Like most informed voters, I followed the 2024 election and its results. In the six months since that election it seems like everyone is writing a book about it and its consequences or benefits (depending on your perspective) to the United States of America. This book, “Original Sin” by Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson, is the latest.

Books about elections are good. They allow us to dive deeper into what happened and why. I have already read “Fight” earlier this year (my review here) and found it to be a fairly decent historical look at Kamala Harris’ presidential run, if you trust the sources that are cited.

“Original Sin” is a horse of a different color, for several reasons. I know the name Jake Tapper of CNN, though I haven’t counted on that outlet for my news needs in over a decade. I do not know the name of Alex Thompson. Still, I thought the book might be another interesting look at the 2024 election.

Tapper and Thompson state in their book that the title comes from this; “The original sin of Election 2024 was Biden’s decision to run for reelection—followed by aggressive efforts to hide his cognitive diminishment.”

For those unfamiliar with Christian doctrine, the Encyclopedia Brittanica explains, “”Original sin”, in Christian doctrine, the condition or state of sin into which each human being is born; also, the origin of this state. Traditionally, the origin has been ascribed to the sin of the first man, Adam, who disobeyed God in eating the forbidden fruit (of knowledge of good and evil) and, in consequence, transmitted his sin and guilt by heredity to his descendants.”

That’s a lot of weight to put on Joe Biden.

Look, I get that Biden was old. Hell, I’ll even stipulate that he was having the usual problems of old age. He’s not the first such president to hold office in his old age and obviously, with the subsequent election of Trump, isn’t the last.

But I want to know the answers to a couple of questions that Tapper and Thompson don’t address;

1. Why did a reporter like Tapper know this and NOT report on it at the time he knew it. Why did he choose to wait, write a book he and Thompson could make money off of, instead of doing his job and reporting the news of it in real time? How can someone like that EVER be trusted to accurately and objectively report the news?
2. Why aren’t Tapper and Thompson reporting on the obvious dementia of the CURRENT occupant of the White House? Why are they (and others) ignoring their duty to investigate and expose what is on full display to the rest of the country and world?

As Shalise Manza Young of The Contrarian writes; “Because the current President of the United States, you know, the guy who doesn’t read, lies incessantly, and has installed a cadre of vapid cosplaying Fox personalities, puppy killers and toxic creek-swimming nepobabies into some of the most important posts in the country, the president who has never been particularly intelligent…is now an incoherent mess.”

Biden may have been old, but he, his staff, and his cabinet were running the country in a marvelous way that benefitted ALL Americans, not just those who Trump likes or who pay him bribes. We’ve seen the full evidence of that ever since January 20th.

But what Tapper and Thompson have presented in “Original Sin” is short on verifiable sources and long on not much more than conjecture.

Editorial cartoonist Mike Luckovich is closer to the truth. Tapper is a heckler lining his pockets, not a political analyst reporting verifiable news in a timely manner.

I gave this book one star. Not recommended.