Hold onto your hats, folks—a bombshell book just dropped that pulls back the curtain on what some call a calculated cover-up of President Joe Biden’s mental fitness, Fox News reported.
A new release titled "Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again" by Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson alleges that former White House deputy press secretary Andrew Bates played a key role in defending Biden’s mental sharpness, often without direct knowledge of the president’s true condition, while the administration worked to silence journalists raising valid concerns.
The book paints a troubling picture, claiming Bates and much of the press team rarely met the president face-to-face, instead relying on senior staff for secondhand updates on his well-being.
The authors suggest that despite serving as a senior spokesperson who traveled with Biden, staffed him in the Oval Office, on Air Force One, and across the country, Bates remained unaware of the full scope of the president’s struggles.
“He, along with most of the press team, rarely met with the president and didn’t have firsthand knowledge of the president’s wherewithal,” Tapper and Thompson write. Well, isn’t that a convenient way to keep the messenger believable while shielding the message?
The book goes further, alleging Biden’s inner circle exploited Bates’ loyalty, pushing him to deny claims they knew held water, making him the “tip of the spear” in deflecting scrutiny.
Weeks before a major Wall Street Journal piece on Biden’s decline, a reporter from another national outlet caught wind of alarming accounts from White House aides—stories of Biden forgetting names, mixing up facts, and appearing visibly confused in meetings.
When the reporter dug deeper, the White House press office didn’t just push back—they came out swinging, angrily disputing the claims, while former deputy chief of staff Steve Ricchetti personally called to dismiss the accounts as false in an off-the-record chat.
The message was clear: publish this, and we’ll paint you as a fabricator on the record—a tactic the book says worked to bury the story. Turns out, intimidation can be a powerful editor.
Bates, often the public face second only to press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, fielded countless reporter inquiries, staunchly defending Biden’s capabilities, like when he posted on X, “He’s just that f---ing good.” But if the book’s claims hold, was this bravado built on blind trust rather than hard evidence?
The authors note a broader strategy by the Biden camp to attack journalists questioning the president’s age, aiming to shame them into silence and deter coverage of his fitness—a move that reeks of suppression over transparency.
Reactions to the book are predictably split, with some slamming the media and Biden’s team for allegedly obscuring the truth, while others, like Naomi Biden, call it “silly” and mere “political fairy smut.” Hard to dismiss firsthand accounts as fairy tales, though, isn’t it?
CNN, home to co-author Jake Tapper, has taken heat for promoting the book, with critics on shows like "The View" and from Jon Stewart questioning the timing, especially given Biden’s recent cancer diagnosis.
Bates himself pushed back, telling Fox News Digital that the narrative distorts the truth, while a former staffer defended him and insisted he treated colleagues with respect and handled major issues with care. Yet, when the smoke of loyalty clears, the question remains: did officials give the American people the full picture?
