MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
The new book "Original Sin: President Biden's Decline, Its Cover-up, And His Disastrous Choice To Run Again," it recounts the story of a president who struggled to remember the names of close advisers, who lacked physical stamina, who was insulated from aides and fellow Democrats for years. The book is out this week, the same week that Biden told the world he has been diagnosed with Stage 4 prostate cancer. That diagnosis underscores a question at the heart of the reporting in "Original Sin" - was Biden too old and too frail to run?
Another question the book explores - did some of Biden's closest aides - aides like Steve Ricchetti and Mike Donilon - cover up his decline? That is something our co-host Scott Detrow discussed with "Original Sin" authors Jake Tapper of CNN and Alex Thompson of Axios.
SCOTT DETROW, BYLINE: Alex, what to you was the moment that most alarmed you, as a person who lives in the United States, as you were reporting and learning these details about the things that were happening behind the scene?
ALEX THOMPSON: I was interviewing a longtime Biden aide, and they're quoted in the book as saying - I'm paraphrasing here - all he had to do was win, then he could have disappeared for the next four years and only had to occasionally show proof of life. When you're electing a president, I think voters know that they're also electing the people around them. And that was...
DETROW: This was their justification?
THOMPSON: This was their justification for - they were - they basically were acknowledging, yeah, he's, like, having trouble. But, like, the threat of Donald Trump, which I think they felt very sincere about, was so great that they were justifying, in some ways, undemocratic actions.
JAKE TAPPER: Yeah. These are the same people who say, hey, nobody elected Elon Musk. Well, no one elected Donilon and Ricchetti, and yet we have a Cabinet secretary telling us that Biden, Ricchetti and Donilon would make decisions without - about the economy without even talking to Secretary Yellen during the period that they cut off the Cabinet.
DETROW: You talked to a lot of anonymous sources for this book. Did anybody regret not speaking out? Or was it, this is the reality I saw, but it was career suicide to say that he couldn't run for another term, so in retrospect, I wouldn't say anything?
THOMPSON: If not regret, a lot of soul searching about, what could I have done differently? You know, one person sort of put to me this way, was, like, how many options were there? Like, they could have gone public, but would that have changed Joe Biden's mind? Probably not. And then it would have just helped Donald Trump.
DETROW: Yeah.
THOMPSON: Now, the one thing that I think people are mad about, that the inner circle especially didn't do - the ones that knew better - is you don't necessarily have to go public, but why not confront him? I haven't heard someone give a good answer.
DETROW: And who confronted him? Secretary of State Blinken kind confronted him.
TAPPER: Yes. It was just he had the meeting with - he had a lunch with him in 2023 in which he basically was like, you know, you have to think about how old you're going to be in the second term. You know, do you think you can handle it? Of course, Biden does. And it's kind of just dropped. You know, I think everybody in that circle, in that world, should be thinking - I'm certainly thinking as a journalist - what should I have done differently?
DETROW: Yeah.
TAPPER: You know, Alex and I covered this - Alex very aggressively from the White House beat, me less so. And I wish I had been more aggressive. I - there are - there's a lot of regret. There's a lot of humility.
DETROW: I want to end this interview the way you start the book - that the morning after the election, Joe Biden woke up convinced he could have won.
TAPPER: He still thinks that. He still thinks he could have won. He went on "The View" - to prebutt this book, we think - and he was asked about that. And he said, well, look, I still got 7 million more votes than Donald Trump. Now, he's talking about the 2020 election. And the truth of the matter is, I have talked to his pollsters more than he ever has, and they did not think that. And Chuck Schumer - when Chuck Schumer finally has the conversation with Biden in which he says that he thinks Biden should drop out, he says, I've talked to your pollsters, they give you a 5% chance of winning. And Biden did not know that because all the polling was interpreted through the spinmeisters around him, Donilon and Ricchetti. And Biden's shocked to hear that. When I talked with one of the pollsters about that story - 5% - he said it was probably more like 1%.
DETROW: That's Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson. Their new book is "Original Sin: President Biden's Decline, Its Cover-up, And His Disastrous Choice To Run Again." Thanks for talking to us.
THOMPSON: Thanks.
TAPPER: Thank you.
DETROW: In response to "Original Sin," a Biden spokesperson told NPR that they, quote, "have not reviewed the book and the authors did not fact-check the book with us, despite that being a common practice to do so." Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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