Next Up with Mark Halperin
Biden's Cognitive Decline Cover-Up "Original Sin" Involves the Author, and Trump's Unusual China Strategy
Tue, 13 May 2025
Mark Halperin exposes the truth about President Biden's cognitive decline cover-up, and why the real "Original Sin" implicates Jake Tapper and the press at large. Then Rich Lowry joins to discuss Trump's unusual China strategy and the media's attempt to avoid responsibility for Biden. And Sen. Michael Bennet on Dem failures and how the party can regain momentum.
Chapter 1: What is the controversy surrounding Joe Biden's cognitive decline?
And today we're going to look at a case study, an example of an area that's, I think, indicative of where we are. It's a new book, Original Sin, and it's a book by two journalists. One is a guy named Alex Thompson, who was one of the most energetic and aggressive reporters in covering Joe Biden's mental decline. And the other author is a guy named Jake Capper, who's an anchor at CNN.
Chapter 2: Who are the authors of the book 'Original Sin' and what is their role?
And what I want to do today is to explain to you why this book represents a crisis and maybe, maybe an opportunity for the American media to regain credibility with the public. This goes back to the question of Joe Biden's mental decline. And I continue to laugh when I hear people say we didn't know and it was we only had a hint of it or we saw it in the debate, but not before.
That's something reporters sometimes say. And a lot of Democratic officials say it's a it's a farce. So I've covered Joe Biden and know Joe Biden for pretty much my whole career. And in 2017, just after he left the White House, he had a book out and he was on a book tour. And I saw him do a book event, very friendly interviewer, big crowd. And he was a train wreck. He was glassy-eyed.
2017.
Now, I'm not a doctor. I know Joe Biden decently well, but there are plenty of people who know him better. I couldn't believe he ran for president in 2020. And so to me, his mental decline was apparent in 2017. And now what you have is a bunch of people who say it was only apparent to them on the day of the debate in the 2024 campaign.
The reason this new book is causing such an uproar, even though it's not out until next week, is because the book purports to explain the cover-up inside the White House, the cover-up inside the White House of Joe Biden's mental decline. I don't understand how there could be a cover-up of something that was on television on a nearly nightly basis.
In either Joe Biden's performance, which was uneven, there were times when he was fine. We've all seen people with mental decline. We know that sometimes things are better than others. But it was on TV every night. And in 2020 and 2024, it was also on TV when Joe Biden wasn't there. He was not visible.
And the ability to have credibility to cover presidents was undermined significantly from 2024 back to 2019, at least. Today, Donald Trump, there's so many things that need scrutiny. His acceptance of this airplane. his family's business dealings in the Middle East with the very monarchies that he's meeting with on this trip. I could go on.
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Chapter 3: How did the media allegedly cover up or fail to report Biden's mental decline?
For those in this country who say the press is not doing a tough enough job scrutinizing Donald Trump, I agree. The press should always be super tough. But what's happened is because of the way they covered Joe Biden, the press has lost credibility with the public. So why is this significant today? This news of this new book has come leaking out to news organizations reporting on it.
One is The Guardian, which got a copy of the book, and they report that a lot of Democrats are very unhappy that Joe Biden kept running and he should have gotten out of the race and that and that there was efforts to cover up for him. Another report from Alex Thompson, who now writes for Axios.
He wrote for Politico previously, says that there was discussion within the Biden camp of perhaps Biden needing a wheelchair. But he couldn't use a wheelchair during the campaign and that if he won reelection, there was talk he would use it then. That's interesting. Those are interesting things. I don't doubt I don't doubt either of those things are true.
But it's this question of accountability, this question of did reporters do everything they could to hold Joe Biden and his team accountable for his obvious decline? Few interviews, few press conferences, few public appearances. doing things in public, not every day, but often, that showed obvious mental decline.
This wasn't something for insiders to know or whisper about, the terms of the cover-up were, but the fact of Biden's decline was not a secret. And the public saw it. So these two guys have now written this book, okay?
And their publisher, aware of the criticism that's already come their way, saying, how can you write a book after the election about a cover-up that we all saw with our own eyes during the campaign? made a video, a publisher making a video, not that common.
Here's a bit of the video they made trying to establish the bona fides of the two authors, Mr. Thompson and Mr. Tapper, that they were on this from the beginning.
Will you pledge that if you're elected, you will be transparent about your health, all facets of your health, with urgency so that we know? One poll shows that almost two-thirds of Democratic voters want a new nominee in 2024, and the top reason they gave was your age. You know, that's not a good number for President Biden.
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Chapter 4: What evidence is presented about Biden’s mental health from interviews and public appearances?
Two-thirds of the American people say he's not sharp enough to be president. Yeah, I mean, how can you use the bully pulpit when you don't have a bully you can put in the pulpit? Okay, so you're part of the 23% of adults who are not concerned about the president's ability to be president because of his age and stamina.
I mean, I know incumbents in general are not popular right now, but do you ever think, maybe we should have a new candidate?
There's a little bit of denialism with the president.
This is a particularly bad week for this report and its comments about President Biden's faculties and his memory to come out because twice this week, he has acted as if he, in 2021, spoke to European leaders who have been dead for years. Part of the job of president is having the confidence of the American people in your faculties.
Chapter 5: How did Jake Tapper approach questioning Biden’s cognitive health during his interviews?
The White House's response every single time it has come up for three and a half years has been to deflect, to gaslight, to not tell the truth, not just to reporters, not just to other Democrats, but even at times to themselves.
So you saw and if you're listening on the podcast, you heard there are two voices. One is is Alex Thompson, who was an aggressive reporter, as aggressive as almost any reporter. in trying to figure out what was going on with Joe Biden's mental acuity and how his team was handling it. And then you heard the voice of Jake Tapper.
And the publisher did as good a job as it could to find clips of Jake Tapper seeming to be at least interested in the topic of Joe Biden's mental decline. So we thought, well, what are the counters to that? Because I know that no one at CNN was particularly aggressive about this, and I had no indication from my memory that Jake Tapper was aggressive.
So we went and looked at the full appearances, the full segments, in which Jake Tapper was, in which the clips were pulled for that publisher video, to ask ourselves, did the full clips demonstrate that Jake Tapper in attitude and determination and focus was in real time during the campaign, during Biden's presidency, interested in getting to the bottom of this?
So let's look at some of the clips from the publisher video, but beyond what they chose to include. Here is Joe Biden's interview with Jay Capper in 2022.
You're about to turn 80 next month. Happy birthday. I had a time. Whenever anyone raises concerns about your age, the oldest president in the history of the United States, you always say, watch me. Voters have been watching you. Democratic voters approve of the job you're doing. Democratic voters overwhelmingly like you.
But one poll shows that almost two-thirds of Democratic voters want a new nominee in 2024. And the top reason they gave was your age. So what's your message to Democrats who like you, who like what you've done, but are concerned about your age and the demands of the job?
Well, they're concerned about whether or not I can get anything done. Look what I've gotten done. Name me a president in recent history that's gotten as much done as I have in the first two years. Not a joke. You may not like what I got done, but the vast majority of the American people do like what I got done.
So he wished them happy birthday. He asked them about one poll. He's not asking him about what was already on in evidence then, which is mental decline. He's simply saying there's a poll that says Democrats don't like you. So I look at that and I say, that's not the way I would have asked it. That's not a guy who was determined to get beyond just asking about a poll.
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Chapter 6: What insights do Alex Thompson and Jake Tapper provide about the White House cover-up?
So here again, he asked the pro forma question. She bats it away with one of their usual lines of spin. Oh, he's so energetic. He runs circles around the younger staff. There's no evidence of it. It's a made up piece of spin. And he seemed to accept it there. Here's another example, again, drawn from the same appearance that the publisher used to prove that Jake Tapper was tough.
And this is with another Biden spokesperson, Kate Bedingfield, who, by the way, was a CNN consultant. So she's being paid by CNN to spin for Joe Biden with her colleagues with whom she shares a green room and everything else. This is from February of 2024, shortly before everything went south for Joe Biden. So this memory issue is already out there.
I want to know how many voters in Michigan, Wisconsin, you think know the difference between... No, no, they don't know, but they know... Or are going to cast their vote... Well, you asked, you asked.
Sorry, okay.
Or are going to cast their vote for president based on whether someone is naming Emmanuel Macron or Francois Mitterrand, whose name they probably don't even know.
Here is perhaps the biggest tale of all. If you're a reporter and you are determined to get to the bottom of this, if you think there may be a cover up at the highest levels of the government, a potential constitutional crisis, you would not treat Biden officials with humor or lightness. You would be tough and determined to get to the bottom of it.
You don't ask about in the context of polls, which is the way he mostly asked about it. You don't accept spin that voters don't care. If you really are concerned about getting to the bottom of this, you ask the question. It's so funny I even have to say this. You ask the question about specific incidents and how they would explain it.
And the one I always come back to is when there was an event in honor of a congresswoman who had passed away and Joe Biden tried to speak to her. As if she were alive and there. OK, that's not confusing the names of two European leaders. That's not knowing which way to walk off the stage. That's not having your first public event at noon. That's not not doing events at night.
That is right in plain sight. And to ask about it the way he did in that appearance and to accept her spin that voters don't care again. Welcome to do it if that's what you want to do. But to do that and then write a book saying I was determined to get to the bottom of it. This is what is this is. I don't mean to just pick on Jake Tapper, but he's the one who wrote the book.
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Chapter 7: What is Rich Lowry's perspective on Biden's cognitive decline and media credibility?
He criticized her and cut her off and I think was a little rude to her. with indignity saying, how dare you say that you're in a position to say the guy has mental decline? Well, guess what? Now that Jake Capra has written a book about this, he says right in the publicity material for the book,
that there was this mental decline that was so apparent and that there was this big cover up in the White House. Now, I give them credit for pointing out the cover up in the White House because that was not aggressively covered because anytime anyone tried to do it, they were threatened and bullied and spun in public. And most reporters just gave up.
But you cannot be part of restoring the credibility of the media to cover Donald Trump aggressively if your posture is, oh, we did nothing wrong. We aggressively covered it. Or worse, in some ways, we didn't even see it. How could we have seen it? We weren't in these private meetings. The cover-up was so intense. I'll say again, Joe Biden's decline was not uniform.
There were days when he was just fine. So Republicans who say he was 100% gone and weakened at Bernie's and someone else was running the government, that's not true. But his decline was pronounced. There's a reason why he had a light schedule. He didn't talk to reporters.
And there's a reason why all these things that happened in public that we all saw were ignored by the press because they didn't want to help Donald Trump win. They didn't want to be blamed if he won again. It's it's one of the most embarrassing things I've seen. So this morning I'm reading Politico, their daily tip sheet, the Politico playbook. And this is what they write.
And it's amazing to me that this is still the way the press, which defended and protected Joe Biden, is framing things. For what it's worth, Biden has continued to deny any suggestion that he experienced cognitive decline while in office. They are wrong, the former president said in an interview last week on The View. There is nothing to sustain that.
I mean, I get letting Joe Biden have his say, but for what it's worth, Joe Biden has continued to deny any suggestion he experienced cognitive decline. I mean, how could they write that? How could they how could they credit that? It makes no sense. But it's the mindset that.
Most every reporter, not Alex Thompson, but his co-author, and again, almost every reporter that's now being asked with the authority and the responsibility of covering Donald Trump to be responsible for that. It's the same line. So Jake Tapper, his book coming out in a week, here he is this morning on CNN creating a whole new set of realities. Watch this.
You have an entire White House press corps, though, following him around. And I'm just curious as to whether or not this kind of trying to hide what was happening with the president at the time had an impact on the press corps. Like, why didn't we hear some of these details from what they actually saw and were dealing with trying to get information?
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Chapter 8: How does the podcast discuss Trump's presidency and his China strategy?
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That's 1-800-958-1000, or you can visit tnusa.com slash next up. Next up, my conversation with, I like to call him the man of the hour, even though that makes no sense in this context. Rich Lowry, the editor of National Review, always the man of the hour. Rich, welcome, and thank you for being here.
Thanks for having me.
We talked in the first segment about the media's cover up of Joe Biden's loss of mental acuity and this new book, which is making the claim that there was no way for the press to get at this story. What's your advice to the press about how to cover this book and how to seize the opportunity to restore credibility in this moment?
Well, I don't know how the media is going to restore credibility, but this was one of the most preposterous lies that we've ever seen. And it was perpetrated in front of our faces. We all saw it. Now, one of the revelations of this book is that they're considering... A wheelchair. Now, why would that be shocking?
Anyone who's had an older relative and they begin to shuffle like that and they have some falls, you know, it's not getting better. You're holding your breath, you know, every time they're going over the edge of a carpet or a rug. But they they just lied to us about this. I remember when when the fall, which one was it, Mark? And it was at West Point. We went over the sandbag. Yeah. Yeah.
And I tweeted, this just isn't good, right? When you're this age and you begin to fall, it's downward from there. And John Harwood and others are, what are you talking about? Gerald Ford fell down and he was the most athletic president ever. Yeah, we all trip and stumble, but we're not all 80 years old and clearly in decline. So we could all see it. We all knew it.
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