Original Sin Audiolibro Por Jake Tapper, Alex Thompson arte de portada

Original Sin

President Biden's Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again

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Original Sin

De: Jake Tapper, Alex Thompson
Narrado por: Jake Tapper
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From two of America’s most respected journalists, an unflinching and explosive reckoning with one of the most fateful decisions in American political history: Joe Biden’s run for reelection despite evidence of his serious decline—amid desperate efforts to hide the extent of that deterioration

"Explosive."
—The New York Times

"[The] most significant book to date about Biden’s cognitive decline." — The Atlantic

"Superbly reported . . . Reads like a Shakespearean drama on steroids." — Los Angeles Times

"It’s hard to think of a book which has shifted the political dial to this extent in recent years." — Politico

In Greek tragedy, the protagonist’s effort to avoid his fate is what seals his fate. In 2024, American politics became a Greek tragedy.

Joe Biden launched his successful 2020 bid for the White House with the stated goal of saving the nation from a second Trump presidential term. He, his family, and his senior aides were so convinced that only he could beat Trump again, they lied to themselves, allies, and the public about his condition and limitations. At his debate with Trump on June 27, 2024, the consequences of that deception were exposed to the world. It was shocking and upsetting.

Now the full, unsettling truth is being told for the first time. Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson take us behind closed doors and into private conversations between the heaviest of hitters, revealing how big the problem was and how many people knew about it. From White House staffers at the highest to lowest levels, to leaders of Congress and the Cabinet, from governors to donors and Hollywood players, the truth is finally being told. What you will learn makes President Biden’s decision to run for reelection seem shockingly narcissistic, self-delusional, and reckless—a desperate bet that went bust—and part of a larger act of extended public deception that has few precedents. The story the authors tell raises fundamental issues of accountability and responsibility that will continue for decades.

The irony is biting: In the name of defeating what they called an existential threat to democracy, Biden and his inner circle ensured it, tossing aside his implicit promise to serve for only one term, denying the existence of health issues the nation had been watching for years, dooming the Democrats to defeat. The decision to run again, the Original Sin of this president, led to a campaign of denial and gaslighting, leading directly to Donald Trump's return to power and all that has happened as a consequence. Rarely does hubris meet nemesis more explosively. Wherever you stand on the political spectrum, Original Sin is essential listening.

©2025 Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson (P)2025 Penguin Audio
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Great book. Factual. Objectively written. Finished in one day…couldn’t stop listening. Highly recommend. Thanks for telling us the real story.

Excellent

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I recommend it , there are some interesting revelations about the inner sanctum of Biden world and how willing they were to cover up his deterioration or how in denial they were about reality. I just hate how the likes of Tapper profit of not really questioning what all of us could see happening in real time and then resorting to writing a book about it.

As for Biden, the continued public dissonance shown even recently when interviewed in the View where he had to be accompanied by Jill and trying to reduce it all to a bad debate is tragic and disingenuous.

Fascinating but…

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Damning. Rhe Biden family delvered the presidency to Trump to oreserve their vanity. We don't need presidents whose liyalty is to their political family rather than the country.

Years of Lies

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The book is well written and amazingly detailed. Jake Tapper reads it well. It’s like he is in the room having a discussion with you.

Unbelievable

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There is a certain poetic justice to Jake Tapper taking up the pen to chronicle the twilight of Joe Biden’s political career. A veteran correspondent with deep roots in the Philadelphia region—a stone’s throw from Biden’s Delaware base—Tapper has, for decades, operated at the intersection of Biden’s orbit and Beltway media. In Original Sin, co-authored with CNN producer Lucy Thompson, he leverages this proximity to deliver the most intimate—and arguably most damning—account yet of the 46th president’s unraveling.

Much as Maggie Haberman’s Confidence Man offered an unparalleled psychological profile of Donald Trump, Original Sin benefits from Tapper’s sustained coverage of Biden’s long and often underestimated career. But where Haberman’s subject thrives in chaos, Tapper’s portrait is of a man increasingly swallowed by it. The result is a book that is less a hatchet job than a slow, clinical autopsy.

Original Sin positions itself as nonpartisan, and largely succeeds. Tapper and Thompson offer few detours into the theater of partisan recrimination. Donald Trump is not exonerated or excused; nor is Biden scapegoated for the broader ailments of the American gerontocracy. The authors keep their scalpel fixed on one body: Biden’s campaign and administration. What emerges is a meticulous—and often unsettling—study of political inertia, denial, and the fragile architecture of power propped up by loyalty and illusion.

The central narrative is constructed from over 200 interviews with aides, lawmakers, campaign staff, and administration insiders. The book’s most explosive revelations surround the President’s declining health and the concerted efforts by his inner circle to conceal it—from the public, from the press, and in some cases, from other members of the executive branch. The depiction of a White House operating in willful denial evokes a tragic echo of late-stage presidencies past, though rarely with such systematic obfuscation.

One of the more chilling sequences recounts preparations for the June 2024 debate—a performance so disastrously revealing that it effectively redrew the electoral map overnight. Tapper, who co-moderated the event, brings a sharp, almost forensic recollection to the lead-up and aftermath. In a moment that will no doubt enter campaign lore, the authors suggest that the debate was less a turning point than a rupture—one that exposed truths Biden’s team had long labored to suppress.

But for all its access and rigor, the book stumbles in its reluctance to fully interrogate the Democratic Party's complicity in Biden’s renomination. The machinery of the 2024 primary—the quiet sidelining of potential challengers, the DNC’s structural shielding of the incumbent, the chilling effect on would-be contenders—is acknowledged only in passing. It is a conspicuous omission in a book otherwise determined to identify the root causes of electoral failure.

Also underexamined is the decision to retain Kamala Harris on the ticket—a move portrayed here as more obligatory than strategic. Tapper and Thompson hint at private doubts within the party apparatus, yet stop short of exploring how those calculations may have amplified Democratic vulnerabilities heading into a volatile election year.

Even so, Original Sin is an urgent, unflinching contribution to the postmortem literature of modern presidencies. It offers not just a portrait of a man in decline, but of a political ecosystem unable—or unwilling—to course-correct. In its restraint, it avoids sanctimony; in its detail, it avoids ambiguity. This is not a book about betrayal or ideology. It is about the cost of refusing to see.

And in that sense, it may be the most American story of all.

The Fall of the House of Biden

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I really loved the book, great behind the scenes access. Now you need to do Trump.

Great behind the scenes access.

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Good to know how it got to where it did. Not just fixing the problem as soon as you know it’s a problem, as early as possible, always leads to a bigger failure later.

All the underlying information

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This book will be remembered as an excellent example of how a country can be ruled by lies. It is unbelievable that the powers that -were- could fool so many people. If Biden would have bowed out eaflier he would have been remembered as an ok interim president. This book has given him a legacy that he desperately did not want. Although sad for the former President. The real victims of this tragedy are the American people

What a disaster for the American people

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Overall the text raises some key points like gerontocracy, lack of transparency, and some details about the Biden camp, yet it is short and lacking in analysis. But the writng voice is my key issue. It's like reading a bunch of interesting news stories compiled into a book. Sometimes it's cathartic to hear someone say what we were all thinking, while other times it feels like watching CNN reruns. The reading voice (Tapper himself) is too nasally for me to rate high. Tapper is definitely an opportunist, but is right in highlighting the emperor has no clothes phenomenon in contemporary American politics.

My favorite line goes something like "Welcome to a system that grants power based on seniority."

Poor writing voice and performance

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Tapper seems to lay a lot of the blame at the feet of Mike Donilon and Steve Ricchetti, who kept giving Biden "rosy" poll statistics. And Democrat's reluctance to tell the truth about what they saw (what we all saw with the debate). It seems Biden was so sequestered from everybody that he didn't have a grasp on reality. And of course, if he has dementia...Or even getting old. I've noticed that previously reasonable, logical people revert to acting like children when they get old, which may be another explanation of why Biden didn't step down earlier. Though why his family didn't urge him not to run again and then step down... But Tapper and Thompson don't have any insight into that.

Interesting read if somewhat repetitive

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