decision. He thought ultimately, and This
• 6:00
  is why they wanted to do an early debate in June as opposed
• 6:03
  to 1 after Labor Day in September or October.
• 6:06
  He thought all he would need to do was stand on stage next to
• 6:09
  President Trump and whatever concerns the American people had
• 6:13
  about his age, his acuity, inflation, the border, that
• 6:16
  would all melt away because they would see how how crazy Donald
• 6:19
  Trump was. And that's obviously not what
• 6:21
  happened. I wonder if that's really the
• 6:23
  theme. The Democrats and especially the
• 6:26
  Bidens were so focused, so obsessed, so deranged, if you
• 6:31
  like, by the phenomenon of Trump that this guy, you know, who
• 6:34
  tried to overturn democracy, who by that stage of the debate had
• 6:38
  been convicted of a crime, you know, could even try to get back
• 6:41
  into the White House. That it kind of abrogated them
• 6:44
  of all other responsibilities. He was bad enough.
• 6:48
  And that Vadnais of Trump was was in was big enough to get
• 6:51
  them back into the White House. The focus on what they call the
• 6:57
  existential threat of Donald Trump allowed them to justify.
• 7:03
  And by them, I mean the Biden family and his top aides and the
• 7:08
  Democratic Party to a large extent allowed them to justify
• 7:12
  almost everything. It allowed them to justify
• 7:15
  putting somebody as nominee who his own cabinet secretaries told
• 7:21
  us in this book that he could not be relied upon for that
• 7:25
  proverbial 2:00 AM phone call for a national security crisis.
• 7:29
  He he wouldn't be up to it, some cabinet secretaries told us.
• 7:32
  It allowed them to justify not having a competitive primary.
• 7:37
  It allowed them to justify not doing interviews, not having
• 7:40
  press conferences. If if you think that you are the
• 7:45
  only answer to a question that poses an existential threat to
• 7:49
  the free world, you really can get away with anything in your
• 7:52
  own mind. Your book is called Original
• 7:55
  Sin. What is the original sin?
• 7:58
  The original sin, as these more than 200 Democratic insiders
• 8:04
  explained to us, in their view most of them was the decision to
• 8:07
  run for re election. When Joe Biden ran for
• 8:10
  president, there was an implicit promise that he would run as a
• 8:13
  one term. 4 aides did a strategic leak to Politico in
• 8:18
  December 2019 saying he would only serve one term when he was
• 8:23
  getting a big, you know, a three person endorsement from Cory
• 8:26
  Booker, Kamala Harris and Gretchen Whitmer in I think
• 8:29
  March of 2020, he, he talked about being a bridge to the next
• 8:34
  generation and yet he decided, no, you know what, I'm I'm going
• 8:39
  to go for two. And that decision, even when
• 8:44
  polls were already showing that vast numbers of Americans, 10s
• 8:50
  of millions of Americans, had concerns about his age and
• 8:52
  acuity, was the original sin. And from that flowed everything
• 8:56
  else, every other bad decision. And Jake, do you think that when
• 9:00
  they said, because I remember that that implication of serving
• 9:03
  for one term as a bridge, I remember that really well.
• 9:06
  I don't remember him actually enunciating it, spelling it out,
• 9:10
  but that was the implication. And no one ever abused us of
• 9:13
  this being wrong at the time, right?
• 9:15
  But do you think that they thought they believed that or
• 9:18
  were they lying at the time when they said when they implied that
• 9:21
  it would be a one term president?
• 9:24
  I think that it is the decision of politicians in an election,
• 9:28
  which is like the decision of a of a car salesman in a showroom.
• 9:32
  What do I have to do to get you to leave the showroom in this
• 9:37
  car today? And I think they just figured
• 9:39
  that they had to make the implied promise it would OK,
• 9:42
  he's old, but it's just going to be one term.
• 9:47
  But what they didn't count on is, and our reporting suggests
• 9:51
  that as far back as 2015, after the death of his son Beau, there
• 9:55
  was a psychic toll being taken on him.
• 9:58
  In 2017, 2018, he was losing his train of thought.
• 10:02
  He was forgetting things. 2019-2020 during that campaign
• 10:06
  aids would describe for us a good functioning Biden and also
• 10:11
  a non functioning Biden. And then throughout his
• 10:14
  presidency, that non functioning Biden would rear his head
• 10:18
  increasingly. And by non functioning, I mean
• 10:21
  forgetting the names of close friends, not able to identify
• 10:24
  George Clooney who he'd known for decades, not being able to
• 10:28
  come up with the names of top aides, losing his train of
• 10:31
  thought in an alarming way. We all lose our train of
• 10:34
  thought. We all forget names.
• 10:35
  I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about to a degree
• 10:37
  that it was unsettling and suggested something cognitively
• 10:40
  was going on and this was going on behind the scenes, was going
• 10:43
  on in front of cameras to a lesser degree, but behind the
• 10:47
  scenes with increasing frequency.
• 10:49
  I have to say, not recognizing George Clooney did come as a bit
• 10:52
  of a shock. I mean, I think there's probably
• 10:53
  no one on the planet who doesn't recognize George Clooney.
• 10:56
  But but to be serious for a second, you said that from that
• 10:59
  original sin flowed all these bad decisions.
• 11:02
  But these bad decisions also ended up in deceit, in actual
• 11:08
  planned deceit. Tell us about that.
• 11:11
  Well, I mean, some of the examples of the intentionally
• 11:14
  planned to see are told to us by members of the Biden
• 11:18
  administration. One person, high-ranking
• 11:21
  official in the White House leaving because they didn't want
• 11:23
  to be part of it. And because this person told us
• 11:26
  there was a concerted effort to hide Biden not just from the
• 11:30
  public, not just from reporters, but from his own administration,
• 11:33
  from Cabinet secretaries, from senior aides in the White House,
• 11:36
  from Democratic members of Congress.
• 11:38
  There's a, there's a, a Cabinet meeting in October 2023.
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  That's the last one for almost a year.
• 11:45
  Cabinet secretaries told us that he they, that they were kept at
• 11:48
  Bay When one of them had a meeting with him somewhere in
• 11:52
  between that Cabinet meeting and the June debate, that person was
• 11:56
  shocked. He seemed disoriented.
• 11:58
  He seemed out of it. They couldn't believe what was
• 12:00
  going on. When those people who felt
• 12:03
  somehow excluded from the presence of the president that
• 12:08
  something was wrong in the system, when they raised the
• 12:10
  alarm bells, what happened to them?
• 12:13
  Well, they were cut off. This was, you know, Joe Biden is
• 12:19
  not alone among politicians in being spiteful and demanding
• 12:25
  loyalty. He's certainly not the first one
• 12:26
  like that, and he won't be the last.
• 12:28
  But when people raised issues like that, they were shown the
• 12:31
  door. There's a pollster named John
• 12:33
  Anzalone who had been with Biden as far back as when Biden ran
• 12:36
  for president the first time in the 1980s.
• 12:40
  And Anzalone was kind of shunted to the side because he was
• 12:47
  raising questions about the administration's policies on
• 12:51
  inflation and on the border. And then when Biden, before
• 12:55
  Biden announced that he was running for re election, he had
• 12:57
  a talk with a couple members of the White House team, including
• 13:00
  Anita Dunn, who was a senior advisor.
• 13:03
  And he was he was expecting that he would be asked to do some
• 13:06
  polling on whether or not Biden should run for re election.
• 13:10
  Just, you know, we are a data-driven political world
• 13:14
  these days. I don't have to tell people in
• 13:16
  the government of Keir Starmer how data-driven politicians can
• 13:20
  be. And Anzalone was shocked because
• 13:24
  Anita done said, we're not, we're not polling for this.
• 13:25
  The decisions already been made. And he he couldn't believe it.
• 13:29
  And he was further and further excommunicated from the group.
• 13:32
  Congressman Dean Phillips, he runs against Biden.
• 13:35
  He says just to get this out in the open that there is a real
• 13:38
  problem behind the scenes. He's basically defenestrated and
• 13:41
  excommunicated from the Democratic Party.
• 13:43
  Person after person that with they raise their head.
• 13:47
  Then Anvil falls down on the special counsel Robert.
• 13:50
  Her is the first person from outside the Democratic Party to
• 13:54
  have a long sit down with Joe Biden.
• 13:57
  He's investigating him for his handling classified information
• 14:00
  and he can't believe this rambling old man.
• 14:04
  And he says in his report in February 2024 that he's not
• 14:07
  going to prosecute him because a jury would find President Biden
• 14:11
  a well meaning elderly man with a poor memory.
• 14:13
  He gets shellacked, as does the attorney general.
• 14:17
  The The administration goes to war against its own Justice
• 14:19
  Department. So what does some of the devices
• 14:22
  that the administration or the inner circle around Biden came
• 14:24
  up with to try and limit the kind of visible damage of his
• 14:28
  frailty? Well, some of them started out
• 14:33
  innocent enough. Any politician wants to be
• 14:36
  portrayed as in in as positive a light as possible.
• 14:41
  And certainly running for president during COVID, as much
• 14:43
  of as COVID was a disaster and tragedy for the world, was a
• 14:47
  benefit to Joe Biden because he he didn't have to travel all
• 14:50
  that much. He could do a lot of zooms.
• 14:53
  But by 2021-2022, the teleprompters that he was
• 14:58
  relying on, the note cards he was relying on became something
• 15:02
  of a crutch and and people would point it out, Conservatives
• 15:06
  especially would point it out how much he was relying on these
• 15:10
  things and how odd it was. But it was even worse behind the
• 15:15
  scenes because he would go to a fundraiser of 40 or 50 people,
• 15:18
  and the campaign would demand that he'd be allowed to have a
• 15:22
  teleprompter just to make impromptu remarks for 10
• 15:24
  minutes. People thought it was weird.
• 15:26
  People thought it was disconcerting.
• 15:27
  Bill. Bill Daley, former Obama White
• 15:30
  House chief of staff, went to one of these events and couldn't
• 15:32
  believe it. He was trying to get a
• 15:34
  Democratic governor to run against Biden because he didn't
• 15:37
  think Biden was going to make it.
• 15:38
  And he had loved Joe Biden. He was Biden's political
• 15:41
  director during his 1988 presidential campaign.
• 15:44
  What really amazes me is that you know when when some people
• 15:47
  were clearly raising the alarm bells.
• 15:49
  I mean, George Clooney after not being recognized by the
• 15:52
  president, who we've known for years, wrote a very searing
• 15:55
  op-ed piece in one of the papers.
• 15:57
  Ari Emmanuel, the the famous Hollywood agent, you know, was
• 16:01
  screaming at the back of a Democrat fundraiser meeting, I
• 16:03
  think, or some, some party meeting, you know, saying the
• 16:06
  president's not up to it, he should bow down, etcetera.
• 16:10
  You know, when when there was clearly clamour for all this,
• 16:13
  you know, why didn't they go to the next level?
• 16:15
  You know, why did people in Congress, in the media not stand
• 16:19
  up and say this can't go on, especially when the opponent is
• 16:23
  someone who was styled by the White House as being a danger to
• 16:26
  democracy? Well, I mean, the question kind
• 16:30
  of answers itself because why were a bunch of politicians not
• 16:33
  behaving bravely and independently?
• 16:35
  I mean, that's the answer to the question.
• 16:37
  They're because they're politicians.
• 16:38
  They're in fear of voters. And Democratic voters to this
• 16:42
  day are angry about any discussion of this.
• 16:45
  How come you're not covering Donald Trump?
• 16:47
  I mean, that is what the Democratic Party is going to
• 16:49
  have to reckon with as they also have to deal with the fact that
• 16:53
  this is a calamity and a tragedy that most people with
• 16:57
  functioning eyes and ears now recognize was a major cover up
• 17:02
  and a major problem for the country.
• 17:04
  And that's I don't, I don't envy them having to negotiate those
• 17:07
  waters. As a journalist, I don't have to
• 17:08
  worry about pleasing a base. But I hear from the angry
• 17:11
  Democrats. They have to appeal to them.
• 17:14
  We talk a lot about the difference around Donald Trump,
• 17:17
  you know, when he's got his cabinet meeting and people have
• 17:18
  to put up their hand and tell him how wonderful he is.
• 17:21
  You know, did did the Democrats around Biden fear Biden or Jill
• 17:25
  Biden as much as the Republicans around Trump fear Trump?
• 17:30
  I think it was there. Obviously there was a degree of
• 17:33
  that. There was also a degree of
• 17:35
  loyalty. There was also a degree of if I
• 17:39
  do anything, I will be helping Donald Trump.
• 17:43
  Joe Biden's running for re election.
• 17:45
  He is the president. There is no viable alternative
• 17:48
  candidate. The Biden people would would use
• 17:50
  Kamala Harris, the vice president who at the time was
• 17:53
  even less popular than Biden, as an excuse.
• 17:55
  How can you get rid of Joe Biden?
• 17:57
  Look at Kamala, you want Kamala to be the nominee.
• 18:00
  So I think there there were a lot of factors.
• 18:03
  We after all contain multitudes. But I do think the existential
• 18:07
  fear of Donald Trump and being seen as in any way helping
• 18:11
  Donald Trump really guided the decisions of a lot of these
• 18:16
  people. But also keep in mind a lot of
• 18:17
  them have their, you know, very few of the people who work for
• 18:20
  Joe Biden were near retirement age themselves.
• 18:23
  Most of them were young enough to either want to run for
• 18:26
  president themselves or want to keep working and making some
• 18:31
  money for their families, and this is not a popular thing to
• 18:36
  do. There's a whole chapter in your
• 18:38
  book called Jill Biden, then the first lady, of course, How
• 18:42
  guilty was she and how guilty were the people around both her
• 18:46
  and Joe Biden? First and foremost, I think you
• 18:50
  have to lay this at the feet of the president.
• 18:53
  Joe Biden was the one who made the decision to run for re
• 18:58
  election. Joe Biden is the one who, at
• 19:01
  least to some degree, was aware of his deterioration.
• 19:04
  I'm 56, I know what I'm capable of doing now and what I'm not
• 19:08
  capable of doing now as opposed to 1015 years ago.
• 19:11
  I know when I forget a word. I know when I forget a name.
• 19:13
  I'm well aware of this and I I think Joe Biden has to be
• 19:20
  acknowledged was the one driving this train.
• 19:23
  That said, doctor Jill Biden, the the first lady, former first
• 19:26
  lady was part of the deal. She was part of the team that
• 19:32
  tried to make sure that by the her husband was portrayed in as
• 19:36
  positive and misleading away as possible.
• 19:39
  One of her top aides, Anthony Bernal, was perhaps the most
• 19:43
  powerful first lady chief of staff in the history of the
• 19:47
  United States. Anthony Bernal was basically a
• 19:49
  Co chief of staff to the White House when it came to how Joe
• 19:52
  Biden was portrayed. So I think those two obviously
• 19:57
  bear most of the responsibility. Hunter Biden, the president's
• 20:01
  son who has had struggles with addiction and the law.
• 20:05
  He was basically a functioning family, chief of staff making.
• 20:11
  The president or encouraging the president, encouraging his
• 20:13
  father to fight back, to go after his critics.
• 20:19
  He was very responsible as well. And then there's a group that
• 20:22
  people in the White House, people in the administration
• 20:25
  would call the politburo. These are the very top Biden
• 20:29
  aides, most loyal Biden aides, Mike Donnellan and Steve
• 20:34
  Roschetti. There were others who were part
• 20:37
  of this group of top aides that were part of the cover up, but
• 20:40
  nobody outside the family more so than Donnellan and Roschetti.
• 20:46
  Jake Sullivan, the former national security adviser, gave
• 20:48
  an interview to the Financial Times earlier this year, and he
• 20:52
  said that when he saw the debate performance that you and Dana
• 20:55
  Bash chaired in June of last year, he was deeply shocked.
• 20:59
  It came as a complete surprise to him out of the blue that the
• 21:02
  president could be this fortunate.
• 21:03
  That begs belief, doesn't it, from someone who is always with
• 21:07
  the president in the Oval Office for all these years on matters
• 21:11
  of national security? I think it is fair to say that
• 21:17
  Biden was most animated and most engaged on issues of national
• 21:22
  security and less so on issues like the immigration or
• 21:26
  inflation. That said, I personally find it
• 21:30
  hard to believe that it was a complete and utter shock to Jake
• 21:33
  Sullivan. Now that that might be, and you
• 21:36
  alluded to this in your introduction, that might be
• 21:39
  because of a degree of self delusion and self deception.
• 21:44
  I don't think Jake Sullivan is one of the conspirators trying
• 21:49
  to portray the president in in a way that was misleading, but I
• 21:54
  also think it's quite possible that he was willing to discount
• 22:00
  or immediately ignore what he was saying.
• 22:02
  He claims, for example, there's a scene in the book where
• 22:05
  President Biden in December 2022 is not able to come up with Jake
• 22:10
  Sullivan's name, even though he's his national security
• 22:12
  advisor. He calls him Steve, and then
• 22:15
  he's not able to come up with the name of his communications
• 22:17
  director, Kate Beningfield. He calls her press.
• 22:20
  Jake Sullivan claims he doesn't remember that.
• 22:23
  Does that mean he really doesn't remember it?
• 22:25
  I can't speak for him. I think the human capacity for
• 22:28
  self denial is quite strong. The Republicans and people
• 22:31
  around Trump have for long referred to the Biden family as
• 22:35
  the Biden crime family. Now that of course was deemed to
• 22:39
  be, you know, far fetched, typical Trump talk, etcetera.
• 22:42
  But when it comes to deceit and cover up, we can argue whether
• 22:46
  that's a crime or not. But when it comes to deceit and
• 22:49
  cover up of the president's cognitive abilities, they sort
• 22:53
  of have a point, don't they? I don't know how much of the
• 22:58
  cover up can be called criminal. I'm not an expert on the law.
• 23:02
  I'm we, we do not allege a criminal cover up.
• 23:06
  It was, it's certainly a scandal and it's certainly appalling.
• 23:11
  When the Republicans talk about a Biden crime family, they they
• 23:14
  mainly talk about ways that Biden's brother and his son
• 23:19
  Hunter cashed in on the on the Biden family name.
• 23:22
  And there's certainly a lot of smoke there.
• 23:25
  I don't know if there's any fire.
• 23:26
  There's certainly a lot of sleaze there.
• 23:28
  I don't know if there's any criminality, but but this might
• 23:31
  be. And if this is what you're
• 23:34
  driving at, I agree with you. Truly the most appalling thing
• 23:38
  that the Biden family ever did. And of course, when you talk
• 23:41
  about self enrichment, you know, the the Trump family can't
• 23:44
  really start that conversation without some red faces.
• 23:47
  OK, but but just to get back to the, you know, to the cover up.
• 23:50
  I mean, one of the things that I found really shocking from your
• 23:54
  book is the detail that, for instance, as of November 2021,
• 23:59
  the annual medical check UPS or medical reports into the health
• 24:02
  of the president did not include a cognitive section.
• 24:07
  He never took a cognitive test, even though they're pretty
• 24:10
  standard in the United States for anybody.
• 24:12
  After they turned 65 and President Trump took one,
• 24:15
  famously, he would recite man, woman, television.
• 24:19
  Whatever it was, it became something of a comic staple, his
• 24:23
  reciting that list of of nouns. I can't get into the head of Doc
• 24:29
  O'Connor, the White House physician who was very, very
• 24:32
  close to the Biden's. And in fact, some people think
• 24:35
  too, too close to the Biden's. But I will say that Dr. Jonathan
• 24:40
  Reiner, who is an advisor to the White House physician's office,
• 24:45
  he has said that the only reason you would not give a test like
• 24:50
  that is because you don't want to know the answer.
• 24:53
  Now, I know, having spoken to her, that Nancy Pelosi was one
• 24:56
  of the people who finally delivered the message to Joe
• 24:59
  Biden that he had to bow out. But what was the role of people
• 25:03
  like her over time in the run up, you know, before the
• 25:08
  disastrous debate, what was the role of Barack and Michelle
• 25:10
  Obama? You know, the Obamas are close
• 25:13
  to the Biden's apparently. What was their role in telling
• 25:15
  him or trying to tell him that the game was up?
• 25:19
  Well it's interesting because they all had their different
• 25:21
  roles and they did not work in the cohesive unit that some
• 25:25
  people I think suspect it might even be great if politicians
• 25:30
  work that collaboratively. Collaboratively.
• 25:33
  Pelosi was early on calling for Biden to run for re election.
• 25:36
  And keep in mind that Nancy Pelosi is 2 years older than Joe
• 25:40
  Biden, so her take on his cognitive abilities may have
• 25:45
  been shaped by that perspective. And beyond that, she stepped
• 25:49
  down as Democratic leader of the House of Representatives after
• 25:53
  the midterms of 2022, so she didn't really interact with him
• 25:56
  much in 2023 or 2024. She, after the debate, was
• 26:01
  something of a vocal passive aggressive nudger of the
• 26:09
  president to leave. Although she never directly said
• 26:11
  it, she would say things publicly and then also, when she
• 26:16
  had this secret private meeting with him, tell him he needed to
• 26:20
  look at the polling. He needed to look at the what
• 26:23
  the American people were saying in the polling.
• 26:25
  And this isn't one of the most fascinating parts of this whole
• 26:28
  debacle. There were three pollsters that
• 26:30
  were really, really good, Jeffrey Pollock, Molly Murphy
• 26:34
  and Jeff Garin, names that don't mean anything to anybody outside
• 26:38
  politics in the United States, but they were really good
• 26:41
  pollsters. They did not work on the
• 26:42
  campaign. They were hired by the campaign
• 26:44
  and they never talked to Joe Biden.
• 26:46
  They never directly presented their their findings to Joe
• 26:50
  Biden. They always gave it to Donnellan
• 26:53
  and Roschetti. And then Donnellan especially
• 26:56
  would interpret and massage the polling.
• 27:00
  And so Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, the Democratic leader, Hakeem
• 27:03
  Jeffries, the House Democratic leader who replaced Pelosi,
• 27:07
  Obama, their campaign from the debate to Biden dropping out on
• 27:13
  July 21st, 2024. Their campaign was, have you
• 27:18
  looked at the data? Have you looked at the polling?
• 27:20
  Because the polling, as Chuck Schumer told Biden in a very
• 27:24
  intense conversation, the polling suggested he only had a
• 27:27
  5% chance of winning. The big thought that occurs to
• 27:31
  me in all this is that there's an enormous amount of deference
• 27:36
  in your Republic about the the office of the president who kind
• 27:41
  of sometimes behaves like an elected monarch.
• 27:43
  And you could argue that the current one wants to be, you
• 27:45
  know, treated a bit like a monarch.
• 27:46
  But the deference towards the president is that what was going
• 27:50
  on here with Biden? I'm glad you brought it up
• 27:53
  because while I do prefer my country to yours, and I do
• 27:59
  prefer many of our institutions, especially the 1st Amendment,
• 28:04
  which I bet you envy to to to yours.
• 28:08
  I do think that your system, because of Question Time,
• 28:14
  because of the parliamentary process, because of the fact
• 28:17
  that if you are the leader of the party and you're not
• 28:20
  measuring up, you know who's coming for you, right behind
• 28:23
  you. I think this could not have
• 28:26
  happened in Great Britain. I I just don't think that your
• 28:30
  system would allow it. And I think our system is flawed
• 28:34
  in such a way that our political parties are very weak and and
• 28:38
  our presidents are very powerful and our Congress are, are, are,
• 28:43
  you know, our legislature is emasculated to the degree that
• 28:51
  that that is, that is shocking. So I don't think, I don't think
• 28:55
  it would have happened in the UKI.
• 28:56
  Just covered the conclave in Rome and they they prevent
• 28:59
  Cardinals who are older from 79 from voting for the next Pope.
• 29:03
  You know, there is no such age limit in America.
• 29:06
  And you mentioned in your book endless examples of legislators
• 29:09
  and indeed, presidents, you know, who are unbelievably old
• 29:13
  and passed it, frankly, whose ailments get covered up.
• 29:16
  You know, in Reagan's case, it was Alzheimer's.
• 29:19
  You know, in FD Rs case, it was the polio at first in in Woodrow
• 29:22
  Wilson's case, it was something else.
• 29:24
  This is a theme of which Biden is just the latest iteration.
• 29:29
  Latest and perhaps the worst since Woodrow Wilson had a
• 29:32
  stroke while in office. President Wilson and his wife,
• 29:35
  Edith Wilson basically just propped him up and served as
• 29:37
  president for some time. It is a problem in this country.
• 29:41
  And I too am very keen on that data point from the conclave.
• 29:48
  And I was just remarking, when did the Vatican become more
• 29:52
  forward leaning and progressive than the United States
• 29:55
  government? And that rule has been around
• 29:58
  since I think 1970. But they have something there.
• 30:02
  Look, my dad is 85, my mom is 82.
• 30:05
  Love him dearly, love to be with them, but we just have to
• 30:09
  acknowledge that while not everybody at age 80 is unable to
• 30:15
  be president, most of us are. Jake Tapper, thank you very much
• 30:20
  indeed. The book is called Original Sin.
• 30:23
  We just spoke to one of the authors and that's it for the
• 30:26
  forecast. I hope you enjoyed it.
• 30:27
  See you next time.