Latest news with #Decline
Yahoo
5 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Tapper reveals Democratic sources felt no remorse about covering up Biden decline in interviews for book
CNN's Jake Tapper said during an interview on Wednesday that the many Democratic sources he and Axios reporter Alex Thompson spoke to for their book about the cover-up of former President Biden's decline didn't really express remorse or acknowledgment that a mistake was made. "We never got somebody that said, 'We should never have done this. I can't believe we did it. In retrospect, it was a mistake. How arrogant we were.' I mean, even, you know, there was a top aide, a top White House aide, who acknowledged to me that this short 10-15 minute interview I did with Joe Biden in October 2022, he would not have been capable of doing in October 2023. That admission was stunning to me," Tapper said on The Stephen A. Smith Show. He added, "But it did not come with, 'And we really made a mistake, we shouldn't have run him. What an error. I can't believe we did it.' It didn't come with that." Tapper and Thompson's book, "Original Sin: President Biden's Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again," has detailed the length at which those closest to Biden went to cover up his limitations while in office. The CNN host recently said the scandal may even be "worse than Watergate." Axios Reporter Pushes Back On Biden's Denial Of Mental Decline, Saying White House Insiders Disagree Tapper said the sources said they thought Biden was the only one who could beat President Donald Trump. Read On The Fox News App "So I think that most were telling the truth, as much as they had come to terms with it themselves, but I do wonder where they will be in a year, because I heard from one of the people, one of the Democrats I interviewed for the book, who gave me one of the most shocking revelations, and I checked in, 'How are you doing,' they're upset. But they're not upset at us, not upset at the book, they're just upset that it happened and now everybody is talking about it," he added. "They're still working through a lot." Thompson also discussed one interview he did that occurred before the election for the book, who he described as saying that all the former president had to do was win and "occasionally show proof of life and the people around him would run the country." "And their justification was when you, first of all, you're not bringing back Trump. And when people vote for president, they're also voting for the people around them, and some people in the Biden world, that is how they justified keeping this going," Thompson added. Tapper added that view was "crazy." Shielding Biden: Journalists Shed Light On The Media's Cover-up Of A Weakened President "That was somebody who worked for the White House before the election, before Biden dropped out, saying like, it's no big deal, he just needs to show proof of life. That was the term, proof of life.' I mean, that's so offensive," Tapper said. The CNN host also accused the former president, and those around him, of being anti-democratic. "And like the idea that Biden thought only he could beat Trump and that he could be president for another four years, both of those are not facts and they both seem odd to me. But the idea that he would deny the Democratic Party an opportunity to have a primary system that would produce, among possible candidates, whether you or Gretchen Whitmer or Josh Shapiro or Gavin Newsom or whoever, that he would deny that to the party, so that this small group of people, including him, and one cabinet secretary said to us that it was, at best, he was a senior member of a board that ran the country. It's anti-democratic, really," he said, speaking to Smith, who has suggested that he was open to a potential bid for the presidency. Click Here For More Coverage Of Media And Culture Tapper has admitted that he didn't cover Biden's decline extensively enough since the book's release and has said he looks back on it with "humility."Original article source: Tapper reveals Democratic sources felt no remorse about covering up Biden decline in interviews for book
Yahoo
25-05-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Opinion - Amend the Constitution to set an upper age limit for presidents
Unless we die young, old age awaits us all — even U.S. presidents. Inevitably, the older we get, the greater the chances of our physical and mental health worsening. Yet although the Constitution says a president must be at least 35, it sets no upper age limit. This is a dangerous oversight that should be remedied with a constitutional amendment that sets a maximum age of 75 for a person to be sworn in as president. This would ensure that no one 80 or older will ever again lead our nation. A study supported by National Institutes of Health estimated that about 24 percent of Americans in their 80s have dementia, ranging from mild to severe, including about 18 percent who have Alzheimer's disease. The NIH describes Alzheimer's as 'a brain disorder that slowly destroys memory and thinking skills, and eventually the ability to carry out the simplest tasks.' That is not something we want in a president, even in an early stage. Several books have been published claiming former President Joe Biden was too mentally diminished to lead our nation — claims that Biden vehemently denies. The book receiving the most news coverage right now is 'Original Sin: President Biden's Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again,' by journalists Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson. And we just learned the sad news that Biden, now 82, has been diagnosed with an aggressive form of incurable but treatable prostate cancer that has spread to his bones. According to the American Cancer Society, there is only a 37 percent chance that a man with this diagnosis will be alive in five years, although some men survive 10 years or more. I think Biden was an outstanding president who accomplished a great deal for the American people. I voted for him in 2020 and I supported his reelection until he ended his candidacy after his disastrous debate performance against Donald Trump. I hope he is one of the long-term prostate cancer survivors. But we have to face the reality that if he had been reelected, Biden would have had to deal with cancer treatments while president and might not have lived until the end of his term. President Trump, now 78, will be 82 when his term ends in 2029. While repeatedly claiming that Biden has dementia, Trump insists that he is mentally sharp. Yet over 230 psychiatrists and other mental health professionals signed a letter published as an ad in the New York Times in October 2024 saying Trump is 'grossly unfit for leadership' because, among other things, he 'appears to be showing signs of cognitive decline.' A book published in 2017 titled 'The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President' argued that Trump is mentally ill and poses a danger to our nation. Ideally, someone physically or mentally incapable of carrying out the duties of president would not run or would resign from the office. But presidents work hard to attain their position, and they and their staffs don't want to give it up. And although the 25th Amendment allows the vice president and the Cabinet, or a body approved by Congress, to remove an incapacitated president from office, it has never been invoked. It would likely only be used in an extreme case, such as if a president were in a coma. Setting an age limit for future presidents via a constitutional amendment should not be a partisan issue. It would apply to future Democratic, Republican and third-party candidates. America's founders deliberately made the process of amending the Constitution difficult. A constitutional amendment must first be ratified by a two-thirds majority vote in both houses of Congress. The amendment must then be ratified by the legislatures in three-fourths of the states, or 38 of 50, to take effect. The Constitution has only been amended 27 times. An age limit for presidents would be unlikely to come into play frequently. No other presidents beside Biden and Trump took office at age 76 or older. The oldest other presidents when they left office were Dwight Eisenhower at 70 and Ronald Reagan at 77. Eisenhower suffered a massive heart attack in office in 1955 but recovered and was reelected in 1956. Reagan was diagnosed with dementia caused by Alzheimer's in 1994, five years after he left office. There is still debate about whether he began deteriorating mentally while still in the White House. The average age of U.S. presidents upon taking office for the first time is 57. Bad things happen to people at every age, but less frequently for the young and middle-aged than the very old. Only 9 percent of Americans age 75 and older are even employed. Although the vast majority of jobs should remain open to qualified Americans regardless of age, the presidency is in a category all by itself. Going forward, it is in our national interest to have an age cutoff of 75 for our highest office. To believe otherwise borders on the nonsensical. A. Scott Bolden is an attorney, NewsNation contributor and former chair of the Washington, D.C. Democratic Party. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
The Hill
25-05-2025
- Health
- The Hill
Amend the Constitution to set an upper age limit for presidents
Unless we die young, old age awaits us all — even U.S. presidents. Inevitably, the older we get, the greater the chances of our physical and mental health worsening. Yet although the Constitution says a president must be at least 35, it sets no upper age limit. This is a dangerous oversight that should be remedied with a constitutional amendment that sets a maximum age of 75 for a person to be sworn in as president. This would ensure that no one 80 or older will ever again lead our nation. A study supported by National Institutes of Health estimated that about 24 percent of Americans in their 80s have dementia, ranging from mild to severe, including about 18 percent who have Alzheimer's disease. The NIH describes Alzheimer's as 'a brain disorder that slowly destroys memory and thinking skills, and eventually the ability to carry out the simplest tasks.' That is not something we want in a president, even in an early stage. Several books have been published claiming former President Joe Biden was too mentally diminished to lead our nation — claims that Biden vehemently denies. The book receiving the most news coverage right now is 'Original Sin: President Biden's Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again,' by journalists Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson. And we just learned the sad news that Biden, now 82, has been diagnosed with an aggressive form of incurable but treatable prostate cancer that has spread to his bones. According to the American Cancer Society, there is only a 37 percent chance that a man with this diagnosis will be alive in five years, although some men survive 10 years or more. I think Biden was an outstanding president who accomplished a great deal for the American people. I voted for him in 2020 and I supported his reelection until he ended his candidacy after his disastrous debate performance against Donald Trump. I hope he is one of the long-term prostate cancer survivors. But we have to face the reality that if he had been reelected, Biden would have had to deal with cancer treatments while president and might not have lived until the end of his term. President Trump, now 78, will be 82 when his term ends in 2029. While repeatedly claiming that Biden has dementia, Trump insists that he is mentally sharp. Yet over 230 psychiatrists and other mental health professionals signed a letter published as an ad in the New York Times in October 2024 saying Trump is 'grossly unfit for leadership' because, among other things, he 'appears to be showing signs of cognitive decline.' A book published in 2017 titled 'The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President' argued that Trump is mentally ill and poses a danger to our nation. Ideally, someone physically or mentally incapable of carrying out the duties of president would not run or would resign from the office. But presidents work hard to attain their position, and they and their staffs don't want to give it up. And although the 25th Amendment allows the vice president and the Cabinet, or a body approved by Congress, to remove an incapacitated president from office, it has never been invoked. It would likely only be used in an extreme case, such as if a president were in a coma. Setting an age limit for future presidents via a constitutional amendment should not be a partisan issue. It would apply to future Democratic, Republican and third-party candidates. America's founders deliberately made the process of amending the Constitution difficult. A constitutional amendment must first be ratified by a two-thirds majority vote in both houses of Congress. The amendment must then be ratified by the legislatures in three-fourths of the states, or 38 of 50, to take effect. The Constitution has only been amended 27 times. An age limit for presidents would be unlikely to come into play frequently. No other presidents beside Biden and Trump took office at age 76 or older. The oldest other presidents when they left office were Dwight Eisenhower at 70 and Ronald Reagan at 77. Eisenhower suffered a massive heart attack in office in 1955 but recovered and was reelected in 1956. Reagan was diagnosed with dementia caused by Alzheimer's in 1994, five years after he left office. There is still debate about whether he began deteriorating mentally while still in the White House. The average age of U.S. presidents upon taking office for the first time is 57. Bad things happen to people at every age, but less frequently for the young and middle-aged than the very old. Only 9 percent of Americans age 75 and older are even employed. Although the vast majority of jobs should remain open to qualified Americans regardless of age, the presidency is in a category all by itself. Going forward, it is in our national interest to have an age cutoff of 75 for our highest office. To believe otherwise borders on the nonsensical. A. Scott Bolden is an attorney, NewsNation contributor and former chair of the Washington, D.C. Democratic Party.
Yahoo
23-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
'Original Sin' sparked a new round of debate over Biden's cognitive decline. Good.
The recent release of a new book from CNN anchor Jake Tapper and Axios reporter Alex Thompson has sparked a fresh news cycle about how Joe Biden and the Democratic Party screwed up the 2024 election by denying his cognitive decline. That news cycle has, in turn, sparked a sizable online backlash, with left-of-center commentators, Democratic strategists and loads of social media users pushing back against the idea that new reporting on the subject is worth covering or paying attention to — and some contending that it is an outright harmful diversion at a time when President Donald Trump is tearing down our democracy. I'm not convinced by the pushback. It's not just always possible to talk about multiple ideas at the same time as a society, it's necessary. And on a substantive level, it's healthy to reflect on the massive errors in judgment committed by Biden's inner circle, elected Democrats, liberal pro-Biden activists and members of the press in order to guard against such scenarios in the future. The shocking amount of time it took for the collective delusion over Biden's decline to be dispelled is a significant part of why we're in the current crisis. And while the next major predicament for the party is unlikely to take exactly the same form — an elderly, diminishing president surrounded by denialist allies — there are always dilemmas in which excessive party discipline can lead to catastrophic groupthink. Tapper and Thompson's book, 'Original Sin: President Biden's Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again,' is based on interviews with around 200 people, including Democratic lawmakers, high-level insiders in the Biden White House and campaign operatives. The book seeks to paint a more detailed picture of how Biden's ill-advised run for a second term unfolded and how it was enabled by people with varying degrees of closeness to him, especially his staunchly loyalist inner circle. 'Original Sin' has loads of damning details. Biden's aides reportedly labored to hide the speed of his decline by altering his schedule, reducing the length of his remarks, scripting his meetings with Cabinet officials, and even doctoring videos with 'slow motion to blur the reality of how slowly he actually walked.' Biden's physician argued with his aides about adding more rest time to his schedule. And Biden forgot the names of longtime aides, including at least one he had worked with for decades. Outside Biden's inner circle, Democrats who didn't see him as often described shock at the shift in his physical appearance and temperament. Cabinet secretaries and senators questioned his ability to process policy and handle crises, and some Democrats perceived him as delegating decision-making in a way a president normally wouldn't. All along the way, there was no serious sustained effort within the party to question Biden's fitness for a second run. While some of this was broadly understood before, the new level of detail and texture is worthwhile stuff for the historical record. 'Original Sin' is not without serious limitations. The anonymous sourcing of the book allows many Democrats to point the finger at Biden and his inner circle and avoid accountability for their own complicity in declining to challenge Biden until it was too late. The book's conceit of a 'cover up' is also worth questioning: Biden's inner circle did try to obscure his changes, but his age-related decline was evident to public observers even during his first presidential run, as I noted in my own commentary as far back as 2020 in which I described his perceivable decline as a serious problem. This was obvious to many voters as well. Throughout Biden's first term — and before the presidential debate that set in motion his decision to drop out of the race — polling indicated that voters, including many Democrats, believed Biden was too old to be president or serve for another term. Finally, the focus on Biden's protective 'politburo' in the book conveniently allows for the press to get more of a free pass than it should, which is particularly notable as Tapper was once one of the most vociferous defenders of Biden's cognitive status in American media. In my eyes, the reporting in the book and the necessary, generative critiques of it are worthwhile endeavors. The timing of the book is not an attempt to 'distract' from Trump's misdeeds, but simply a function of the time required to put together a lot of reporting for a book. If it's not your cup of tea, you can ignore the news coverage and discussion and read the roughly seven trillion other articles that come out about Trump every day. The expectation that a news cycle or round of debate on an issue or a book publishing schedule should conform to the cadences and objectives of a political comms operation is not only misguided, but it's also the same kind of mindset that helped Democrats get into this crisis. One can simultaneously focus on the challenges facing the country and the challenges facing one's own party. Regardless of where one stands on who deserves the most blame, the Biden delusion was an extraordinary instance of groupthink that warrants widespread reflection from Democrats. In an ideal world, developing a more detailed understanding of what was happening at the White House should be salutary, particularly as the party continues to face a widespread age problem. And many Democrats' reluctance to put their names to criticisms of the president and his advisers underscores how vulnerable the party remains. Activists should take note and feel even more emboldened to pressure a party that hardly stands for anything except for moderate opposition to the right's positions. Parties need to be disciplined and work cooperatively with leaders in order to function, including rallying to their side when they make some mistakes. But unconditional loyalty is no virtue — and it can often pave the way for one's own downfall. This article was originally published on
Yahoo
22-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
GOP senator demands Biden officials testify about alleged cover-up of Biden's health problems
Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), the chair of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, is writing letters to two dozen former senior Biden administration officials to appear before his committee to answer what they knew about former President Biden's health problems in light of allegations that White House officials deliberately kept his cognitive and physical decline a secret. 'We've written letters to more than two dozen top administration officials and we've requested interviews with them,' he said. 'It's all the people you think, anybody who should have had frequent contact with the president.' Johnson said his staff is sending letters requesting testimony to former Vice President Kamala Harris, Cabinet officials such as former Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg and Biden's former chief of staff Jeff Zients. Johnson said he would consider issuing subpoenas if his invitations are ignored. 'We'll first politely invite them,' he said. 'Hopefully they'll come in and do an interview.' The Wisconsin senator is asking for former officials to answer some 'basic questions.' 'This doesn't have to be daylong type of interview or even half a day,' he said. 'Give us an hour of your time, we have some basic questions we want to ask you.' 'They owe that to the American public,' he said. Johnson said he's not ruling out subpoenas if he gets stonewalled and noted that he does not need support from the top-raking Democrat on the subcommittee, Sen. Richard Blumenthal (Conn.), to issue them. Biden and former first lady Jill Biden have pushed back hard on reports that the former president's inner circle covered up serious health problems during the second half of his four-year term. Former President Biden told 'The View' earlier this month he could have beaten Trump in November 2024 if he had stayed in the race. He stepped aside after coming under tremendous pressure from Democratic lawmakers and donors not to run for a second term after turning in a disastrous debate performance against Trump in June. Biden insisted he had 'a bad, bad night' in the debate but that it didn't reflect any serious cognitive or health issues. 'There is nothing to sustain that,' he said. Jill Biden said on the program that 'the people who wrote those books' alleging serious mental lapses by the former president 'weren't in the White House with us.' 'They didn't see how hard Joe worked every single day. He'd get up, he'd put in a full day and then at night, I'd be reading my book, and he was still on the phone, reading his briefings, working with staff,' she said. Questions of a possible cover-up of the true extent of former President Biden's health problems have been fueled this week by reporting in a new book by CNN's Jake Tapper and Axios's Alex Thompson that senior White House aides discussed the possibility that Biden would need a wheelchair if elected to a second term. The book, 'Original Sin: President Biden's Decline, Its Cover-up, and his Disastrous Choice to Run Again,' also reports that Biden failed to recognize Hollywood star and major Democratic donor George Clooney when he arrived at a June 2024 fundraiser for the president. Tapper and Thompson wrote that Biden appeared 'severely diminished, as if he'd aged a decade since Clooney last saw him in December 2022.' Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
