Biden health bombshell allows Maga to tell media: ‘We told you so’

Original Sin, a new book by CNN anchor Jake Tapper and Axios reporter Alex Thompson, alleges that Joe Biden’s staff covered up the extent of his cognitive decline. Biden, now 82, did not recognise actor George Clooney at a fundraiser and forgot the names of key staff, the book claims, but his closest allies hid this to smooth his path to the 2024 election.

While the Democratic party is under fire for alleged complicity in this charade, another target is the mainstream print and broadcast media, which Trump and his allies have long accused of liberal bias and whose influence Trump has been working to erode.

“There is significant reputational damage,” said Reece Peck, an associate professor in media at the College of Staten Island. “For the most part, the so-called mainstream media mocked the idea that he had cognitive decline or chastised people that would raise that issue.”

Tapper and Thompson’s book “will reinforce both the distrust for the Democratic party, but also its media allies”, and fuel claims of bias from the conservative movement. “They'll use any ammunition,” Peck said.

Thompson criticised media colleagues at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner this month. Receiving an award for his coverage of Biden’s cognitive decline, he said: “We bear some responsibility for faith in the media being at such lows.”

It was ultimately Biden’s rambling performance at the 27 June presidential debate that led to his withdrawal from the race, and his replacement by former vice-president Kamala Harris.

Conservative commentators have reacted to Original Sin with glee. Maga-friendly outlets have accused Tapper of hypocrisy, running clips of him interrupting Trump’s daughter-in-law, Lara, in 2020, when she speculates on Biden’s cognitive decline.

But political journalist Chris Whipple, whose own book Uncharted about Biden’s declining health and the 2024 election was published last month, rejects the idea of a grand conspiracy.

“I don't see this as a cover-up in the classic Watergate sense of the word, where everybody's hiding something they know to be true,” he said. “What the media knew was reported: everybody saw Joe Biden shuffling toward Air Force One and grasping the handrail and falling over and all the rest,” he said.

“The story is even stranger and – in some ways, more human – because in my view, Biden's inner circle was lost in this fog of delusion and denial.”

The claims also come amid rising hostility from the White House towards journalists from independent media. “He [Trump] has a way of intimidating the press,” said Marvin Kalb, a 95-year-old veteran US journalist and former NBC News Meet the Press host. “As a student of the craft, I have an impression of fear.”

Trump has sued outlets including ABC, CBS and the Des Moines Register over coverage he disagreed with. The executive producer of CBS flagship news programme 60 Minutes recently resigned saying he could no longer operate with editorial independence amid Trump’s lawsuit and efforts to sell CBS parent company Paramount – a deal which requires federal approval.

“The whole journalism ecosystem in the US is driven by commercial interests, so that’s the way you really can create a kind of McCarthyite culture, where people are scared and they self-censor,” said Reece Peck.

Trump signed an executive order to cut funding to public news outlets NPR and PBS, with the White House calling them “radical propaganda”. Attempts to dismantle the Voice of America are currently being challenged in the courts.

The White House has also moved to promote favourable content. Press secretary Karoline Leavitt has given increasing access to Trump-friendly reporters and news outlets.

In this atmosphere, Kalb worries that reporting on the past may be an easier bet for journalists than tackling the present. “It is so easy in this environment to rip into Biden, in an environment in which the incumbent is a feared subject,” he told The Observer.

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