A forthcoming book that promises explosive new details on former President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s mental and physical decline while in the White House has revived the subject of how his aides and top Democrats handled his decision to run for re-election.
The book, “Original Sin,” by Jake Tapper of CNN and Alex Thompson of Axios, chronicles how Mr. Biden’s advisers stomped out discussion of his age-related limitations, including internal concerns of aides, external worries of Democratic allies and scrutiny by journalists. Mr. Biden had long been gaffe-prone, but as he forgot familiar names and faces and showed his physical frailty, the authors write, aides wrapped him in a protective political cocoon.
At the same time, the book is so reliant on anonymous sourcing — very few aides or elected officials are quoted by name — that it reveals the enduring chill that Mr. Biden’s loyalists have cast over a Democratic Party still afraid to grapple publicly with what many say privately was his waning ability to campaign and serve in office. Already, Mr. Biden has begun pushing back against reporting on the end of his presidency, re-emerging for interviews to try to shape his legacy.
The book does not contain any astonishing revelation that changes the broad perception of whether Mr. Biden, now 82, was fit to serve as president. Instead, it is a collection of smaller occurrences and observations reflecting his decline. The authors write about a “cover-up,” though their book shows a Biden inner circle that spends more time sticking its collective head in the sand about the president’s diminishing abilities than it does scheming to hide evidence of his shortcomings.
The New York Times obtained a copy of the book, which is set for release next Tuesday. Here are six takeaways.
Biden forgot names, even of people he had known for years.
During his 2020 campaign and throughout his presidency, Mr. Biden forgot the names of longtime aides and allies, according to the book.
It describes him forgetting the name of Mike Donilon, a loyal aide who had worked for him since the early 1980s, and failing to recognize the actor George Clooney. He also forgot the names of Jake Sullivan, his national security adviser, and Kate Bedingfield, the White House communications director, according to the book, along with Jaime Harrison, whom Mr. Biden had picked to be chairman of the Democratic National Committee.
In another instance, Mr. Biden confused his health secretary, Xavier Becerra, with his homeland security secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas, the authors write. During a meeting about abortion rights, Mr. Biden confused Alabama with Texas, according to the book.
People described as aides and allies told the authors that Mr. Biden appeared frail in meetings and that they had worried he might need a wheelchair in his second term. Cabinet gatherings were largely scripted for him even when journalists were not present, according to the book. In a rare on-the-record account, Representative Mike Quigley, a Democrat from Illinois, described Mr. Biden’s physical abilities during a trip to Ireland as similar to what he saw when his own father was dying of Parkinson’s disease.
Mr. Biden’s response to the accounts is not included in the book, nor are on-the-record responses from many of the aides, Democrats and other figures it names. (Indeed, the extensive use of anonymous sources makes it difficult to confirm the accuracy of many of the claims.) Mr. Biden’s spokesman, Chris Meagher, said the former president’s team had not yet seen a copy of the book and had not been consulted in its fact-checking.
“We are not going to respond to every bit of this book,” Mr. Meagher said. “We continue to await anything that shows where Joe Biden had to make a presidential decision or where national security was threatened or where he was unable to do his job. In fact, the evidence points to the opposite — he was a very effective president.”
Few Biden allies, even now, would speak openly about his decline.
Nearly a year after pressure from Democrats forced Mr. Biden to drop out of the presidential race, the book shows that the party remains unwilling to reckon publicly with its choice to back Mr. Biden as its nominee for as long as it did.
The reluctance of many Democratic leaders and insiders to voice criticism without the cloak of anonymity, even after their devastating defeat, suggests a lasting fear of speaking out. It also points to an awareness that saying now that Mr. Biden should not have run in 2024 could prompt questions about why they said nothing when it mattered.
Ultimately, the most powerful people in the party either made a colossal misjudgment of the situation or recognized the problem yet declined to press Mr. Biden or the White House about it.
“No Democrats in the White House or leaders on Capitol Hill raised any doubts, either privately with the president or publicly, about Biden’s second run,” the book reports.
The authors write that Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken did gently ask Mr. Biden if he was ready to take on a re-election bid, but that the president reassured him he would be fine. Ron Klain, Mr. Biden’s first chief of staff, also broached the subject of whether the president should run again in conversations with other staff members, according to the book, but it never went anywhere.
Democratic aides are seeking to shift the blame.
It is a long tradition for Washington bigwigs to use books to place the blame squarely on someone else. What’s unusual about this book is that just about all players who agreed to be interviewed — 200, the authors wrote — pointed the finger at Mr. Biden and his small circle of senior aides.
The book calls the inner circle of Biden aides who made decisions for, and controlled the flow of information to, Mr. Biden “the Politburo,” an unflattering reference to the Soviet Union’s policymakers during the age of communism.
One of the few people quoted on the record is David Plouffe, the former campaign manager for Barack Obama. The book describes him as coming out of retirement to try to elect Vice President Kamala Harris after Mr. Biden dropped out.
“We got so screwed by Biden,” the book quotes Mr. Plouffe as saying, adding a more vulgar choice of words to describe what the president did to the Harris campaign.
But Mr. Plouffe’s assertions absolve him and other prominent Democrats of their responsibility for her defeat.
Outsiders were shocked by Biden’s abilities.
A theme throughout the book is that people who had not seen Mr. Biden in person for a long time were shocked by his appearance when they did.
Former Representative Brian Higgins, a Democrat from New York, is quoted in the book as saying that Mr. Biden’s possible cognitive decline “was evident to most people that watched him.” David Morehouse, a former Democratic campaign aide turned hockey executive, said Mr. Biden “was nothing but bones” after seeing him in a photo line in Philadelphia.
And Mr. Clooney, a prominent Democratic donor, was so upset about his interaction with the president that he wrote a New York Times opinion essay calling on him to drop out.
Other outsiders raised alarms that went unheeded by Mr. Biden’s inner circle. Ari Emanuel, the Hollywood agent whose brother Rahm was Mr. Biden’s ambassador to Japan, wound up in a shouting match in 2023 with Mr. Klain over whether the president’s campaign should continue.
One Democrat quietly pushed for a Biden primary challenge.
One of Democrats’ biggest regrets about last year is their failure to hold a competitive primary contest. But at least one Democrat worked behind the scenes to try to make it happen, according to the book.
In 2023, Bill Daley, who served as White House chief of staff to Mr. Obama, sought to persuade Democratic governors including JB Pritzker of Illinois, Gavin Newsom of California and Andy Beshear of Kentucky to challenge Mr. Biden in the Democratic primary race, the book reports.
He found no takers.
Now, of course, Democrats expect their 2028 nominating contest to be crowded and highly competitive. And with many in the party calling for generational change, some 2028 hopefuls who were stalwart allies of Mr. Biden in 2024 may face new pressure to finally address whether they were wrong about his capacity to be president.
Jill Biden’s protectiveness of her husband grew as he aged.
After Mr. Biden, the book is harshest on his family’s closest aides. Anthony Bernal, the consigliere to Jill Biden, the first lady, draws some of the book’s toughest scrutiny.
The authors write that Mr. Bernal could shut down any conversation about the president’s age and mental acuity by telling fellow White House aides, “Jill isn’t going to like this.”
Dr. Biden is described as a fierce advocate for her husband who did not care to hear any criticism of his abilities or political judgment and grew more involved in his decision-making as he grew older.
When a donor suggested in 2022 that Mr. Biden should not seek re-election, Dr. Biden remained silent — a reaction she regretted and vowed not to repeat, the authors write.
“I can’t believe I didn’t defend Joe,” she is quoted telling aides afterward.
