New book details how bidens mental decline was kept by the voters: NPR

The year is 2019 and the hopeful President Joe Biden is on a campaign in Iowa. During the event, Biden fights to remember the names of one of his adjutants Mike Donilon.

The problem? The two have known each other since 1981, and Donilon has served as one of the closest helpers of Biden for decades and had only a few steps from the oval office at one point.

It is one of several jarring moments reported in the new book. Original sin: The decline of President Biden, his cover -up and his catastrophic decision to run again, By Jake Tapper from CNN and Alex Thompson from Axios. It draws Biden’s decline of his time in the White House and the efforts of its highest employees to keep this decline hidden from the voters.

Tapper and Thompson joined Look at all things Host Scott Detrow on Thursday to discuss the process of writing the book and why they now thought for the right time for publication.

The upcoming book comes when BIDEN’s personal office announced in a statement on Sunday that he was diagnosed with an “aggressive form” of prostate cancer that metastasized except for the bones. The 82 -year -old bidding was observed last week after a prostate node was found for further tests.

The diagnosis underlines the largest weaknesses that bids have faced in office in his last years.

Those who are near Biden defended him and his presidency despite the book.

Last week, a spokesman for the Biden office said: “We are still waiting for someone to point out where Joe Biden had to make a presidential decision or make a presidential speech in which he could not do his work because of the intellectual decline.”

This interview was easily processed for length and clarity.

Interview highlights

In the presidential debate dacht that triggered the book:

Tapper: Dana Bash, my co-medicator, and I had these iPads so that we could write people in the control room because we obviously cannot speak to them and there were only one or two advertising interruptions. And I wrote “Holy Rauch” while this first, terrible, not driven where he said: “We finally beat Medicare. “I just couldn’t believe it.

I mean, we all saw him age. We all stumbled and false him. We had seen all the evidence for the decline, but the bida team, the family and senior consultants told everyone, not only the media and not only the public, but also democratic donors and members of the congress: “He is fine. It is fine.”

Even today, the inner inner circle believes that he could have won, and still believes that he could do a great job as president by January 2029 as President. At this point it is only deception. I mean we can see It. We spoke to a top democrat who saw what everyone saw: how he didn’t seem great. He was not at the top of things. And look, that’s a guy we saw in public life. He has been in public life since 1972. So we saw him in old age.

When using the expression “cover -up”

Thompson: If it was not a cover -up, why were so many people surprised by the debate? From autumn 2023, our reporting, which is based on the interviews of over 200 people, will show that there were two biodes: there was a functioning bid and non -functioning bidges. And that goes back to 2019. But it almost always worked.

From 2023, however, the ratio of this functioning and non -functioning relationship begins dramatically and also non -functioning bidges. The white house, the people around them – we had a high -ranking officer of the White House who had left because they were upset what happened and did not believe that he should run to re -election.

Prevent yourself: If they don’t work. What is the best way to define that?

Tapper: I would not describe the names of top consultants or close friends. I would say we are all people. We all forget names. We all lose our train of thought. We all see this with people who agree.

We talk about the point that you cannot have a conversation. You are unable to find data, information, knowledge and names you have should have ready.

When he didn’t recognize George Clooney. This is someone who is not just someone he has known for more than 15 years, not just someone with whom he had had serious conversations about Darfur, not just someone who had collected millions of dollars for him and organized this fundraiser. He is also one of the most famous people in the world. So I talk about it. I speak of what we saw in the debate, this non-functioning I-Cannot-Articulate-A-Sentence-Biden.

Prevent yourself: You talked about the context of the cover -up. He gives talk. It appears in public. He fulfills the duties of the presidency. And yet, as they reported, there is a concerted exertion to stand out. What did this circle of helpers do?

Thompson: The one top adjutant who left the White House said that they had deliberately shielded him from other members of the cabinet, other members of the cabinet, other high -ranking high -ranking officials from the White House. The inner circle got smaller and smaller.

This official of the White House said that this was intended so that they did not recognize the extent of the decline. You also saw that the schedule became much closer and limited.

The schedule was much more oriented to seeing the public and other helpers not working.

Prevent yourself: What is the theory for you, which makes the most useful, how we got to this point?

Tapper: We have a chapter in the book that goes into Joe Biden’s legend. Which I do not mean in a pejorative sense, but only the story, the mythology of Joe Biden.

He had a remarkable ability to get up after being pushed to the ground by fate, be it a weak stuttering or the terrible tragedy that took the life of his wife and daughter or two brain aneurysms, etc.

And he says in one of his memoirs: “Stand up” was what his father said to him. And so they measure a man, their ability to do so stand up. And that not only became a mythology, but almost a theology. And like every theology, skepticism was not allowed. And that is the inner circle of bids.

“He can do it. He is a game day. He will do it.” Everyone wrote it down in 2008 and then became the best vice president in history. Everyone wrote it in 2019, 2020, and then defeated Donald Trump. And he is the only one who has ever beaten Donald Trump. And this theology has taken root. It is the theology of the President of the United States. And who is someone who challenges this?

Prevent yourself: I would like to end this interview as you start the book that Joe Biden was convinced in the morning after the election that he could have won.

Tapper: He still thinks that. He still believes that he could have won. He continued The view To pretend this book in advanceWe think. And he was asked about it. And he said: “Well, look, I still have 7 million more votes than Donald Trump.”

And he talks about the election 2020.

I spoke more to his surveys than he ever did, and they didn’t think that. When Chuck Schumer finally had a conversation with Biden, in which he says he believes that bidges should get out. He says: “I spoke to their survey participants. They give them a 5%chance of winning.” And bids didn’t know [Steve] Ricchetti and bidges are shocked to hear that. When I talked to one of the survey about this story, 5%, he said it was probably 1%.