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(gentle music) (soft music) - [Narrator] And now, the "Cascade PBS Ideas Festival," featuring journalists, newsmakers, and innovators from around the country in conversation about the issues making headlines.

Thank you for joining us for "The GIST" with Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson, moderated by Mike Pesca.

Before we begin, a special thank you to our session sponsor, Socius Law Group.

We'd also like to thank our stage sponsor, BECU.

And our founding sponsor, the Killinger Foundation.

Also, thank you to our host sponsor, Amazon.

(audience applauds) - Hello and welcome to the "Cascade PBS Ideas Festival."

I'm Mike Pesca, host of "The GIST" podcast.

The press corps and the presidency are two institutions that have forever been locked in a duel and a dance.

The media always wants more, more access, more information, more scoops.

Presidents have traditionally resisted, trying to control the narrative, shape the stories that we're told, and to try to influence the messages that reach the public.

And that is all normal.

What is not normal became apparent to almost all Americans one summer night during a presidential debate.

And that is the topic of the zeitgeist-shaping new book, "Original Sin: President Biden's Decline, Its Cover-up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again."

Welcome Jake Tapper, Alex Thompson, authors of "Original Sin."

(audience applauds) So as I said, Zeitgeist defining, this is the kind of book that even if the people here haven't read it, and maybe they read the excerpt in "The New Yorker," maybe they've heard a few of the interviews you've done that you've not been lacking for, I understand, that bring back carpool karaoke just for you guys.

(Alex chuckles) So what I want to do is to lay out some of the major claims and then give you each a chance to highlight one or two.

So we can't get to all, the whole scope of this tapestry that you weave, but just, each of you, give me a thread, if you will, an anecdote that one of your sources told you that brings to life what the situation was.

Alex, you can start.

- Well, this isn't a story a source told me, but rather months of President Biden's private schedules that were given to me in 2023 and 2024.

And what you can clearly see... Now, we, and as reporters, saw the public schedules, and that, you know, he obviously didn't do many events in front of a camera after 4:00 PM, didn't do many events in front of cameras before 10:00 AM, but the private schedule was also incredibly constricted.

And what it showed was that, basically, the White House apparatus was slowly adapting to his limitations and to his decline.

There was one day in particular that always stands out, which it was October 3rd, 2023.

And it's not an outlier either.

There's many days that are very similar to this.

And basically, his day is a few meetings from 10 to 1, about two hours of what they called "POTUS time," a half hour of desk time, and then a short meeting with his chief of staff, and then dinner and back to the residence by 4:30 PM.

That was the full day.

And seeing months of these calendars over the course of late 2023 and, you know, in 2024, I think, just showed how, despite some saying that this was sort of in plain sight, people were worried about his age, that in private there were also a lot of things being done to control for his limitations.

- There are a lot of stories, and when Alex and I started reporting on this after the election, to be completely candid, we didn't know what we were gonna get.

We didn't know how much there was gonna be, we were gonna be able to mine.

And we were surprised at how much we got.

We got so much that, like some of the things that we got early on in the reporting process, didn't even end up in the book because of word limitations.

- Yeah.

- But I think there were just a lot of moments that we got in the book where we just could not believe the story.

And one of the most shocking ones was in "The New Yorker" excerpt, which was that President Biden didn't seem to recognize George Clooney when he saw him backstage at that big fundraiser that George Clooney was a co-host for that raised a record $30 million for his campaign.

And George Clooney had known President Biden since...

He met him after 9/11, and he dealt with him as an activist against the genocide in Darfur when he was vice president and on and on.

And I mean, that's just a shocking thing.

And it also just explains why Clooney wrote the op-ed he did, because he saw what every one of us saw at debate night, he saw it backstage at that fundraiser.

And we just have lots of anecdotes like that of moments... Like we all age and we all lose our train of thought and we all forget names, and this isn't that.

What we uncovered in our reporting is that there was the fine Joe Biden that, you know, if he shows up on TV, not threatening to beat us up, which he did the other day.

I guess people don't know that, okay, nevermind.

You guys don't watch enough CNN.

(Alex and audience laughs) So the Joe Biden that's fine, you know, seems old, but he's fine.

And then there's the one that we saw the night of the debate who's non-functioning, doesn't seem in control, doesn't seem in command.

And there was just that Joe Biden... We wanted to know how much that person reared his head before the debate night, and we found out it was more than you'd be comfortable with.

- Yeah, unless you come away with the impression or one comes away with the impression that this is mostly affect, that was one of the strengths of the book to me, that it was deep.

It wasn't just communication or affect.

It wasn't even my conclusion, it was the people closest to him coming to that conclusion.

So all presidents have to be gatekept, otherwise the job's impossible.

Around him are a series of close advisors that you call, because that's what Biden world called it, the "politburo."

Were the walls higher and thicker with the politburo than any other president that you've reported on or encountered?

- Certainly, that I've reported on, Jake's report on more White Houses than I have, but also it was that way to members of the Cabinet.

They could not believe the amount of control and access that these people had.

And it went beyond even members of the Cabinet, members of Congress, other senior members of the Democratic Party, they- - Who've dealt with other presidents before.

- Yes, exactly.

And you know, like, I mean I think we have a story of Adam Smith that basically, I think he only spoke to President Biden one time, and that was just about Afghanistan, it was very brief.

- Was he chair of foreign relations?

- Armed services.

- Armed services.

- He's the top Democrat until Republicans take the House back.

But yeah.

- Yeah.

- I mean he's a very important player.

- During a time when we're funding the Ukraine war and that's major issue.

- Yeah.

- Spoke to him once, sorry.

- Yeah, no, and you know, we talked to a senior White House official who left in 2024...

I mean, and listen, like the walls had already been high and thick at the beginning of the presidency and became that way even when he was running for president, they became taller and thicker during COVID, and then this one senior White House official who left in early 2024 because they objected to him running for a second term confessed to us that they were intentionally, especially leaving in late 2023, they were intentionally shielding him, not just from the press, but from his own staff so that people did not realize the severity of the decline.

So it's really like late 2023, early 2024, those walls are getting almost impenetrable.

And they were hiding that non-functioning Biden, that at times adult Biden, from the American people and from fellow Democrats.

And ultimately, like the debate is just, their luck ran out because they'd, obviously, been able to manage him to the point where he was able to give that great State of the Union address or at least vibrant State of the Union address, and then, but- - And there were improvisational moments too.

It was more than just reading off.

- Exactly.

- He got a lot of strength from that, he parried with Republicans in the crowd.

- A hundred percent.

- Yes.

- Yeah.

- Yes.

- So I've covered White Houses since Bill Clinton's White House, and you just can't compare how insular and how small this group was.

And the other thing that I think is important about it is, with the exception of Donald Trump, who I think surrounds himself, especially this term as opposed to his first term, he surrounds himself with a lot of "yes men," people who just tell him what he wants to hear, I think that that's what Biden had too.

- Yes.

- I'm not comparing the two men, I'm not comparing the two presidencies, but the style of leadership is the same.

And I think, Mike, you would agree that one of the things that is important for a leader in any field, media, business, Starbucks, Amazon, is to have people around you who can tell you, "That's a bad idea.

That's a mistake.

Let's talk about this some more," because otherwise big mistakes are made.

And I think that President Biden had removed a lot of those people from his group.

And let me just make one other point because I recognize that this is a blue city in a blue state.

We are not unsympathetic to Joe Biden in this book.

We certainly respect his service.

We respect all of the hardships that the fates have thrown at him.

I do not think this is a mean book.

This is about a consequential decision, a bad decision, in retrospect, that he made.

We try to explain why he made it.

We try to explain the world from his point of view why it should not have happened.

And for people who are saying, "Why aren't you covering Trump?"

Well, I do, two hours every day, so I do do that, as does Alex.

But beyond that is the simple answer of, this is how we got a second term of Donald Trump, because this happened, because Joe Biden decided to run for reelection even though he had made an implicit, not explicit, but implicit promise, he would be a one-term president.

And then even after it became very clear that he was having these moments, that made it clear he could not do this job of being president for another term.

And I don't really think there's any serious debate that he, today, would be capable of being president until January, 2029.

I just don't think, even before the tragic cancer diagnosis, I just don't think he would be up for that.

That decision meant that a very strong bench, including Jay Inslee, or I'm trying to think who would draw applause, a name, but apparently I failed.

(Mike and audience laughs) But a very strong Democratic bench did not get a chance to run, whether you're a fan of Newsom or Shapiro or Whitmer or Warnock or whatever.

And that attempt to suppress and hide from you, from you, what he was having moments of behind the scenes meant that once it was exposed to everybody on June 27th, 2024, in my personal view, and I think Alex is in the view of a lot of Democrats that are around the Biden White House and the Harris campaign, ultimately, there was just no recovering from that.

The Democratic Party, whether or not every Democrat knew or not, a Democratic official was exposed to people or portrayed in people's minds as lying to them.

- Yeah.

- And that's a real mistake with real consequences.

And you know, you're reading about them in the paper every day.

- There's another subtle difference here.

Mostly when we think about what were the consequences of Joe Biden's mental acuity slipping to the degree that it did, mostly the analysis is something like what you said, that made him unelectable and then play out the string.

Would Kamala Harris be able to in her 107 days beat Trump?

And the answer was no.

So the premise is the consequence of him having mental slippage was that he was unelectable to America.

But I'll raise another point.

If he had mental acuity, he very well, and I'd like to hear what you think about it, he very well might have decided to do what he promised or strongly implied in 2020.

He might have said, "I'm going to be the bridge."

Because part of mental processing is having a theory of self, is having an understanding of how you come across and what your powers are.

And so I think perhaps it's true that the mental slippage also led him to the bad decision to run again.

- I think that's possible.

But what our reporting shows is that to believe that Joe Biden was going to be a bridge and a one-term president is sort of ignoring the previous 79 years of his life.

(Mike and audience laughs) As one person, you know, put it to us is like, he is nothing if not for this.

- Uh-hmm.

- He has put everything, his entire life, and he has, you know, basically, made this a family drive for decades.

I mean, this is a guy that wanted to run for president as soon as he was constitutionally eligible and... - He got elected to the Senate, right, before he was old enough to be in the Senate.

- Yes, he was 29 years old.

- Right.

- His birthday was... Yeah, he turned 30 between election day and swearing-in day.

- It's constitutional but he's a young man in a hurry.

- Yes, I have to say I agree.

You know, I'm a fan of yours, and I love how you throw out theories and everything.

It's one of the reasons I listen to you all the time and all that, but I think he's just like every president, like every politician, an egomaniac, and like he was always, and was always gonna serve as Texas.

- Yeah.

- I mean, I don't- - It's hard to get there, and once you get there, you don't want to leave.

- Yeah.

So I don't know that I buy that theory, but as Alex says, it's possible.

- Yeah, Anthony Bernal, one of the two or three most consequential people in keeping Biden from his staff and the public.

He has a Wikipedia entry of seven sentences.

And by way of comparison, Brutus "The Barber" Beefcake, who was a wrestler in the '80s, 158 sentences.

So it does seem that something went wrong.

And I wouldn't say it was because Anthony Bernal is a Svengali or so damn skilled at what he was doing, he had to be serving some sort of function, right?

It wasn't Anthony Bernal or even Donilon making the decision, was anyone?

- I mean, I think the Biden's in the family.

- Yeah, you really have to... At the end of the day, Joe Biden had enough acuity to know what he was doing.

He had enough acuity to know his limitations.

Even under the degree of delusion, he might have been.

- Yeah.

- He had to have known, I'm having trouble walking, I'm having trouble talking, I'm having trouble remembering names, and that... Look, none of this is comfortable to talk about or acknowledge.

I mean, mortality and aging are two things that we all go through and probably the least talked about things that we all go through.

- Uh-hmm.

- But I think that you can't take away his agency here and Jill Biden's agency here and Hunter Biden's agency here, 'cause they really were the most important players.

There was no process for Joe Biden deciding he was gonna run for re-election.

The decision was just made (finger snaps) by him.

There's this story about him talking to his grandkids, but you know, that's not real.

He made the decision, he was gonna run, and everybody just got in line.

And Bernal was basically Jill's enforcer and Donilon and this other guy, Steven Ricchetti, were basically the president's enforcers and all the decisions flowed from there.

So, I mean, when you have a small group of people who are willing to say, "We are full steam ahead right into the iceberg," that's a problem.

- Yeah, yeah.

So you describe essentially three camps.

Camp one is people in denial or say they're in denial.

Camp two were people who say something like, "You are right, we've all seen him have those moments, but it's mostly communication."

And camp three is, "Communication's really important to the job of the president."

The camp shifted over time, right?

- Mm.

- Did the people in the third camp who were very worried, did it take the debate for them to talk among each other or realize how bad it was, do you think?

- I think in some cases, because of the culture in that building, if you said anything, then you were automatically suspect.

- Uh-hmm.

- Like if you ever raised doubts about his age, then people would be like, "What do you mean?

He's as sharp as ever."

You know, the line, right?

"He's running circles around us."

- Yeah.

- You couldn't- - Behind closed doors.

- Yes.

You would be shocked if you were in the room with him, right?

And so I do think the debate gave permission... And I can tell this too, because I was able to write a lot of stories after the debate, because not only were they finally willing to talk to each other, they were also finally willing to talk to reporters that, like, they had been noticing things that gave them pause, that worried them and now they realize that the consequences of having not said anything could mean, you know, not just Donald Trump winning, but Republicans getting huge majorities in Congress.

I'd also say just one little thing on the third camp, I would say, there are many people in the third camp that don't just think it was a communications issue.

- Yeah.

- That they thought that he was limited in his ability to do the job and that his age affected, and honestly, made him a less effective president.

- I wanna ask you about reporting, which is... We have a few minutes left.

I know why, and Alex was the best reporter actually pursuing these issues.

And I know why you can't, in getting people on the record, browbeat them and you don't want to be performative and say, "How dare you."

But can you or did you do anything to elicit any real grappling with, my God, what have we done from, say, the Cabinet members?

- Yeah, I mean, how could you not... You know, all these conversations, especially with the Cabinet members, we agreed that they would be anonymous and then they're saying these explosive things.

Now, some people have said, "Well, you shouldn't have made them anonymous."

Well, we agreed to make them anonymous.

- Yes, we tried to get them all on the record.

- Yeah.

- Obviously.

That we, you know... Of course.

- Yes.

- You know, but these people are fearful.

- Yes.

- But to your point about remorse and thinking back, yeah.

I mean, and I guess this is the way that...

I think this is the rationale if I'm sort of distilling all of them into one person, including some senior White House officials is this, what were my options, I didn't have access to him.

- [Mike] Uh-hmm.

- I could have gone public with my concerns, but that was not gonna change this guy's mind.

He didn't care if I went public, and it was only going to help Donald Trump.

And as bad as Joe, as bad as this situation is with having a president that cannot do the job he is running for, that is still a better scenario than Donald Trump winning.

And I think that's how they think about it.

But now that Trump won, I think there's like, is that the right call?

Was that the right decision?

- The incentive structure in our politics is not constructed to reward courage.

It just isn't.

Journalism's different.

You might argue that the incentive structure in journalism these days is to preach to choirs.

- Uh-hmm.

- That's where the money is, for sure.

I would say that the reception to this book has been among normies, and I don't know you all, but if you're here, I'm assuming- - You seem normal, yeah.

- Yeah, you seem okay to me.

But the reception to the book has been great among normal people.

It's been great reviews, it's been great sales, it's been lovely crowds like this one.

But the reception among official liberals, let's say, or progressives on the left and conservatives or MAGA or whatever on the right has been ferocious.

It's been absolutely ferocious.

Now, I don't care.

I mean, we're reporters.

Like, we don't have to appeal to those groups.

But if you're a Democrat, you have to worry about these people.

Especially if you're gonna run for office, you have to worry about progressive activists think that you're a traitor, that you are doing X, Y, Z because you're a sellout, 'cause you're trying to make money, this, that, and the other.

And I'm not surprised that the reaction among Democratic officials has been as muted as it's been.

Although there really hasn't been a lot of pushback because I think the book is just self-evidently true and thoroughly reported and really not rebuttable, but you haven't seen... You know, Senator Chris Murphy from Connecticut, (clears throat) who's almost certainly gonna run for president based on his behavior, not any inside reporting I have, you know, he's acknowledged that, obviously, President Biden lost some cognitive skills, just how much he doesn't know.

But we haven't really heard anything from Whitmer, Newsom.

I guess my point is just those are the people that all these off-the-record or background sources Cabinet secretary number three are worried about for whatever reason, boards or elections or wanting to have a role in the Democratic Party, because these people are angry.

- Uh-hmm.

- And they're angry at Trump exists and they're blaming it on me and Alex or whatever.

- Uh-hmm, right, right.

And I did a search for the day after the book came out, 'cause the day the book came out, Biden's cancer diagnosis was revealed.

All the CNN transcripts, there were 33 mentions of the big beautiful bill and two mentions of Biden.

So if the argument is you're taking your eye off Trump, it's demonstrably untrue.

But I do wanna ask you, gentle challenge, back in 2020, you had Lara Trump on the show and you got into it with her.

You took her critique of Biden verbal stumble as mocking... - Well, she said he had cognitive, cognitive problems.

- Yeah, yeah.

- And this is October, 2020.

Our reporting suggests that his cognitive struggles began as far back as 2015.

Her report, the investigation into Biden's mishandling of classified information, suggests that there was evidence of it in 2017 and 2018.

But what I saw in October, 2020 was not that.

- Right.

- And in fact, I'd interviewed him in September, 2020 and, the interview's online, you can see it if you want, he seems fine.

- Right, it was a good interview.

But what I wanted to ask you was actually this, you just talked about the reaction to Democrats and many normies are saying, "Well, we don't wanna be George Santayana and we don't want to not learn from history."

What about Republicans or very conservative people, people would never vote for Biden in the first place, have any of them given you any credit, you personally, or are they framing it as, "You're just late to the party, why should we listen to you?"

- Yeah, I mean there's a lot of that.

I think that people...

I think there is a misunderstanding between the difference between running a clip of Joe Biden.

- Yeah.

- And pointing at him and calling him an applesauce head.

And that, which was certainly going on throughout his presidency, and again, they were right to have skepticism about his cognitive skills.

They were right.

- Uh-hmm.

- But that's not reporting, it's commentary, and it's fine.

And I don't have an issue with it, but that's commentary.

What Alex and I did was talk to more than 200 people, have intense interviews, have a very serious process of reporting, fact checking, coming up with a narrative investigation, and presenting this to the public as to this is the best first draft of what we think actually was happening and why we're all in this boat.

And there have been conservatives that have said to me, "I think what this book..." "I think this book is important."

But generally speaking, it's kind of just taken as a given on the right.

That, like, they knew all this, you know, and what else is new.

- Yeah.

- But that said, I mean, I think that we have...

I think this book has been accepted as true, been accepted as accurate, and allowed for a discussion about something very important to every single person in this room, which is how much was that White House lying to you?

And how much was that...

Were those decisions responsible for the fact that, you know, there aren't gonna be foreign students studying in the United States or, you know, the tariff struggles that people, no doubt, in this Port City are experiencing.

- Yeah.

- Because there's a direct, in my view and Alex's, a direct cause and effect.

- Maybe not learning from history.

We don't repeat it, but we experience the funhouse mirror photo negative version of it.

I want to thank my guests, Alex Thompson, Jake Tapper.

(audience applauds) The book is "Original Sin," and thank you all so much.

(gentle upbeat music) (gentle upbeat music)