President Donald Trump declared in March that the pardons issued by former President Joe Biden were void because they were done by autopen. Legal experts replied that the law does not prohibit automated signatures. Trump’s detractors argued that the president was using the autopen signatures to demonstrate Biden’s cognitive impairment and that “Biden’s team” covered up Biden’s inability to do the job.
The autopen is not proof of a cover-up, but when Biden withdrew from the 2024 presidential election following a disastrous debate performance against Donald Trump, it was clear to the public that Biden’s mental abilities had deteriorated. If Biden’s health was so poor, why did “Biden’s team” encourage him to run for reelection?
CNN anchor Jake Tapper and Axios correspondent Alex Thompson attempted to answer that question in their new book, Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Cover-up, and Tragic Decision to Run Again, which will be released to the public on May 20, 2025.
The book describes how Biden’s White House staff emphasized the president’s good health while making every attempt to hide his diminishing mental competence from the public. According to the book, Biden’s cognitive abilities had been deteriorating for years, and at the age of 81, he was in no condition to run for reelection. However, “Biden’s team” let their fear of another Trump presidency galvanize them to orchestrate the decade’s biggest scandal by attempting to force a deteriorated old man to serve another presidential term.
Tapper and Thompson’s premise is wrong.
“Biden’s team” did not fear another term under Trump. They were afraid of losing their shadow control over the executive branch. Tapper and Thompson failed to discover that “Biden’s team” mapped out a 12-year plan from the start: one term for Biden, followed by two terms for Kamala Harris.
“Biden’s team” was well aware of Biden’s cognitive impairment before he entered the presidential race. During the 2020 Democratic primary, most public opinion polls indicated that the Democratic frontrunners were too progressive to beat Donald Trump. Although “Biden’s team” was more progressive than the Democratic frontrunners, they recruited Biden and touted him as a “moderate” capable of uniting a divided nation. “Biden’s team” chose Kamala Harris as his running mate so that she could prepare to run for president following Biden’s single term.
After the 2022 midterm elections, “Biden’s team” discovered they had a Kamala Harris problem.
Harris was not proficient in international relations and economics. She was ineffective at every assignment assigned to her by the president, and she had poor approval ratings. “Biden’s team” had no confidence in Vice President Harris. They feared that Harris would lose the Democratic presidential primary, bringing their 12-year plan to an end after just four years.
“Biden’s team” had to devise a way for Harris to bypass the primary process but still be the Democratic presidential nominee.
Since no politician with serious presidential aspirations would dare challenge a sitting president in a primary election, Biden would win the primary virtually unopposed. So “Biden’s team” encouraged Biden to run but planned for him to drop out of the race due to health issues just before the official nomination process. That would leave the Democratic Party with no alternative but to allow Vice President Harris to replace Biden and become the next Democratic nominee for president.
Once that occurred, Biden served one term as planned, and if Harris had been elected president, “Biden’s team” would have retained control of the executive branch for another four years.
The real scandal was not that “Biden’s team” concealed Biden’s declining health while he was in office, as Tapper and Thompson claimed; it was that Biden was recruited to run for president because of his mental deficiencies, and Biden’s progressive team made all executive decisions for him from the first day of his presidency.
When President Trump’s statement about Biden’s autopen signatures made national headlines, journalists, who had always felt Biden was mentally unfit, wondered if Biden even knew what was being signed in his name and began to question who was truly making decisions in the Oval Office. Journalists named the people they thought made up the “Biden team.” Each list mentioned a different person, but Ron Klain, Biden’s chief of staff, appeared on all of them.
Ron Klain previously served on the board of the Center for American Progress (CAP). CAP is a left-wing think tank founded in 2003 to counter the conservative Heritage Foundation. CAP leaders have declared that their goal is “not just to change the conversation, but to change the country.” “Biden’s team” were former members of CAP, and when an inept Biden won the White House, CAP attempted to change the country by putting their members in positions throughout the Biden administration.
Business Insider reported in August 2021 that, “At least 66 alumni of the Center for American Progress have been nominated or are already working inside the White House and in agencies across the federal government … They’re not just any government jobs, either: CAP alumni fill some of the most important positions in Washington. Among them are the secretary of Veterans Affairs under President Joe Biden, the top White House economic policy advisor, and the chief of staff at the Pentagon. Former CAP President and CEO Neera Tanden is now on Team Biden; she joined the White House as a senior advisor earlier this year after her nomination to lead the Office of Management and Budget faltered in the face of opposition from Senate Republicans.”
Are these events coincidental or evidence of a CAP conspiracy?
(Postscript: a few weeks ago, on Angela Rye, Tiffany Cross, and Andrew Gillum’s Native Land Podcast, a listener asked the hosts whether the Democrats had anything similar to the Heritage Foundation to assist in policy formation. The hosts agreed that the Democratic think tank was CAP, but that’s not the point. The point is the listener was aware of the Heritage Foundation and Project 2025 but had no idea CAP existed.)