Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson will examine former President Joe Biden’s health and his decision to run for re-election in a book coming later this year.
Penguin Press will publish the journalists’ Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice To Run Again in the spring, the press announced in a news release. It calls the book “an unflinching and explosive reckoning with one of the most fateful decisions in American political history: Joe Biden’s run for reelection despite evidence of his serious decline—amid desperate efforts to hide the extent of that deterioration.”
Biden was 80 when he announced in 2023 that he would run for re-election as president, despite concerns from some in his party about his age and mental acuity. Those concerns grew considerably after he debated Donald Trump last June; Biden’s meandering performance in the debate was widely seen as disastrous.
Biden dropped out of the race the following month, and the Democratic Party nominated Kamala Harris, who was then vice president, to replace him. Harris lost to Trump in the November presidential election.
In their book, Penguin Press says, Tapper of CNN and Thompson of Axios will take readers “behind closed doors and into private conversations between the heaviest of hitters.”
“What you will learn makes President Biden’s decision to run for reelection seem shockingly narcissistic, self-delusional, and reckless—a desperate bet that went bust—and part of a larger act of extended public deception that has few precedents,” the publisher says. “The story the authors tell raises fundamental issues of accountability and responsibility that will continue for decades.”
Original Sin is slated for publication on May 20.
Michael Schaub is a contributing writer.
