Next Up with Mark Halperin
Biden's Cognitive Decline Cover-Up "Original Sin" Involves the Author, and Trump's Unusual China Strategy
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.
Full Episode
Everybody, welcome in. Mark Halpern here. Thank you for being part of NextUp. We're going to find out what's next up today. Talk to Colorado Senator Michael Bennett. Next up for him, he's running for governor. We'll talk to him about what he thinks about the popularity of AOC and of Donald Trump and of Kamala Harris.
We're also going to talk to Rich Lowry of the National Review about everything going on in the news with President Trump, the Democrats, and everything else. But first up here, And next up for us is my hope that my people in my profession in the media can do a better job. The credibility of the media is vital to our country.
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.
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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