Axios national political correspondent Alex Thompson, co-author of ‘Original Sin,’ on the media’s widespread reluctance to probe into former President Biden’s cognitive decline — on this week’s “FOX News Sunday.”

SHANNON BREAM, FOX NEWS: We’ve got to start with the elephant in the room, the media coverage of this. You recently won an award from the White House Correspondents Association for, quote, “Aggressive reporting on Biden and for providing, quote, important insight into the inner workings of the Biden White House.” And accepting the award, you acknowledged we missed some of this. There is more that could have been done. But everyday Americans who are watching the kinds of things like we have on the screen now, they’ll say, we weren’t in Washington. We’re not at the White House. We’re not covering this every day. We could see this decline in real time. Why couldn’t most of the Washington press corps? ALEX THOMPSON, NATIONAL POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT, AXIOS: Well, I’d say first, there’s a big difference between what you’re seeing on the screen there and then what was going on behind the scenes, behind the inner circle of the Biden White House to try to shield that part of Joe Biden. But for people that in the country that are frustrated with the media coverage, I don’t blame them because they were saying there’s probably more here. And we should have not — because the media definitely talked about his age and did show those clips. But I do think we didn’t probe more, probe enough into what was actually going on behind the scenes. And that’s what we really try to do in this book. BREAM: Well, fair to say though that those who did publicly question what we were seeing and try to push for more answers, they were often belittled or kind of, you know, condescended to about why they would even ask those questions. THOMPSON: I mean, I covered this aggressively back since 2021 and especially through 2023 and 2024. And the book says that, you know, at times I — I was even frustrated that there didn’t — that, you know, and I — I felt a little bit on the outs with, you know, some of my colleagues, not all. I think there are a lot of people that were really trying to cover this story and people in the White House were lying and not telling the truth and obscuring it. But, yes, I mean, I think it’s fair. That’s why I made the comments at the speech. I think, you know, this is a good moment for just like reflecting on — on why exactly we missed some of the details that we finally got in this book. BREAM: Mm-hmm. So, some of those who were pressing at the time in real time for more answers. I want to play a little bit of the responses they were getting from Biden’s inner circle. KARINE JEAN-PIERRE, FORMER WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: I think you all have called this the cheap fakes video. And that’s exactly what they are. They are cheap fakes video. The white wing critics of the president have a credibility problem. ALEJANDRO MAYORKAS, FORMER SECRETARY OF HOMELAND SECURITY: The most difficult part about a meeting with President Biden is preparing for it because he is sharp, intensely probing and detail-oriented and focused. RON KLAIN, FORMER WHITE HOUSE CHIEF OF STAFF: The president is absolutely sharp fit on top of his game. People can see that for themselves. You don’t have to take my word for it. You can — people can see that for themselves. BREAM: People felt like they saw something different when they were looking for themselves. All of those quotations were in 2024. So based on, having read your book, what you reported, were those people lying at the time, this idea that they couldn’t keep up with President Biden, that he was exceptionally sharp? THOMPSON: They weren’t telling the truth. And I think the book really conclusively shows what was going behind the scenes. And throughout 2023 and 2024, there were steps taken to increasingly shield Joe Biden, not just from the public, but from, you know, members of his own cabinet, members of his own senior staff. And one White House official who left in 2024 told us that they left in part because they were not comfortable with how they were trying to shield the extent of the decline. Joe Biden, that people saw on that debate stage, I think the book really shows it was not the first time that Joe Biden had acted like that. You can also listen to the tapes from the Robert Hur investigation. I think there’s like — you can — you can sort of hear debate Biden. And there were increasingly frantic efforts to make sure that the public did not see debate Biden. While the public did see that he was aging, I think the debate was a shock to millions of Americans because of the extent of it. BREAM: Well, and you mentioned in the book, you talked to a number of cabinet secretaries. I thought this was extremely illuminating and a little bit frightening because some of them told you they didn’t think he could handle that 2:00 A.M. middle of the night phone call. I mean, he’s the commander-in-chief with the nuclear codes. One of them talked about seeing him in person the last year and was shocked by — he seemed disoriented. His mouth was hanging open. He seemed out of it. Did those cabinet officials express any remorse? I mean, did they not have an obligation to say to the American people, we don’t think this guy can be the president, much less run for four more years? THOMPSON: I mean, there’s definitely a lot of self-reflection about what — if anything, they should have done differently. I think there was a feeling like a lot of members of the Democratic Party that were seeing this or some moments of him seeming out of it, that going public was not going to change his mind. It was only going to help Donald Trump. And I think that’s how a lot of them rationalized it. Now, whether or not history will judge them, you know, as being right for doing that, you know, we will see. But this is also part of the reason why the White House was shielding him from as many people as possible, including cabinet secretaries. Because sometimes, you know, you see him once maybe it’s just a bad day. You can just say like, you know, maybe I just had one bad meeting. You’re not really sure. BREAM: Well, and it did seem like there’s so many people who you would have thought would have access to him who didn’t because of this inner circle that really much managed his schedule and his time and his access in a way that didn’t give a lot of people, you know, one-on-one time with him. In the book, you quote a long-time Biden aide, basically admitting, he shouldn’t be running again. They said to you on page 85. “He just had to win and then he could disappear for four years. He’d only have to show proof of life every once in a while. His aides could pick up the slack.” Who would have been running the White House in a second Biden term? THOMPSON: This person went on to say that when you’re voting for president, you’re voting for the aides around him. But these aides were not even Senate-confirmed aides. These are a White House aides. These were unelected people. And one of the things that really I think comes out in our reporting here is that if you believe — and I think a lot of these people do sincerely believe that Donald Trump was an — is an existential threat to democracy, you can rationalize anything, including sometimes doing undemocratic things which I think is what this person is talking about. BREAM: Mm-hmm. I want to ask you about the president’s doctor because we have this unfortunate news now about his cancer diagnosis. And you write about Dr. Kevin O’Connor several times in the book. But on page 47 you say, “People around Biden worried that O’Connor, whom almost everyone called Doc, might be too close to his patient.” You write about his continued resistance to ever give him a cognitive test. But knowing what we know about the president’s health, something that, you know, a lot of medical professionals including Zeke Emanuel who is no conservative says, he may have had this cancer probably for years. Was Dr. O’Connor too close to him to significantly and accurately pro both his mental and physical health? THOMPSON: I mean, Zeke Emanuel is not only is no Republican, he also worked on Joe Biden’s COVID team. And he basically said that it’s almost certain that Joe Biden had this cancer while he was president. So that either means that he had cancer and his doctor did not catch it. Or it means that they did catch it and they didn’t disclose. And so it’s raised more questions than not. In terms — I mean, a lot of people did feel that Kevin O’Connor, while they also believed he was a man of integrity, they also just felt that he had been sort of, you know, brought into this Biden orbit of — of sort of, you know, they call it a version of a reality distortion field. And, you know, the — the other thing is that Kevin O’Connor was also very involved with Joe Biden’s late son, Beau’s cancer treatments. And, you know, that sort of bonded them in a way that I think made people a little apprehensive. And even people that really love Kevin O’Connor and — and they, by all counts, like he was beloved throughout the White House, you know, even long-time Biden needs have told me that they are skeptical and feel like they don’t have all the information when it comes to this cancer diagnosis. BREAM: OK. Well, maybe James Comer will be the one who probes that if this turns into a subpoena situation on the Hill. It’s a fascinating read in a way that is almost like you can’t turn away from a train wreck or watching happen having this information that we have now.
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