Original Sin is a provocative title for Jake Tapper’s and Alex Thompson’s new book about former President Joe Biden. It alleges that a cover up of sorts took place to largely hide the mental incapacity of Biden for great chunks of his time at the top. Now, the Trump Republican opposition and Fox News continually pointed the finger at Biden’s age as a problem during his time in office – so it was not some big secret. However, it was denied by the Democrats and the White House in particular. Joe Biden’s original sin. The zombie like performance in the June 2024 presidential debate against Donald Trump confirmed the worst fears of some in the Democrat camp that Joe Biden was too old and mentally unfit to go again. Public pressure was brought to bear and Biden pulled out.
Biden & The Sin Of Being Human With All Its Failings
Unfortunately, for those of us who excoriate Trump it proved to be too little too late and Kamala Harris lost the election. Original Sin postulates that the close circle around Biden, named the politburo, hid his mental deficiencies and protected him from scrutiny as much as possible. He hardly ever did presidential stuff after 6pm. Biden rarely met with his Cabinet, especially from 2023 onwards. He avoided any in-depth interviews with senior journalists during his time in office. The upshot of this is the inference that he did not sufficiently project the kind of presidential leadership normally required by the role. Was this the sin of omission? Or the sin of pride, that he and only he could beat Donald Trump? Or the sin of that deeply human attachment to power?
“What is original sin?
Original sin is an Augustine Christian doctrine that says that everyone is born sinful. This means that they are born with a built-in urge to do bad things and to disobey God. It is an important doctrine within the Roman Catholic Church. The concept of Original Sin was explained in depth by St Augustine and formalised as part of Roman Catholic doctrine by the Councils of Trent in the 16th Century.
Original sin is not just this inherited spiritual disease or defect in human nature; it's also the 'condemnation' that goes with that fault.”
- (https://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/christianity/beliefs/originalsin_1.shtml)
Maruxa Lomoljo Koren at Pexels
Democratic Sinning Joe Biden Style
Sinning, as the story goes, is in us all and is what we are made of. I think that Joe Biden is viewed by many of us as a pretty good guy in a dirty business. He, also, appears far better in contrast to Trump, which is an important thing to remember in all of this. Thus, he was forgiven for being far too old by many in the circumstances. Anything was better than Trump for lots of Democrats. Unfortunately, this did not prove to be the case with the greater American public or did it? Joe Biden did not, in the end, contest the 2024 presidential election. Interestingly, Donald Trump has won twice, both times against a female candidate. Are there Garden of Eden and Eve implications here? The Christian religiosity of the United States cannot be underestimated in all of this. Joe Biden’s original sin was in the end the human frailty of old age with all its inherent consequences.
The Sin Of Omission
I remember thinking, at one time, why don’t they give him an AI makeover. That could have been very Orwellian, with a digitally reinvigorated President Biden making screened announcements to the nation. Instead the podium was left empty all too often. There was an absence, a lacking of manifest leadership, that I think the American people picked up on and this was a sin of omission. Lying by omission is when you don’t tell the truth by saying nothing. The intimate circle around Biden knew that he was diminished by old age and that it was getting worse.
America’s Cult Of Personality
Americans over value the cult of personality, celebrity, and individualism at the expense of the party or the community. Too much power is granted to leaders and not enough to those around them. I kept thinking, during the Biden presidency, that they needed to have more focus on members of the cabinet who were more vigorous. It was this doddering presidency despite the many great legislative initiatives being undertaken. They undersold their achievements because of this warped overemphasis on the figure of the president himself. It is a weird set up and the Democrats paid the price.
“ “President Biden’s decline and its cover-up by the people around him is a reminder that every White House, regardless of party, is capable of deception,” Thompson said. “We, myself included, missed a lot of this story. And some people trust us less because of it. We bear some responsibility for faith in the media being at such lows.”
Original Sin begins with a bang. Its first chapter is titled “He Fucked Us”, from an on-record quote by David Plouffe, senior adviser to the Harris campaign, before that manager of Barack Obama’s 2008 winning effort. “We got so screwed by Biden as a party,” Plouffe says. Harris was a “great soldier”, but the race was “a fucking nightmare. …’
- (https://www.theguardian.com/books/2025/may/25/original-sin-joe-biden-book-review)
Deception and politics go together like deception and government do. Bitter recriminations often follow defeats in the political sphere. US politics is a strange beast and the cult of the leader dominates all else to the detriment of the American people. It is a systemic problem much more than it is one man’s sin, in my view. There is such a plethora of disinformation coming out of the political realm and its media. The right wing echo chamber is far worse and has poisoned the well for all of us.
#UNGA President Donald J. Trump by National Archives and Records Administration is licensed under CC-CC0 1.0
“We are living in an age, where truth and facts are distorted and disparaged by political leaders hell bent on power. The rise of social media has put gossip and lies in a seemingly credible format. The digital revolution has seen style eclipse substance. Thus, making utter rubbish look believably cogent. Images and video are manipulated to tell the kind of story so desired. Fake news is the joker in the pack, along with AI rendered identity fraud. Yuval Harari, a historian, has been warning all and sundry about the dangers we are facing from counterfeit human beings. Bots and scammers are undermining the faith we once had in our institutions and each other.”
- (https://www.midasword.com.au/historians-have-to-be-interested-in-truth/)
Janus Joe Biden
“CNN's Jake Tapper calls his new book a tragedy. Original Sin: President Biden's Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again, which Tapper co-authored with Axios' Alex Thompson, describes two Joe Bidens.
"The first one is the one that everybody got to know during his vice presidency," Tapper says. "And the second one was kind of a non-functioning Joe Biden. ... And that non-functioning Biden would rear his head increasingly starting in, like, 2019, 2020. And then, as his term went on, more and more behind the scenes."
The book describes a president who failed to recognize longtime political allies, lost his train of thought in important conversations and forgot important dates, including the death of his son, Beau: "We in the public would see some of it in front of the cameras ... but we had no idea how bad it was," Tapper says.”
- (https://www.npr.org/2025/05/20/nx-s1-5398050/joe-bidens-decline-jake-tapper-original-sin)
The really rotten place we find ourselves in is Trump 2.0 and that makes many of us sick with rage. The outcome poisons things far more than usual post-defeat. Joe Biden’s original sin has to be how it led to this first and foremost, I think. Meditate on that folks.
Robert Sudha Hamilton is the author of America Matters: Pre-apocalyptic Posts & Essays in the Shadow of Trump.
©MidasWord
