Brace yourself for a bombshell claim: a newly released book alleges that former President Joe Biden’s declining health made filming campaign videos during the 2024 election cycle an uphill battle, with much of the footage deemed unusable.
As reported by Fox News, a book titled "Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again," published on Tuesday, paints a troubling picture of Biden’s struggles behind the camera while also suggesting his delayed exit from the race hurt then-Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign efforts.
Authored by CNN’s Jake Tapper and Axios’ Alex Thompson, the book dives into the challenges faced by Biden’s team as they attempted to craft campaign content during a critical election period.
The authors claim Biden stumbled so frequently during recordings that the resulting videos were often scrapped, unfit for public eyes.
One notable incident described in the book took place in a high school gym, set up to mimic a town hall where voters could pose questions to the former president.
Despite the event being closed to reporters and featuring a pre-set list of questions, Biden reportedly struggled to respond coherently, leading his team to ditch the footage altogether.
Some blamed the gym fiasco on poor lighting, but others, according to the book, pointed the finger squarely at Biden himself as the root of the problem.
Even for shorter clips, such as requested five-minute addresses for keynote events, the White House aimed to limit recordings to one or two minutes due to time constraints—yet Biden often couldn’t manage even that without flubbing lines.
“The man could not speak,” a source familiar with the process bluntly stated in the book, highlighting the severity of the alleged difficulties.
The same source described Biden’s challenges as an “inability to find words, to remember what he was saying, to stay on one train of thought,” painting a grim portrait of the behind-the-scenes chaos.
To mask these issues, the book claims aides sometimes resorted to editing videos in slow motion to obscure how slowly Biden walked, a tactic that sounds more like Hollywood than politics.
“If he was off, editing footage in a way that cast him in the best light would require hours of work,” the source added, suggesting the Herculean effort needed to polish even brief clips.
Beyond the technical struggles, the book argues that Biden’s delayed withdrawal from the race dealt a severe blow to Kamala Harris’ campaign, a point underscored by David Plouffe, a senior advisor on Harris’ team, who called the situation “a f---ing nightmare.”
While the book alleges a cover-up by Biden’s team to downplay the extent of his cognitive decline, his camp has pushed back hard, with a spokesperson insisting to Fox News Digital, “There is nothing in this book that shows Joe Biden failed to do his job.”
The spokesperson further defended Biden’s record, stating, “Joe Biden was an effective President who led our country with empathy and skill,” a counterpoint that invites skepticism when weighed against the book’s detailed accusations. Turns out, actions—or in this case, inactions—have consequences, and the conservative lens can’t help but question whether the full truth was ever on display.
