On Tuesday, CNN’s Jake Tapper and Axios’ Alex Thompson are set to release Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, It’s Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again — a book that claims to blow the lid off the very cover-up they both helped perpetuate. But Tapper and Thompson’s decision to allow their sources to hide behind the veil of anonymity is even more scandalous in light of Biden’s cancer diagnosis.
“Last week, President Joe Biden was seen for a new finding of a prostate nodule after experiencing increasing urinary symptoms,” a statement released Sunday by Biden’s office said. “On Friday, he was diagnosed with prostate cancer, characterized by a Gleason score of 9 (Grade Group 5) with metastasis to the bone.”
The statement said the cancer is a “more aggressive form” but “appears to be hormone-sensitive which allows for effective management.”
But even that statement covers up the truth, at least according to Dr. Zeke Emanuel, who said Monday on MSNBC that it’s extremely likely Biden had this cancer while in office.
“[Biden] did not develop [cancer] in the last 100, 200 days. He had it while he was president. He probably had it at the start of his presidency in 2021,” Emanuel said. “I don’t think there’s any disagreement about that.”
After years of the propaganda press’ spin and gaslighting, we now know that Biden wasn’t just cognitively impaired — but likely gravely ill. And yet, the people who enabled this crisis, like Cabinet members, remain nameless in Tapper and Thompson’s book — free from accountability.
In one excerpt of the book, an anonymous Cabinet member admitted that “For months, we didn’t have access to [Biden]” while another anonymous Cabinet member said there was a “deliberate strategy by the White House to have him met with as few people as necessary.”
If Tapper and Thompson truly intended to confront the cover-up, they wouldn’t have shielded the very people who helped orchestrate it. America already knew there was a cover-up. The only value this book could have offered was naming names — something it fails to do. What good is any “revelation” if it protects the guilty and arrives only after the damage is done?
Biden’s cancer announcement only sharpens the betrayal. According to Emanuel, Biden likely had cancer since the start of his presidency. That means those same insiders who helped cover up Biden’s cognitive decline very likely knew about his physical condition too (and even if they didn’t, no one would believe them given their involvement in the cover-up scandal).
Yet Tapper and Thompson allow these same insiders to speak from the shadows as if they’re brave truth tellers rather than co-conspirators in possibly the greatest political scandal in American history.
The truth is, Original Sin doesn’t expose the cover-up. It extends it. By letting Biden’s inner circle speak anonymously, Tapper and Thompson ensure the public remain in the dark while the guilty remain untouchable. Biden’s cancer announcement merely reveals that the deception was much deeper than anyone thought — and Tapper and Thompson’s book merely proves the cover-up is still alive and well — and they’re still a part of it.
Brianna Lyman is an elections correspondent at The Federalist. Brianna graduated from Fordham University with a degree in International Political Economy. Her work has been featured on Newsmax, Fox News, Fox Business and RealClearPolitics. Follow Brianna on X: @briannalyman2
