Tuesday’s CBS Mornings scored the first broadcast network interview for CNN host Jake Tapper and Axios reporter Alex Thompson as part of release day for their already bestselling book Original Sin about Joe Biden’s cognitive decline before and during his presidency.
While there were attempts made to hold the legacy media to account, it never panned out and, even though some questions came off as tough, it was largely waged on friendly terms for the media vis-à-vis who was to blame for the country being held captive for four years.
Co-host Tony Dokoupil alluded to “talk about whether the Washington press corps should have done more and known more, shared more during the administration,” but that never happened. Thankfully, 2025 MRC Bulldog Award winner and SiriusXM host Megyn Kelly took care of that.
But in a tease, co-host and Democratic donor Gayle King framed the book’s findings as though it were new to her, saying there’s “a new book that claims former President Biden had signs of decline as far back as the 2020 campaign. Yikes. We’ll talk with the authors Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson, who have just arrived about what they allege
Dokoupil did his best to set the table, stating at the onset of the first segment that “they allege that steps were taken to conceal former President Joe Biden’s vast diminishing health while he was in office” and “spoke to more than 200 people for this book, many people within the Biden administration and the larger Democratic Party” to reveal a President who required “an increased reliance on note cards and scripted meetings even with his own Cabinet members.”
Following the standard well wishes for Biden in his prostate cancer fight, Dokoupil dropped his media teaser, but his question to Tapper was really “what was the nature of the cover-up.”
Tapper replied it was Americans “were repeatedly lied to by people in the White House who were always saying, ‘he’s fine, he’s fine, he’s fine,’” so what he and Thompson found “was shocking, just the degree to which he was addled, increasingly, there were almost like two Bidens, a fine Biden, the one you saw on the reg in 2020 and a non-functioning Biden.”
Yes, we know, Jake. Really earth-shattering!
King used the first segment to operate from the left, first wondering whether White House aides actually lied or “really believed that he was going to be okay, Alex, and he would be able to do the job.”
Thompson explained there is, in fact, a difference between making your boss “look good” and, well, lying to the point of shielding “their own Cabinet.”
After co-host Nate Burleson played the cursory reader by asking Tapper and Thompson to explain who was part of Biden’s inner circle most responsible for the coddling, Dokoupil had them respond to pushback from Steve Ricchetti, one of the said inner circle members.
Tapper hit back he’s not “read the book” while Thompson said “we didn’t make this up” about Biden’s limited faculties.
King closed the first segment by hitting them with criticism from the left that they kept this information (as though Biden’s mental state were a total unknown) until after the election so they could make money (click “expand”):
KING: But critics are saying to both of you guys, listen, if you knew this information, you said you didn’t get it until after the election —
TAPPER: Right.
KING: — we are questioning that because you are — you all both are so well sourced, so that’s raising some questions. Why didn’t you share it before, as soon as you got it, as opposed to gathering all the information then putting it out in a book that you will undoubtedly profit from.
TAPPER: Well, I think —
KING: The optics, people say, don’t look good for both of you.
TAPPER: So, I would take issue with that, because first of all, if you know me or Alex, you know that if we had learned in real time that President Biden didn’t recognize George Clooney at that 2024 — I’m sorry, at that June 2024 fundraiser —
KING: Yes, we didn’t know that in real time.
TAPPER: We would — we would have reported it. That’s a huge scoop. I mean, the way that everybody here on this set, the way all of us are wired, is we want to be the first ones to break the story. We would have done it in a second, but that said, there was something about writing a book after the election that I thought was an important way to do this, in terms of telling the whole story of how this all happened. And I mean, look, I mean, we started writing the book in November, and it’s May, we got it out as soon as we could. But people in the administration who covered this up from the American people, they justified this to themselves by saying, oh, this threat of Donald Trump, it’s an existential threat to the country, so this justifies what we’re doing. Once that threat was done, because Trump won —
THOMPSON: They were willing to talk.
The second segment started with Tapper outlining the national security implications of Biden’s mental impairment and then King stating the obvious of something she could have done more to highlight: “[T]ime after time, the polls show the numbers were dropping, his age, his cognitive decline, but many times in the book, you kept talking to people who said, this reminds me of my dad. This reminds me my grandmother, my grandfather.”
Burleson again went to the left by wondering without evidence by health concerns for President Donald Trump (click “expand”):
BURLESON: You mentioned President Trump. You know, after writing a book like this.
TAPPER: Yes.
BURLESON: I would assume it gives you a keen eye when it comes to the cognitive and physical declination of some of our political leaders, and you, as a well-sourced as Gayle, mentioned, what are you hearing? What are you seeing when it comes to our current President Trump?
TAPPER: I don’t think — we don’t see any effort, any evidence of any sort of deterioration cognitively. I think the questions about Trump that have always been raised have to do with his personality, which is something that is very out and in the open to the voters. But to pick up on Alex’s point, whether you’re talking about President Biden, President Trump, or President Gayle King, I think that —
KING: Choose another name.
BURLESON: The transparency.
TAPPER: — the transparency is so important. It is not required. Presidents do not have to give their health records to the American people.
BURLESON: And that needs to change.
TAPPER: That’s a — it’s unacceptable after this, there is no way that the American people should tolerate this ever again. There needs to be a law on the books requiring full health disclosures, full health under oath, as Alex said.
They returned for CBS Mornings Plus and featured more fair-weather discussions of the book and its thesis of a far-gone Biden, starting with co-host Adriana Diaz asking about the title of the book (which came from sources Tapper and Thompson spoke to saying Biden’s “original sin” was running for reelection).
Following Tapper and Thompson explaining what their book argued was demarcations in Biden’s decline, Dokoupil brought up the state of the Democratic Party still refusing to grapple with their cover-up (click “expand”):
DOKOUPIL: Well, there’s non-functioning Biden. There’s also the non-functioning Democratic Party here, which you detail. I mean, you’ve got Bill Daley, former chief of staff for Barack Obama. He wanted a primary. He pushed for it, got slapped down. You got a whole chapter on Dean Phillips who wanted a competitive primary. He gets slapped aside. They say he’s insane for even asking for one. Were the Democrats afraid of the alternative, or were they really that confident in Biden?
THOMPSON: They were afraid of the alternative, and in some ways, you know, and the threat of Trump that they really, sincerely believe should have, you know, you know, shocked them into reality, but instead it caused them to retreat.
DOKOUPIL: I don’t mean were they afraid of Trump. Obviously, they didn’t want Trump back in the office.
THOMPSON: Yeah, yeah.
DOKOUPIL: They’re Democrats. He’s a Republican. Yeah, on and on their bench.
THOMPSON: Oh, okay.
DOKOUPIL: The — the alternative Democratic candidates, Pritzker and Shapiro and you name it — Whitmer.
TAPPER: Yeah. There is an argument from the Democratic insiders we talked to that if Biden had just abided by his tacit pledge and only served one term, then there could have been a competitive primary among what people think is a strong Democratic bench and whoever emerged from that primary process would be a much stronger candidate than either President Biden or the Kamala Harris that only had 107 days to do it. Maybe she would have emerged victorious from the primaries, who know — who knows. I think one of the issues here is the party system in this country. Democratic and Republican parties have become incredibly weak. The presidents are the ones who wield all the power. They’re really no longer is any sort of check on any president, whether it’s Donald Trump or Joe Biden. There isn’t anybody. In the Nixon days, a bunch of senators could walk down to the White House and say, you need to step down. We can’t maintain this anymore. I don’t think that exists anymore. I think the Democratic Party and the Republican party have both willingly handed over the reins to a strong executive, and that puts us in a – in a precarious situation.
THOMPSON: But also, to your point, the Biden people did not have confidence in Kamala Harris, and that was one of the reasons that they rationalized running again, because they didn’t believe that she could win.
DIAZ: And you write that they kept saying, the only one who’s beaten Trump is Biden.
THOMPSON: Still saying that.
Tapper did give Joe Biden his flowers, boasting that “one of the things that so many people love about Joe Biden is the fact that no matter what horrible things fate has thrown at him, he’s able to get back up and he certainly has a life that is admirable in terms of rising from the ashes and rebuilding,” but such attempts to rally did him in and such “skepticism was not permitted.”
The third and final CBS segment (in the AM, at least) concluded with Dokoupil framing the book as an uncomfortable read for the future of….Democrats (click “expand”):
DOKOUPIL: I had a very left-leaning relative visiting when this book came home with me, and I tried to show it to them, and they didn’t want to look at it at all.
TAPPER: Yeah.
DOKOUPIL: So, why — why do you think Democrats really need to engage with this subject? And then what are the takeaways in our final minute here just for the general public? Why do they need to know?
THOMPSON: Well, it’s hard to win if you don’t understand why you lost and I think — and how the Democratic Party sort of sleepwalk into what they consider a disaster. We thought it was just important not just for history, but for this moment.
TAPPER: So, George Clooney is obviously in the book. I interviewed him the other day for Goodnight and Good Luck. And one of the things at the end of that play, which is about Edward R Murrow and journalism in the 50s, the only thing that’s not said in 1954, in that show, is this montage of clips from television at the very end and it has clips of Republicans lying about the 2020 election and also has clips of Democrats lying about Biden’s acuity.
DOKOUPIL: Mmmm.
TAPPER: And I asked Clooney if it was important to him as somebody who spoke out after the debate calling for Biden to step down, he said it was because we have to speak truth to power to everybody, not just not just the other side, but to your side, too. And I said, well, what about all the people who go to see your show who are Democrats and don’t want to hear criticism of Biden? And he said to them, I say, how do you think we got Trump?
To see the relevant transcripts from May 20, click here (for CBS Mornings) and here (for CBS Mornings Plus).
