The Megyn Kelly Show - Megyn Kelly's FULL Interview with Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson - on the Truth About Biden Cover-Up and ＂Original Sin＂ Revelations

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00:00:30.780 Hey, everyone. It's Megan Kelly.

00:00:32.180 Welcome to this special weekend bonus episode.

00:00:34.920 Did you miss our viral interview with Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson last week

00:00:39.840 on their new book, Original Sin?

00:00:42.140 If you did, you can catch the whole thing right here.

00:00:46.200 Enjoy, and we'll see you Monday with the EJs.

00:00:49.940 Welcome to The Megan Kelly Show, live on Sirius XM Channel 111 every weekday at noon east.

00:01:00.000 Hey, everyone. I'm Megan Kelly. Welcome to The Megan Kelly Show.

00:01:04.700 Today, a deep dive into the decline of President Biden's cognitive health while in office,

00:01:11.680 including never-before-heard stories from those very close to the president

00:01:15.640 and a true reckoning about the media's role in the Democrat Party's attempted cover-up.

00:01:21.160 In minutes, I will be joined by CNN's Jake Tapper and Axios' Alex Thompson regarding their new book.

00:01:28.240 It's called Original Sin, President Biden's Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run

00:01:35.440 Again. This will be their first long-form interview. The book does include some shocking

00:01:41.040 new details, including from some of Mr. Biden's own cabinet secretaries, who said that by 2024,

00:01:48.060 the president could no longer be relied upon for being able to perform at 2 a.m. if there were

00:01:54.440 some sort of emergency. He was not able to answer that call. Another revelation from the book,

00:02:00.860 a source close to Mr. Biden said, quote,

00:02:02.920 quote, five people were running the country, and Joe Biden was at best a senior member of the board.

00:02:10.280 Who were those five people running the country? And who exactly perpetrated this attempted cover-up?

00:02:18.360 We will ask for and receive names in just a moment. But first, I'll look back at the president's

00:02:25.000 decline that we reported on at the time that was called nothing more than a conspiracy theory.

00:02:32.920 We hold these truths to be self-evident. All men and women created by it go, you know the thing.

00:02:40.340 Signs of a slipping Joe Biden were everywhere, even in the run-up to the 2020 election.

00:02:45.740 For a politician long known for gaffes, this was something different. Concerning brain freezes,

00:02:51.620 like this one on CNN in April 2020.

00:02:54.160 You know, there's a, during World War II, you know, where Roosevelt came up with a thing

00:03:00.320 that, you know, was totally different than a, than the, it's called, he called it the, you know,

00:03:07.780 the World War II, he had the war, the war production board.

00:03:11.960 But raising questions about Mr. Biden's mental fitness back then was risky.

00:03:16.300 Just ask Laura Trump, who dared to go there in an interview with Jake Tapper weeks before the 2020

00:03:22.180 election. I think what we see on stage with Joe Biden, Jake, is very clearly a cognitive decline.

00:03:29.020 That's what I'm referring to. It makes me uncomfortable.

00:03:31.360 You are, you are, you are, it's so amazing. It's so amazing to me that,

00:03:36.280 and try and figure out an answer. A cognitive decline.

00:03:39.040 You're trying to tell me that what I was suggesting was, I think that you were mocking his stutter.

00:03:44.100 Yeah, I think you were mocking his stutter. And I think you have absolutely no standing

00:03:47.520 to diagnose somebody's cognitive decline. Less than four and a half years later,

00:03:51.820 it's Tapper doing the examining. Starting in around 2019, 2020, there were two Bidens. There

00:03:57.200 was a Biden that was perfectly workable, serviceable, seemed fine. And then there was a non-functioning

00:04:02.580 one. In his new book, Original Sin, co-authored with Axios' Alex Thompson, the pair document the

00:04:09.860 behind-the-scenes panic among Democratic officials over Joe Biden's decline. Tapper claims he was on

00:04:16.780 the case all along, but couldn't report fully until after the election, when more people were

00:04:21.860 finally willing to talk. But it was a story most Americans had already seen with their own eyes.

00:04:28.880 The best way to get something done, if you, if you hold near and dear to you that you, uh,

00:04:34.340 um, like to be able to, anyway. Forgetting the names of world leaders. I want to thank, uh,

00:04:43.620 that fellow down under. Thank you very much, pal. And then the moment that shocked even casual

00:04:50.460 observers. Jackie, are you here? Where's Jackie? Asking for Congresswoman Jackie Walorski,

00:04:55.920 who had died in a car crash seven weeks earlier. The president had publicly mourned her death when it

00:05:02.660 happened, even lowering White House flags in her honor. But he remembered none of it. Tapper did

00:05:09.080 occasionally press White House officials. Watch him, right? Watch him. And he, uh, he, I've, I've-

00:05:15.560 They are watching him. That's what I'm saying. That's the 77% who are concerned. No, no, no.

00:05:19.320 It is hard for us to keep up with this president. The, uh, the same president who couldn't remember

00:05:24.680 the name of Hamas. There's been a response from the opposition.

00:05:31.380 Then came the bombshell, her special counsel report. Mr. Herr described President Biden as

00:05:36.640 an elderly man with a poor memory who could not remember when he was vice president or the year

00:05:43.180 his son Bo died. I think anybody sitting down for an interview like that where you're being asked

00:05:47.340 specific dates over and over again, you're not going to remember every single one.

00:05:50.580 In early June, 2024, a Wall Street Journal story exposed concerns from members of Congress

00:05:56.360 about a diminishing president. There's been a relentless focus in some news outlets

00:06:01.460 on minor slips by our president that I frankly think are typical of anyone who's keeping a demanding

00:06:08.040 14-hour-a-day schedule. A coordinated message claimed conservative media was deceptively editing clips.

00:06:15.260 In major areas where people get their news, this lie or this concept about Joe Biden is being

00:06:21.620 validated. Fake videos of President Biden that are being referred to as cheap fakes.

00:06:27.100 They're cheap. They're just distorted, out-of-context videos, chopped up in certain ways,

00:06:31.680 constructed in certain ways. He's far beyond cogent. In fact, I think he's better than he's ever been.

00:06:37.840 Joining me now, Jake Tapper. He's the host of The Lead with Jake Tapper on CNN and Alex Thompson.

00:06:46.360 Alex is a national political correspondent for Axios.

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00:07:54.820 They shop, you save. Guys, welcome to the show.

00:07:59.260 Thanks, Megan.

00:08:00.100 Thanks so much for having us.

00:08:01.720 Yeah, great to have you. All right. First of all, Jake, explain why it's called Original Sin.

00:08:06.380 It's called Original Sin because right after the election, we started talking to Democratic sources

00:08:12.580 who were telling us how horrible things were, not just in front of the cameras and all those clips you

00:08:17.620 showed, but how much worse it was actually behind the scenes. And one of them said to me that the

00:08:24.020 Original Sin was that Biden should not have run for re-election to begin with, which then necessitated

00:08:30.760 the cover-up of how bad things actually were. And that term, Original Sin, just stuck with me.

00:08:40.020 When Alex and I talked about doing the book, I think the day before Election Day,

00:08:45.040 I already thought Original Sin would be the perfect title because it just gets at how momentous

00:08:51.120 a decision this way it was, how momentous a mistake this was to run for re-election and then,

00:08:56.860 of course, the cover-up.

00:08:58.860 Alex, we understand that you originally had drafted a book along these lines, but then

00:09:03.600 the deal fell apart. So how did it get revived? When did publishers get interested in what you were

00:09:09.580 trying to tell?

00:09:10.200 Well, my book project actually was different. I mean, it was a Biden book, but it was with Simon

00:09:15.580 and Schuster. They signed the deal in January of 2021, and it was supposed to come out before the

00:09:21.180 election. And there was maybe going to be some age stuff, but it was much more about the family

00:09:26.700 dynamics and how they affected the president and the presidency. Ultimately, the book deal

00:09:32.780 did fall apart. Simon Schuster canceled the book in October of 2023. There are a few reasons for that.

00:09:41.420 One was I was running behind. Two, Biden books were not selling well. And third, there was honestly

00:09:50.080 a difference of what sort of book we wanted. And that was most manifest in sort of a debate or clash

00:10:00.520 over the title of the book. And I wanted to call the book Haunted because the thesis of the book was

00:10:05.780 he's haunted by his son, Beau. He's haunted by the Hunter stuff, by the Obama comparisons, by

00:10:10.560 the idea that Trump could win again. And they wanted to call the book Soul Man or Shadowboxer.

00:10:18.960 And I said no.

00:10:22.360 Good hill to die on.

00:10:24.260 It was an expensive hill to die on. So I returned the advance. And then I obviously had some Biden

00:10:35.880 reporting and was interested in trying to revive some sort of project on Biden because I'd covered

00:10:40.840 him for so long. And it was really the book was Jake's idea about making it focused on this one

00:10:48.700 issue of the Biden presidency. Yeah, this is the issue. OK, I got it. Let me keep going.

00:10:54.040 Let's just let's let's go right to the controversy around the book and then we'll get to the contents

00:10:58.420 of the book, which I definitely want to spend time on. As you know, this book, it's right in the

00:11:03.960 subtitle. It involves coverage of the so-called cover up. But Jake, the criticism has been that

00:11:10.520 you're complaining about a cover up about Joe Biden's mental acuity that failed, that right wing

00:11:17.300 pundits saw, the right wing in general saw, that independent media saw and reported on.

00:11:22.940 And that was no mystery even to left wing and so-called mainstream reporters who were not fooled,

00:11:29.840 but chose willful blindness instead of honest reporting and that you were part of it. How do you respond?

00:11:36.820 It's a it's a tough and fair question. I would say that Alex and I, after Election Day,

00:11:48.300 interviewed more than 200 people, 200 mostly Democratic insiders. And all these interviews

00:11:53.780 were almost all of these interviews were after the election. And they justified to themselves what they

00:12:01.320 had done in terms of misrepresenting how the president was, not just to me and Alex and other

00:12:09.240 reporters, but also just to each other and to the world and to Democrats and to the cabinet, etc.

00:12:14.460 By by saying that there was this existential threat of Donald Trump and only Joe Biden could beat Donald

00:12:18.860 Trump. And that justified everything in their minds. After that existential threat was over because the

00:12:24.080 election was over and Donald Trump won, they were, we found, Alex and myself,

00:12:28.100 remarkably willing to talk to us either off the record or on background or in some cases on the

00:12:34.520 record about what they saw. One of the things that emerged was that there were two Bidens. One was the

00:12:42.740 fine Biden, serviceable, adequate. And the other one was a is a non-functioning Biden. And that's the one

00:12:49.680 we saw the night of the debate. And that's the one we saw some clips of here and there that you just

00:12:54.560 showed. And that non-functioning Biden, the one that lost his train of thought in a significant

00:12:59.740 way, not in the way just that every human loses their train of thought, but in a way that shows

00:13:04.080 that he's having trouble articulating his very views. And the one who forgot the name of close

00:13:11.820 aides, who was not able to come up with George Clooney's name, didn't seem to recognize him, all that

00:13:17.780 sort of thing. That non-functioning Biden was, according to our reporting, showed up as far back

00:13:25.040 as 2015, after the death of Beau, where one top aide said that that tragedy, the loss of Beau,

00:13:32.720 was like watching somebody pour water on sand. That was the effect on his psyche.

00:13:37.860 And there were other moments, 2017, 2018, you hear some, the Her Report, one of the reasons he came to

00:13:43.240 that conclusion was because of the recordings they heard of Joe Biden in 2017 talking to his ghost

00:13:48.080 writer, in which he was similarly inclined. Obviously, in 2019, 2020, there were other moments

00:13:54.100 like that. Most of his campaign staff and others would say, look, he's 78, he's 79, he has senior

00:13:59.520 moments, but he's fine, he's fine, he's fine. Well, he wasn't fine. And throughout his presidency,

00:14:07.080 that non-functioning Biden would show up more and more and more, and he was worse and worse and worse,

00:14:14.640 really deteriorating tremendously the next time there was a really horrible family incident, which

00:14:21.800 was when Hunter Biden's plea deal fell apart in the summer of 2023. And then obviously in June, he was

00:14:28.300 convicted. And the thought, the fear of losing his son, not to jail, but maybe to another, to a relapse,

00:14:35.560 to an overdose, to a suicide, who knows, was a very real fear. And the threat of losing a third child

00:14:42.900 really just diminished him tremendously, according to top aides. So all of which is to say that this

00:14:50.300 was a deterioration, this was a progression. And look, knowing what I know now, obviously,

00:14:58.340 I feel tremendous humility about my coverage, that Laura Trump interview, for example,

00:15:05.680 et cetera. She saw something that I did not see at the time, 100%. And I own that. I did ask Joe Biden

00:15:15.820 to be transparent about his health records in an interview in 2020. I did ask him about the fact

00:15:21.140 that voters thought that he was not transparent at all. He promised you that he would be transparent

00:15:27.760 about his health records. And then he wasn't. And when you sat with him again, including one month,

00:15:31.980 including one month after the Jackie Walorsky thing, you didn't ask him about it. You didn't

00:15:36.700 follow up on the fact that he was falling up the stairs, that he was losing his train of thought

00:15:41.580 regularly, that he was slurring, that he was incomprehensible, that he was getting lost on the

00:15:45.740 White House lawn. You sat right across from him and you asked none of that, notwithstanding the fact

00:15:50.020 that he had promised you he would be fully transparent about his health issues.

00:15:54.200 That's true. But I did ask him about his age and the fact that the American people had concluded that

00:16:00.960 even though he said, whenever anybody brought up the subject of his age, watch me. And I said,

00:16:05.860 yes, they're watching you and they are concerned that you were too old for this job.

00:16:09.760 You know, you know, as well as I do, that there's a way of you can say, hey, there's this poll on your

00:16:16.060 age. Or you could say you just forgot that Jackie Walorsky was dead. You you asked where she was

00:16:23.480 moments after watching a videotape tribute to her. You lowered the flags at the White House

00:16:30.160 after she died. This happened 13 days before you sat with him. There is a way of pressing a man like

00:16:36.900 that on the actual infirmities to bring it home to him and to the audience. And you didn't do it.

00:16:42.300 That's correct. I didn't. And like I said, I feel humility about my coverage. I mean,

00:16:47.120 it's not like I was asking him his favorite movie or his favorite color. We were talking about

00:16:51.320 Putin. We were talking about other issues of national importance. But yeah, I mean,

00:16:56.640 of course, I've said I look back at my coverage with humility. And and I wish I did cover the issues

00:17:05.200 of age and acuity, but I wish I had covered them much more. And I wish I mean, of course, in

00:17:11.580 it's May 2025. Do I wish that in that 10, 15 minute interview I had with Biden in October 2022,

00:17:22.020 that this had been the only subject because I had then. It wasn't just that, though, Jake.

00:17:28.080 It wasn't just that. I mean, you sat with him a couple of times in the course of his presidency

00:17:30.960 and these issues were not pressed. Well, there was at least that time. And then there was the

00:17:35.280 time at the beginning. And but apart from that, you covered the Biden's presidency. No, no, no.

00:17:41.320 Let me let me just finish my point. I'm just saying I had one interview with him during his

00:17:44.700 I had one. OK, right. And it was 13 days after the Jackie Walorski thing. But you covered the Biden

00:17:50.180 presidency aggressively throughout the four years. And and you didn't cover mental acuity hardly at all.

00:17:55.680 I mean, time and time again, when issues came up, you seem to be running cover for the president.

00:18:01.540 I don't think interested. Well, I mean, we'll start with the Laura Trump issue that you referred.

00:18:05.920 Here it is. This happened in 2020. Joe Biden, as we all know, his work to overcome a stutter.

00:18:12.920 How do you think it makes little kids with stutters feel when they see you make a comment like that?

00:18:19.440 First and foremost, I had no idea that Joe Biden ever suffered from a stutter. I think what

00:18:25.440 we see on stage with Joe Biden, Jake, is very clearly a cognitive decline. That's what I'm

00:18:31.400 referring to. It makes me uncomfortable. You are. You are. So amazing. You're trying to tell me that

00:18:37.680 what I was suggesting was I think you were mocking his stutter. Yeah, I think you were mocking his

00:18:42.940 stutter. And I think you have absolutely no standing to diagnose somebody's cognitive decline.

00:18:47.140 And it's very concerning to a lot of people that this could be the leader of the free world.

00:18:51.940 OK, that is all I'm saying. I genuinely feel sorry for Joe Biden. I appreciate it. I'm sure

00:18:56.400 it was from a place of concern. We all we all believe that. Laura Trump, thank you so much.

00:19:01.420 Do you want to apologize to Laura Trump now?

00:19:05.100 I've already apologized to her. I called her months ago.

00:19:08.360 And what does she say?

00:19:10.900 I mean, I don't want to disclose the contents of a private conversation, but I thought the

00:19:15.180 conversation went well. And she said she has said this publicly, so I feel fine sharing it. She said

00:19:21.220 that she would never mock anybody's stutter. But I mean, you know, after we did the research

00:19:25.980 for this book and I realized how bad his acuity issues were, I like I mean, I I called Laura

00:19:36.760 Trump and I said you were you were right.

00:19:40.180 She was totally right. That's the thing, because when I watch that clip and I'm giving voice to

00:19:45.360 what a lot of people watching the show are feeling, Jake, I feel angry because she was

00:19:49.520 right. And not only did you not allow her to make her comments, but you you seem to try to

00:19:55.440 humiliate her. You you had a hostility toward the position, but she was totally right. And then you 0.93

00:20:02.040 lectured her on how she was in no position to diagnose cognitive decline, which you guys do at

00:20:08.660 length, including on page four of your book. You describe at length his cognitive decline, which is

00:20:14.660 all she tried to do with you. But you had such a visceral reaction to her. And my feeling is that's

00:20:20.120 because you didn't want to hear it.

00:20:22.580 Now, I mean, we can I'm happy to talk about this. I didn't come here thinking that you weren't going

00:20:27.440 to ask me about this. I'm happy to talk to you about it. The first time I saw the coverage of

00:20:32.440 Laura Trump's comments, which were interpreted as her mocking Joe Biden's stutter, was in January 2020.

00:20:40.780 I read it in conservative media. I read it in the Daily Mail. And that's where I saw that her 0.99

00:20:48.280 comments were being interpreted that way. After those comments were publicized, it got a lot of

00:20:54.700 coverage. And Sully Sullenberger wrote an op ed in The New York Times criticizing her about this.

00:21:02.220 So that's the context for that, that I was following up on a story that had been out there

00:21:12.100 months before. This is also in the context of October 2020, a very intense time. People on the

00:21:18.560 Biden side are saying crazy things about Trump. People on the Trump side are saying crazy things

00:21:23.140 about Biden, including Don Jr. suggesting that Joe Biden is a pedophile. So that is the larger context. 0.53

00:21:29.440 But as I said, her comments have aged well. My comments have aged poorly. I own that. But I

00:21:38.600 think what is significant is, in addition to me owning that, the reporting that Alex and I have done,

00:21:45.480 which is beyond just, and when I say just, I don't mean to diminish it. But the comments of Joe Biden

00:21:53.260 making gaffes, saying things stupid, tripping are all important and all deserved to be aired and all 0.99

00:22:02.200 deserve scrutiny. But as you know, Megan, because even though you look 30 years younger than me, 0.98

00:22:06.920 we're roughly the same age, Joe Biden has been saying stupid things for decades. 1.00

00:22:11.100 Okay. 1.00

00:22:11.500 I get what you're saying, but this minimizes it too, because it was more than saying stupid 1.00

00:22:16.420 things. But I'm just, I'm telling you like over here in my ecosphere, we were covering all of 0.97

00:22:22.380 these. It wasn't just falling down. It was getting lost. It was some of the stuff you report in your

00:22:27.000 book. We knew, and we were reporting on like the multi jump cuts in the videos of him, where it was

00:22:33.800 obvious he couldn't get through a one minute take. So they had to use those. It was clear to us that he

00:22:39.160 was using teleprompter in, and, and there was some reporting on that at the time, all of which the

00:22:43.700 White House was denying. Now with the current White House, I have some connections with the

00:22:48.660 Joe Biden White House. I had none, but you did, you did. And so while you've been in Washington 30

00:22:55.820 years, Jake, you guys, you and CNN have White House connections, but there was no effort, none to get

00:23:01.840 to the bottom of this. And now for you guys to write this book, like there was a coverup. It's like you,

00:23:06.980 there was a coverup and there was an attempted coverup. It could only ever work if you allowed it,

00:23:12.740 if the press allowed it. Some of us tried not to, and some of us were complicit.

00:23:19.100 First of all, the Biden White House did not like me. Okay. This is, I do not have great

00:23:26.340 connections with the Biden White House. Well, clearly you have a lot of sources. You say you

00:23:29.840 talked to over 200 sources for this book. So you have some you could have called and worked.

00:23:34.780 No, that's the point is that they were not being honest. That's the point.

00:23:39.420 The Wall Street Journal will get it in June of 2024. And Jake Tapper and CNN couldn't find

00:23:43.660 sources for this story then before he dropped out. Annie Linsky and Siobhan Hughes did an amazing

00:23:50.680 job in their reporting and, and they should be heralded. And I heralded them. I had them on my

00:23:56.400 show right after the debate to talk about their great reporting. But Annie Linsky.

00:24:00.540 But you did not put them on when they published that story, which was before the debate.

00:24:07.600 Correct. I don't know what the booking situation was, but it wasn't because I didn't want them. I'm

00:24:11.380 sure I said that day, let's book. I'm sure I said that day, let's book that. Did they? Yeah. You,

00:24:16.300 you put on a Democrat and, and you allowed the Democrat to rip on the report as a Rupert Murdoch,

00:24:21.540 Murdoch sponsored hit piece. It's just, if we're going to, if we're going to, if we're going to do

00:24:28.480 this, let's just stick to the facts here. Okay. When there is a damaging report, that's what I've

00:24:34.960 been doing all along. I'm talking about what you just said. I just missed the biggest story of the

00:24:40.100 century when it comes to presidential politics. And one of us did. Okay. So the, uh, there is a

00:24:49.520 difference, okay. Between the clips of Joe Biden falling on a stage, uh, at the Air Force Academy

00:24:58.380 graduation. There is a difference between the clip of Joe Biden embarrassingly forget, forgetting

00:25:03.460 that a Republican member of Congress who he's talking about has died. Those are embarrassing.

00:25:09.580 Those are important, but there is a difference between that and the investigative journalism that

00:25:15.760 Alex and I were able to do and only able to do after the election. And I know, you know,

00:25:20.700 this because you've been talking about the scoops in the book and you've been talking about,

00:25:24.100 I don't diminish the importance of the book. I don't, I have supported the importance of the

00:25:29.280 book and we'll talk about the contents of the book at length, but there is no way we can have that

00:25:34.000 conversation with an audience that is as skeptical of your ability to tell the story as mine is

00:25:40.680 without addressing your role in this, right? Like Alex is a different story, but you know,

00:25:45.660 you've watched the coverage since it came out that you wrote this book. There are, there's a legion of,

00:25:51.800 of articles about how comparing you in some instances to like OJ instead of if I did it,

00:25:57.920 this is if I hit it, that like, you are not the right messenger to bring the story about the coverup

00:26:04.640 because you helped, you allowed it. And you likely did that out of a desire to help Joe Biden

00:26:11.420 and hurt Donald Trump. You didn't want to do anything that might improve Trump's chances.

00:26:18.900 I do not think that that is accurate. I do not think that that is true at all. The idea that

00:26:24.800 Siobhan and Annie do their piece and we have on the co-chair of the Biden campaign is not me trying

00:26:31.060 to cover for the Biden campaign. That is me putting the questions of the reporting that were made

00:26:36.620 to him and saying things like, so you really haven't seen any moment or you would acknowledge

00:26:41.540 that you, wouldn't you acknowledge that he's lost a step? He's 81, et cetera, et cetera.

00:26:45.820 Like I said before, do, if I had known then what I know now, would I have been more aggressive?

00:26:54.580 Yes, of course.

00:26:55.780 How did I know? And you didn't know. I'm just curious because when I saw that Wall Street Journal

00:26:59.520 report in June of 24, I scoffed at it like, okay, it's an attempt, but it's lame. Everybody

00:27:07.500 on the right wing ecosystem and the independent media ecosystem knew it was a lame attempt that

00:27:11.880 only scratched the surface. We had all been discussing his serious cognitive problems for

00:27:17.840 years by that point. Jake, in June of 2022, this show did a full two hour program on his

00:27:25.200 cognitive decline. I heard it. It was, I know we want to pretend I'm mentioning the Wall Street

00:27:29.420 Journal as a courtesy, but those of us on this side of the aisle had been reporting in depth

00:27:34.280 on his multiple problems and the obvious lies we were being told for years, for years. You really

00:27:40.140 want the audience to believe you were fooled? What do you mean I was fooled? I'm not saying I was

00:27:47.460 fooled. I'm saying we all saw these moments before the camera and they were obviously concerning and

00:27:52.920 he was obviously aging and that was significant. But the people at the White House, I'm trying to

00:27:59.280 answer the question, but so the people at the White House, when I would call, when others would call,

00:28:03.840 when Alex would call, would lie. He's fine. He's fine. You'd call Democrats and say, what are you

00:28:10.280 seeing behind the scenes here? Because this is concerning. He's fine. He's fine. This is just a

00:28:15.700 moment. He's 79. He's 80. He has moments like that, but he's fine. His decision-making is fine.

00:28:19.980 They're still saying that. They're still saying that. And let me defend Annie and Siobhan there for

00:28:25.420 a second, because you just said that their Wall Street Journal story just scratched the service.

00:28:30.720 They got what they could get in June, 2024. And I went back and Alex and I went back to report some

00:28:38.320 of the same things that they reported on. For example, there was a meeting in the White House about

00:28:43.600 Ukraine funding in January, 2024. And we were able to get people to say things as a Democratic member

00:28:51.040 of Congress that I, look, I don't know who Annie and Siobhan's sources are, but they were not able

00:28:56.240 to get them to do that. I assume that, you know, they had dozens of sources for that article, but not

00:29:03.180 one of the Democrats that they talked to would even talk on background. It is a complicated thing to try

00:29:09.060 to get to. But your commentary on your show. Yes, I'm going to bring you in. But your commentary

00:29:14.500 on your show, Jake, consistently ran in one direction. Occasionally you would ask tough

00:29:19.580 questions. I don't think that's true. I mean, here you are on September, 2023 saying that Biden

00:29:24.700 was sharp mentally. September of 2023. No, no, no, no. You said, hold on. You said he's sharp

00:29:31.380 mentally. I think the question is physically, right? He's sharp mentally. And then you pointed out

00:29:35.800 that his opponent, Donald Trump, was only a couple of years younger than he was. There are many

00:29:39.760 examples where you're doing that kind of coverage. OK, so let's let's be honest and and full about

00:29:45.760 what you're talking about. Frank, there's no problem with honesty on this show. OK, yeah,

00:29:52.580 Frank, let's watch it. Let's watch it. Yeah. Frank, for it came on with a biography about Joe

00:29:57.200 Frank, for it came on to talk about his biography with his biography with Joe Biden. And I'm trying

00:30:01.840 to summarize what his conclusions were. So he is saying that Biden was. Where is the part where you

00:30:09.180 say he's not sharp mentally, Frank? We've seen the following 10 examples in the past year. Never

00:30:15.980 mind three years. I wasn't. I've already said I wish I had covered this more aggressively. Frank

00:30:25.200 four had come to the show to talk about his book about President Biden. This was in September 2023.

00:30:33.100 And I interviewed him about his book. And that was the end of that. Now, I suppose in retrospect,

00:30:41.700 I say again, I wish I had been more aggressive. I do. Yeah. But our reporting suggests. And like I said,

00:30:48.640 we've talked to more than 200 people, Democratic insiders, that the real deterioration of President

00:30:55.560 Biden. And yes, there was a degression, a regression, whatever you want to call it, deterioration

00:30:59.940 since 2015. But it really started to intensify in the summer of 2023 when Bo Biden, I'm sorry,

00:31:08.920 when Hunter Biden's plea deal fell apart and Joe Biden was terrified about what that effect would have

00:31:14.460 on his son. I accept that. And people close to him say that was a real demarcation. And in October

00:31:23.840 2023, there is the last cabinet meeting for almost a year. And cabinet secretaries tell us that that

00:31:32.380 began that fall 2023 began what they call a weird period where they were kept at bay, where they were

00:31:40.000 kept away from President Biden. And now we're getting this substance, which I do want to talk about. I'm

00:31:43.940 about to switch to that. But let me let me just ask you, because when we got to leading up to the

00:31:48.260 debate, which you anchored that June 27th debate 2024, there was a ton of news leading into that

00:31:54.160 debate in that month. And we look back at your coverage and found that you ignored it. Not only did

00:32:00.600 you ignore the Jackie Walersky moment when you had him 13 days later, but you ignored the freeze up that

00:32:06.520 he had at the Juneteenth celebration. You ignored what happened at the G7 when he wandered off in Georgia

00:32:11.920 Maloney, prime minister of Italy, had to go find him. You ignored the freeze up at the George Clooney

00:32:18.380 L.A. fundraiser. You didn't cover it. You only covered it after the debate, after George Clooney

00:32:25.040 wrote his op-ed. Jake, nobody made you do that. There was your network at every turn was telling us

00:32:33.180 those were, quote, cheap fakes. And you were not combating that narrative. You were at CNN was actively

00:32:39.900 misleading us on what our very eyes were showing us. That's the truth. That's the record.

00:32:46.860 I will acknowledge that after I was named moderator, co-moderator of the debate,

00:32:56.360 I tried to make sure that my coverage was fairly vanilla, both about Trump and about Biden,

00:33:03.080 because I just wanted to get to the debate. And, you know, the Biden people and the Trump people,

00:33:09.560 I'm kind of frankly surprised that either one of them agreed to have me as a moderator because both

00:33:17.080 sides disliked me so much. But yeah, I remember that moment. And I remember that moment, the glitch

00:33:24.560 at the immigration event and not getting much attention outside of conservative media at all.

00:33:29.720 And Alex and I are here to say that conservative media was right and conservative media was correct

00:33:36.980 and that there should be a lot of soul searching, not just among me, but among the legacy media to

00:33:44.840 begin with, all of us, for how this was covered or not covered sufficiently. 100%.

00:33:50.260 So, I mean, I'm not here to defend coverage that I've already acknowledged. I wish I could do differently.

00:33:59.800 Let me bring Alex in. Thank you for your patience, Alex. And apologies for the back.

00:34:04.320 I think he's fine. I think he's fine. You're not going to him.

00:34:07.240 Based on what just happened. But Jake and I are actually friends. And this is all said in the context of

00:34:13.780 I know what my audience wants to hear asked. And Jake has told me before he wanted the opportunity

00:34:18.640 to answer these questions. So that's what we're doing here.

00:34:21.040 Megan, we didn't come on the show thinking that this was going to be a softball interview.

00:34:28.260 I understand. Like, listen, listen, as a – first of all, nobody flagellates Jake Tapper more than Jake

00:34:36.120 Tapper, OK? Like, I get it. I understand. I am fallible. I make mistakes. It's not just the Biden

00:34:42.760 coverage. I mean, I go back and I look at, like, I wish I had been covering terrorism more before 9-11.

00:34:48.020 I wish that I had covered the WMD with more skepticism. And there's, you know, a million 0.95

00:34:51.800 things. This is definitely among them. And conservative media absolutely has every right 0.95

00:34:58.720 to say we were hip to this and the legacy media was not. Now, I do not accept that I was part of

00:35:06.480 a cover-up. I do not accept that I was just providing cover for Joe Biden. I think a lot of these

00:35:12.600 clips are not fair. The one that is fair is the Laura Trump clip. And I own it. And I regret it.

00:35:18.900 And I've told her that privately. And that's completely fair. But what we uncovered after

00:35:26.220 the election, what people were willing to tell us after the election was so shocking. And yeah,

00:35:33.660 the Jackie Walorsky thing is awful. But I would posit that President Biden not being able to come

00:35:39.080 up with the name of his national security advisor in December 2022 is important information. And I

00:35:46.960 would also posit-

00:35:47.720 I'm not arguing that the book has no place or importance. Let me ask Alex something. So you

00:35:53.080 may be aware, the hard time I've given you on this show is not because of your coverage of the Biden

00:35:58.300 mental decline. I've given you a hard time over the past couple of weeks because you were honored by

00:36:04.320 the White House Correspondents' Dinner for covering this story, which honestly is like getting the

00:36:09.520 award for being the thinnest kid at fat camp. I mean, there was literally no competition at the

00:36:14.980 White House Correspondents' Association dinner that they would even consider. You know, they're not

00:36:19.980 going to give awards to anybody in the right-wing ecosphere who covered this from the beginning.

00:36:24.040 With all due respect to you, Alex. But when you got up there, you actually got up there and said,

00:36:29.720 we, myself included, missed a lot of this story. And we bear some responsibility for faith in the

00:36:37.100 media being at such lows. But we, the media, did not miss this story, Alex. We did not miss this

00:36:43.420 story. We were all over this story. We were night and day covering this story.

00:36:48.020 The we. We knew you hated the we after he said it. We talked about this. 0.99

00:36:52.460 It was insane. It was an insane comment to make. Who were you talking about?

00:36:56.160 He was talking about the people in the room. Be quiet. It's not your turn to talk anymore. It's

00:36:59.140 Alex's turn. Thank you. Who is we? Thank you. I can defend myself. No, we were the people in the

00:37:05.540 room. I mean, like, I was getting, it was the White House Correspondents' Dinner. I was talking

00:37:09.480 to the people in the room that covered Joe Biden. All right, so here's my follow-up. Got it. Here's

00:37:13.360 the follow-up. We, if that's who we is, did not miss the story. We, in that room, intentionally

00:37:21.420 chose not to cover the story or dig into the story, which is a massive story that we have

00:37:30.520 missed in Original Sin.

00:37:33.340 Okay, I'm glad you asked me this question because I heard you rip me to shreds the night

00:37:37.540 out, the Monday after the dinner. And at first I was-

00:37:40.600 What I meant to say was congratulations and.

00:37:42.920 Yeah. Um, and, um, at first I was defensive, but then I was, you know, I thought about it

00:37:49.000 also, you know, from your all perspective, especially like the missed part and like your

00:37:54.540 readers, your readers that were saying, Hey, there's a problem here or not your readers

00:37:59.800 for your listeners saying there's a problem here and I'm not seeing it reflected in the

00:38:03.980 media. And, and after the debate happens, everyone to be like, Oh my God, there's a

00:38:10.140 problem. Um, I'd be pissed too. Cause you would feel like you weren't listened to. And

00:38:14.200 that, um, and I'm sure that a lot of people felt that it was because, um, some reporters

00:38:20.280 let their own personal politics get in the way. And let's be honest, like a lot of newsrooms

00:38:25.420 in DC and New York are more liberal than not. And they, I mean, I'll just say for myself,

00:38:32.940 I think some of them let their own personal politics get in the way. But in terms of the

00:38:36.940 missed part, uh, the reason I said missed is because I think there were a lot of really

00:38:41.640 great reporters on this beat. And I know you may disagree. I know your listeners may

00:38:46.160 disagree, but I was in the white house, you know, every day. And I think, um, a lot of

00:38:51.040 them really do try and do some really great work every single day that sometimes you also

00:38:57.460 use on this show from the New York times and others. And I felt that basically saying

00:39:04.160 that, uh, calling everyone in the room, not a good faith reporter, I didn't think was

00:39:09.980 fair. And so I was, I said, miss to sort of give grace for both.

00:39:16.460 Well, that's sweet. I I'm less graceful than you are and, uh, less forgiving, but that's

00:39:21.460 fine. Takes all kinds. Let's go, let's do some substance. Okay. Of the book is we still

00:39:26.080 have some time and I want to get into it. You guys write in original sin out today. The

00:39:31.200 Biden coverup may not be unique, but it is arguably the most consequential. So what do

00:39:36.300 you mean by that? How, how so Alex? Well, we've seen this before Wilson, uh, you know,

00:39:45.260 and Edith Wilson, his wife after a stroke, FDR was incredibly sick during the 1944 campaign.

00:39:50.920 Um, you know, we obviously know a little bit more now about JFK, um, and Ronald Reagan.

00:39:57.040 And I'd say two reasons. One is, you know, the FDR one wasn't as consequential because

00:40:01.840 he won. Um, we, so you mean amongst health coverups. That's what you mean?

00:40:08.160 Yes, that's what I meant. I think that's what we mentioned in the book. Um, yeah, sorry.

00:40:12.820 All right, let's keep going. Um, you, you write that you spoke with at least four cabinet secretaries

00:40:18.240 of Joe Biden's and that they said he could not be relied upon to quote, perform at 2 AM during

00:40:23.420 an emergency. So, uh, and here's just a little bit more. They said access by the end of 2024

00:40:29.240 quoting here from your reporting access dropped off considerably in 2024. And one of the cabinet

00:40:34.780 secretaries, number one, you referred to said, I did not interact with him as much. I didn't get

00:40:39.860 an explanation. Instead, that cabinet secretary would brief other senior white house aides who

00:40:45.320 then brief the president. Yes, the president is making the decisions, but if the inner circle is

00:40:49.060 shaping them in such a way, is it really a decision? Are they leading him to something?

00:40:53.460 Said this one, a different cabinet secretary, number three, October, 2023, the cabinet was kept

00:40:59.580 at bay with the exceptions of Lloyd Austin and Antony Blinken quote for months. We did not have

00:41:04.860 access to him. There was clearly a deliberate strategy by the white house to have him meet with

00:41:08.700 as few people as possible or as necessary at one rare meeting during that time. Cabinet secretary

00:41:13.680 three was quote shocked by how the president was acting. He seemed disoriented and out of it.

00:41:18.560 His mouth agape. All I can think when I see that word agape, Jake, is that debate that you hosted

00:41:25.120 that I just, that that's what it was the whole time agape to the point where I, when I was reading,

00:41:32.140 I listened to my news oftentimes on like these apps that will read you at the article and the news

00:41:37.680 readers, the AI news readers pronounce that word agape. And all I heard for like, I must've heard 200

00:41:44.900 times agape the day after that debate. So it was a pattern. The cabinet secretaries were saying it,

00:41:51.020 you saw it, we all saw it. Um, and yet what did they tell you behind the scenes about what,

00:41:57.100 if anything, they did about it?

00:41:58.120 Well, nothing. I mean, that's, that's the thing. Uh, there is very little in terms of actual action

00:42:08.440 that happened. And one of the reasons for that, I think is because by the end of 2023 and then

00:42:15.300 throughout 2024, so many people had been sequestered off from president Biden, uh, that there weren't

00:42:24.740 people that had any reliable information about his current condition. It's actually one of the

00:42:31.860 interesting parts of the post debate coverage. There are people in the white house that the

00:42:38.640 communications effort, uh, communications office of the Biden white house are trying to get them to

00:42:43.140 go out and defend the president, uh, and say, you, you know, I, I just met with him. He's fine,

00:42:50.340 blah, blah, blah. And they had not seen him in weeks or even months. They could not attest to his

00:42:57.840 fitness. When Ron Klain, the former Biden white house chief of staff is calling around and trying to

00:43:04.300 rally Democrats after the debate to speak about Biden's acuity. Many of them tell Klain, I haven't

00:43:13.420 seen him in a year or I haven't seen him in a year and a half. Um, now Klain and Klain interprets that

00:43:19.780 as his successor, Jeff Zients is managing the portfolio poorly and should be doing more to have

00:43:26.880 like, you know, make nice with Congress stuff. But Alex and I interpret that as they are hiding

00:43:33.800 Biden from as many people as they can. So there aren't as many people who have seen him. I didn't

00:43:39.260 actually Nancy Pelosi, as we write about in the book has a, has a private and secret meeting with

00:43:44.520 Biden after the debate where she's urging him to look at the polling information. And I don't know

00:43:48.800 when the last time she had had a one-on-one with him was because she suggests that after she stepped

00:43:55.220 down as democratic leader, after the midterms of 2022, she barely saw him. And this is a theme

00:44:03.000 throughout, uh, 2023, especially the last half of 2023 and 2024, how many people didn't have access

00:44:10.740 to him, how many people didn't see him. And that, and this, this was by design you write in the book

00:44:15.920 that, uh, Alex, I'll bring you in because there was a so-called what you write as about as a politburo

00:44:21.420 surrounding him. It was four people plus Biden to make five. Can you tell us who those people were?

00:44:26.980 And is the theory then that those are the four people who did know and worked as this,

00:44:32.920 as sort of cabal to keep everybody else at arm's length so that they wouldn't also have full

00:44:38.280 knowledge of his deterioration?

00:44:40.040 That's me. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Um, so the people that we're naming would be Mike Donilon,

00:44:50.840 Steve Reschetti. Mike Donilon's his top political advisor. Steve Reschetti's his top legislative

00:44:54.500 advisor. Um, Ron Klain, when he was chief of staff, Bruce Reed, uh, his basically longtime policy

00:45:01.980 advisor. Um, you can, those are sort of the four. They were known as a politburo, gray hairs,

00:45:07.860 poobahs, and they were with him the most of anybody. Now, if you were to ask them, 0.92

00:45:13.180 and I still think even if you put them on truth serum today, they would say he was fine. Um,

00:45:18.680 you know, I think, um, I don't know if they're lying or lying to themselves or it doesn't matter.

00:45:25.120 Then there's this other sort of group that aren't the politburo, but are just as powerful.

00:45:29.540 And they were the ones that kept the schedule, uh, affected personnel and really built the bubble.

00:45:35.620 And that would be Annie Tomasini, who was deputy chief of staff and previously oval office

00:45:40.460 operations. And then Anthony Bernal, who was the top aid slash enforcer for first lady Jill Biden and

00:45:48.260 had incredible influence to the point that even people in the Biden white house would refer to

00:45:54.260 her as one of those powerful first ladies in history. You write about this guy Bernal a lot.

00:45:59.680 And it's, it's, you suggest Jake, it was very tough to find anybody with a nice word to say

00:46:04.680 about this guy who was Jill Biden's top person. Yeah. And he, he acknowledged that he had a tough

00:46:09.960 reputation. He was the chief of staff for Jill Biden and perhaps the most powerful first lady

00:46:15.420 chief of staff in, in the history of this country. Uh, he is somebody that enforced what Jill Biden

00:46:21.560 wanted. And at the end of the day, one of the things that was interesting when,

00:46:24.360 when we wrote this book and researched this book was trying to figure out why was there no discussion

00:46:30.020 of whether or not he should run for reelection? Why was it just a foregone conclusion that he was

00:46:34.660 going to run for reelection, especially after he had made this kind of vague promise that he would

00:46:39.000 be a one-term president. And it came down to two people, one of whom spoke for Biden, that's Mike

00:46:44.600 Donilon. And the other one spoke for first lady Jill Biden, and that's Anthony Bernal. And basically,

00:46:49.500 they communicated to the rest of the staff. Um, Bernal would say, you run for two terms,

00:46:56.640 you serve for two terms, you don't do one. And, uh, and Mike Donilon would say, you know,

00:47:02.200 Biden's made the decision he's running. That's it. There's no discussion. And when people would

00:47:06.300 try to raise it, although nobody directly with Joe Biden, but when people would try to raise,

00:47:11.020 you know, Anita Dunn said something, I'm like, are we sure this is a good idea? A different pollster was

00:47:15.220 like, shouldn't we, um, figure out if like, this is even a good idea. This is the politics of it all.

00:47:19.920 This is not whether or not he should or should not have been president. This is about, uh, whether or

00:47:24.640 not he could get reelected, which is a different level here. Um, they would say the decision's been

00:47:29.360 made, the decision's been made. And, and so there were, there was a small group of people running the

00:47:35.000 train. And I think that it's not a star chamber so much cause they weren't like, it wasn't like five of

00:47:40.900 them in a room, uh, making these decisions, but definitely Rashetti and Donilon, definitely

00:47:45.820 Bernal and then different individuals hopping in and out, whether Jen O'Malley Dillon, who was a 1.00

00:47:51.440 deputy chief of staff and then ran the campaign, whether Anita Dunn, whether Ron Klain or Jeff

00:47:56.520 Zients, the chiefs of staff all played different roles. Well, how about, can you follow up Jake on

00:48:01.440 what you said earlier? Because just this week, Jake Sullivan, the national security advisor was out

00:48:05.980 saying, geez, what I saw at that debate shocked me. But you have reporting in this book that

00:48:10.300 Jake Sullivan was well aware that Joe Biden was having some serious memory problems going back

00:48:15.180 years. In December, 2022, um, the day, uh, that, um, and I'm, her name is escaping me,

00:48:23.540 which is ironic. Brittany Greiner, the name, I'm sorry, I'm not a big WNBA fan. The, the time that

00:48:29.220 Brittany Greiner gets out, that gets out of Russian, uh, control, uh, Russian, uh, you know, 1.00

00:48:35.400 she was a prisoner in Russia. Um, Biden is outside the Oval Office, uh, with, and Jake,

00:48:41.660 Jake Sullivan, his national security advisor and Kate Benningfield, his communications director

00:48:47.760 are there and he can't come up with their names. This is December, 2022. He calls Jake, Steve,

00:48:53.280 Steve, and then he calls Kate Benningfield press. And then he beckons them to come with him. So I don't

00:49:00.080 know. Uh, I saw in that same interview that, uh, that Jake said he did. Jake Sullivan said he didn't

00:49:04.500 remember that. Um, I can't attest to what people remember, what they don't. I just know that that

00:49:09.780 happened. That happened. And you also report Alex, that there was interference run by, I think this

00:49:15.320 same Politburo, this cabal against the white house residents staffers so that they would not witness

00:49:22.780 what the inner circle was witnessing with his deterioration. Can you fill that out a bit?

00:49:28.340 Yeah. The resident staff were really stunned with how, especially the first lady's office took over 0.66

00:49:34.920 really through Bernal and Annie Tomasini. Both of them also unusual had resident staff passes,

00:49:41.820 which is not normal for aides in the white house to be able to go like to and from they would, you

00:49:47.340 know, just had certain powers to the point that a lot of the resident staff, you know, they felt they

00:49:52.800 were being kept at bay, that they were not trusted and that they often were there just twiddling

00:49:57.900 their thumbs. They would have to go. They often went home early. They didn't have a lot to do.

00:50:02.560 And there was a feeling among some in the resident staff that this was about hiding his deterioration.

00:50:09.680 And we quote one resident staff, um, you know, official that said he would just sometimes look

00:50:15.500 at you and I'm paraphrasing. He would just sometimes look at you like he doesn't even know

00:50:19.440 you, even though I was seeing him every day.

00:50:23.040 They would, um, keep somebody out of the elevator. Uh, there was the elevator is the elevator in the

00:50:28.080 white house normally manned? Cause you seem to be reporting that they ejected that person from that

00:50:31.860 post. Yes. They basically said your services will no longer be necessary. And they, again,

00:50:38.600 it was part of this larger pattern of, uh, where we are taking over the residents. Now,

00:50:44.320 your services are needed sometimes, but not, uh, as much as they almost always are.

00:50:49.740 But how about Jill Biden, Alex?

00:50:54.340 I mean, she was first and foremost, a protector, um, and she and loyalty enforcer, and she would

00:51:02.820 had tremendous, uh, control over, um, over the schedule over keeping, you know, that circle very,

00:51:10.200 very close. And I think, um, you know, even though she would never admit that, uh, you know,

00:51:15.760 that he has any problems, I think by her very actions, you saw it on the view, but privately

00:51:20.500 to, you know, jumping in with answers, trying to help him along, guiding him, introducing. So he

00:51:26.080 remembers who they are, you know, that by her action shows that she knows that he needs help,

00:51:31.840 that he needs someone to pick up the slack.

00:51:33.980 All right, we'll pick it up there. We have to get into the presidential debate and what Jake's

00:51:38.320 reaction was when he had that onstage meltdown. And what is, uh, the reaction from these guys

00:51:43.920 to the announcement about Joe Biden's cancer diagnosis on the eve of their pub date. Stand

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00:52:54.420 the IRS makes the next move. All right, Jake. So I have been in the front row of a presidential

00:53:02.760 debate in big moments. Oh, I remember. I remember. One of the interesting things is always like,

00:53:09.460 what's the dynamic between the anchors on the set when you know big news is being made? So walk us

00:53:15.640 through that moment when he completely fell apart with the, I killed Medicare and everybody was left

00:53:21.100 with their own agape moment. Does your, I guess, presumably your, your viewers and listeners know

00:53:28.300 the agape reference by now. Um, so that for that front row seat was, um, really disturbing. Um, and

00:53:38.460 again, as you say, we have all, we all watched president Biden age. We all watched his gaffes. We all

00:53:45.100 watched these moments that were uncomfortable and obviously, uh, representative of, of a decline

00:53:53.260 going on. But there was something about that debate that was utterly shocking. And maybe, maybe you and

00:53:59.740 your listeners were not shocked. Maybe, maybe you thought that this was going to happen and, and this

00:54:04.420 was all, you know, I think it was one of those shocked, but not surprised moments for us. So he comes

00:54:10.400 out and, you know, he's obviously shuffling as, uh, had, had been going on with him for years because

00:54:18.040 of his degenerative spine. And although, by the way, that was another thing that the white house

00:54:22.840 wasn't being honest about. They were saying it had to do with his, like breaking his ankle or something

00:54:27.420 in December, 2020 and not wearing the boot. And his refusal to wear the, the, like the foot cast or

00:54:33.700 support. It was another lie. Yeah, not true. Um, so he comes out and he, he has a cold also. Um,

00:54:39.860 and he sounds, so even his voice, obviously you go back and listen to him in 2020, his voice is much

00:54:44.860 deeper and more and stronger. And then, you know, he comes out, it's, it's, it's thinner,

00:54:49.600 it's readier. He obviously is coughing a lot, but there was something about that.

00:54:53.500 My first text to my, my producing team read phlegm. And I saw that same word in your book

00:54:59.320 referencing what, what you were thinking. It was phlegmy. He was definitely very phlegmy. 0.94

00:55:03.740 So, so it was, it was, it was a few minutes in, I mean, his first answer was not good,

00:55:09.760 but, um, that, you know, that wasn't ultimately particularly surprising. I think it was the

00:55:14.920 second answer, the second long answer in that, uh, economics block that we did where he just

00:55:21.140 completely lost his train of thought, um, in such a way that he was like grasping for words.

00:55:26.640 And look, he has those crutches where he starts wandering off. And then he says, anyway,

00:55:32.880 because he's lost his train of thought. That's something that we've seen,

00:55:35.540 but this was something else. This was something more shocking. And he said,

00:55:40.660 then he says, we finally beat Medicare. And I, I presumably he was trying to say we finally beat

00:55:45.940 COVID, but, um, it was really shocking. Uh, also interesting at the, at the time was

00:55:52.200 Trump obviously was very Trumpy during the debate. He did his thing. If you like it,

00:55:57.740 you like it. If you don't, you don't for Trump, given what was going on to his left,

00:56:03.560 he was fairly restrained. He wasn't really commenting on the self immolation that was

00:56:11.180 going on. I think he only made one comment that night about Biden's incoherence. He said something

00:56:16.340 like, I'm not really sure what he just said. And I'm not sure that he does either or something

00:56:21.040 like that. I'm paraphrasing, but it was shocking. Get to the text that you sent to your control room

00:56:25.820 and the correspondence between you and Dana. So, so we have, um, iPads cause you can't

00:56:31.780 communicate, obviously, uh, talking to your control room during a debate. We have iPads where you can

00:56:36.680 write on them. And I recommend it if you don't have one, by the way, it's fantastic. And, and, um,

00:56:42.440 I wrote cause I had no idea who was back there. So I tried to keep it clean. I wrote,

00:56:46.780 holy smokes. Now what I was thinking was, holy fuck. I mean, it was just shocking, 1.00

00:56:51.720 but I kept it clean. Dana wrote, Dana writes to me on a piece of paper. He just lost the election.

00:56:58.860 Um, and I, it was just, I mean, it is, I don't think this is hyperbole at all.

00:57:04.320 The worst debate in the history of presidential debates going back to 1960. I just can't think of

00:57:10.260 anything even remotely close to it. And then you saw him immediately after you write in the book

00:57:15.660 and he seemed like unaware that something extremely problematic had just occurred.

00:57:23.640 Well, it was just, first of all, Jill helps him down from the stage. It's like a one,

00:57:28.500 it's a one step stage. Maybe it was a little distracting cause there were weird lights or

00:57:33.300 whatever, but that looked weird too. But they come over to the table. Trump, Trump is long gone. He's

00:57:39.260 probably, he's probably in the air at that point. And, um, he, they come over and they really didn't

00:57:46.380 seem to have any idea that this had been as bad as it was. And it was very awkward. He said something

00:57:53.200 about, sorry about, sorry about my cold. And I can, you, like, he tried to like say something about

00:57:58.720 how much Trump lies. And then he said something like, uh, I guess, I guess we'll go see what the

00:58:03.940 commentators have to say or something like that. And he and Jill wander off. And it was just one of

00:58:09.080 these, you know, sometimes you think like, did I just see that? Was that, did, did I just witness

00:58:14.940 this 90 minute event during it? Also, I'll just, I'll just say, um, so I'm 56. So I'm now at the age

00:58:22.520 where like, I love sleep. Like sleep is something that when you're a kid, you hate it so much. But when

00:58:28.000 you're an adult, you're like, I can't get enough of it. And I even thought, as this debate started,

00:58:33.640 why are we starting at nine? This is so late. Um, and then when Biden started to fump around,

00:58:41.840 I thought, man, starting this at nine was really a bad idea. Why didn't they ask for like five?

00:58:46.220 They never should have agreed. They never should have agreed. Following up on a point from earlier,

00:58:49.980 Alex, because we talked about the cabinet secretaries unnamed, and we talked about the

00:58:54.320 Politburo protecting him. And you gave us the names. There is a suggestion in the book,

00:58:59.580 though. It's never written explicitly that president Biden wasn't always making the calls

00:59:03.920 as president. Is that, is that what you're reporting that, that he was not in full command

00:59:08.940 of the decision-making for those four years? Well, some members of the cabinet told us, um,

00:59:15.920 that they felt that one of them put it to us this way is because what happened is they closed ranks.

00:59:23.700 They had the cabinet members come in and brief senior staff, and then they, and then the senior

00:59:29.060 staff would brief the president. And one member of the cabinet put it to us this way. Yes, the

00:59:34.180 president is officially making the decision, you know, putting the sign dotted line. But if the,

00:59:40.240 if the decision is framed in a certain way, is it really a decision? And are really they the ones

00:59:46.000 making the decision? And there was a feeling that, that, um, they were, you know, putting their hand

00:59:52.120 on the scale one way or another. And, you know, some people also felt that this began, you know,

00:59:58.160 as early as 2021, when, you know, the Biden administration, uh, you know, went pretty

01:00:03.640 far to the left of where Joe Biden had been for a lot of his career. And many people attributed to

01:00:10.400 that, um, to Ron Klain, who is more progressive being chief of staff. And they felt some people,

01:00:16.420 um, including in the cabinet felt that if Biden had been 20 years younger, um, it may have been

01:00:21.600 different. One cabinet member said, you know, he's an old man. He's got four to six hour,

01:00:26.080 good hours a day. And if that's the case, sometimes things are missed, you know, he's not in the weeds

01:00:32.860 as much. Yeah. So just to be made by other people. Wait, wait, let me, let me keep going. I only have

01:00:38.280 you for seven more minutes. I know you've got to, you've got to date with somebody else. Um,

01:00:41.580 follow up to you on this, Alex. So right before you guys launched your book, as you know,

01:00:47.740 on Sunday night, they came out with an announcement that he's suffering from prostate cancer. That's

01:00:53.280 metastasized to his bones. We've had multiple doctors come out and say that has to be at least

01:00:59.220 a five to seven year run. Some have acknowledged is a very, very small percentage who could potentially

01:01:04.580 have like that had prostate cancer that went into the bones, but extremely rare. Anyway, what do you make

01:01:11.320 of the timing of that announcement? And do you think it's any accident that it came in between

01:01:15.380 you releasing the, her audio tapes and on Axios on Saturday and you guys releasing your book today?

01:01:25.480 I can tell you, and I wrote in a story with Marco Pudo this morning that some people that even worked

01:01:31.780 in the Biden white house, um, are suspicious of the timing and are, they are skeptical of it. I don't

01:01:38.440 want to get into skepticism. I try to just report and not speculate. Um, but I can tell you that,

01:01:43.900 you know, some people that worked for him, um, were, uh, felt very strange about the sudden,

01:01:51.900 uh, timing of this. And, um, you know, I'm going to continue to report it out. It's obviously

01:01:58.400 very sad. And I also think, you know, we framed this book as a, as a tragedy of a man undone.

01:02:03.980 Um, and I think this just further shows that tragic element and also, you know, what, how risky,

01:02:11.480 uh, it was for him to run for reelection at such an old age. 0.99

01:02:16.280 Is that at all an oh shit moment? Is it all an oh shit moment where you're like, oh my God, 0.99

01:02:20.740 the whole book is about his health and a coverup. And we miss the fact that he, he's got cancer. 0.99

01:02:26.860 He's got terminal cancer. I mean, like, like, I don't know. Is that, do you feel like what's your

01:02:31.980 odd? What, what, what are your, what do you think the odds are? Because your whole book is about how

01:02:35.860 he covers up about his, his health problems. So, I mean, I mean, you're in an interesting

01:02:41.040 position now as reporters who are continuing to report on politics and whether you give credence

01:02:47.340 to this story that he just found out and he didn't know while he was the sitting president.

01:02:52.980 How are you going to, how do you handle that? I certainly, I certainly understand the skepticism.

01:02:58.280 And, uh, I think if there's anything, this book instructs us as we should be very skeptical and

01:03:03.440 we should also demand more from our leaders when it comes to health records. There was a moment in

01:03:08.500 the book, um, where Senator Debbie Stabenow, uh, a Democrat of Michigan is with, is alone with first

01:03:15.900 lady Jill Biden. This is after the debate before, but before Biden drops out and Senator Stabenow says

01:03:21.460 something like, we don't know what's wrong with Joe Biden. We don't know if there's a condition,

01:03:28.460 but you do. And first lady Biden doesn't answer the question. And then later fumes about the 1.00

01:03:38.280 temerity of Senator Stabenow saying that. And I think what we've learned in the last couple of days,

01:03:44.100 uh, about, um, president Biden's health. And obviously I know all of us, um, wish him the

01:03:49.680 best in his fight against prostate cancer. What, what I think it gets at is the difficulty of

01:03:55.260 hard reporting and investigative journalism when it comes to health issues, uh, observations and

01:04:02.980 punditry, uh, are important and, uh, necessary, but the deep investigation of what is going on behind

01:04:13.640 the scenes and what is going on in terms of somebody's health, that is, that is very tough.

01:04:18.700 And as, as we all know, we don't have subpoena power. We can't break into doctor's offices. Um,

01:04:24.220 I have no reporting on when he found out about this. All we have, all the world has is their word.

01:04:31.960 And if you believe their word, then you believe their word. And if you don't,

01:04:35.460 you're left with your skepticism. Yeah, there's certainly reason to doubt their word.

01:04:38.960 Question for you, Jagan, on the reportage front is, do you, what do you do with these cabinet

01:04:44.040 secretaries who didn't tell the truth about Biden's mental acuity, but now have told the truth to you

01:04:52.460 and then they want to come on your show? Maybe some of them will run for president.

01:04:57.400 I mean, now that you know, right, that they are not honest brokers, like you actually know,

01:05:02.540 what do you do about that?

01:05:03.700 It's interesting. Um, I guess I'll cross that bridge when I come to it. Uh, it has been interesting

01:05:10.460 watching some of the Democrats and, you know, who talked to us for the book, uh, and what they say

01:05:18.460 publicly versus what they say privately. Uh, that has been interesting. Yeah. I saw the one Congresswoman

01:05:24.300 who we quote in the book, Susan Wilde, former Congresswoman from Pennsylvania was out there tweeting 0.99

01:05:28.920 something like fuck Andrew Yang. Like we need to go move forward and focus on Trump and not Biden. 0.98

01:05:36.620 And she's quoted in the book during a meeting, a zoom meeting of the, of the, uh, ranking Democrats

01:05:42.200 saying something like Biden can't come to my district and he makes us all out to be liars.

01:05:46.900 And it's just, when it was pointed out to her, that her, that what she said, according to the book

01:05:53.280 was very different, uh, than what she was saying now, she, at least to her credit, uh, fessed up to

01:05:59.120 it. She didn't deny it, but it is weird watching the dance between people who know how bad it was

01:06:06.540 and are just keeping quiet. We're trying to change the subject. And those who know how bad it was

01:06:12.180 and are lying to the public. It's interesting. Well, I mean, one of them has is Hakeem Jeffries,

01:06:18.180 who you point out in the book, he knew he was there when Biden was having one of his many, um,

01:06:25.800 problems. And now he's out there like, we're moving forward. We're moving forward. Chuck Schumer

01:06:32.200 too. Like we're moving forward. They knew Chuck Schumer's all over your book, um, with big meetings

01:06:37.900 where he went to Joe Biden, which was previously reported, but a lot of details about him saying

01:06:43.400 you're not being told the truth. You've got to get out. You're going to lose. You're going to bring

01:06:46.640 us all down. And now he's like forward moving for anyway. Okay. Let me keep going. Cause there's two

01:06:50.440 other things I want to ask you about. Um, Jake, we had, we played a soundbite from Mark Halperin show

01:06:56.020 where he interviewed a guy named Rufus Gifford, who is the campaign finance chair for Joe Biden's

01:07:02.500 campaign. And he was at the now infamous Clooney fundraiser for Biden in June of 24. And he took

01:07:09.660 issue with your reporting. We played the audience to sound, but I won't waste time on it now, but he

01:07:13.760 says it didn't happen. What you report. Clooney did not walk in there. Sorry. Biden did not walk in

01:07:20.240 there and go sort of through a bunch of people saying, nice to see you. Nice to say, thanks for

01:07:24.660 being here. Thanks for being here. He said that that was impossible because he got there. He was

01:07:30.240 announced by his handler. And immediately the handers handler said, you know, George Clooney,

01:07:36.260 you know, Julia Roberts. He said, nice to meet him and moved on. And he poured cold water on that

01:07:40.700 story of your book care to respond. We're pretty confident about the sourcing and the event as

01:07:47.380 described. And, uh, you know, we just went through as a country years and years of the Biden people

01:07:55.080 lying and denying. And I'm not particularly interested in pretending any of it is credible.

01:08:04.080 We are very sure of our story. It wasn't just in our book. It was, uh, thoroughly fact-checked in the

01:08:09.180 New Yorker who did, uh, an excerpt of it and we stand by it. And I, I don't really care what Rufus

01:08:16.400 says. And now do you care what the ladies of the view say? Because that's kind of in your, 0.57

01:08:22.920 not your personally, but it's in the left wing ecosphere and they are having a very negative

01:08:28.520 reaction. I'm sorry to tell you to original sin. They don't like your book guys and they don't

01:08:33.940 appreciate that. It's being published now. And, um, I wonder, have they read it? Have they had you

01:08:39.840 on? Have they invited you to come on to discuss it? They have, they have not, they have, they have,

01:08:44.660 we have gone to them any number of times and said, we would love to come on the show to discuss.

01:08:48.920 They obviously were where, uh, president and first lady Biden went for their pre-bottle

01:08:53.780 of the book. Um, and we thought it would be, it would only be fair to, uh, have us on, but the

01:09:00.900 view and, and for that matter, Fox news, uh, seems to enjoy, uh, using our scoops, talking about

01:09:07.940 everything we learned in the months of investigative journalism and what we're revealing in this book.

01:09:11.980 Uh, but they're declining to have us on to discuss it, which is regrettable because I think this is an

01:09:17.780 important thing for, for people to, to come to terms with, um, when it comes to the view or to

01:09:23.820 explore in terms of the depth of what we, Alex and I have been able to find out in terms of, uh,

01:09:28.400 Fox news. I will say that there is clearly a, a, a contingent of people on the left who want to

01:09:35.720 bury their head in the sand on this issue and pretend it didn't happen and pretend, uh, that

01:09:41.860 it's not, uh, part of the reason why Donald Trump and the Republicans control the white house and the

01:09:47.760 house and the Senate and why democratic poll numbers are in the toilet. Uh, I think that is

01:09:53.280 part of why Democrats are where they are. This, this gaslighting.

01:09:57.840 Mm-hmm. There was a comment by David Axelrod that we should, we should set aside the discussion of

01:10:03.280 your book and the allegations in it because of the diagnosis news. Jake, do you disagree with

01:10:09.500 David Axelrod? Well, if I didn't, I don't think I'd be here. I mean, I think what happened to the

01:10:16.180 country, I think we need to be discussing this. Um, I think obviously we have sympathy for president

01:10:24.620 Biden, both in terms of the prostate cancer and in terms of whatever other health issue he is

01:10:29.620 grappling with. Um, and we talked to many neurologists who spent, you talk about how you

01:10:34.820 were on a text chain with your producers the night of the debate. We talked to one of the top

01:10:39.060 neurologists in the, in the world who, um, you know, has, is on a text chain with a number of other

01:10:44.880 top neurologists and they spent much of 2024 trying to figure out what was wrong with Joe Biden, whether

01:10:50.880 it's Lewy body dementia or Parkinson's or something Parkinsonian, and they don't know, then they're

01:10:56.740 not qualified to say from a distance, but it's a serious question. And the larger issue of

01:11:01.960 transparency and group think questions for the democratic party and the public and the news media,

01:11:07.180 these are all really important conversations to have. I don't think that our story, I don't think

01:11:12.400 that our book is mean. I think it is just accurate and clear eyed. And I think this is a conversation

01:11:16.960 the country needs to have, not just about president Biden, but about all presidents.

01:11:20.860 It's like, it's like I tell my kids, it is not mean to say something that is true, but not

01:11:28.260 necessarily complimentary. I mean, it's not, if it's true and you are not saying it with the intention

01:11:33.320 to hurt somebody, it's not quote mean. Um, they're not going to get away with that. Sorry, Alex,

01:11:38.320 you wanted to weigh in. Go ahead. I actually just wanted to say one more thing about the media

01:11:44.200 coverage. And this question, which is, you know, Jake, when Jake came to me with this idea,

01:11:50.940 you know, on every beat, there are some suck ups, there are some people that are lazy.

01:11:55.580 But I never felt that Jake, even if he fell short on the age issue, I never felt he carried the water 0.95

01:12:01.180 for the Biden people. And I hope your listeners who may be skeptical of Jake, at least like give the

01:12:06.800 book a chance. Yes, I don't think we've convinced them that Jake did not run cover for Joe Biden.

01:12:12.260 No, I'm going to be honest, but I do think we may have convinced them to buy the book, which is

01:12:16.040 the purpose of your visit here. And that's fine. I mean, there's a, it's a big media landscape.

01:12:19.900 They don't have to watch the lead. They, they can take it for what it's worth. I do want to ask you

01:12:24.520 one question about Naomi Biden before I let you go, guys, she weighed in. This is the president's

01:12:28.160 former president's granddaughter. She called it a silly book. She says it's a political fairy smut. 0.94

01:12:34.140 It is political fairy smut for the permanent professional chattering class, 0.98

01:12:37.980 a bunch of unoriginal, uninspired lies written by irresponsible, self-promoting journalists out

01:12:42.560 to make a quick buck, relying on unnamed anonymous sources, pushing a self-serving false narrative.

01:12:49.640 Alex, care to take that on?

01:12:53.220 I mean, I think the book very much shows the Biden family is very tight knit and I wasn't surprised to

01:13:00.480 see it. That being said, I think we stand completely behind our reporting.

01:13:04.700 All right. And Jake, I'll, I'll close with this. You've gotten so much blowback

01:13:08.940 in the days that led up to today, had to hire the crisis PR agent.

01:13:15.220 How are you feeling so far? All right, whatever. But you've gotten a lot of blowback. So how are

01:13:20.540 you feeling today? Was it worth it?

01:13:24.260 Yeah. Telling the truth is always worth it. We hired Risa Heller because she's a political 1.00

01:13:29.040 bro. And months ago, we did this. Well, you had a PR agent through your publisher.

01:13:35.360 Yeah. And, and they're great, but this is a very controversial political book. And we felt like it

01:13:40.660 needed the eyes of a smart political team in addition to the great publicists at Penguin.

01:13:47.320 I get it. But you're not denying that you've had massive blowback. Are you? I mean, you've been

01:13:51.260 under attack for days now.

01:13:53.800 Oh, the left and the right are mad. The left is like, why are you covering, why are you covering

01:13:59.380 this? You should be covering Trump. Your book is full of lies and the right is doing what you

01:14:06.120 illustrated earlier with your tough questions. I will say this. People were shocked on June 27th,

01:14:13.600 2024, because there was to a degree, a coverup of how bad his decline had been. So even if,

01:14:22.620 and not if, even though many folks, including you, were covering this, it still was shocking what

01:14:31.680 people saw on June 27th. And the only other point I'll say is I'm not disagreeing with the fact that

01:14:40.220 conservatives were right on this and that people in the legacy media, including myself, should have

01:14:45.200 been paying closer attention and more attention. I'm granting all of that. But the reason why I think

01:14:51.900 there is interest in this book is because people want to know more beyond what they saw in front of

01:14:59.480 the camera. They want to know how this happened. And I think that is what we provide through this

01:15:05.180 deeply sourced, uh, unflinching account of what really went on behind the scenes.

01:15:10.760 I got to steal one more minute because I just want to explain to the audience, Jake, how Jake

01:15:15.440 Tapper and Megyn Kelly became friends because it's a very unlikely friendship in the eyes of a lot of

01:15:21.800 people. But we've both been in media for a long time. We were at Fox and CNN together. We were friends

01:15:29.300 even before you went to CNN. I remember texting with you about the decision when you were leaving ABC,

01:15:33.660 where, where would you go? What did you want to do? We've bonded over news and it's insanity. We've

01:15:39.700 bonded over the Philadelphia Eagles and your shared love with my husband, Doug of that very complicated

01:15:45.800 football team. And I just, I want people to understand, like notwithstanding that we have

01:15:50.500 political differences and we have differences in the way we see news stories, like there's still room

01:15:54.640 for mutual respect and kindness and friendship. And I, I think that's to our credit.

01:16:00.380 I consider you a friend. Uh, I don't necessarily agree with everything you do or say, but that

01:16:07.780 doesn't really matter. And, uh, I think it's interesting what you've done and, and impressive

01:16:13.300 what you've built, uh, since, uh, that, you know, you know what I think about what happened

01:16:19.700 to you at NBC. It's flattering to you and not to them. Um, um, but yeah. And look, I mean,

01:16:25.940 one of the things that you've said to me or said about me is that I might not always succeed,

01:16:31.700 but I try to be fair and I am trying to be fair and I am not infallible. And I have said,

01:16:37.340 I wish I had covered things differently. There's a million things I wish I'd covered differently.

01:16:41.740 This is obviously significant, more significant. I wrote a book about it with Alex. I mean,

01:16:45.560 like, I think this is a big deal, but this book, isn't me trying to do anything other than what

01:16:52.260 happened. We need to know what happened. And if somebody had written this book, I would have bought

01:16:57.620 it and I would have interviewed them, but they hadn't. And Alex and I got to work, um, knowing

01:17:04.380 that there would be a huge blowback both from the right and from the left. And it was just important

01:17:11.020 for us to tell the story of what happened. Well, listen, um, I appreciate it because I did learn

01:17:17.560 a lot and I did find the debate absolutely shocking though. As I say, not entirely surprising,

01:17:22.400 right? It's like the extent to which he had deteriorated was shocking. Uh, and by the way,

01:17:28.900 before you go, thank you for all you do for our veterans as well, guys, good luck with it. I'm sure

01:17:33.320 it's going to be a big success. It is called original sin. President Biden's decline,

01:17:38.260 it's cover up and his disastrous choice to run again. And it is available right now. All the

01:17:43.620 best to you both. Thanks, Megan. Appreciate it. Thanks. Your business doesn't move in a straight

01:17:49.560 line. Make sure your team is taken care of through every twist and turn with Canada Life savings,

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The Megyn Kelly Show - May 31, 2025

Megyn Kelly's FULL Interview with Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson - on the Truth About Biden Cover-Up and ＂Original Sin＂ Revelations

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