Legacy Media Outlets Say Biden Book Is Full Of ‘Bombshells’. Here’s What You Need To Know.

Democrats, left-leaning pundits, and legacy media outlets are all talking about the “bombshells” included in Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson’s forthcoming book on the last days of the Biden campaign, “Original Sin.”

Tapper, a CNN anchor, and Thompson, an Axios reporter, interviewed more than 200 people to catalogue Biden’s obvious cognitive and physical decline, and the lengths to which the people around him went to cover it up.

But while the book certainly seems to contain previously unknown details, many don’t seem to be “bombshells” to the average American who watched President Joe Biden stumble his way through his re-election campaign.

Here are the “bombshells.”

Biden’s staff considered the possibility that he might need a wheelchair.

Biden’s halting gait was the topic of much conversation among his critics, and according to “Original Sin,” it was a concern discussed at length by his staffers. The consensus was that he might need a wheelchair, but with him still on the ballot at the time, they worried about the optics of taking that step prior to the 2024 election.

“Biden’s physical deterioration — most apparent in his halting walk — had become so severe that there were internal discussions about putting the president in a wheelchair, but they couldn’t do so until after the election,” Tapper and Thompson wrote.

Biden’s physician, Dr. Kevin O’Connor, had also privately conveyed his concerns that the president could eventually take a fall that would make a wheelchair a necessity rather than an option.

In order to minimize the risk, Biden’s team made sure that the president wore shoes that were made for stability and had him board and disembark from Air Force One using the shorter staircase at the rear of the plane.

Still, according to Axios, O’Connor did not believe that Biden’s team was doing enough to safeguard the president: “O’Connor sometimes quipped that Biden’s staff members were trying to kill him, while he was trying to keep him alive.”

And when anyone asked about his gait or the fact that he’d switched to the short stairs, Biden’s team brushed aside concerns by claiming that his halting step was simply the result of his refusal to wear the walking boot long enough after fracturing his foot in November of 2020.

Biden failed to recognize his friend — and host — George Clooney at his 2024 Hollywood fundraiser.

Biden had a long history of flubbing the names of people at large events. But Tapper and Thompson wrote that he failed to recognize the Oscar-winning actor — with whom he’s been friends for years — when he approached him at a Hollywood fundraiser in June of 2024.

“You know George,” the assisting aide told the President, gently reminding him who was in front of him. “Yeah, yeah,” the President said to one of the most recognizable men in the world, the host of this lucrative fund-raiser.

“Thank you for being here.”

“Hi, Mr. President,” Clooney said.

“How are ya?” the President replied.

“How was your trip?” Clooney asked.

“It was fine,” the President said.

It seemed clear that the President had not recognized Clooney.

“It was not O.K.,” recalled the Hollywood V.I.P. who had witnessed this moment. “That thing, the moment where you recognize someone you know—especially a famous person who’s doing a f***ing fund-raiser for you — it was delayed. It was uncomfortable.”

Biden ultimately had to be reminded that the man standing in front of him was George Clooney.

Biden was hidden from his own staffers and cabinet members since at least 2023.

One staffer, who reportedly quit after Biden insisted on pushing ahead with a campaign for reelection, told Tapper and Thompson that access to Biden was strictly limited in order to keep people from seeing just how dramatic a change had taken place.

“We attempted to shield him from his own staff so many people didn’t realize the extent of the decline beginning in 2023,” the staffer said. “I love Joe Biden. When it comes to decency, there are few in politics like him. Still, it was a disservice to the country and to the party for his family and advisers to allow him to run again.”

“When he proved incapable of delivering a two-minute video address without stumbling, aides filmed him with two cameras so the edit would be less obvious,” another staffer said.

The White House Press Corps’ already-limited access to Biden was diminished even further, and reports circulated that he hadn’t met with certain members of his own cabinet in weeks or even months.

Full cabinet meetings, which had been few and far between from the word go, spread out to the point that Biden would hold only three in 2023 and one in 2024.

“We spoke with several cabinet secretaries for the book, and this period of time is what one of the secretaries called ‘The Weird Period,'” Jake Tapper said.

“Despite the earlier praise, the third cabinet secretary we spoke with told us that starting in 2023, quote, ‘For months we didn’t have access to him. There was clearly a deliberate strategy by the White House to have him meet with as few people as necessary,” Tapper continued, noting that very few of Biden’s cabinet secretaries met with the president after late 2023.

“And it was not just cabinet members who were kept away from the president. Aides who had once seen Biden regularly say they went months without seeing him. Others told us that in some meetings, Biden would mumble incoherently, something the public only got glimpses of,” he said.

If the assertions made in the book — and by other reporters, pundits, and high-ranking Democrats — are to be believed, the White House did such a good job of hiding Biden’s infirmity from all but his closest advisers that none of them were truly aware of how bad things had gotten until the CNN debate.

Stay tuned for Part II: Are these really “bombshells”?