Biden insider was reportedly 'amazed' at the media coverage they were able to spin
The co-author of "Original Sin," the newly released book on former President Joe Biden's mental and physical decline, says a Biden insider admitted they were shocked at what they were able to get away with in regard to media coverage.
"I had one conversation with someone," Axios reporter Alex Thompson, who co-authored the book with CNN’s Jake Tapper, said Tuesday on News Nation Now. "This was after the election while we were reporting this book. And this person said, listen, yes, we deserve blame for X, Y, Z. We were hiding him. But this person also sort of got in my face, and they said, ‘Listen, the media deserves some blame too. Like we were sort of amazed at some of the stuff we were able to spin.’"
The book, published Tuesday by Penguin Press, looks at the efforts made by those within the Biden administration, members of Congress, Democratic donors and celebrities, to hide the truth about the decline of Biden’s mental and physical health.
FLASHBACK: WHITE HOUSE PRESS SEC KARINE JEAN-PIERRE LAUGHS OFF QUESTION ON BIDEN'S HEALTH IN 2022
Thompson said, in a sense, he thinks journalists failed to do their job.
"I think the media in a lot of ways just was not skeptical enough and did not remember the lesson that they do it to different degrees, but every White House lies," he said.
After the Wall Street Journal published its explosive story in June 2024 about how some lawmakers began questioning Biden's health, the debate around the issue became more heated.
The Wall Street Journal detailed concern about Biden's decline, saying that he was "slipping," "spoke so softly at times that some participants struggled to hear him," would make long pauses and close his eyes long enough that people questioned if he had fallen asleep.
Author Chris Whipple's new book, "Uncharted: How Trump Beat Biden, Harris, and the Odds in the Wildest Campaign in History," claimed that Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., privately said Biden was declining before she publicly called out a Wall Street Journal story on his cognitive decline.
According to Whipple's book, the former Speaker of the House went to the White House in May 2024 for an awards ceremony and was "startled by how much the president had aged." She allegedly told a friend "he was not the same Joe Biden," according to the book.
On Sunday, Biden’s prostate cancer diagnosis was announced, with his spokesperson telling Fox News days later that the last time he received a blood test that screens for prostate cancer was in 2014.