One of the most damning revelations to come from Original Sin, the new book by CNN’s Jake Tapper and Axios reporter Alex Thompson, is that the cover-up of President Biden’s mental and physical decline wasn’t just organized—it was enabled.
Thompson appeared on NewsNation Tuesday and dropped a stunning quote from a former Biden insider who reflected on how easily they manipulated the press. According to Thompson, the source acknowledged blame for hiding Biden’s decline—but said the media was “sort of amazing” in how easily it was spun.
“Listen, yes, we deserve blame for X, Y, Z. We were hiding him,” the source allegedly told Thompson. “But… we were sort of amazed at some of the stuff we were able to spin.”
The book, released Tuesday by Penguin Press, lays out how Biden’s team—including administration officials, Cabinet members, donors, and even celebrities—worked together to suppress growing concerns about Biden’s cognitive and physical capabilities.
The claim echoes what conservatives and critics have alleged for years: that a coordinated effort existed to protect the president from scrutiny, even as public stumbles and quiet whispers about his condition grew louder.
Thompson didn’t spare the press, either. He said journalists were “not skeptical enough” and failed to apply the most basic rule of covering any administration: assume you’re being lied to.
“In a lot of ways, I think journalists just didn’t remember the lesson that every White House lies—to different degrees, but they lie,” Thompson said.
That admission comes as damning stories mount. A 2024 Wall Street Journal exposé reported that Biden would go quiet mid-sentence, close his eyes for long stretches, and speak so softly that participants couldn’t hear him. Some even thought he had fallen asleep.
At the time, Democratic leaders like Nancy Pelosi publicly dismissed the report. But according to Chris Whipple’s book Uncharted, Pelosi privately expressed alarm after a 2024 White House visit, saying she was “startled by how much the president had aged” and telling a confidant, “He was not the same Joe Biden.”
That discrepancy between public defense and private concern has become a recurring theme in reporting about Biden’s inner circle. Democrats stuck to the script in public—but quietly whispered to reporters and colleagues that the president was slipping.
More recently, the story took a medical turn. Just this week, Biden’s office confirmed he has been diagnosed with prostate cancer that has metastasized to the bone. His spokesman later admitted Biden hadn’t received a blood test screening for prostate cancer since 2014—raising new questions about how long the White House may have known about his condition.
These revelations are piling up just as a growing number of Americans question not just Biden’s health, but the institutions that shielded him.
Even mainstream journalists are now forced to reckon with their role. Former CNN analyst Chris Cillizza said this week that most in the media “looked the other way” in 2023 and 2024 “because they vote for Democrats.”
The story being told now—by reporters, insiders, and even Democratic allies—is one of coordinated deception, media complicity, and public betrayal.
And if the truth is only coming out now, the obvious question becomes: what else haven’t they told us?
