Jake Tapper of CNN and Alex Thompson of American news website Axios have released a best-selling book detailing how President Joe Biden’s “Original Sin” was deciding to run for a second term and how his decrepitude was covered up by himself, his family, his staff and his fellow Democrats.
I might also add that it was covered up by the mainstream media, including the authors themselves. The satirical website The Babylon Bee published this piece: “Jake Tapper Uncovers Startling Evidence That Biden’s Decline Was Covered Up By Jake Tapper!”
The book provides much evidence of Biden’s mental decline. It doesn’t provide much insight into the copious use of an auto-pen to sign executive orders or why the people in Biden’s inner circle in the White House and the news media helped facilitate a con on the American people.
House Speaker Mike Johnson has recounted how Biden was shocked to learn of an executive order banning overseas natural gas that he supposedly signed an executive order for. Was the order autosigned without his knowledge? This would be a dangerous undermining of the integrity of the presidency. Where is the accountability? Why did a White House cadre with the help of the mainstream media cover up what could be the biggest scandal in our country’s history?
Were I still in Congress, I would be demanding that the House and Senate leadership immediately start an investigation to equal or exceed Watergate. The FBI should be intensely investigating this before cellphones and computers are wiped clean or destroyed. The American public deserves a full accounting.
I’ve written two previous opinion pieces for the Register about Biden’s condition, warning of his declining mental status.
That debate with Trump made it impossible to sweep Biden’s mental and physical decline under the table. New York Times liberal columnist and friend of the Bidens Maureen Dowd wrote of Biden, “He’s selfish. He’s putting himself ahead of the country. He’s surrounded by opportunistic enablers. He has created a reality distortion field where we’re told not to believe what we’ve plainly seen. His hubris is infuriating.”
Staff knew the Biden White House resembled a communist government
The book outlines in detail how Biden’s decision to run again led to a campaign of denial and gaslighting that resulted in Trump’s re-election. The book frequently quotes Biden saying that the polls showed he could win — except that his own pollsters, when they were finally allowed to, told him the opposite.
Biden kept saying that only he could beat Trump. Nemesis is the Greek goddess of retribution and punishment for excessive pride (hubris). Biden, in ignoring his obvious frailty, exhibited the hubris that Nemesis punishes. This resulted in a tragedy for his own party.
Tapper and Thompson describe a small, tight-knit group of Biden’s inner circle running the White House like a communist “Politburo,” a term actually used by White House junior staff. They were the “ultimate decision makers” as Biden’s cognitive function declined. This group consisted of Mike Donilon (a Biden friend for 40 years and a consultant who was getting paid $4 million for the campaign), senior advisers Steve Ricchetti and Bruce Reed, and former chief of staff Ron Klain.
Adviser to the president Annie Tomasini and the first lady’s top adviser Anthony Bernal were in the “Politburo.” First lady Jill Biden and the president’s son Hunter completed this small cadre that made decisions and controlled information getting to the president. The authors point out that his innermost circle “steered the ship of state to the left of where Biden had been for most of his career.”
The authors don’t ask if this shift to the left was “a conspiracy” but do question if the cover-up of his condition was. They note that Jill Biden was “one of the chief supporters of the president’s decision to run for re-election, and one of the chief deniers of his deterioration.”
There was a code of silence — the authors use the Sicilian word omertà — that prohibited any public talk of the president’s acuity. This code was enforced by the “Politburo.” Typical of this was the White House trashing of Special Counsel Robert Hur’s report, which said that Biden clearly violated the law on the security of records from his vice presidency but that Hur wouldn’t prosecute because of Biden’s memory issues. For example, Biden couldn’t “remember, even within several years, when his son Beau had died.” Hur thought that a jury would have a hard time convicting “a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.” The “Original Sin” authors relate how the White House “slimed Hur as an unprofessional right-wing hack.”
Details on Kamala Harris, news media are frustratingly sparse
The book gives many convincing details of Biden’s mental decline all while his close advisers said he was “mentally sharp.” A disappointment is the little insight the book gives into Vice President Kamala Harris’ interactions with Biden. If she did meet often with Biden, did she not see what his close advisers saw? If she did, didn’t she have an obligation to discuss this with Cabinet members who thought the same, some of whom the authors anonymously quote?
I am not surprised that many of these members of the “Politburo” are not quoted much in the book. If they had recounted episodes of Biden’s mental deficiencies that they tried so hard to manage, the next question would be why were they not more forceful in trying to direct him to not run? Tapper and Thompson think that hatred of Trump motivated many to ignore Biden’s foibles. A mentally diminished Biden was preferable to an “existential threat” Trump.
The authors interviewed four Cabinet members about Biden’s mental acuity. Did any think of either resigning or invoking the 25th Amendment to try to remove Biden? Only one White House staffer resigned because he or she thought Biden not up to the job. These individuals are going to be asked the Howard Baker Watergate question in congressional hearings: “What did you know and when?”
I suspect other questions will be asked: To what extent was Biden the decision-maker? Did the president do any reading or homework on the issues? Was he too fatigued for work? How much did this affect his schedule? Was he confused on calls with foreign leaders or congressmen? Where was the White House press corps that did so little to report on Biden’s health? Did reporters see Biden only at his best?
The mainstream media also deserves blame for a cover-up of Biden’s declining state when it was clear to the public that Biden was struggling. Tapper and Thompson don’t reflect much on this. As a physician, I called for cognitive testing of Biden back in 2021. Why didn’t the press demand an answer from his physician about why cognitive testing was “unnecessary”? To me it looks like he didn’t undergo cognitive testing because he, his family, and his advisers didn’t want a bad answer — better not to know. Despite these omissions, however, one thing “Original Sin” does do well is dispute the assertion that no one besides his close staff and family knew of his condition.
Biden traveled a path we’ve seen before
The authors clearly think there was a cover-up — it’s in the title. This isn’t the first time there has been a cover-up on a president’s health.
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In 1919 President Woodrow Wilson suffered a series of strokes that left him partially paralyzed and often incoherent. His wife Edith, arguably our first woman president, along with a small group of loyal aides, conspired to hide his illness from the public, government officials and even from the president himself. He was bedridden for months while the public was told he was suffering from nervous exhaustion. Edith ran a “petticoat government.”
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President Franklin Roosevelt was dying of cancer, probably melanoma metastatic to his brain, when a doctor examined him in 1944. He recommended that Roosevelt and the top Democrats wisely choose the next vice president, as that person would soon be president. Vice President Henry Wallace of Iowa was therefore deemed too progressive and dropped from the ticket and Harry Truman selected. The public was clueless.
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John F. Kennedy was diagnosed with Addison’s disease requiring animal adrenal extract for the rest of his life. Addison’s causes fatigue, dizziness, muscle weakness, and other symptoms. He took as many as 12 drugs at once including narcotics Demerol and methadone for pain, stimulant Ritalin, and Librium for anxiety. On at least one occasion he took an antipsychotic drug for a severe mood change. The public was in the dark.
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Ronald Reagan left the White House in 1989; he was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s in 1994. Evidence suggests he was actively involved in his presidential duties, according to White House staff and official documents. It’s thought that Reagan maintained his mental competence in office but with occasional age-related forgetfulness. However, some point to his performance in the 1984 presidential debates as evidence of cognitive lapses.
The 25th Amendment that clarified how to remove an incapacitated president was adopted a few years after Kennedy’s assassination. Did Tapper and Thompson ask any of the more than 200 people they interviewed if the 25th Amendment ever crossed anyone’s mind concerning their doubts about Biden’s faculties?
If so, there is no mention about this in the book.
Will Jill Biden be now linked with Edith Wilson? Was Biden’s diagnosis of metastatic prostate cancer covered up like FDR’s, or simply not looked for in order to ignore its implication for his running again? Did Biden receive stimulants to help him appear more energetic at times or testosterone to strengthen him when it could have helped cause the spread of his cancer? We don’t know the answers to these questions, but they are pertinent to his “original sin.”
What’s clear to 80% of Americans is that Biden was not up to the job of president. His poor debate performance finally caused the Democratic leadership, celebrities and donors to insist that he stop his campaign. This is well documented in the book and should be of interest to everyone, not just political junkies. His late withdrawal and almost simultaneous endorsement of Harris squelched any chance of an abbreviated primary that Tapper and Thompson indicate was hoped for by President Barack Obama, Rep. Nancy Pelosi, and others.
When Adam and Eve tasted the forbidden fruit thinking they could be as wise as God, they were kicked out of the Garden of Eden. When Biden made the decision that he was the only one who could beat Trump, he made sure the Democrats were kicked out of the White House.
Dr. Greg Ganske is a retired plastic surgeon and reconstructive surgeon who cared for women with breast cancer, children with cleft lips, farmers with hand injuries and burn patients. He served Iowa in the U.S. Congress from 1995 through 2003.
This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: Americans deserve a full accounting of Joe Biden cover-up | Opinion
