Original Sin
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  • Published: 22 May 2025
  • ISBN: 9781804958506
  • Imprint: Penguin
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 352

Original Sin

  • Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson
Formats & editions
Tr. Paperback
3 Jun 2025
EBook
22 May 2025
Audiobook
20 May 2025
Hardback
22 Jun 2025
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An explosive account of one of the most hubristic mistakes in American political history: Joe Biden’s decision to run for reelection despite mounting evidence of his decline, and his team's increasingly desperate efforts to hide it.

In Greek tragedy, the protagonist’s effort to avoid his fate is what seals his fate. In 2024, American politics became a Greek tragedy.

Joe Biden launched his successful 2020 bid for the White House with the stated goal of saving the nation from a second Trump term. He, his family and his senior aides were so convinced that only he could beat Trump again that they lied to themselves, allies and the public about his condition and limitations. At his debate with Trump on 28 June 2024, the consequences of that deception were exposed – all but dooming the Democrats to defeat later that year.

Now the full, unsettling truth is being told for the first time. Here, two of America’s best-respected political journalists take us behind closed doors to reveal the extent of Biden’s decline and who knew about it, from White House staffers to senators to Hollywood celebrities. They paint President Biden’s decision to run for re-election as shockingly narcissistic, delusional and reckless – and the wider cover-up as an act of unprecedented public deception. Rarely has hubris met nemesis so explosively.

The story the authors tell raises fundamental issues of accountability and responsibility that will endure for decades. In the name of defeating what they called an existential threat to democracy, Biden and his inner circle ensured it, marking the beginning of a remarkable campaign of denial and gaslighting against the American public. His decision to run again was the original sin of his presidency – the moment that led directly to Donald Trump’s return to power and all that has come since.
  • Published: 22 May 2025
  • ISBN: 9781804958506
  • Imprint: Penguin
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 352
Categories:

Praise for Original Sin

Damning and well-documented.

TELEGRAPH

A scathing account of an elderly, egotistical president cocooned from reality seeking re-election in 2024 despite significant concerns about his declining health and cognitive abilities.

GUARDIAN

Tapper and Thompson's portrait of a decrepit American president is devastating... Original Sin succeeds because it has a strong thesis and an arresting narrative, delivered in made-for-TV episodes.

FINANCIAL TIMES

A fascinating insight... this book shines a blinding light on the extent to which Joe Biden was ageing rapidly, becoming tired and confused and patently unfit for a second term in office.

iNEWS

Explosive . . . Tapper and Thompson have done the [Democratic] party a favor. Some sort of reckoning is due for the disastrous missteps that that paved the way for Trump’s return.

MICHELLE GOLDBERG, co-author of POLITICAL CORRECTNESS

[The] most significant book to date about Biden’s cognitive decline.

ATLANTIC

Superbly reported . . . Reads like a Shakespearean drama on steroids.

LOS ANGELES TIMES

Original Sin is not really a 'campaign book'—its account of the 2024 election largely ends after Biden drops out—but its simple assessment of the race is more compelling than anything else I’ve read about it . . . Original Sin is rarely better than when Tapper and Thompson are writing—with extensive reporting and clear-eyed prose—about the disaster that Biden caused . . . Over the next year, dozens of books will appear that attempt to explain this election. It’s hard to imagine any doing better than that.

WASHINGTON POST

A damning, step-by-step account of how the people closest to a stubborn, ageing president enabled his quixotic resolve to run for a second term.

NEW YORKER

Original Sin is a comprehensively sourced autopsy of the agonised end to Biden’s 50-year career. It’s accusatory, indignant, righteous – and convincing.

NEW STATESMAN

An authoritative indictment of a denial-plagued presidential run . . . This tough yet fair account of an ageing president’s inauspicious reelection campaign makes a strong case that voters deserve to know more about their commander-in-chief’s health.

KIRKUS

It’s hard to think of a book which has shifted the political dial to this extent in recent years.

POLITICO
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