Cascade PBS: Tapper, Thompson, and Pesca

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Gist – Cascade PBS: Tapper, Thompson, and Pesca

Release Date: July 5, 2025
Host: Mike Pesca
Guests: Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson
Topic: Discussion on the book "Original Sin" by Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson, which delves into President Joe Biden's decline, its cover-up, and the repercussions of his decision to seek re-election.

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1. Introduction to the Ideas Festival and Book Overview

Mike Pesca opens the episode by welcoming Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson to the Cascade PBS Ideas Festival in Seattle. He introduces their book, Original Sin, highlighting its focus on President Biden's declining capabilities and the subsequent attempts to conceal this decline from the public and within his administration.

Mike Pesca [00:04]: "... the best interview you're gonna hear on it quite clearly."

2. The Premise of "Original Sin"

Tapper and Thompson outline the core thesis of their book: President Biden's mental and physical decline, the orchestration by his close advisors to mask this deterioration, and the consequential decision to run for a second term despite evident limitations.

3. Evidence of Biden's Decline

Alex Thompson presents tangible evidence from private schedules of President Biden between 2023 and 2024, showcasing a highly constrained daily routine that accommodated his limitations.

Alex Thompson [05:22]: "His day is a few meetings from 10 to 1... and back to the residence by 4:30pm that was the full day."

Jake Tapper shares anecdotes from within the administration, including instances where Biden failed to recognize long-time associates, indicating a significant cognitive decline.

Jake Tapper [04:41]: "Adam Smith. Adam Smith."

4. The Tight-Knit Politburo

The discussion delves into the formation of an insular group of advisors, dubbed the "Politburo," who exerted excessive control over Biden's decisions, effectively isolating him from honest feedback and critical discourse.

Jake Tapper [12:02]: "Put... They became taller and thicker during COVID."

Alex Thompson [21:53]: "... undoubted loyalty... seen as disloyalty."

5. Consequences of Concealing the Decline

Pesca and the guests explore how this concealment led to a lack of transparency and accountability, culminating in Biden's decision to seek re-election despite evidence suggesting he was unelectable in a competitive race.

Jake Tapper [16:15]: "This decision... meant that a very strong bench... did not get a chance to run."

6. Critical Moments Highlighting Decline

Several key moments are discussed that epitomize Biden's struggles:

• The Presidential Debate: A night where Biden appeared non-functional and out of control, a stark contrast to his earlier demeanor.

  Jake Tapper [08:00]: "That was just the Joe Biden that's fine, but he's fine... And then there's the one that we saw the night of the debate."

• Missile Incident in Poland: Biden's delayed response due to his curtailed schedules raised concerns about his ability to handle national security crises.

  Jake Tapper [29:28]: "But that was... We did not find anything in there."

7. Impact on the Democratic Party

The book argues that Biden's decision to run again, despite his limitations, contributed to the election of Donald Trump in a subsequent term. The lack of viable Democratic candidates and internal distrust further exacerbated the party's challenges.

Jake Tapper [16:00]: "The Democratic Party... was exposed to people or portrayed in people's minds as lying to them."

8. Reception and Reactions

Tapper and Thompson discuss the polarized reception of their book. While it garnered positive reviews among the general public, it faced fierce backlash from both progressive Democrats and conservatives. Internal Democratic figures have remained largely silent or defensive.

Jake Tapper [40:35]: "The reception to the book has been norm, has been great among normal people... But the reception among official liberals... has been ferocious."

9. Ethical Considerations in Reporting

The authors reflect on the ethical dilemmas faced during their investigation, such as ensuring the anonymity of sources while striving for transparency and factual accuracy.

Alex Thompson [39:35]: "We agreed to make them anonymous. So we tried to get them all."

10. Conclusion and Broader Implications

Mike Pesca wraps up the discussion by emphasizing the book's significance in understanding the fragility of democratic institutions when leadership falters. The conversation underscores the necessity for vigilance, accountability, and the importance of having capable leadership to navigate complex national and international challenges.

Jake Tapper [41:28]: "... allowed for a discussion about something very important to every single person in this room..."

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This episode of The Gist offers an in-depth exploration of Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson's investigative work on President Biden's administration, shedding light on internal dynamics and the profound implications of concealed leadership shortcomings.

Transcript

[Mike Pesca]

Hi, it's Mike. It's Saturday after a Friday, or maybe it's a weekend Saturday. I'm going to give you the long talk book interview I did with Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson, recorded out in Seattle. I got the, I got the tape from Cascade PBS who was nice enough to invite me. The name of the book is Original Sin. You've probably heard a lot about it, but this is the best interview you're gonna hear on it quite clearly. So Jake and Alex, and Alex was absolutely in the middle of this while it happened. Jake after the fact, as you'll hear, said, you know, I owe it to myself as a journalist and I owe it to journalism to go and do the interviews that I couldn't do while Biden was in office to try to figure out what happened. And that's what we bring to the crowd at Cascade pbs, the Ideas festival. And the Ideas festival that is ongoing every day on the gist of original sin. Up next, high interest debt is one of the toughest opponents you'll face unless you power up with a SOFI personal loan. A SOFI personal loan could repackage your bad debt into one low fixed rate monthly payment. It's even got super speed since you could get the funds as soon as the same day you sign. Visit sofi.compower to learn more. That's sofi.com p o w e r loans originated by SoFi bank and a member FDIC. Terms and conditions apply. NMLS 696891.

[Jake Tapper]

This is one of the most spectacular.

[Alex Thompson]

Venues with all kinds of character and hospitality scenery. These people in this gitatas valley, they love when you come to see see what they have to offer.

[Mike Pesca]

I'm J.J. harris, an Ellensburg rodeo clown and I want to invite you to the rodeo. Come hang out with us in Ellensburg. Great rodeo, great time. Two performances on Saturday. One is the extreme bulls of the year event. Do not miss the Ellensburg Rodeo August 29th through September 1st. We'll see you there.

[Alex Thompson]

Hi everyone.

[Mike Pesca]

Thank you all for coming. This is a great ideas festival. I have been in the past to notions get togethers and inkling soirees, but this is an ideas festival. This is gonna nail it. What I'm gonna do is read a little from the prompter. Then you know you'll have a chance to applaud very robustly and then we'll talk. Hello and welcome to the Cascade PBS Ideas Festival. I am Mike Pesca. I host of the Gist. Let's go back. What do you say we Go back. That's one other this is only going to happen now. Here we go. Hello and welcome to the Cascade PBS Ideas Festival. I'm Mike Pesca, host of the Gist Podcast. The press corps and the presidency are two institutions that have forever been locked in a duel and a dance. The media always wants more. More access, more information, more scoops. Presidents have traditionally resisted trying to control the narrative sh, the stories that we're told and to try to influence the messages that reach the public. And that is all normal. What is not normal became apparent to almost all Americans one summer night during a presidential debate. And that is the topic of the zeitgeist shaping new book Original President Biden's decline, its cover up and his disastrous choice to run again. Welcome with me Jake Tapper, Alex Thompson, authors of Original Sin. So as I said, Zeitgeist defining this is the kind of book that even if the people here haven't read it, maybe they read the excerpt in the New York or maybe they've heard a few of the interviews you've done that you've not been lacking for. I understand that bring back carpool karaoke just for you guys. So what I want to do is to lay out some of the major claims and then give you each a chance to highlight one or two. So we should note there are four cabinet members in the book who talk about President Biden's decline at different stages. There are a few named members of Congress. Seth Moulton is one. Annie Carnes is one.

[Jake Tapper]

Adam Smith. Adam Smith.

[Mike Pesca]

Adam Smith is one. There is an unnamed foreign head of state. There are the big donors. There's Bill Daley, there's Jeffrey Katzenberg, people who say, I've known Biden for years. He wasn't the same Biden. I shook his hand. He seemed frail. More than a few people said something like he seemed like my dad before he died. So we can't get to all the whole scope of this tapestry that you weave, but just each of you give me a thread, if you will, an anecdote that one of your sources told you that brings alive what the situation was. Alex, you could start.

[Alex Thompson]

Well, this isn't a story a source told me, but rather months of President Biden's private schedules that were given to me in 2023 and 2024. And what you can clearly see now, we as reporters saw the public schedules in that, you know, he obviously didn't do many events in front of a camera after 4pm didn't do many events in front of cameras before 10am but the private schedule was also incredibly constricted. And what it showed was that basically the White House apparatus was. Was slowly adapting to his limitations and to his decline. There was one day in particular that always stands out, which it was October 3, 2023. And it's not an outlier either. There's many days that are very similar to this. And basically his day is a few meetings from 10 to 1, about two hours of what they called POTUS time, a half hour of desk time, and then a short meeting with his chief of staff and then dinner and back to the residence by 4:30pm that was the full day. And seeing months of these calendars over the course of late 2023 and 2024, I think just showed how, despite some saying that this was sort of in plain sight, people were worried about his age, that in private there were also a lot of things being done to control for his limitations.

[Jake Tapper]

If I could just take one second just to thank everybody at the Cascade PBS Ideas Festival for hosting us. It's really exciting, excited, exciting to be here. Thank you to Mike and his wife for coming all the way from Brooklyn, and thanks to friends of mine who are here, Howie and Rachel, and some others for turning up. I have a second cousin named Steve Scherer who's like a PBS legend in Seattle. Is he here? I don't know if Steve is here. There he is. That's my second cousin, Steve Scherer, who I've never met.

[Mike Pesca]

Wow. PBS bringing.

[Jake Tapper]

I'm sorry, not pbs, npr. Npr. Sorry, sorry, sorry. We were talking about PBS and NPR backstage, so I got confused. NPR legend says, steve, please come by so I can say hi to you and we can send a picture to my dad. Sorry about that.

[Mike Pesca]

You want to go over dinner plans or.

[Jake Tapper]

We got a book tour to go. I wish we had time. So there are a lot of stories. And when Alex and I started reporting on this after the election, to be completely candid, we didn't know what we were going to get. We didn't know how much there was going to be. We were going to be able to mine. And we were surprised at how much we got. We got so much that some of the things that we got early on in the reporting process didn't even end up in the book because of word limitations. Yeah, I'll tell you one of those. Just because it's not in the book. But Congressman Aguilar from California, right after the debate, he does an event in New York with Hakeem Jeffries and President Obama and President Obama is trying to do his thing about like we all have bad debates and you know, it's not really legitimate. Obama's one bad debate was he seemed a little peeved, but he didn't seem, you know, non functioning or addled in any way anyway. And Aguilar comes back to California with his wife and they've got two teenage kids, two teenage boys and they're trying to do the spin. Congressman Aguilar, who's the third ranking House Democrat to the kids about one bad night, he had a cold and the two teenage boys are just not buying it. And they're like holding up the TikTok videos and they're like, come on mom and dad. But I think there are just a lot of moments that we got in the book where we just could not believe the story. And one of the most shocking ones was in the New Yorker excerpt which was that President Biden didn't seem to recognize George Clooney when he saw him backstage at that big fundraiser that George Clooney was a co host for that raised a record $30 million for his campaign. And George Clooney had known President Biden since he met him after 911 and he dealt with him as an activist against the genocide in Darfur when he was vice president and on and on. And that was, I mean that's just a shocking thing. And it also just explains why Clooney wrote the op ed he did because he saw what every one of us saw debate night. He saw it backstage at that fundraiser. And we just have lots of anecdotes like that of moments we all age and we all lose our train of thought and we all forget names. And this isn't that. This is what we uncovered in our reporting is that there was the fine Joe Biden that you know, if he shows up on TV not threatening to beat us up, which he did the other day. I guess people don't know that. Okay, nevermind. You guys don't watch enough cnn. So the Joe Biden that's fine seems old, but he's fine. And then there's the one that we saw the night of the debate who's non functioning. It doesn't seem in control, doesn't seem in command. And there was just that Joe Biden. We wanted to know how much that person reared his head before the debate night. And we found out it was more than you'd be comfortable with.

[Mike Pesca]

Yeah, unless you come away with the impression or one comes away with the impression that this is mostly affecting. That was one of the strengths of the book to me that it was deep. It wasn't just communication or affect. It wasn't even my conclusion. It was the people closest to him coming to that conclusion. So all presidents have to be gatekept, otherwise the job's impossible. Around him are a series of close advisors that you call, because that's what Biden world called it, the Politburo. Were the walls higher and, and thicker with the Politburo than any other president that you've reported on or encountered?

[Alex Thompson]

Certainly that I've reported on Jake's report on more White Houses than I have. But also it was that way to members of the Cabinet. They could not believe the amount of control and access that these people had. And it went beyond even members of the cabinet, members of Congress, other senior members of the Democratic Party.

[Mike Pesca]

They've dealt with other presidents.

[Jake Tapper]

Put.

[Alex Thompson]

Yes, exactly. And you know, like, I mean, I think we have a story of Adam Smith that basically, I think he only spoke to President Biden one time and that was just about Afghanistan. It was very brief.

[Mike Pesca]

Chair, was he? Chair of Foreign Relations, Armed Services.

[Jake Tapper]

He's the top Democrat until Republicans take the House back. But yeah, yeah, I mean he's a very important player during a time when.

[Mike Pesca]

We'Re funding the Ukraine war and that major issue. Spoke to him once.

[Alex Thompson]

Sorry, yeah, no. And you know, we talked to a senior White House official who left in 2024 and listen, like the, the walls had already been high and thick at the beginning of the presidency and became that way even when he was running for president. They became taller and thicker during COVID And then this one senior White House official who left in early 2024 because they objected to him running for a second term confessed to us that they were intentionally, especially beginning in late 2023, they were intentionally shielding him not just from the press, but from his own staff so that people do not realize the severity of the decline. So it's really like late 2023, early 2024, those walls are getting almost impenetrable. And they, they were hiding that non functioning Biden that at times adult Biden from the American people and from fellow Democrats. And ultimately like the debate is just their luck ran out because they had obviously been able to manage him to the point where he was able to give that great State of the Union address or at least vibrant State of the Union address. And then.

[Mike Pesca]

But there were improvisational moments too. It was just reading off and off.

[Alex Thompson]

Exactly.

[Mike Pesca]

He got a lot of strength from that. He parried with Republicans in the crowd 100%, yes.

[Jake Tapper]

So I've covered White Houses since Bill Clinton's White House. And you just can't compare how insular and how small this group was. And the other thing that I think is important about it is with the exception of Donald Trump, who I think surrounds himself especially this term as opposed to his first term, he surrounds himself with a lot of yes men, people who just tell him what he wants to hear. I think that that's what Biden had too. I'm not comparing the two men, I'm not comparing the two presidencies, but the style of leadership is the same. And I think, Mike, you would agree that one of the things that is important for a leader in any field, media business, Starbucks, Amazon, is to have people around you who can tell you that's a bad idea, that's a mistake. Let's talk about this some more because otherwise big mistakes are made. And I think that Biden, President Biden, had removed a lot of those people from his group. And let me just make other one other point because I recognize that this is a blue city in a blue state and it's a PBS ideas festival. We are not unsympathetic to Joe Biden in this book. We respect his service. We respect all of the hardships that the fates have thrown at him. I do not think this is a mean book. This is about a consequential decision, a bad decision in retrospect that he made. We try to explain why he made it. We try to explain the world from his point of view, why it should not have happened. And for people who are saying, why aren't you covering Trump? Well, I do two hours every day, so I do do that, as does Alex. But beyond that is the simple answer of this is how we got a second term of Donald Trump. Because this happened because Joe Biden decided to run for reelection even though he had made an implicit, not explicit, but implicit promise he would be a one term president. And then even after it became very clear that he was having these moments that made it clear he could not do this job of being president for another term. And I don't really think there's any serious debate that he today would be capable of being president until January 2029, I just don't think, even before the tragic cancer diagnosis, I just don't think he would be up for that. That decision meant that a very strong bench, including Jay Inslee or I'm trying to think who would draw applause a name, but apparently I failed. But a very strong Democratic bench Did not get a chance to run. Whether you're a fan of Newsom or Shapiro or Whitmer or Warnock or whatever. And that that attempt to suppress and hide from you, from you what he was having moments of behind the scenes meant that once it was exposed to everybody on June 27, 2024, in my personal view, and I think Alex is in the view of a lot of Democrats that are around the Biden White House and the Harris campaign, ultimately there was just no recovering from that. It just the Democratic Party, whether or not every Democrat knew or not, a Democratic official was exposed to people or portrayed in people's minds as lying to them.

[Mike Pesca]

Yeah.

[Jake Tapper]

And that's a real mistake with real consequences. And you know, you're reading about them in the paper every day.

[Mike Pesca]

There's another subtle difference here. Mostly when we think about what were the consequences of Joe Biden's mental acuity slipping to the degree that it did, mostly the analysis is something like what you said that made him unelectable. And then play out the string. Would Kamala Harris be able to in her 107 days beat Trump? And the answer was no. So the premise is the consequence of him having mental slippage was that he was unelectable to America. But I'll raise another point. If he had mental acuity, he very well, and I'd like to hear what you think about it. He, he very well might have decided to do what he promised or strongly implied in 2020. He might have said, I'm going to be the bridge. Because part of mental processing is having a theory of self is having an understanding of how you come across and what your powers are. And so I think perhaps it's true that the mental slippage also led him to the bad decision to run again.

[Alex Thompson]

I think that's possible. But what our reporting shows is that to believe that Joe Biden was going to be a bridge and a one term president is not really is sort of ignoring the previous 79 years of his life. As one person you have put it to us is like he is nothing if not for this. He has put everything his entire life and he has basically made this a family, you know, drive for decades. I mean, this is a guy that wanted to run for president as soon as he was constitutionally eligible.

[Mike Pesca]

And he got elected to the Senate right before he was old enough to be in the Senate.

[Alex Thompson]

Yes, he was 29 years old.

[Jake Tapper]

His birthday was. Yeah, he turned 30 between election day and swearing in day it's constitutional, but.

[Mike Pesca]

He'S a young man in a hurry.

[Alex Thompson]

Yeah.

[Jake Tapper]

I have to say, I agree. You know, I'm a fan of yours, and I love how you throw out theories and everything. It's one of the reasons I listen to you all the time and all that. But I think he's just like every president, like every politician, an egomaniac. And like, he was always gonna serve as Texas.

[Mike Pesca]

Yeah.

[Jake Tapper]

I mean, I.

[Mike Pesca]

It's hard to get there. And once you get there, you don't wanna leave.

[Jake Tapper]

Yeah. So I don't know that I buy that theory, but as Alex says, it's possible.

[Mike Pesca]

Yeah. Now, as far as the politburo and the specific people, I'd like to invite everyone in the room to close their eyes and picture Mike Donelan. You're not thinking of anything, are you? Because he's unknown to you. You may have heard the name. And so this is my question. How. How does so much power. Or Anthony Bernal, and even less constitutionally vetted or approved by. And you could explain who he is. Approved by Congress. How in such men who are advisors to the president, how does such power reside?

[Alex Thompson]

Well, I think once you get into the White House, I mean, once you're victorious, you have a ton of automatic power, and then it's just wielded in different ways. And the way that this. This White House works. So Anthony Bernal was the First Lady, Joe Biden's chief of staff, almost inarguably the most powerful chief of staff to a first lady ever. Because not only did he have his fingers in Biden's schedule, every single event, you know, personnel that were placed and making sure that there was loyalty, you know, he also, and the first lady were basically the ones, you know, people would allude to them as loyalty police. That he sets the direction and dissent was seen as disloyalty. And, you know, it speaks to Jake's point before where, you know, you need people that are willing to get in your face and say no. And over time, those people were solely, you know, excommunicated from, like, the bia, the Biden circle. So I think the. And I guess you say, so how do these people, these few people, get power? It's because they were undisputably loyal and they had been with him for a long time. And that group of people is not that big.

[Mike Pesca]

And we'll be back in a minute with more of me talking to Jake and Alex from this live forum. Stay tuned. We're back with me, Mike Pesca interviewing Jake Tapper, Alex Thompson, on their book Original Sin. This was recorded In Seattle last month, just. I was looking Anthony Bernal. You had broken a story on him or reported a bit about his personality and how loathed he was to this day. Anthony Bernal, one of the two or three most consequential people in keeping Biden from his staff and the public. He has a Wikipedia entry of seven sentences. And by way of comparison, Brutus the barber beefcake, who was a wrestler in the 80s. 158 sentences. So it does seem that something went wrong. And I wouldn't say it was because Anthony Bernal is a Svengali or so damn skilled at what he was doing. He had to be serving some sort of fool. It wasn't Anthony Bernal or even Donilon making the decision. Was anyone?

[Alex Thompson]

I mean, I think the Biden's in the family.

[Jake Tapper]

You really have to. At the end of the day, Joe Biden had enough acuity to know what he was doing. He had enough acuity to know his limitations. Even under the degree of delusion he might have been. He had to have known. I'm having trouble walking, I'm having trouble talking, I'm having trouble remembering names and that. Look, none of this is comfortable to talk about or acknowledge. I mean, mortality and aging are two things that we all go through and probably the least talked about things that we all go through and. But I think that you can't take away his agency here and Jill Biden's agency here and Hunter Biden's agency here, because they really were the most important players. There was no process for Joe Biden deciding he was going to run for reelection. The decision was just made by him. There's this story about him talking to his grandkids, but, you know, that's not real. He made the decision he was going to run and everybody just got in line. And Bernal was basically Jill's enforcer, and Donilon and this other guy, Steve Richetti, were basically the President's enforcers. And all the decisions flowed from there. And there was, we have an anecdote in the book of a guy named John Anzalone, fantastic pollster, had been with Biden since 1987, since his presidential race in 1987. Some of you perhaps may remember he didn't even make it to 1988 because he was kind of driven out of the race because of accusations of plagiarism from his speech. And Anzalone had been with him since then. He could tell you about where he was in Des Moines when he heard Joe Biden do the Neil Kinnock speech or the recitation of that verse. And Anzalone was basically early on, kind of pushed out of any sphere of influence. He had done the polling for the 2020 campaign. And then early on, he was sending memos to the White House from outside the White House saying. Because a lot of times pollsters are not in the White House, they're outside. They have other clients, et cetera. And I don't even know if any White House has, like, an official pollster. It's probably gauche. It's always like, the party or some outside consultant paid for by the party. But anyway, he's sending memos saying, people are really concerned about inflation. People are really concerned about the border. And basically, those memos, a couple of them, leak to the New York Times. He's blamed for it, even though the New York Times made it very clear that they did not come from him. They came from people inside the building he shunted aside. And obviously, he also had been concerned about the aging process and what that was doing to the president. When he comes to have a meeting in 2023, early 2023, he's like, okay, this is before the president had announced he was running for reelection in April. And he says, okay, we need to poll for this. He's talking to Jen o' Malley Dhillon, who goes on to become the campaign chair, and Anita Dunn, who's basically senior advisors for communications. You know, we did polls for this. We need to find out what the areas of weakness and strength are for this having to do with his age. And he's told by Anita Dunn, there's no process. The decision's been made. He's running, and he can't believe it. So, I mean, when you have a small group of people who are willing to say, we are full steam ahead, right into the iceberg, that's a problem.

[Mike Pesca]

Yeah. Yeah. So you describe essentially three camps. Camp one is people in denial or say they're in denial. Camp two are people who say something like, you're right, we've all seen him have those moments. But it's most communication. And camp three is communication's really important to the job of the President. So two questions about that. One is the camp shifted over time? Right. Did the people in the third camp who were very worried, did it take the debate for them to talk among each other or realize how bad it was, do you think?

[Alex Thompson]

I think in some cases, because of the culture in that building, if you said anything, then you were automatically suspect. Like, if you ever raise doubts about his age, then People would be like, what do you mean? He's as sharp as ever. You know the line. Right. He's running circles around us. You couldn't.

[Mike Pesca]

Behind closed doors.

[Alex Thompson]

Yes. Behind closed. You would be shocked if you were in the room with him. Right. And so I do think the debate gave permission. And I can tell this, too, because I was able to write a lot of stories after the debate because not only were they finally willing to talk to each other, they were also finally willing to talk to reporters that, like, they had been noticing things that gave them pause, that worried them. And now they realize that the consequences of having not said anything could mean not just Donald Trump winning, but Republicans getting huge majorities in Congress. I'd also say just one little thing on the third camp. I would say there are many people in the third camp that don't just think it was a communications issue, that they thought that he was limited in his ability to do the job and that his age affected and honestly made him a less effective president.

[Jake Tapper]

We had Cabinet secretaries tell us that if the proverbial 2am phone call that the president gets in the middle of the night because there's a national security emergency, they did not think these are Cabinet secretaries, just to underline this, Cabinet secretaries. They did not think President Biden in 2024 could have handled one of those. So. So one of the pushbacks that comes from the Biden camp is, okay, but you can't point to any bad national security decision or any consequential decision that he made that was affected by any of this, which is not true. And we can talk about that later. There's also the. Well, thank God that we didn't have one of those 2:00am phone calls.

[Mike Pesca]

Right. There was when the Polish missile, sorry, the Ukrainian missile landed in Poland, but it was. It's unclear where it came from.

[Jake Tapper]

Right. But that was. So you're good. So he started by 2023, really, on the foreign trips. He would not do the working dinners, which are important. It's part of the job to have good relationships with world leaders. It's not just about what you're eating. And Secretary Blinken, the Secretary of State, would do a lot of them. And there was one of them that he didn't do. He went to bed early. And that night he was woken up in the middle of the night because of that missile crisis. Because, remember, at first everybody thought maybe it was a Russian missile and the Russians were attacking Poland. It was actually the fear that it was a bigger crisis, NATO ally. But the, the good News was that he had gone to bed early. So he was able to do what he was able to do.

[Mike Pesca]

Well, the very good news was it wasn't Russia.

[Jake Tapper]

Right.

[Mike Pesca]

That's nothing.

[Jake Tapper]

That's number, number one. Number one good. Well, if we're doing that, number one good news is World War III didn't start and we're all still here.

[Mike Pesca]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Jake Tapper]

So, but, but then. Yeah. And. But again, David Axelrod makes this point again, very loyal Democrat, helped get Obama elected, et cetera, et cetera. David Axelrod makes this point when people would say at the fundraiser, at the Clooney fundraiser, oh, it's a really rough schedule. And that's why he seemed a little out of it. And it had been a rough schedule in June, Normandy, an 80 year Normandy anniversary in France, flies back because Hunter has a trial in Wilmington, is convicted, flies back for the G7 in Italy, and then flies to Los Angeles for that fundraiser. And that's all within two weeks or so. And that's a big schedule. That's also what presidents do. That's also the job. This is not running for mayor of Tacoma. No offense to the mayor of Tacoma. It's hissing. Okay. I'm just saying, like, it's not. In terms of your travel schedule, being mayor of Tacoma, I'm sure is a very important, challenging job.

[Mike Pesca]

Sure.

[Jake Tapper]

But you are not the leader of the free world. Going to Ukraine and going to France. I mean, it's just different. So that idea that, like, well, he had a really rough travel schedule, I don't even understand that as an argument. Yes. He's the President of the United States.

[Mike Pesca]

Yeah. So there is. When I talk to Democratic friends of mine, one of the shows I host is called Not Even Mad Michael Cohen. Not that Michael Cohen. Democratic Michael Cohen just was. They have not proved that there was one policy that Joe Biden screwed up because of his mental acuity.

[Jake Tapper]

Hasn't read the book.

[Mike Pesca]

Well, I would. So I counter, as a counterpoint, said, you know, Michael Bennet, Colorado senator, this guy's so good. Points out that in the first year of the administration, there was a pretty robust plan about immigration. And that plan just seemed to evaporate. And there was no way to get the White House to talk about this very serious issue. Mayorkas talks about this and it was probably the number one issue that redounded in his face. That and inflation. And then you have to wonder while he was debating with Joe Manchin and others about whether to pass what was called the Inflation Reduction act, the progressives wanted so much more money in the bill, was he on top of things? Larry Summers and Jason Furman, two big Democratic mainstay economists, were saying, you can't have this much in the bill. It's going to cause inflation. Do we know that he even got that piece of advice from people who would normally be exactly in the ear of centrist, reasonable President Joe Biden? Do we know that?

[Alex Thompson]

Well, I mean, you gave half of our answer, I think, right there. But I would say the thing that I've always been frustrated by this argument is that a lot of those same people, and I don't know what Michael thinks, but like, these are sort of Biden defenders. Yeah. They will admit. Yes. Like his schedule is often curtailed to 10 to 4. Yes. He didn't have as much energy. Yes. He could not really, you know, speak in complete sentences most of the time, even during midday. Yes. Even important meetings were often just the middle of the day. But we swear, despite all those things, his decision making was as good as it was 40 years ago. And it's like, well, if he, if he can no longer speak, how do you know that, that, that, that whatever is causing that decline is not at all related to some of the decision makings? I mean, they are trying to, they're trying to say that because it is unprovable in some ways. But there were members of the cabinet, senior members of the Democratic Party, even members of the administration that believe if he had been 20 years younger, he would have governed differently.

[Mike Pesca]

Yeah.

[Jake Tapper]

I think the governance part is an important part of it. And like, look, for example, we do have moments in the book from 2021 where there's this whole debate about the build back better bill and whether it should be tied to the infrastructure bill. And I won't bore you any further than to say Biden goes up to Capitol Hill and he's supposed to make a pitch to the House Democrats and he doesn't make it.

[Mike Pesca]

Right.

[Jake Tapper]

So Nancy Pelosi.

[Mike Pesca]

Nancy Pelosi is stunned. She brings him in to do one.

[Jake Tapper]

Thing and he doesn't do it. And then she brings him back.

[Alex Thompson]

Yeah.

[Jake Tapper]

And he doesn't do it again.

[Mike Pesca]

Right. By the way, if you want to talk about should there be an upper age limit for politicians, she is two years older than him.

[Jake Tapper]

She's two years older.

[Mike Pesca]

She's the sharp, as sharp as anyone in the book.

[Jake Tapper]

And she steps down voluntarily from her leadership position in 2022, as do Steny Hoyer and Jim Clyburn. So, I mean, there were octogenarians who understood, like, it's Time for a new group to come. But in any case. So that's. That's. People do look. House Democrats do look back at that and wonder. I wonder if there was something going on there. It's not provable. Look, the Afghan withdrawal was a disaster. We did not find any reporting that suggested that he was not on top of decisions. And national security is obviously the subject that interests him the most. The war in Afghanistan being a mistake is one of the central principles of his life, or at least of the last 20 years. We didn't find anything in there, so it's not in the book. Because now did his hand. Like, again, the way he handled that fiasco, not apologizing, not firing anybody, not expressing enough contrition. And it was after that that his poll numbers went under, sank into the 40s and then at times into the 30s. So that was a consequential decision. And his handling or mishandling of it, also consequential. We can't tie that to his acuity at all. So who knows? But the Bennett thing is interesting because Bennett goes to the White House in June 2024 for an immigration event. Senator Bennett, this is. This is a very weird moment, and I wish I could just show it on the screen. But President Biden, during this event, has some sort of an event while he's speaking. And neurologists we talk to say it seemed like a neurological event, but they can't diagnose him from afar. But it was odd. It wasn't a stutter. It wasn't just that thing. You know how sometimes he whispers, you know what I'm talking about?

[Chris Gethard]

He'll whisper to make a point.

[Jake Tapper]

And it's just. It wasn't that. Did anybody. I hope you heard me. I'm not as good at the whisper thing. But he has some moment where he says something and, like, you can't understand what he's saying and you don't even understand, like, what's going on. Bennett leaves the White House, and he'd also had an interaction with the president privately. And he thinks this is why our immigration policy is a mess, because the commander in chief cannot manage the portfolio. Being president requires somebody to that has the acuity to understand. Okay, these advisors want me to do this, and these advisors want me to do that, and I'm taking it all in. And here's what we're doing. And you do this, and you do that. And in Bennett's view, President Biden can't do it. And in Bennett's view, whatever you think of Trump's actions on immigration or Obama's actions on immigration or Bush's actions on immigration, they were able to manage the portfolio. So I don't buy it. I just don't buy that it didn't have an impact.

[Mike Pesca]

I also, personally, it's very frustrating to me when someone articulates that. And I say, well, what do you think tactical management of international relations is? Do you think that John F. Kennedy, during the Cuban Missile crisis, had one policy that he pursued? No. He had to think about ways to trade missile systems from Turkey because of. They were. They were in Cuba. There was so much multidimensional chess. And if you. You're just.

[Jake Tapper]

Khrushchev sent them two different telegrams. Well, we're gonna ignore the one where he's threatening to blow us up, and we're gonna take this. I mean, like, you have to be on top of things.

[Mike Pesca]

Yes. And so to be. I'm not saying that every president can be a talleyrand on the international stage, but it does take more than. We're going to have a Gaza pier. And then it turns out that there are. This is just something I thought of. It's not in the book, but it just came out that there were 20 casualties of the Gaza Pier. It was operational for 20 days. It cost $100 million. Can we know that Joe Biden even knew about that? Right. We don't know. I don't know if you reported on the gossip here. I want to ask you about reporting, which is, we have a few minutes left. I know why. And Alex was the best reporter actually pursuing these issues. And I know why you can't, in getting people on the record, browbeat them. And you don't want to be performative and say, how dare you.

[Alex Thompson]

But.

[Mike Pesca]

But can you or did you do anything to elicit any real grappling with. My God, what have we done from, say, the cabinet members?

[Alex Thompson]

Yeah. I mean, you. I mean, how could you not. You know, all these conversations, especially with the cabinet members, we agreed that they would be anonymous. And then, you know, they're saying these explosive things. Now, some people have said, well, you shouldn't have made them anonymous. Well, we agreed to make them anonymous. So we tried to get them all.

[Jake Tapper]

On the record, obviously, that we, you know.

[Mike Pesca]

Of course, yes.

[Jake Tapper]

You know, but these people are fearful.

[Alex Thompson]

Yes, but to your point about remorse and thinking back.

[Jake Tapper]

Yeah.

[Alex Thompson]

I mean, some. And I guess this is the way that I think this is the rationale. If I'm sort of distilling all of them into one person including some senior White House officials, is this is what were my options. I didn't have access to them. I could have gone public with my concerns, but that was not going to change this guy's mind. He didn't care if I went public. And it was only going to help Donald Trump. And as bad as Joe, as bad as this situation is with having a president that cannot do the job he is running for, that is still a better scenario than Donald Trump winning. And I think that's how they think about it. But now that Trump won, I think there's like, is that the right call? Was that the right decision?

[Jake Tapper]

The incentive structure in our politics is not constructed to reward courage. It just isn't. Journalism's different. You might argue that the incentive structure in journalism these days is to preach to choirs. That's where the money is for sure. I would say that the reception to this book has been among normies. And I don't know you all, but if you're here, I'm assuming you seem normal.

[Mike Pesca]

Yeah.

[Jake Tapper]

Yeah. You seem okay to me, except for cousin Steve. Just joking. But the reception to the book has been norm, has been great among normal people. It's been great reviews, it's been great sales. It's been lovely crowds like this one. But the reception among official liberals, let's say, or progressives on the left and conservatives or MAGA or whatever on the right has been ferocious. It's been absolutely ferocious. Now, I don't care. I mean, we're reporters. Like, we don't have to appeal to those groups. But if you're a Democrat, you have to worry about these people, especially if you're going to run for office. You have to worry about progressive activists think that you're a traitor, that you are doing XYZ because you're a sellout, because you're trying to make money this, that, the other. And I'm not surprised that the reaction among Democratic officials has been as muted as it's been. Although there really hasn't been a lot of pushback because I think the book is just self evidently true and thoroughly reported and really not rebuttable. But you haven't seen, you know, Senator Chris Murphy from Connecticut, who's almost certainly going to run for president based on his behavior. Not any inside reporting I have is, you know, he's acknowledged that obviously President Biden lost some cognitive skills. Just how much he doesn't know. But we haven't really heard anything from Whitmer, Newsom, Shapiro, etc. We were supposed to do an interview on Newsom's podcast that somehow got slipped off his schedule.

[Alex Thompson]

He's traveling.

[Jake Tapper]

He's traveling.

[Mike Pesca]

But who'd he book instead?

[Alex Thompson]

He did Newt Gingrich the other day.

[Jake Tapper]

Interesting. So I guess my point is just those are the people that all these off the record or background sources, Cabinet secretary number three, are worried about for whatever reason, boards or elections or wanting to have a role in the Democratic Party. Because these people are angry and they're angry at Trump exists and they're blaming it on me and Alex or whatever.

[Mike Pesca]

Right, right. And I did a search for the day after the book came out. Cuz the day the book came out, Biden's cancer diagnosis was revealed. All the CNN transcripts, there were 33 mentions of the big beautiful bill and two mentions of Biden. So if the argument is you're taking your eye off Trump, it's demonstrably untrue. But I do want to ask you, Gentle challenge. Back in 2020, you had Laura Trump on the show and you got into it with her. You took her critique of Biden verbal stumble as mocking.

[Jake Tapper]

Well, she said he had cognitive problems.

[Mike Pesca]

Yeah, yeah.

[Jake Tapper]

And this is October 2020. Our reporting suggests that his cognitive struggles began as far back as 2015. Her report, the investigation into Biden's mishandling of classified information suggests that there was evidence of it in 2017 and 2018. But what I saw in October 2020 was not that.

[Mike Pesca]

Right.

[Jake Tapper]

And in fact, I had interviewed him in September 2020. And the interview's online. You can see it if you want. He seems fine.

[Mike Pesca]

Right. It was a good interview. But what I wanted to ask you was actually this. You just talked about the reaction to Democrats and many normies are saying, well, this is just, we don't want to be George Santa Anna and we don't want to not learn from history. What about Republicans or very conservative people? People would never vote for Biden in the first place. Have any of them given you any credit? Or are they you personally or are they framing it as you're just late to the party, why should we listen to you?

[Jake Tapper]

I mean, there's a lot of that. I think that people, I think there is a misunderstanding between the difference between running a clip of Joe Biden and pointing at him and calling him an applesauce head and that which was certainly going on throughout his presidency. And again, they were right about his to have skepticism about his cognitive skills. They were right. But that's not reporting, it's commentary. And it's fine. And I don't have an issue with it, but that's commentary. What Alex and I did was talk to more than 200 people, have intense interviews, have a very serious process of reporting, fact checking, coming up with a narrative investigation and presenting this to the public as to this is the best first draft of what we think actually was happening and why we're all in this boat. And there have been conservatives that have said to me, I think this book is important, but generally speaking, it's kind of just taken as a given on the right that like, they knew all this and this, you know, and what else is new? But that said, I mean, I think that we have. I think this book has been accepted as true, been accepted as accurate, and allowed for a discussion about something very important to every single person in this room, which is how much was that White House lying to you and how much was that Were those decisions responsible for the fact that there aren't going to be foreign students studying in the United States or, you know, the tariff struggles that people, no doubt, in this port city are experiencing? Yeah, because there is a direct in my view and Alex's a direct cause and effect.

[Mike Pesca]

Maybe not learning from history. We don't repeat it, but we experience the funhouse mirror photo negative version of it. I want to thank my guests, Alex Thompson, Jake Tapper. The book is original sin. And thank you all so much. And that's it for today's show that just is produced by Cory Warra. Our development officer for the Virginia territory is Michelle Pesca. The same thing further south for the Florida territory is Astrid Green. Green, the production coordinator is Ashley Khan. Kathleen Sykes co edits the Gist list. Or maybe she edits and I co collaborate. Not really sure. Still working that out. But she's on the gist list, which you could go to mike pesca.substack.com improve do peru and thanks for listening.

[Chris Gethard]

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