Latest news with #ItsCoverup
Yahoo
13-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Biden ‘totally f***ed' Kamala's chances of winning the Presidency by waiting too long to drop out, top campaign aide says
A top campaign aide during former Vice President Kamala Harris's failed 2024 presidential run has placed the blame for her loss solely at the feet of President Joe Biden, according to a new book. David Plouffe, who was drafted into Harris's campaign after Biden stepped away from the race last summer, didn't parse words, saying the then-president "totally f***ed us" by not dropping out of the race sooner. Before working with Harris, Plouffe managed former President Barack Obama's winning 2008 campaign and served as a senior adviser in his White House. He gave his unfiltered opinions in Original Sin: President Biden's Decline, Its Cover up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again, a new book by Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson. Plouffe is quoted as calling Harris's 107-day campaign "a f***ing nightmare," which he said was "all Biden." In the book, Plouffe says he received calls from several donors worried about what they saw as Biden's declining health and cognitive skills, and his ability to deliver speeches. He said he pushed the White House and the Democratic Party on whether or not they really felt hitching their electoral hopes to Biden again in 2024 was the best course of action. In addition to Plouffe, authors Tapper and Thompson spoke to approximately 200 people, including members of Congress, the White House, and campaign insiders about the campaign. Plouffe wasn't the only one sounding the alarm about Biden, according to their reporting. A senior aide, who quit the White House because they did not believe Biden should be running, told the authors that "we attempted to shield him from his own staff so many people didn't realize the extent of the decline beginning in 2023." The staffer said that they "love Joe Biden," but also felt that it was " a disservice to the country and to the party for his family and advisers to allow him to run again.' Another prominent Democratic strategist accused Biden of "stealing" a 2024 victory from the American public. 'It was an abomination. He stole an election from the Democratic party; he stole it from the American people," the strategist reportedly said. The book also reveals that Biden's aides had discussed his potential use of a wheelchair if he were re-elected. 'Biden's physical deterioration — most apparent in his halting walk — had become so severe that there were internal discussions about putting the president in a wheelchair, but they couldn't do so until after the election,' Tapper and Thompson write. Aides at the time believed that putting Biden in a chair during the election would hurt his chances of beating Donald Trump. But Biden's doctor, Kevin O'Connor, reportedly 'privately said that if [Biden] had another bad fall, a wheelchair might be necessary for what could be a difficult recovery.' The book further claims that Biden did not recognize actor George Clooney — who eventually called for the president to step away from the race, despite his admiration for him — during a 2024 fundraiser. While questions of Biden's apparent decline were circulating behind closed doors in the White House and Democratic movers and shakers, the public focus on his cognitive abilities came to a head following his disastrous debate performance against Trump in June of 2024. According to the book, Senator Chuck Schumer confronted Biden after the debate at his home in Rehoboth, Delaware, and tried to convince him to step aside to preserve his legacy. He reportedly warned that if he continued and lost to Trump, half a century of "amazing, beautiful work goes out the window." "But it's worse than that – you will go down in American history as one of the darkest figures," Schumer reportedly said. Biden reportedly replied to Schumer by telling him he had "bigger balls than anyone I've ever met." The former president did eventually heed the calls to step aside, but many of the book's subjects argue it was too late to salvage an effective campaign.
Telegraph
28-02-2025
- Politics
- Telegraph
The progressive media still faces a reckoning for covering up Joe Biden's cognitive decline
If only CNN's Jake Tapper – and so many others in his line of work – could go back in time. Tapper became the subject of conservative scorn this week after announcing that he and ace Axios reporter Alex Thompson had authored a new book about the collapse of former president Joe Biden's re-election campaign. According to publisher Penguin Random House, Original Sin: President Biden's Decline, Its Coverup, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again tells the story of how Biden, 'his family, and his senior aides were so convinced that only he could beat [Donald] Trump again, they lied to themselves, allies, and the public about his condition and limitations'. But 'the consequences of that deception were exposed to the world' last June at a debate moderated by none other than Tapper. It's a worthy subject; and there's no one better to write about it than Thompson, who doggedly reported on Biden's condition for years. Tapper, however, is another matter. A clip of the CNN anchor has resurfaced, in which he lectures Lara Trump back in 2020 for associating Biden's 'stutter' with 'cognitive decline'. 'How do you think it makes little kids with stutters feel when they see you make a comment like that?' he asked her at the time. Biden had already insisted that his gaffes had nothing to do with his childhood stutter. But Tapper appeared determined to reach for any excuse to explain away Biden's behaviour. To be fair to the face of the Left-leaning cable news network, Biden's condition seemed to deteriorate considerably between 2020 and 2024, even if the signs of what was to come were there early on. But Tapper persisted in peddling soft defences of the former president even when his cognitive decline became impossible to ignore. After Special Counsel Robert Hur revealed that Biden could no longer recall major events from his time as vice-president, or remember the year in which his son Beau died, Tapper continued to cite Biden's 'stutter' during discussions of his age, and even suggested that the stunning memory lapses were not 'disqualifying' during an interview with Democratic congressman Adam Schiff. Still, for all of his shortcomings, Tapper was tougher on Biden than most of his peers, digging into the issue repeatedly on his show. The more alarming aspect to this story is that swathes of the US media are still refusing to acknowledge their complicity in covering up the truth about Biden's fitness to serve. Biden's decline was not rank, partisan speculation. It was observable, readily apparent fact. But most of America's Fourth Estate – just 3.4 per cent of whom identify as Republicans, according to a study in 2023 – denied that fact presumably because it was an inconvenient one that imperilled Biden's chances of defeating Trump again. 'In Greek tragedy, the protagonist's effort to avoid his fate is what seals his fate. In 2024, American politics became a Greek tragedy,' begins the publisher's description of Original Sin. The tragedy of much of the US media was not just its transparent willingness to collude in a cover-up designed to protect Biden's re-election chances, but its continued, shameful refusal to avoid a reckoning for that cover-up. It was only when it became clear that he would lose to Trump that they sprung into action with all the zeal of a convert. Thompson and Tapper's work will doubtlessly yield invaluable information about the inner workings of the plot to secure a second term for a man incapable of serving one. But it also ought to account for the brazen role journalists played in it until the moment they realised it wouldn't work.
Yahoo
28-02-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
The progressive media still faces a reckoning for covering up Joe Biden's cognitive decline
If only CNN's Jake Tapper – and so many others in his line of work – could go back in time. Tapper became the subject of conservative scorn this week after announcing that he and ace Axios reporter Alex Thompson had authored a new book about the collapse of former president Joe Biden's re-election campaign. According to publisher Penguin Random House, Original Sin: President Biden's Decline, Its Coverup, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again tells the story of how Biden, 'his family, and his senior aides were so convinced that only he could beat [Donald] Trump again, they lied to themselves, allies, and the public about his condition and limitations'. But 'the consequences of that deception were exposed to the world' last June at a debate moderated by none other than Tapper. It's a worthy subject; and there's no one better to write about it than Thompson, who doggedly reported on Biden's condition for years. Tapper, however, is another matter. A clip of the CNN anchor has resurfaced, in which he lectures Lara Trump back in 2020 for associating Biden's 'stutter' with 'cognitive decline'. 'How do you think it makes little kids with stutters feel when they see you make a comment like that?' he asked her at the time. Biden had already insisted that his gaffes had nothing to do with his childhood stutter. But Tapper appeared determined to reach for any excuse to explain away Biden's behaviour. To be fair to the face of the Left-leaning cable news network, Biden's condition seemed to deteriorate considerably between 2020 and 2024, even if the signs of what was to come were there early on. But Tapper persisted in peddling soft defences of the former president even when his cognitive decline became impossible to ignore. After Special Counsel Robert Hur revealed that Biden could no longer recall major events from his time as vice-president, or remember the year in which his son Beau died, Tapper continued to cite Biden's 'stutter' during discussions of his age, and even suggested that the stunning memory lapses were not 'disqualifying' during an interview with Democratic congressman Adam Schiff. Still, for all of his shortcomings, Tapper was tougher on Biden than most of his peers, digging into the issue repeatedly on his show. The more alarming aspect to this story is that swathes of the US media are still refusing to acknowledge their complicity in covering up the truth about Biden's fitness to serve. Biden's decline was not rank, partisan speculation. It was observable, readily apparent fact. But most of America's Fourth Estate – just 3.4 per cent of whom identify as Republicans, according to a study in 2023 – denied that fact presumably because it was an inconvenient one that imperilled Biden's chances of defeating Trump again. 'In Greek tragedy, the protagonist's effort to avoid his fate is what seals his fate. In 2024, American politics became a Greek tragedy,' begins the publisher's description of Original Sin. The tragedy of much of the US media was not just its transparent willingness to collude in a cover-up designed to protect Biden's re-election chances, but its continued, shameful refusal to avoid a reckoning for that cover-up. It was only when it became clear that he would lose to Trump that they sprung into action with all the zeal of a convert. Thompson and Tapper's work will doubtlessly yield invaluable information about the inner workings of the plot to secure a second term for a man incapable of serving one. But it also ought to account for the brazen role journalists played in it until the moment they realised it wouldn't work. Isaac Schorr is a staff writer at Mediaite and a Robert Novak fellow Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
