David Remnick: Nearly a year ago last June, we sat down to watch the presidential debate between Donald Trump and Joe Biden. It was the first and only debate, and it was moderated by Jake Tapper and Dana Bash of CNN. Biden struggled to complete sentences, to remember facts. At times, he made no sense at all. He spoke in a raspy whisper.

Joe Biden: Making sure that we're able to make every single solitary person eligible for what I've been able to do with the COVID. Excuse me, with dealing with everything we have to do with-- Look, if-- we finally beat Medicare.

David Remnick: Biden had been elected as the oldest person ever to hold the office. Prior to the debate, there were moments when his deterioration was certainly worrying, but the debate itself left him exposed, unmasked. There could no longer be any doubt at all and no concealment. Joe Biden was an old man getting older, and Donald Trump was likely to win in a landslide. After the debate, Biden's people said, in effect, "Nothing to look at here. The President had a cold, he had a bad day. We all have bad days, right?" It was hard to watch that debate and see it as a fluke.

For millions of Americans, the willing suspension of disbelief collapsed right then and there. Who could believe any longer that Joe Biden, no matter what you thought of his achievements as president, could fulfill those duties for another four years? We know how this story ended, but there's a lot we didn't know until now. Reporting by Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson makes clear that the debate night was not a fluke at all.

Their new book is called Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again. Jake Tapper is CNN's lead Washington anchor and he interviewed Biden many times going back to his years in the Senate. Alex Thompson is a national political correspondent for Axios. An excerpt of their book has appeared in The New Yorker, and we'll dig deeper into this story, which has had such immense consequences for the country, its politics, and its future.

Jake and Alex, I'm not a fortune teller, but I'm going to guess in advance that one critique of your book and the critique of all the coverage of Biden's decline and fall can be summarized in the question, what took you so long? Before we launch into the details of your book, let's wrestle with that question of why now? Why so late?

Jake Tapper: I think a lot of us have covered Joe Biden's aging and the accompanying inabilities to do things the way he used to do throughout his presidency. What we uncovered after the election was over, when all the people that we had been talking to for months and years and all of the people who had been saying, "He's fine, he's fine, he's fine, he's fine," were suddenly willing to talk about what had been going on. It was only after the election that we were able to get the inside point of view. Before that, the only insider point of view we really got was from the Hur report when the special counsel said what he saw behind closed doors, sitting down with Biden for an extended period of time.

David Remnick: Robert Hur, who investigated the handling of classified documents, he famously used the phrase to describe Biden, "A well-meaning elderly man with a poor memory."

Jake Tapper: Before that, it was all a lot of, "He's fine, he's fine, he's fine." Now, Alex and I have spoke with more than 200 people after the election, and unencumbered by their fears of, "If I say this, then Joe Biden won't get elected or Kamala Harris won't get elected," they were much more candid. Look, it's very important that folks were noting that he tripped on stage at a graduation at the Air Force Academy. Comparing that to him not being able to conjure forth the name of George Clooney or recognize George Clooney, somebody he'd known for decades, and somebody throwing the most lucrative fundraiser in the history of the Democratic Party, those are two different things.

Noting that he mistakenly thought that in 2021 he'd had a conversation with Francois Mitterrand as opposed to Emmanuel Macron. We all saw that and we noted it and we talked about it. That compared to him not knowing the name of one of his top advisors in December 2022, there's a difference. What we found by writing this book was that everything that we saw was going on in front of the camera, it was much worse behind the scenes.

David Remnick: What you're saying is that while it was happening in real time during Biden's presidency, the sources who were in the position to know, who actually knew and saw this, were not speaking clearly to journalists on any basis. Is that what we're suggesting?

Alex Thompson: Yes. I don't think they were speaking honestly, and as Biden's decline became precipitous, they also began to close ranks. The circle of people that had access to the president shrank considerably at the end of 2023 and throughout 2024, up and leading to the debate.

David Remnick: Well, describe what that circle became and how did it shrink and who was around him?

Alex Thompson: I'd say the people they were excising were both longtime aides, cabinet members, senior officials. Basically, what happened is the very, very inner circle, and I put in that category, if you want to put names to, it would be like Mike Donilon, Steve Ricchetti, Annie Tomasini, Anthony Bernal, Jake Sullivan, Tony Blinken. Basically, they said, "You brief us, we'll brief him," was the message.

David Remnick: Anthony Blinken was on this show in his last day in office as Secretary of State, and I asked him about the aging question, and he answered it in the following way. He said, "Basically, when I was in the room with him, he was doing what you would want of a president."

Anthony Blinken: I think if I felt that he wasn't up to the job, that's something that I would have-

David Remnick: You would have had that conversation with him.

Anthony Blinken: I would have had that conversation.

David Remnick: You didn't.

Anthony Blinken: I saw everything that I experienced myself was when it came to grappling with all these issues, when it came to debating them, when it came to looking at them from every angle, when it came to making decisions, when it came to having judgments, his were strong, his were sound.

David Remnick: When you saw that debate with Trump-- is that what he says in private, or was he just doing that on the record for a podcast?

Alex Thompson: I mean, first thing I will just say is it's sort of telling that not just Tony Blinken, but basically every single senior advisor, with the exception of few, they'll always say, "Well, when I was with him, when I saw him," which is giving them plausible deniability.

Jake Tapper: There's also a couple other things to unpack with that. One is that the issues that animated Joe Biden the most in his presidency were national security issues, was NATO, was the Middle east, was Ukraine, Russia. I don't doubt that he was most engaged, and also that those meetings, when they scheduled them, were in peak performance time, noon, one o' clock. The other thing that Blinken says-

David Remnick: Well, hang on, Jake. Peak performance time, you're suggesting is just a couple of hours in the middle of the day? It's that brief?

Jake Tapper: Not a couple, but 10:00 to 4:00 is what Alex's reporting was in 2023. That I think is even generous because he was not in the Oval Office every day from 10 until 4.

David Remnick: What was he doing?

Alex Thompson: I mean, he spent a lot of time in the residence, and he would be on the phone, and we have months of the internal block. The internal calendar, which is called the block calendar. Which shows how much his schedule, especially beginning in late 2023, when he was not traveling, was restricted. There were some days when he would go up to the residence, have dinner and be down at 4:30 pm.

Jake Tapper: You hear this argument a lot from not just the Politburo, which is what some of the administration came to calling Tom Donilon and Steve Ricchetti, the two top aides, and not just the First Family's eyes and ears, Anthony Bernal and Annie Tomasini. What others would say is, "Oh, his decision making was always fine. His decision making was always fine." The job of the president is not just decision making.

Alex Thompson: It's also communication to the population.

Jake Tapper: Yes. One of the top aide said to us, "The job is making hard decisions and communicating them to the American people." This aide said, "He was always able to do number one. Number two was a struggle, and it got worse throughout his presidency." Number two is so much, yes, you want the person to be able to make good decisions, but, also, they need to persuade, they need to cajole, the American people need to have faith in this person. Our Western leaders need to have faith in this person. He lost a lot of that.

David Remnick: Presumably to campaign for the presidency when that moment came.

Jake Tapper: Yes. If it hadn't been for COVID, who knows if that would have even worked in 2020. COVID, as one aide told us, was a huge tragedy and disaster for the American people, but a gift to Biden in 2020 because it enabled him to basically have a very inactive campaign schedule that was largely dependent on him doing Zooms.

David Remnick: Alex, you write in the book about Cabinet meetings during Biden's presidency, and those meetings seemed almost entirely scripted. Were they written down? Were they really scripted? Talk about the orchestration of those sessions.

Alex Thompson: Very much so. This is something that came after the election, in which members of the Cabinet told us that they found the Cabinet meetings disturbing and frustrating and that the White House would ask them, "What are you going to ask? If he asks a certain question, what is your answer going to be?" It wasn't just when cameras or the press was brought in for a brief photo op. It was even afterward, where there were literal-- they described it to us as there were literal scripts, where the Cabinet meeting was a very scripted affair and members of the Cabinet afterward came away feeling a little disturbed. This was as early as 2021, but it became worse over time.

David Remnick: Did they ask pointed questions, Jake? Did they press the issue?

Jake Tapper: No. No. In fact, October 2023 is the last cabinet meeting, I think, until September 2024. That period begins what one Cabinet secretary of several we spoke with described as the weird period where they were kept at bay. They didn't get a chance to interact with the president. There are exceptions to this. Blinken, the Secretary of State, and Austin, the Secretary of Defense.

For the most part, a lot of these secretaries were just completely kept at arm's length. One of them said that during that period, spring of 2024, the secretary did have a meeting with Biden and he was mumbly and incoherent and difficult to understand. This person left that meeting, this Cabinet secretary left that meeting upset and disturbed. No one came forward. When they would complain internally, they were told, "He's fine, be quiet."

This is a larger topic for what we all need to reckon with when it comes to the American presidency today and the degree to which one person is bestowed with so much power and surrounded by individuals whose own power depends on that person maintaining power, regardless of whether or not it's good for the White House, the party or the country. That power and the fear of what happens. Robert Hur came forward, did his job. He wasn't able to get a job for months. Dean Phillips came forward, said Joe Biden should be challenged in the primaries. He's not up to this. He was essentially defenestrated. There was a real price to coming forward.

David Remnick: Were the scripted Cabinet meetings, as you call them, the case from the very beginning of the presidency, or did that become more noticeable late in the presidency?

Alex Thompson: It started at the beginning, but it became more and more scripted throughout.

Jake Tapper: A lot of the tools that may have started out innocently enough for Joe Biden-- every White House, indeed any successful person, is surrounded by people to help make them look as good as possible. A lot of those tools, note cards and teleprompter, et cetera, that were put there innocently enough for a 79-year-old president at the beginning of his term became crutches and ultimately tools of the cover up by the end. Because if you are a President, if you're 81 years old and you're not able to go into a room full of donors and speak extemporaneously for 10 minutes, then there's something wrong. That was happening in 2023.

Bill Daley, former Obama chief of staff, he went to one of those and he was distressed. He tried to get other Democrats to run in the primary against Joe Biden. He reached out to Pritzker, he reached out to Newsom or Beshear, and nobody would do it. It's a fool's errand to take on an incumbent president in a primary, generally speaking, but people saw this and they were disturbed. Again, some things might start off like, "Look, we're just trying to help the president. He wants a teleprompter, no big deal." All of a sudden, he can't answer questions at a fundraiser in 2023.

[music]

David Remnick: Jake Tapper of CNN, and I'm speaking also with Alex Thompson of Axios. Our conversation continues in a moment. This is The New Yorker Radio Hour.

[music]

David Remnick: This is The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. I've been speaking today with the authors of Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again. The book is by Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson. The next serpt of the book appears on newyorker.com. The book recounts the actions of staff members who deliberately concealed Biden's decline from the public and the silence of those who witnessed it. The book also raises some enduring questions about how our political system works and how candidates are vetted or not. I'll continue my conversation with Alex Thompson, a Washington reporter for Axios, and Jake Tapper of CNN.

There's never been a cognitive test released to the public, I believe. What did you uncover in your reporting on that score?

Alex Thompson: Well, I would say that Biden's personal physician, his name is Dr. Kevin O' Connor, he's been with him for so long, he even helped with Joe Biden's sons, Beau Biden's cancer treatments, they're essentially almost like a family doctor which gave some people concern that he was too close. He basically said, "I don't need to give the president a cognitive exam."

Now, you'll remember maybe that, during Trump's first presidency, he went underwent a cognitive exam. Now they claim he aced it. They obviously said he's fine, fine, fine, fine. They actually sort of defiantly said, "We don't need to conduct one." Biden's personal physician said, "Well, I see him every day. The cognitive exam is made for physicians who only see their patients every several months. If you doubt that he is cognitively capable, listen, he is doing the job." They never did a cognitive exam, despite the fact that a lot of doctors start doing regular cognitive exams when someone is 65. Joe Biden, when he was inaugurated, was in his late 70s.

Jake Tapper: We get in a little bit to the Biden family lore and the way they look at the world, but there's a lot of not wanting to acknowledge realities.

David Remnick: Can you give an example of that?

Jake Tapper: Pretending that--

Alex Thompson: I'll go into what happened Beau Biden.

David Remnick: Go ahead, Alex.

Alex Thompson: In their own memoirs, the Bidens acknowledge that in summer of 2013, Beau Biden was diagnosed with essentially lethal brain cancer. He underwent brain surgery. It was glioblastoma. They acknowledged that it was likely he was not going to live. He was a sitting Attorney General of the State of Delaware. In February of 2014, with a year left on his term, they had a doctor, his doctor come out and publicly say that he had a clean bill of health. Some of that was just political reasons, but some of it was their own internal denial. That Beau was going to make it, Beau was going to do it, that he was never going to die. To acknowledge this lethal form of brain cancer was acknowledging that he was going to die.

David Remnick: That was a personal issue. The stakes were--

Jake Tapper: He was the chief law enforcement officer of the state of Delaware, hiding the fact that he was debilitated.

David Remnick: My understanding, Jake, is that the pivotal moment of decision making comes when earlier Joe Biden had suggested that he might be a bridge figure, that his great success was to beat Trump, to introduce a great deal of legislation and executive orders that would set the country in a different direction.

Joe Biden: Look, I view myself as a bridge, not as anything else. There's an entire generation of leaders you saw stand behind me. They are the future of this country. They're the people who are going to--

David Remnick: That would have been the moment for Joe Biden to declare victory and hand the baton over to someone else, or at least start the process of doing so. Instead, as I understand it, that moment of victory in the midterms spurred Joe Biden to stay in the race. Am I getting things right here, Jake?

Jake Tapper: 100%. One of the most important parts of understanding Joe Biden is understanding his refusal to accept defeat. Look, it's one of the things that we love about politicians or any sort of public figure. He gets knocked down, he gets back up again. That's part of the ethos of Joe Biden. In this case, he didn't have that. The midterms went better than expected, better than they had for Clinton or Obama in their first terms.

Now, I think that a lot of the reason for that was despite Joe Biden, not because of Joe Biden. It was because of, and this is according to his own pollsters and people close to him, he did better than everyone thought in the midterms because there was a very engaged Democratic electorate because of the overturning of Roe v. Wade that year, and because Trump had gotten involved in a lot of primaries and backed not the best candidate for the general election, whether Blake Masters in Arizona or Herschel Walker in Georgia. Regardless, yes, the midterms weren't as bad.

David Remnick: Now, sometimes in presidential history, the truth teller is the spouse. That the president's wife, who's known the president long before he was the leader of the free world, is able to speak the truth directly and privately to her husband. What was the role of Jill Biden in all this?

Alex Thompson: Certainly not a truth teller. I can tell you even people that served in both the Obama and Biden administrations noted how different the roles between the two were. In this case, they saw Jill first and foremost as protector. Other Biden aides have described Jill Biden as one of the most powerful first ladies in American history. They would say that even though she does not acknowledge that her husband was in decline, that inherently, just implicitly, she was picking up his slack.

David Remnick: Well, just preceding the publication of your book, last week there was the spectacle of Joe Biden and Jill Biden appearing in advance of your publication, clearly as a way to get out in front of it, to be honest. They appeared on The View. Nothing that I saw, and I watched the program, nothing in that program would dissuade me from The View, that it would have been a bad idea for Joe Biden to risk being president into his mid-80s.

Alyssa Farah Griffin: Mr. President, since you left office, there have been a number of books that have come out, deeply sourced from Democratic sources that claim in your final year, there was a dramatic decline in your cognitive abilities in the final year of your presidency. What is your response to these allegations, or are these sources wrong?

Joe Biden: They are wrong. There's nothing to sustain that, number one. Number two, think of what we were left with. We were left with a circumstance where we had an insurrection when I started, not since the Civil War. We had a circumstance where we were in a position that we-- well, the pandemic, because of the incompetence of the last outfit end up over a million people dying.

David Remnick: Jill Biden, seemed to control the conversation, and Joe Biden did the best he could. You have to have some human sympathy for it, but not a whole hell of a lot of confidence in his ability to carry out the hardest job in the world.

Jake Tapper: Imagine thinking, A, the Joe Biden we all saw on The View or the BBC interview, is capable of being president until January 2029. Because that's what they think. The Biden first couple and Ricchetti and Donilon. That's what they think. Also, imagine thinking that the best prebuttal to our book, which quotes extensively Democrats-

David Remnick: Prebuttal? That's a new word for sure.

Jake Tapper: Extensively quotes Democrats describing what they saw behind the scenes and how much it upset them. That the best way to prebut our book is to put him out there. Imagine thinking that. This isn't an episode of the Twilight Zone where, all of a sudden, he swims in a pool and emerges with the energy of a 12-year-old. He is still 82 and looks and sounds every day of it.

Alex Thompson: I just want to add one thing to that, which is in some ways the bigger scandal in my mind is what if he'd won?

David Remnick: I can hear the hair being ripped out of people's head as you say that. They're saying, "If he had won, it would have been a hell of a lot better than what we're experiencing now." Speak to that.

Alex Thompson: Sure. I understand that perspective completely. Basically, if he had won, people in the Biden world believe there would have been a constitutional crisis because clearly the people in his inner circle were not willing to cede power and were completely of the belief that he was on top of it all. Increasingly, members of the Democratic Party were becoming suspicious that he was not up to it.

There is more to being president than not being Donald Trump. That speaks to the frustrating choice Democrats and the country faced in this last election. You had somebody that even members of his own administration believe that he was not up to doing the job he was running for for four more years versus someone that they believe sincerely was going to hurt the country in significant ways.

David Remnick: Well, I know we excerpted this part of your book, but it's worth going through the narrative of what George Clooney experienced with Biden, not because he's a famous movie star, but because he was a huge Democratic Party fundraiser and encountered Biden even before you did in the fateful debate. Tell me the story, Jake, if you would, of Clooney's, in a sense, conversion that led him to write a pretty damning piece in The New York Times op ed page.

Jake Tapper: As you note, he's not just a movie star. He is a Democrat, a very proud Democrat, and has been involved in some of the biggest fundraisers ever, including in the spring of 2024 at Radio City Music Hall. I think that raised $27 million. Jeffrey Katzenberg was running the fundraiser. Then Katzenberg wanted another fundraiser. This one would raise $30 million, which would be the most money ever raised for a Democratic presidential candidate. Clooney said, "Sure, tell me where to go."

It's June, and Clooney has shown up. He was in Italy filming a movie. He and Julia Roberts are co-hosting this thing. He's there and he sees Obama walk in, and there's Obama. Same old Obama. He loves Obama. A little grayer, but same guy. Then Biden walks in and he's shocked. He hasn't seen Biden since December 2022, before he got a Kennedy Center Honor. George Clooney. He sees him, he can't believe how slow he's walking, how much he's shuffling. Then Biden walks over and he's saying, "Hey, how you doing? Thanks for coming. Hey, how you doing? Thanks for coming," for everybody who's there.

He comes over to Clooney and says, "Hey, how you doing? Thanks for being here." Biden's aide, says, "You know George." He's like, "Yes, sure, of course. How you doing?" It becomes very apparent to everyone there that President Biden does not recognize George Clooney. Then the aide has to say, "George Clooney." Underlying who this person is. One of the most recognizable faces in the world.

"The guy who was hosting the fundraiser for you, the guy that you gave a Kennedy Center Honor to, the guy you've known for 20 years." Then he's like, "Sure, yes. Hey, how you doing?" He wasn't the only one, Clooney and those in that circle who saw something that upset them. Barack Obama saw Biden not at his best, where he had to jump in a couple times in these private meetings behind the scenes, and they all just convinced themselves, "Look, Biden's had a rough travel schedule."

David Remnick: He's tired. He's had a lot of flights.

Jake Tapper: Yes. He was in France, then he was in Delaware for punter's trial, then he's back to Italy for the G7.

David Remnick: I'm sorry, he's not flying in a middle seat in economy.

Jake Tapper: Yes. No, he has Air Force One with a bedroom. Although one of his top Aides says to me, "There's a big difference between Joe Biden getting seven hours and Joe Biden getting eight hours of sleep." Which is, "Okay, that's interesting."

David Remnick: That's not encouraging either.

Jake Tapper: That's not a defense. Right. In any case, Clooney just goes back to movie world and files it away as, "Okay, he's old and I guess he didn't get any sleep and it's been a crazy schedule." Then what happens at the debate, and then Clooney's like, "This is what I saw."

David Remnick: Okay, let's talk about the debate. Jake, you are sitting, you are just feet away from Trump and Biden and you've interviewed these guys many times. You spend your life watching this political drama and reporting on it. Describe the experience of sitting there and what you're seeing and what you're hearing and how it strikes you.

Jake Tapper: I will say, having watched it on TV, in addition to having watched it in person, it was worse in person, and it's pretty bad on TV. He shuffles out, seems really old. He starts talking. He's obviously got a cold. His voice is already thin and reedy before the cold. He seems really, really old. I remember thinking right when it started, when he clearly was not primed and ready. "Why did they agree to do this at nine o' clock at night?" Having kept Alex's reporting in the back of my mind about how sometimes 4:30, that's the end of the workday for him. Why would they do this at nine o'clock at night? Then he gives the first horrible answer which comes like in the first 5 or 10 minutes. The one where he says, "We beat Medicare."

Joe Biden: What I've been able to do with the COVID. Excuse me, with dealing with everything we have to do with-- Look, if-- we finally beat Medicare.

Jake Tapper: Thank you, President.

Jake Tapper: Because he's having trouble. It's not just-- we've all had colds.

David Remnick: We've all forgotten names, too.

Jake Tapper: We've all forgotten names, but this was a man who could not put thoughts together and who could not explain basics of his policy. I'm not a doctor, I can't diagnose what it was, but this was somebody who was not able to communicate like he himself was able to communicate even four years ago. I was shocked. We had iPads. Dana Bash, my co-moderator and I, so we could communicate with the control room because we can't talk. I wrote, "Holy smokes," because I didn't know who was in the control room. I thought maybe--

David Remnick: Holy smokes is what you wrote.

Jake Tapper: Well, I would have said something else, but I thought maybe Zaslav was there. I didn't want to offend anybody, but I was stunned. Then his answers were really bad, and even his best answers were barely serviceable, and it almost didn't even matter. Trump was Trump, full of bombast and false claims, but he was disciplined. Say what you will about Donald Trump. The only thing he said about what I think empirically is the very worst debate performance in the history of televised debates since 1960. The only thing Trump said was, "I don't understand what he just said there, and I don't think he does either."

Jake Tapper: President Trump.

Donald Trump: I really don't know what he said at the end of that sentence. I don't think he knows what he said either.

David Remnick: It was a rare moment of restraint and humanity on Trump's part and never to be equaled again.

Jake Tapper: I don't know if it was humanity as much as your opponent's blown himself up to get out of the way.

David Remnick: That's fair, too.

[music]

David Remnick: We'll talk about what happened after that debate in just a moment. My guests today are Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson, and this is The New Yorker Radio Hour. Stick around.

[music]

David Remnick: This is The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick, and I've been speaking this hour with Jake Tapper of CNN and Alex Thompson of Axios. Their new book is called Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again. It's a book, by the way, that Biden and people close to him have been dreading for a long time.

Earlier in the program, we mentioned how Biden once referred to himself as a bridge, a bridge to a new generation of leaders. That was during the 2020 campaign. Some of us took that remark to mean that Biden intended to stay in office for just one term. Somewhere along the line, he became convinced that only he could beat Donald Trump, and he stayed in the race until it was way too late.

Now, Alex, one of the reasons that Biden wanted to run again, it said, is that he and his close circle of advisors didn't really view Kamala Harris as a worthy successor. That's what you write. Biden called her, and the quote is, "a work in progress," when he was speaking in private. First of all, where did that come from? Tell me about that atmosphere.

Alex Thompson: Yes. Well, it's funny that our title is Original Sin, but a few Biden senior Biden people said, "Well, the original sin actually was picking Kamala Harris," because his heart was with Gretchen Whitmer, and the political case, particularly after the murder of George Floyd by a policeman, was made by Ron Klain, Cedric Richmond, James Clyburn, that he needed to pick a Black woman and she was the most vetted and the most prepared. She had also been friends with Beau Biden, which goes a long way with Joe Biden. Once she's in there, the scars of the 2020, 2019 Democratic primary, they may have healed between the principles-

David Remnick: Describe those scars.

Alex Thompson: Kamala Harris goes in the first debate and she says that Joe Biden's previous opposition to busing in schools basically makes him disqualified. She essentially insinuates that his past stances were racist. While Joe Biden may get over it, Joe Biden's family and the team around him never fully get over it.

David Remnick: Yes, Jill Biden was said to be particularly furious with Kamala Harris for that debate performance.

Alex Thompson: There is this atmosphere, not just during the 2020 campaign, but in the White House as well, that, "Yes, you need to help Kamala Harris, but don't go out of your way. Don't go above and beyond, because it could be seen as disloyal."

Jake Tapper: There is a degree to which Kamala was insurance for Biden. I don't think it was consciously so, but they would-- If anybody ever said anything in internal discussions, not to Biden himself, but in internal discussions about should he run, et cetera, the answer was always, "If it's not him, it's going to be Kamala Harris. You think she can win? You think she can be president?"

David Remnick: The insinuation there is that-

Jake Tapper: She's not capable of winning and not capable of being president.

David Remnick: It's capability not for demographic reasons. Not because she's Black and a woman, and all the prejudices.

Jake Tapper: No. She's less popular than him, which she was until she became the nominee, and less capable.

David Remnick: Now, you say in your book that who Biden really wanted to be vice president was Gretchen Whitmer. It's interesting to me that Gretchen Whitmer did not emerge at all. Kamala Harris was rewarded for her loyalty in a way, and that she got Biden's approval once he stepped down. There was no process, nobody stepped in, nobody dared to do that.

Jake Tapper: Well, there are a lot of reasons for that. One of the reasons was when Biden called Harris on July 21st to tell her that he was dropping out, and she was supportive. "Don't let them chase you out, Joe." He said, "No, I think I've got to do this. It's what's best. Are you ready for it, kid?" She wanted to do it. They sent over the note that he was going to put on social media. Doesn't mention her. She says, "You don't mention me in here."

David Remnick: She did say that.

Jake Tapper: Yes. He says, "I was going to endorse you in an Oval Office address later in the week." This is Sunday. He was talking about doing this Wednesday or Thursday. She said that that would be interpreted as weakness. The Donilons and Ricchettis and Bidens talked about it and then came back and said, "You know what we're going to do? We're going to put out this note, and then 15, 20 minutes later, we're going to put out the note endorsing.>

They did do that. Harris had made calls and was ready to go. She decided she wanted to call, in addition to, obviously, the Clintons and the Obamas and the Democratic leadership, she wanted to call any possible rival, anybody who might throw their hat into the ring. The first person she called, because the one they were the most concerned about, or maybe the one they were thought was the most eager or ambitious, was Governor Shapiro of Pennsylvania. They called him, but he's on board immediately. Then they call around.

The only two of the prospective Democratic possibilities who don't endorse her that day are Gretchen Whitmer, who is taken aback by all of it, and JB Pritzker, the governor of Illinois. Pritzker calls around that day. "Is anybody going to run?" I think if anybody else had run, maybe Pritzker would have run, but he certainly was not going to be the only one running against the incumbent vice president, the first ever Black woman vice president in history. By the next day, it was a done deal. Whitmer and Pritzker were on board. Obama announced that he was on board, and that was that.

David Remnick: We know the role that Nancy Pelosi played in helping to ease Joe Biden out. It was quite masterful and Machiavellian all at once. She was on the show and described that in no uncertain terms.

Jake Tapper: They still hate her, though, the Bidens.

David Remnick: Oh, my God. Do they? The relationship that remains at least somewhat of a mystery to me is the role of Barack Obama. I want to know what the relationship was at this point between Obama and Biden because it seems to me from reading your book is that Biden never stopped loving Barack Obama and resenting him deeply. There's great suspicion there. Am I right?

Alex Thompson: Yes, it's a great way of putting it. I don't think Obama has any intense feelings one way or another toward Joe Biden, but Biden certainly does. Now, there are both political and personal reasons for this. The first on the political end is Biden and his inner circle have never gotten over the fact that Obama preferred Hillary to him in 2016. Joe Biden wrote about in his memoir, it has been this loyalty moment of who is with us and who was against us. The fact that Trump won in their own heads was evidence that their version or their way of politics was right and the Obama smarty pants people were wrong.

Jake Tapper: The other thing from the Obama perspective is that, one, he feels like what he says to Joe Biden isn't heard because-- and he's used these words, "Joe is still pissed at me about Hillary." He knows Biden will not listen to him. There was this mythology that some people posited on MSNBC that Obama had gotten George Clooney to write that op ed, which is not true. George wrote it on his own. Beyond that, Obama told him not to publish it, that it was just going to get Biden's backup. There is a degree to which, A, he thinks like, "This guy just doesn't listen to me at all. The best thing I can do is just be here and say-"

David Remnick: He never got involved in trying to convince Biden not to run a second time?

Jake Tapper: No. He checked in on him in 2023 and just tried to reaffirm to Biden how much tougher this was going to be and how tough Trump was going to be. Thought Biden was Biden, thought Biden was old, thought Biden was who he is. That's the degree to that that he said anything. He would talk to Schumer, he would talk to Pelosi, he would talk to Hakeem Jeffries and he would guide them. The polling became very important to the real top crowd trying to get Biden out of the race. Pelosi, Jeffries, Schumer.

David Remnick: What did it? What was the tripwire? Why did he finally hang it up.

Jake Tapper: I think what did it are two things. One, Schumer telling Biden about the meeting that the Democratic senators had with the Politburo, with these top aides, in which a lot of people expressed concerns. Ultimately at the end, John Fetterman, who was a Biden supporter, a dead ender, says, 'Who's with me?" There were maybe 5 Democratic senators out of 51 senator caucus that were with Biden. Schumer told that to Biden, and Biden did not know that because Donilon had not told him and Ricchetti had not told him.

Then the second thing was Minyon Moore, who set up the Democratic National Committee, longtime respected Democratic operative she had, when she took the job to run the DNC, started this ad hoc committee called the what if committee. That was just to prepare for anything. One of the things the what if committee did was keep track of the delegates, especially after the debate.

The what if committee conveyed to Ricchetti and Donilon, "Biden can still win the nomination at the convention, but it will be tight and it will be ugly." I think those two things, your senators have abandoned you because Biden always thought of himself as a creature of the Senate, and, "You can win, but it's going to be a very hideous victory." I think that just convinced him. Plus, by the way, he made this decision while he was really sick with COVID which could not have encouraged him that he was up to this over the next few weeks.

David Remnick: Alex, it's not a faint memory. I remember very distinctly that you would watch Donald Trump on the stump during the campaign and wild things would come out of his mouth. I mean, really wild things causing people to say, "Well, wait a minute. When we're comparing cognitive decline, Donald Trump sounds like he's debilitated in some other distinctly troubling way." How do you compare? Again, we understand that neither one of you are doctors, but how do you compare Donald Trump, who's now going to be 79 very soon, and there'll be parades, his cognitive status as opposed to Joe Biden's.

Alex Thompson: I wrote this back in 2023. Donald Trump has revealed almost nothing about his personal health, and he didn't do that in 2016 either. He is older when he was inaugurated than Joe Biden was when he was inaugurated, and we have no knowledge. Part of me is like, "I don't want to just be the old president's reporter," but it is troubling that the oldest president inaugurated we ever had, we really don't know a lot about his health.

The other implicit thing in your question, which I found while I was covering this 2023 and 2024, was just because Trump is all those things doesn't mean that Biden's cognitive state is not worth of equal scrutiny either. I think some Democrats were not receptive to that reporting until it was very, very late in the game and it was undeniable.

Jake Tapper: Look, I'm 56. I am not capable of doing things that I could do when I was 35. I don't just mean, you know, running up and down a basketball court. I'm not as cognitively sharp now. Am I wiser? Sure. I get that argument. At a certain point when I have aged past my sell date, CNN will show me the door or whoever I'm working for at the time.

The presidency and politics in general is the only world in which there is no one, no boss to do that. It is the voters. It's up to the voters. The voters can be snookered in an era of tribalism, and they can be told, "It doesn't matter if so and so is a kumquat. All that matters is that he's not the other guy." We are not only in a gerontocracy, we're in a gerontocracy where tribalism makes it easier to do.

I mean, it's still amazing to me that after everything that happened with Biden, Kay Granger, who was the chair of the House Appropriations Committee, somehow managed to quietly step down from leadership and then just check herself into a home for dementia while still drawing a congressional salary, as if she was showing up to work every day. Republicans in Congress, some of them knew about it, and they would just say, "Oh, it's so sad. It's so sad." Yes, it's very sad, but also, why is she drawing a congressional salary?

David Remnick: A final question, Alex. Do you have the impression that Joe Biden will go to the end thinking he was dealt with unjustly?

Alex Thompson: Yes. I think a lot of people around him will also feel that way. I think they'll also go to the end believing that he could have won. I also think part of that, beyond his own chip on the shoulder, scran Joe Biden-ness, I think, is also to-- Because to acknowledge the alternative would be too painful.

David Remnick: The book is Original Sin. The authors are Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson. Thank you so much.

Jake Tapper: Thank you, David.

Alex Thompson: Thank you.

[music]

David Remnick: You can read how Joe Biden Handed the presidency to Donald Trump at newyorker.com. It's an excerpt from the book Original Sin. Jake Tapper is the lead Washington anchor for CNN, and Alex Thompson is a national political correspondent for Axios.

[music]

 

Copyright © 2025 New York Public Radio. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use at www.wnyc.org for further information.

New York Public Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline, often by contractors. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of New York Public Radio’s programming is the audio record.