How Biden’s allies gaslit America and the world

On Wednesday, a sitting congressman by the name of Gerry Connolly died at his Virginia home. He was 75, and became the third Democratic member of US Congress to die in as many months.

Both parties contribute handsomely to what commentators have labelled an American gerontocracy: a society governed by old people. At the start of the year, 84 members of the 435-seat House of Representatives were older than 70, along with a third of the 100 senators.

Donald Trump became the oldest person to become US president when he took the oath of office in January 2017, aged 70. Joe Biden broke that record in January 2021, aged 78 and 61 days, and Trump reclaimed it in January 2025, aged 78 and 220 days.

Joe Biden’s diagnosis, sad though not shocking, has only served to underline his frail condition.Credit: AP

But Biden’s decline while president stands alone. Not only because of its consequences for the most powerful office in the world, but because of his denial, his stubborn resolve to run again, and the way his allies played down the reality of what was happening, and gaslit the world.

“One of the great lessons from 2024,” Democratic campaign adviser David Plouffe tells the authors of a new book, is that “never again can we as a party suggest to people that what they’re seeing is not true”.

The book, Original Sin, was already making headlines when Biden announced last weekend that he has an aggressive form of prostate cancer that has spread to his bones.

Written by CNN anchor Jake Tapper and Axios political correspondent Alex Thompson, it paints a picture of a widespread cover-up – rising to “scandal” – perpetuated by enablers who were as addicted to the trappings of power as the Oval Office occupier himself.

Biden’s diagnosis, sad though not shocking, has only served to underline his frail condition. It might make the discussions more awkward, but it seems to heighten, not reduce, the culpability of those around him, and adds to the questions facing Democrats about how seriously they took Biden’s health and capability.

(Not everyone sees it that way. Comedian Jon Stewart mercilessly mocked the book on The Daily Show, as well as CNN’s attempts to promote it following Biden’s diagnosis.)

The book has, of course, opened up new conspiracy theories about who knew what and when – conjecture fuelled by Trump this week. But Biden’s office clarified he had not been screened for prostate cancer since 2014, and independent experts said this was perfectly normal.

“Most guidelines recommend stopping screening after the age of 70 or 75,” says Dr Todd Morgan, co-director of the Weiser Centre for Prostate Cancer at Michigan Medicine. “It really shifts in the direction of more risks than benefit as we get older.”

This is also true for someone like the president of the United States, whom we might expect to have the most rigorous healthcare possible.

“Sometimes outstanding medical care is less care rather than more care,” Morgan says. “In the United States, that’s a little bit against our culture because we really do have a tendency to think that more is always better, and it isn’t.”

Biden’s aides may not have been obscuring a cancer diagnosis, but they certainly obscured the extent of their boss’ physical and cognitive impairment.

Original Sin sets out how those closest to Biden circled the wagons and imposed measures designed to shield him from forums where things could go wrong. They restricted the hours in which he participated in events and meetings – no early mornings or late nights – gave him a teleprompter even in friendly forums such as fundraisers, equipped him with note cards, and supplied questions to friendly journalists.

Thompson alleges these things were initially just “about making him look good”, but over time became about “trying to hide how bad it had gotten from voters”. The then-president was increasingly isolated from public view.

The book illustrates an undulating but progressive decline that only became fully clear to the world in the disastrous June 27, 2024 presidential debate. But it was far from the “one bad night” the campaign portrayed it as at the time.

Some of Tapper and Thompson’s sources suggest Biden was never really the same after his son Beau’s death from brain cancer in 2015. “His grief seemed to break something inside him,” one person was quoted as saying.

Biden struggled to recall his senior aide Mike Donilon’s name while campaigning in Iowa in December 2019, according to the book. Donilon had worked with Biden since 1981. The authors write that since at least 2022, Biden had moments in which he could not recall the names of top staffers he saw every day.

In one particularly damaging section, Tapper and Thompson say some of Biden’s cabinet secretaries told them that “by 2024, he could not be relied upon” to perform adequately in the case of a 2am emergency.

And in another chapter, they recount how Biden failed to recognise megastar George Clooney at a Los Angeles fundraiser that Clooney was headlining. The incident, in part, prompted the actor to pen an influential opinion piece for The New York Times after the debate, calling for Biden to drop out of the race.

The book reflects poorly on Biden’s closest aides, dubbed “the Politburo”, including Donilon, Steve Ricchetti, Anthony Bernal and Ron Klain. While they are extended some lenience for loyalty to the boss and service of the cause, they are also accused of clinging to false hope, denying reality and dismissing the legitimate concerns of senior and well-meaning Democratic onlookers.

Donilon – who was reportedly paid $US4 million ($6.2 million) for his campaign work from February to November – is alleged to have interpreted polling data in a more favourable way until the end, rather than telling Biden the hard truth.

“They did such a disservice to Joe Biden and to the country,” former Barack Obama adviser David Axelrod says in the book, in remarks directed at Biden’s inner circle. “The family as well.”

Another person familiar with the internal dynamics told Tapper and Thompson: “Five people were running the country, and Joe Biden was at best a senior member of the board.”

At the same time, the book does not contain any shocking revelations about Biden’s conduct in office that demonstrate harm to the nation and its security; something a Biden spokesperson seized on in a statement about the book.

“There is nothing in this book that shows Joe Biden failed to do his job, as the authors have alleged, nor did they prove their allegation that there was a cover-up or conspiracy,” the spokesperson said.

George Clooney, Joe Biden, Julia Roberts and Barack Obama at a Democratic fundraiser on June 15, 2024.Credit: X - @JoeBiden

Original Sin also serves as a reminder that not everyone was in on the alleged ruse. Some people spoke up or raised concerns. Especially later in the piece, some shouted. And the polls were always clear. In 2023, 71 per cent of people thought Biden was too old to be president.

One anecdote tells of Democratic campaign veteran David Morehouse shaking Biden’s frail hand at an event in late 2023 and hearing the president tell a story Morehouse “knew never happened”. Stunned, he told a governor seated next to him: “I’ve worked on four of these things. This guy cannot run for president of the United States.”

Morehouse reportedly also rang Bernal, first lady Jill Biden’s senior adviser, who “didn’t have much to say in response”.

The book is full of these vignettes: Democratic figures encountering Biden at fundraisers, feeling disturbed by what they witnessed, and trying to find out what was going on.

But they came up against a defensive and defiant White House that played those concerns down and had a “full-blown freak-out” when issues of Biden’s age were raised in the press.

In the foreword, Tapper and Thompson say Biden’s decline was “in front of our noses”. But while several media outlets did pursue the story later in Biden’s term – particularly Thompson in Axios – it never reached a crescendo wherein the mainstream US press collectively pursued the story with vigour.

Tapper, in particular, has been criticised for being complicit in the alleged cover-up and now writing the book about it. In various interviews promoting Original Sin, he has admitted neglecting the story and credited conservative media with doing a better job.

“I think that the press corps, I’m certainly including myself, needs to worry less about politeness when it comes to these health issues and needs to be even more aggressive when it comes to demanding transparency when it comes to health issues,” Tapper said on CNN on Thursday (Friday AEST).

Following the book, many Democrats argue the party needs to move on rather than dwell on the past. But that’s likely wishful thinking.

Not only did the sequence of events result in Trump retaking the Oval Office, but it seriously damaged the Democrats’ credibility with Americans. Dean Phillips, a then-congressman who challenged Biden for the Democratic nomination, says the “constant lying and gaslighting” about Biden’s health cost Democrats the public’s trust.

“Those who propagated the lie about the former president’s fitness for office, and those who remained quiet in the face of it, placed their politics and proximity to power ahead of principle,” he wrote in a letter to The Wall Street Journal this week.

It is not clear whether those lessons have been learnt, even after November’s harsh verdict. One long-time Biden aide who spoke to Tapper and Thompson for the book, but who was not named, says the following about the Democrats’ collective denial.

“He [Biden] just had to win, and then he could disappear for four years – he’d only have to show proof of life every once in a while.” Aides, the person asserted, could pick up the slack. “When you vote for somebody, you are voting for the people around them, too.”

Get a note directly from our foreign correspondents on what’s making headlines around the world. Sign up for our weekly What in the World newsletter.