A conspiracy of silence

JAKE Tapper and Alex Thompson’s Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again provides a picture that most Americans would have recognised, which was “in front of our noses”, as the authors put it. It was that of a tottering president who was frequently incoherent and confused when he spoke, who lost his recall of names and faces, and who seemed to be drained of energy.

Tapper, a CNN correspondent and anchor, and Thompson, a journalist with Axios, depict a Democratic Party, White House staff and a Biden campaign that – though aware of Joe Biden’s confusion, incoherence and forgetfulness, including his failure to recognise actor George Clooney at a fundraiser and reference to French President Emmanuel Macron as ex-leader Francois Mitterrand – remained largely silent about it, and instead attempted to hide and spin it.

Biden’s enablers rationalised their conduct by arguing that he was solely capable of defeating Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.