Open Book with Anthony Scaramucci - The Biden Cover-Up with Jake Tapper & Alex Thompson

Episode Date: June 4, 2025

This week, Anthony talks with two of the most respected journalists in American politics, Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson about their new book Original Sin: President Biden's Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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That's everything. That's from authors and historians to figures in entertainment, political activists, and, of course, Wall Street. Before we dive in, make sure to follow or subscribe wherever you get your podcast. And don't forget to leave a review. Good or bad. I want to hear from you. I want to hear whether you're enjoying it or where we can improve. And I can take the hits.

So let me know. If you don't like something, say it straight. Now let's get into it. Well, welcome to Open Book. I am your host, Anthony Scaramucci. I am delighted today to have with me two friends, Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson. Jake is the lead DC anchor, Chief Washington correspondent for CNN. And Alex Thompson is the national political correspondent for Axios.

The title of this bestselling book is Original Sin, President Biden's Decline. It's cover-up and his disastrous choice to run again. And I have to say this, and this is something that Jake will enjoy. I texted Jake from one of my other phones. He didn't know who the hell it was. And so he made me send him a FaceTime video to verify that it was actually me, Alex. But I read the book. You guys sent me an advance copy.

I don't have it on me, actually, because I left it in London for one of my colleagues from Goalhanger, this podcast company I do a podcast with. But I read the book, and I would say that my mouth was open for most of the book in terms of the revelations in the book. I texted Jake, and he didn't believe it was me, so I had to FaceTime him. But what I said at the time was this is as big of a deal as Watergate to somebody like me. And I've seen a lot of your interviews, and people have brought this up to the two of you. So I want to start with by congratulating you for the book, but also why write it?

because, of course, you're getting the backflack of a tremendous amount of controversy. You're too smart guys. You knew that this would be a hotbed issue for a lot of people, and they would start shooting at you and dehumanizing you. You're smarter than me. When I went into politics, I was stupider than the two of you, okay? I didn't realize the vortex I was going into, but you guys did. So let's start there.

Why write the book knowing that? Well, the book was written just because I wanted to know what happened. I was very confused. I knew he'd been aging, and we'd been watching him deteriorate over time. But then that night of the debate, June 27, 24, I was shocked. I mean, again, we'd all seen him declining and getting older, but that was something. What we saw that night was something else. It was someone who couldn't articulate a thought, somebody who lost his train of thought,

somebody who couldn't come up with words. And I wanted to know what happened. That really was the impetus for it. And the day before the election, Alex was on my show and I very impulsively just told him about the book idea. I thought Harris was not going to win and that people, a lot of Democrats thought the original sin of this all was Biden deciding to run for reelection. I don't know how seriously he took what I said, but the day after the election, I reached out and we got to work and we were just reporting, reporting, reporting, reporting. And we were reporting before we had a deal. We were reporting before we had a publisher. We just wanted to know.

I mean, I do remember saying to Alex early on, like, if we just post this, if nobody buys this, and this is just you and me and self-publishing an e-book, that's fine with me. I don't care. I just want to know what happened. And so that was the impetus for it. And, you know, there is a lot of blowback on the right and the left. I will say that the book is a hit with the Normies, which thankfully is most of the country. I mean, we are selling very well, and the reviews have been great from. most sane publications. But yeah, I mean, that was it. Why? Why? How bad was he before the debate? How often

did it rear its head? Who saw it? How many people saw it? And it's that was, and we didn't even know how much we would get, honestly, when we started writing the book, even after we had the contract. And by the end of it, we were, we were pleased with how many people talked to us more than 200 people, almost all of them, Democrats, almost all of the interviews after the election. You know, I think it was, I forget who said it. But a famous author said, you know, if there's a book that you want to read that hasn't been written, then you must write it yourself. And that's what we did.

Well, I mean, I'll let it Alex talk in a second. But Jake, when I read the book, I literally texted you when I closed the book. And I said, okay, this book. See, the thing is, you know this. And I know this because I've written books and I've got a lot of books on my office. I do a podcast on books. I'll be able to read the books. They just, you know, they read somebody's rent.

addition of the book. They don't even know what's in the book. The research in this book is overwhelming. It's not, it's not like, oh, Jake and Alex made something up. You have originally sourced research in the book. So Alex, talk a little bit about that. How, I mean, how did you get that, by the way? I would love to know that. And then secondarily, are you surprised by the reaction that people, because Jake's saying something about the normies, these people are going to shut on the book one way or another for partisan reasons, but the book is an overwhelming, clear-eyed, well-researched indictment of what happened. You know, one of my former bosses once said the only thing worse than everybody talking

about your reporting is nobody talking about your reporting, and that it's never, it's not fun, like when everyone is, you know, is talking about it, but that is the goal. And the reason why people are talking about it is because each side has a vested interest in their narrative prevailing. You know, Democrats don't want to look in the meet. I mean, you know, someone that covered Joe Biden for four years and was, I thought, tough but fair. But what about Trump was the answer for everything. And so I'm not surprised at all that their answer still is, what about Trump? But I will say, like, even not just the normies, but also I think people in the Biden administration on the Biden campaign team. And Democrats, you know, I've been at least somewhat hardened for the number of people I personally know that have, like read the book and are willing to, you know, accept reality in a way that I think they weren't a year ago. And as for, you know, how we did it, I mean, we basically did nothing for two and a half month.

I would say the other thing that was going in our favor is that people that we had been trying to reach out to, you know, cold calling, sliding into their DMs, you know, for years. Finally, we're willing to talk because I think both because some of them were being reflective, not all, but some of them were, and figuring out how they got here. And then also, you know, there was no, like, I think a lot of people were scared to talk before because they thought any information we give, it's only going to help Trump. And so I think that that just changed things. So, you know, the three of us are students of history. We've known that this has happened before. We know the Woodrow and Edith Wilson situation. We know that heart attacks that Eisenhower had and things that were going on with Ronald Reagan. But this feels so different from that. So make a historical comparison for me. Tell me why you guys think this is different. And tell me what you think the last thing. implications are of this. It's tough to, it's tough to assess the best historical reference just because we still don't know so much about how adult President Reagan was at the very end of his second term

with Alzheimer's or the depths of, you know, Eisenhower's worst, worst days after his heart attacks. I think the best historical reference would probably be something in between Ronald Reagan and it's certainly not like Woodrow Wilson's stroke, but it's up there. I mean, it is, it is very clear, and I don't even think that they're refuting it or rebutting it, but it is very clear that the, what Alex and I, the construct Alex and I came up with is a fine or good Biden and a non-functioning Biden. And we're not saying that non-functioning Biden is 100% of Biden. I mean, that's just not the case. Obviously, we see him walking and talking and making remarks, and we saw that throughout his presidency. But as with anybody who is aging or has some sort of degenerative issue cognitively,

there are good days and bad days, good moments and bad moments. We were saying that there were the non-functioning Biden that we saw the night of the debate, that there were more moments like that than the public was aware of behind the scenes. So I suppose it's most like Reagan, if I, if I suss it out because Reagan certainly had moments where he was functioning and non-functioning. But I'm not a doctor and I didn't have any special insight into the Reagan administration. But if I had to come up with a comparison, I guess that's the one. What's so outrageous about it to me is the fact that we as a public and, well, look, I mean, Anthony, you went out on a limb. You endorsed Biden, right? And then you were a former Trump official

who endorsed Biden, and you had every right to, as somebody publicly advocating for him, you had every right to know what was going on behind the scenes. And they were hiding it from you. And they were hiding it from, you know, cabinet secretaries and top Democratic officials and donors and such until they could no longer hide it until the debate revealed it. So let me just say a couple of things here. I want you both to react. So I gave money to the Biden people. They came to my office. They told me that don't, some of this stuff is AI generated, the stuff at, uh, on Normandy. He was really looking over here. He wasn't looking over there. Remember, McCrone was trying to help him get out of the pew. Uh, they told me, they told me that he broke his foot. They didn't

put the cast on properly, which is why he was hobbling around like that, but he was, uh, as energetic as ever. Uh, and that, uh, don't, don't look at this thing going on over here, but look at that thing over there, sort of Wizard of Ozzy. The one thing I will say to you, Jake, I gave $30,000 to go to this East Hampton fundraiser after the debate. Okay. And I went to there, and I did say to a reporter afterwards, he was behind a velvet rope. He was with the prompter in front of him.

I've been to a lot of political fundraisers. I've never seen somebody do that before where no interaction with the people. at the fundraiser, a couple of pictures for top, top donors, and then reading from the prompter. Yeah. Guys, I walked out of, they said, okay, this is no way this guy's going to make it to the end. You're not going to be able to make it. And I guess, I guess my reaction was similar to your reaction, but I did not realize how bad

it was until I finished your book. So let me say a couple of things I'd like you to respond to them. Okay. Was there a group of people that just said to themselves, hey, We've got great power here. And Jake, you said this on one of your shows, by the way, and I'm going to bring it up here. I remember saying it, but I've used it on my podcast. It was very little turnover in the Biden administration, if any.

And it was almost like they had their own power structures where they didn't need to, you know, I mean, Biden wasn't overseeing. It's usually not Trumpian turnover, but there's usually some turnover that's the president's like, okay, I don't like what you're doing. I got to move you out. But these guys had their own power structures, no turn. And they're like, if we can just get the old man to get through one more election, we can keep these power structures. What's your reaction to that, Jake? And Alex. Alex, what are you taking?

I think there is something to. I would say there were two rationales for one is a little bit more like is a little bit more sympathetic and one is closer to what you're doing. And honestly, people in the administration still debate which one was true. and it's probably a combination. You know, it was in their self-interest to convince themselves to say he could do this. But so the more sympathetic one is Joe Biden is the only person that's beaten Trump. They believed that he was the only one that could beat Trump or had the best chance of beating Trump. Trump is an existential threat to democracy.

And therefore, you can justify anything. The less sympathetic one is what you're saying is that all of these people's lives, they're basically the first line of their obituaries are caught up in this guy. They believe that they, through Biden, are helping save the country. And they also have like little things. Like Mike Donlin was making $4 million off the reelection campaign. Steve Roshetti, another top aide, you know, had a lifelong ambition of being White House chief of staff. And on and on, you could see how people would try to ration.

personalize, you know, putting a guy that could not do the job he was running for in the Oval Office. Yeah, I mean, I agree with that. And I think you're on to something there, Anthony, in the sense that I don't think that I don't think President Biden fired one person. I can't think of any. No, you said it on your show. It was, to me, it was an epiphany.

I was like, I've used it. I said, there's proof that he wasn't in charge because he didn't fire anybody. didn't fire one person, including after the Afghanistan debacle, and including after Secretary Lloyd Austin deceived the country and the White House about his medical issues. And it's truly shocking. One of the things that, that, one of the moments in the book that is the most meaningful to me takes place in June 24 when Senator Michael Bennett of Colorado goes to the White House for an immigration event. And Biden has some weird moment, speaking, not a, it's an event that neurologists tell us seemed neurological. He says something,

nobody can hear him. It's very odd. It's a very odd moment. You can Google it and see it. But it's disconcerting. And Bennett leaves the White House thinking, well, no wonder our immigration policy is such a mess. This guy can't manage the brief. He's not in charge. He's not handling it. And so all these competing groups and staffers are in charge of it. And that's why the immigration policy is all over the map. There were the secretary of Homeland Security, Mayorkas expected early on in the Biden administration to get an order that would give him the power to help provide more border security and it never came.

So when the Biden people say, well, okay, regardless of this book, we're still waiting for the authors to provide one decision that, you know, mishandled national security or whatever, there's a million of them. It's just that it's, you know, the absence of leadership is also a decision. And that's one of the issues. Okay. When I sell my business, I want the best tax and investment advice. I want to help my kids. And I want to give back to the community. Ooh, then it's the vacation of a lifetime. I wonder if my head of office has a forever setting.

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of Presidential Power, because you write in the book that there was an insider describing kind of a five-person board, if you will, which is what you're talking about right now. And what you learn from Neustadt, you actually do need one person to come up and make the decision. They can either generate it from the White House or have it be a cabinet model, but there's got to be one conductor. And so just talk about that. Channel your Richard Neustadt for a second. Be a historian to speak to a future generation to say this historically means what for future presidents. I think if you look at how this White House operated because Biden was limited in his energy, because Biden was limited in the amount of time he could be in.

engaged, what you saw was that power and decision making trickled down. And yes, we don't have any reporting that Biden, that they made a decision, you know, without having Biden to sign off. But what a cabinet member said is they were, you know, that they couldn't get any, especially by 20203, 2024, they couldn't get any time with them. And that, that, you know, small group around Biden, basically would say, oh, come and brief us. And then we will brief him. And what one cabinet member said to us is, yes, the president is technically making the decisions. But if they're being presented in a certain way, it's actually not really a decision. And I think what you saw here is that so much of the decision making was made. And by that, I mean, like, the haggling over how to present a decision

was done at the mid level. And as a result, you know, there was no, at times there was no coherence of a larger strategy because the president was not involved until the very, very end when basically the decision and all the politicking had already been made. So I think it shows how sort of things can run in like an incoherent autopilot without, you know, really tremendous engagement or at least a very clear direction set from the top. I mean, the most coherent strategy they probably had on Ukraine. And that was because Joe Biden, even if he, and I do think he was more engaged on that issue than general, but also he set a very clear direction of what he wanted. And so the bureaucracy was all swimming in a largely the same direction. Although, I mean, even then, there were a lot of

criticisms from Ukraine Hawks, Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill who thought that Biden was slow walking a lot of these decisions, you know, he would get to where they wanted him to be, ultimately, giving the Ukrainians attackums or whatever, but it took a while. Now, I don't, we don't have any reporting that suggests that's because he was not engaged or he was adult. And certainly there's even an argument to be made that like he had to bring Europe along on some of these decisions and he was, you know, that was something that he had to manage. But also like, I don't know.

I mean, and that and the truth is a lot of people don't know because, you know, there, there was a meeting that President Biden had with the House Democrats in October 2021. He was supposed to go before them. This is in the book. And he's supposed to say, I want you to separate the Build Back Better bill from the infrastructure bill, vote for infrastructure, and then we'll keep working on Build Back Better. That was what he was supposed to say.

That's what Nancy Pelosi thought he was going to say. He doesn't say it. And then they bring him back again. He doesn't say it again. Now, at the time, a lot of people thought, this is weird. He's being cagey. Maybe he's just being political. But then in retrospect, after the debate, a lot of House Democrats,

look back on that and thought, oh, something was going on there. He just didn't have a handle on all this. One other thing on the point that Alex was making about if cabinet secretaries or others brought decisions to the Politburo, which is what the Biden administration officials called this tight inner circle, the Politburo, Steve Rossetti, Mike Donald and et cetera. And the quote that Alex referred to, like, if somebody else is managing the decision making how much of a decision it is, just to give a kind of like a sillier metaphor. So for your viewers or your listeners to understand, if I say to Alex,

Anthony can have anything he wants for dinner. So, you know, he's coming over tonight. Anthony can have anything he wants for dinner. And Alex goes to you and says, you can have chicken or you can have fish. Well, technically you've made a decision when you pick the chicken, I assume. But the limitations of the decision-making process

really belie that this. is any sort of real process. And that's a real problem, which is not to say that, you know, there isn't a form of that for any president, but it was just like on steroids for this one. Yeah, but I mean, I guess the problem is, hear me out for a second, guys, and respond it. I feel like the Democrats got so intimidated or freaked out by Trump. Yep. That they just said, we're going with Biden. He could be weekend at Biden. We don't give a shit.

We're going with Biden. And I think that the process, I mean, they are supposedly for the democracy. They don't have a New Hampshire primary. I can't remember the name of the House of Representative Guy that was trying to run against Biden. Pete Phillips. Yeah. They disintegrated him.

They went after Bobby Kennedy. I mean, they just, I don't know. I mean, I feel like they, if they had just let the process go or if somebody had gone to Biden said, dude, you're not able to do the job. anymore. Let's get somebody in your place. I mean, they force him out anyway, guys, right? They force him out. They just happen to force them out in July, as opposed to September of 23. I'm just wondering. But they forced him out. Let's not give the Democrats too much credit. They forced him out because they thought they were going to lose the election, not because they had serious issues about whether or not

he could be president, which they should have. And in fact, there's only one House Democrat that says the honest thing, which is not only should he not be our nominee, he shouldn't be president right now. And that's Congresswoman Marie Losing Camp Perez in Washington State. But J.D. Vance says the same thing. And it's really honestly hard to argue. How can you say he's too addled to be our nominee, but he still can be president? I mean, it doesn't make any sense. We had cabinet secretaries telling us that by 2024, Joe Biden, President Biden,

could not be relied upon for that proverbial 2 a.m. in the middle of the night, National Security Emergency phone call. So play Washington Cynic for me for a second. That will be easy. Yes, I understand that. I understand that, but this is the thing. To me, I read the book, and I'm like, if I'm a Democrat, I would say, okay, guys, this is a cautionary tale for what can happen if you don't answer the call of duty necessary. If you don't fulfill your obligation about competence, I would be praising the two of you guys.

I would be like, guys, this is a wake-up call. to go back to the woodshed together and we have to reorganize ourselves because this is a wake-up call. Because you're not a partisan Democrat. You're a normie, I mean, which is a- You think they go after the two of you. Yeah. And they're lighting you guys up on Twitter, lighting you guys up on Bill or whatever. They're lighting you up everywhere. I mean, don't you get, I mean, I guess my point is what would wake them up, Jake? What would wake them up, Alex. I mean, what will wake them up, I mean, like all politicians, what will wake them up is voters, right? If enough normie voters say, hey, this was not okay, you guys were part of this.

And, you know, we're seeing, it'll be interesting to see in the Virginia governor's race, the Republican or he put up an ad against the Democrat, basically calling her complicit and, you know, vouching for Biden. You're seeing Antonio Villarosa in the, you know, California governor gubernatorial primary attack kamala Harris and Javier Bacera, who are both obviously part of the administration for not telling the truth about Biden. And we'll see how voters respond. But, you know, Jake has this comparison where, you know, it reminds him and it's a good comparison of Republicans after January 6th. And eventually, I think Republicans at first were, what are we going to do?

And then voters weren't punishing them for it. In fact, voters were punishing them if they kept focusing on. it. The Liz Cheney's and Adam Kisinger. So, you know, I think, you know, it's really, unfortunately, politicians just seem to, they're not principled except for what's going to get me votes. We all know that, but I get, the thing that blows me away, we're now at the point in history where the three of us read Orwell as a cautionary tale, but the other people read it as a fucking guidebook. You know what I mean?

They're like, okay, this is how we're going to do things. Okay, we're going to just create the permanent lies. Is there any way to break that fever, I guess the question I have? I mean, look, I'm not a partisan Democrat and I'm not a partisan Republican, and I don't really understand partisanship, particularly because it just seems so intellectually dishonest, especially this day and age when you have to stand by people and stand by actions that are just so horrifying for both Democrats and Republicans. I will say that it seemed there was a time like maybe even like a week ago where I thought,

all right, well Democrats, you know, at the very beginning after this book came out, and the book did, you know, not to Tudor and Horn, but it did change the discussion and the dialogue about Biden without question. There was a front page story about our book on the Washington Post a week before the book was published. Jake, the book blew me away. Yeah. I want to get to my last question here in a second, but go ahead.

I'm sorry. So there was a time when I thought, you know, the Democrats are going to have to come to terms with this. And, you know, Roe Kana came out and started talking a little bit about this. Senator Chris Murphy came out and said, obviously Biden had some cognitive decline. The question is how much. And I thought, okay, good. We're going to have an honest conversation about this.

But that was it pretty much. I mean, other than the political attacks Alex referred to, I haven't really seen. You know, we've seen Senator Warnock was asked about this by Christian Welker on NBC, and he just, he ran away from the question. Last I checked, November 2024 was in the past or something. Schumer tried to change it to we're looking at the future. Akeem Jeffrey says we're looking at the future. You know, I don't understand it because to me, Democratic voters were there long before the party was, or even many in the news media, which is Biden's too old and can't do this job. So I don't fully understand the notion that people are not seizing this opportunity and saying,

we need to acknowledge wrongdoing. Oh, Seth Moulton said something on real time. Yeah, I saw. I saw you on the show. He said we need to acknowledge to voters that we were not telling the truth about the economy, about immigration, and about Biden's acuity. And I thought, wow, okay, maybe we're going to get somewhere. But the far left attacks that you see on me and Alex, like, that's, I mean, that's fine with us.

We don't care. We're reporters. But that is what Democratic politicians have to deal with. They need their votes. They can't have those people opposing them. And so that's the challenge here is to reach those people and say, this was a fraud perpetrated on you. You guys are the victims of this. You know, the old granny writing a $10 check to the Biden campaign and, you know, finds out that Mike Donaldan took $4 million bucks.

I mean, those people should be outraged. It's so well said. So, okay, so at the end of my podcast, what we do, guys, is I come up with five words from the book. And so I'm going to ask you guys to each respond to it. You can give me a sentence, a word. I'm going to say a word. I want you to react to him. I'm going to say the word denial.

So let's start with you, Alex. I say the word denial. What do you think of? The family. Okay. Jay. The party, the Democratic Party, in huge denial about what was going on. not inquisitive particularly.

How about, how about 2024? How would you define that? Democrats essentially forfeited and let Trump come back. I mean, for Democrats, disaster. And I think specifically about the debate. You know, during this book tour, it's been wild to, you know, we'll do some interviews and people will play the clips from the debate. still just so painful to listen to those, listen to those clips. Trump.

Luckiest man in American history. Okay, I'm, I'm with you, Alex. Do you want to add anything to that, Jake? I mean, victorious. I mean, you know, that's what he is. And Democrats are responsible for it. I mean, polling indicated that there was an opening for Donald Trump to not win. He was, he did not ride a, you This wasn't like an 80% approval. People loved and had fond memories of him. Democrats, as Alex said, forfeit. Vice President Harris. Loyal to a fault.

Yeah. Mixed. I mean, our book is not an indictment of her. I think that she helped the party a lot get out of the basement they were in. And because of her election night was not as huge of a disaster as it would have been if Biden had still been the nominee. But, you know, she played a role in all this, too. So, you know, my thing with her, I would just say cautious. You know, if you're going to be president, you've got to throw the ball.

You got to take risks. And she was a little bit too cautious. He had 107 days. She should have just gone crazy, you know. All right. Last one. Okay. Joe Biden.

Tragic. You see you guys say that. It was like a Greek tragedy. What about you, Jake? Sad. Yeah. Yeah, it's just a way, it's a very, you know, a great career politician. What a sad way to go out. But very Shakespearean, right? You're holding on way longer than you need to. And, you know, listen, I thought the book was extraordinary. The title of the book is original sin. President Biden's declined its cover up and it's disastrous choice to run again. But I believe that this book will be a seminal. book, a historic, you've made a historic contribution to not just today's zeitguess, but also the future about how people are going to think about these things and what their obligations are. And I hope that's the outcome of this book, guys. I think it was an incredible book. And so I congratulate you guys on writing it. And thank you for joining me today on Open Book. It's always good.

Thanks for having us. Thank you. I am Anthony Scarabucci, and that was Open Book. Thank you so much. for listening. If you like what you hear, tell your friends and make sure you hit follow or subscribe wherever you listen to your podcast. While you're there, please leave us a rating or review. If you want to connect with me or chat more about the discussions, it's at Scaramucci on X or Instagram. I'd love to hear from you. I'll see you back here next week.