CNN host Jake Tapper discusses his new book, “Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, It’s Cover-up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again.”

SARA SIDNER, CNN HOST: All right. New this morning President Biden’s closest advisers privately discussed the possibility that he made need to use a wheelchair if he won re-election because his physical health had deteriorated so much. That scoop out this morning from Axios. It’s one of the many details in the soon-to-be-released new book titled “Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, It’s Cover-up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again.” It was written by Axios’ Alex Thompson and CNN’s own Jake Tapper. Jake is here to join us now. I’m curious about what his advisers were saying at the time as you look at this — as you reported out this book. JAKE TAPPER, CNN ANCHOR AND CHIEF WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT, CO-AUTHOR, ORIGINAL SIN: PRESIDENT BIDEN’S DECLINE, IT’S COVER-UP, AND HIS DISASTROUS CHOICE TO RUN AGAIN”: Sara, the White House physician, Dr. Kevin O’Conner, was telling White House aides that President Biden’s deterioration of his spine — the degeneration — was so significant that if he fell one more time that he might have to be in a wheelchair and serve in a wheelchair for his second term. But everybody pushed off the notion that he’d used a wheelchair until after the election. This is all part of a larger whole where the Biden White House tried to hide the extent of his deterioration, both physical and cognitive, as much as possible. In fact, as you — we all know and we all saw as his shuffling gait got worse and worse from 2003 to 2004, they started putting aides around him as he walked to Marine One, the helicopter. That was to kind of hide from public view how bad his gait was and how bad his walking was — his shuffling — and also in case he stumbled again to make sure somebody was there. And this is just of a piece of an overall campaign to try to conceal from the American people the extent to which the president was really struggling to do his job. SIDNER: You have an entire White House Press Corps though following him around. And I’m just curious as to whether or not this kind of trying to hide what was happening with the president at the time had an impact on the Press Corps. I’m, like, why didn’t we hear some of these details from what they actually saw and were dealing with trying to get information? TAPPER: Well, Alex Thompson and I were on the case, as were lots of other reporters, trying to figure out what was going on behind the scenes. But the bottom line is the White House was lying not only to the press, not only to the public, but they were lying to members of their own cabinet. They were lying to White House staffers. They were lying to Democratic members of Congress, to donors about how bad things had gotten. And, in fact, Alex and I started writing this book after the election of 2024 and we spoke with more than 200 people, most of whom — almost all of whom were Democrats and almost all of whom wouldn’t be honest with us or wouldn’t be candid with us until after the election. And then after the election we found out all of these things that when you looked at what was going on with President Biden at the time it probably doesn’t surprise you the extent to which he was deteriorating. But now we have anecdotes and facts about what was really going on behind the scenes with details that Democrats wouldn’t share with us until after Election Day. SIDNER: Are you hearing anything from President Biden himself about any of this? Is he responding to any of this? TAPPER: So he was on “THE VIEW” last week and Alyssa Farah Griffin, one of our commentators and also obviously a host there, asked him about our book specifically — she said to us later it was about our bool — about the fact that sources were saying these things about him behind closed doors and are they wrong.

RealClearPolitics Videos