
Original Sin
President Biden's Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again
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Narrated by:
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Jake Tapper
About this listen
From two of America’s most respected journalists, an unflinching and explosive reckoning with one of the most fateful decisions in American political history: Joe Biden’s run for reelection despite evidence of his serious decline—amid desperate efforts to hide the extent of that deterioration
"Explosive." —The New York Times
"[The] most significant book to date about Biden’s cognitive decline." — The Atlantic
"Superbly reported . . . Reads like a Shakespearean drama on steroids." — Los Angeles Times
"It’s hard to think of a book which has shifted the political dial to this extent in recent years." — Politico
In Greek tragedy, the protagonist’s effort to avoid his fate is what seals his fate. In 2024, American politics became a Greek tragedy.
Joe Biden launched his successful 2020 bid for the White House with the stated goal of saving the nation from a second Trump presidential term. He, his family, and his senior aides were so convinced that only he could beat Trump again, they lied to themselves, allies, and the public about his condition and limitations. At his debate with Trump on June 27, 2024, the consequences of that deception were exposed to the world. It was shocking and upsetting.
Now the full, unsettling truth is being told for the first time. Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson take us behind closed doors and into private conversations between the heaviest of hitters, revealing how big the problem was and how many people knew about it. From White House staffers at the highest to lowest levels, to leaders of Congress and the Cabinet, from governors to donors and Hollywood players, the truth is finally being told. What you will learn makes President Biden’s decision to run for reelection seem shockingly narcissistic, self-delusional, and reckless—a desperate bet that went bust—and part of a larger act of extended public deception that has few precedents. The story the authors tell raises fundamental issues of accountability and responsibility that will continue for decades.
The irony is biting: In the name of defeating what they called an existential threat to democracy, Biden and his inner circle ensured it, tossing aside his implicit promise to serve for only one term, denying the existence of health issues the nation had been watching for years, dooming the Democrats to defeat. The decision to run again, the Original Sin of this president, led to a campaign of denial and gaslighting, leading directly to Donald Trump's return to power and all that has happened as a consequence. Rarely does hubris meet nemesis more explosively. Wherever you stand on the political spectrum, Original Sin is essential listening.
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Story
Who is the real Kamala Harris? And how did she ascend to the second highest office in the country? Despite her limited experience in national politics and confusing professional history, there hasn’t been a comprehensive examination of Vice President Kamala Harris’s journey to the White House...until now. Find out how the San Francisco socialite turned politico fast-tracked her way onto the national stage, only to lose the faith of her base and her president.
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Not All Bad
- By pmg on 01-26-24
By: Charlie Spiering
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2024
- How Trump Retook the White House and the Democrats Lost America
- By: Josh Dawsey, Tyler Pager, Isaac Arnsdorf
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini
- Length: 10 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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Award-winning reporters Josh Dawsey, Tyler Pager, and Isaac Arnsdorf bring us the definitive and explosive account of how Trump and his advisers overcame a dozen primary challengers, four indictments, two assassination attempts, and his own past mistakes to defeat the Democrats, and pave the way for a second term that would be far more aggressive and ruthless than the first.
By: Josh Dawsey, and others
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Uncharted
- How Trump Beat Biden, Harris, and the Odds in the Wildest Campaign in History
- By: Chris Whipple
- Narrated by: Mark Bramhall
- Length: 6 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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A disastrous debate, a would-be assassin’s bullet, an electrifying eleventh hour candidate swap, dramatic and surprising VP selections, betrayals behind closed doors, charges of a stolen election, game-changing blunders—the history-making 2024 presidential election is a political saga of Shakespearean proportions. In minute-by-minute detail, esteemed White House historian and political analyst Chris Whipple chronicles the unprecedented drama as it unfolds.
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I got snookered….don’t you get snookered
- By Hank on 04-14-25
By: Chris Whipple
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Mark Twain
- By: Ron Chernow
- Narrated by: Jason Culp
- Length: 44 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer Ron Chernow illuminates the full, fascinating, and complex life of the writer long celebrated as the father of American literature, Mark Twain.
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An epic achievement by both author and reader.
- By H. Jason on 06-01-25
By: Ron Chernow
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The Devil May Dance
- A Novel
- By: Jake Tapper
- Narrated by: Rob Shapiro
- Length: 10 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Charlie and Margaret Marder, political stars in 1960s Washington DC, know all too well how the tangled web of power in the nation's capital can operate. Attorney General Robert Kennedy needs them to look into a potential threat not only to the presidency but to the security of the United States itself. Charlie and Margaret quickly find themselves on a flight to sunny Los Angeles, where they’ll face off against a dazzling world of stars and studios. At the center of their investigation is Frank Sinatra, a close friend of President John F. Kennedy and a rumored mob crony.
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Smarmy rehash of Hollywood cliches
- By D2Zen on 05-13-21
By: Jake Tapper
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Revenge
- The Inside Story of Trump's Return to Power
- By: Alex Isenstadt
- Narrated by: Alan Peterson
- Length: 7 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Over the course of the last four years, the American public looked on as the former president faced a series of daunting obstacles to return to the White House. The lingering cloud of January 6, a shadow effort within the Republican establishment to defeat him in the primary, multiple indictments, assassination attempts, and an 11th hour change of his opponent all threatened to derail his return to power at any moment.
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if you followed the election, you already know most of it, but it's still a great listen.
- By Tony on 03-22-25
By: Alex Isenstadt
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All the Demons Are Here
- A Novel
- By: Jake Tapper
- Narrated by: Meg Price, Rob Shapiro
- Length: 11 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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It's 1977. Ike and Lucy, Senator Charlie and Margaret Marder's kids, are grown up—and in trouble. US Marine Ike has gone somewhat off the grid, working on Evel Knievel's pit crew in Montana, when—after a bar fight—he has to flee a neo-Nazi gang and seek refuge in the woods with a group of Vietnam veterans. Lucy, a reporter, has become the star of the brand-new Washington DC tabloid, the Sentinel, and is breaking all sorts of stories about a serial killer and falling in with the Lyons, the wealthy family that owns the newspaper.
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Extremely Disappointed
- By Tom G. on 07-27-23
By: Jake Tapper
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Apple in China
- The Capture of the World's Greatest Company
- By: Patrick McGee
- Narrated by: Fred Sanders
- Length: 13 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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For listeners of Walter Isaacson’s Steve Jobs and Chris Miller’s Chip War, a riveting look at how Apple helped build China’s dominance in electronics assembly and manufacturing only to find itself trapped in a relationship with an authoritarian state making ever-increasing demands.
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Performance is so robotic it’s distracting.
- By robert Campbell on 05-29-25
By: Patrick McGee
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Nightshade
- By: Michael Connelly
- Narrated by: Will Damron
- Length: 9 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Detective Stilwell has been "exiled" to a low-key post policing rustic Catalina Island, after department politics drove him off a homicide desk on the mainland. But while following up the usual drunk-and-disorderlies and petty thefts that come with his new territory, Detective Stilwell gets a report of a body found wrapped in plastic and weighed down at the bottom of the harbor. Crossing all lines of protocol and jurisdiction, he starts doggedly working the case.
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A new Connelly detective…
- By SAM on 05-28-25
By: Michael Connelly
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Who Knew
- By: Barry Diller
- Narrated by: Barry Diller
- Length: 12 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Writing in his own singular voice, Barry Diller delivers both an astute and entertaining business memoir and a surprisingly frank coming-of-age story. After starting his career in the mailroom of the William Morris Agency, Diller went on to have one of the most extraordinary ascents in show business history, inventing the TV Movie of the Week for ABC at age twenty-seven, becoming CEO of Paramount Pictures at age thirty-two, and launching the Fox TV network at age forty-four.
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What an amazing book!
- By Barbara W. on 06-10-25
By: Barry Diller
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The Tenant
- By: Freida McFadden
- Narrated by: Will Damron, Christine Lakin
- Length: 8 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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Blake Porter is riding high, until he's not. Fired abruptly from his job as a VP of marketing and unable to make the mortgage payments on the new brownstone he shares with his fiancée, he's desperate to make ends meet. Enter Whitney. Beautiful, charming, down-to-earth, and looking for a room to rent. She's exactly what Blake's looking for. Or is she? Because something isn't quite right. The neighbors start treating Blake differently. The smell of decay permeates his home, no matter how hard he scrubs. Strange noises jar him awake in the middle of the night.
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I have almost all of FM's titles in my library
- By Olympia1010 on 05-18-25
By: Freida McFadden
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Race Against Terror
- Chasing an Al Qaeda Killer at the Dawn of the Forever War
- By: Jake Tapper
- Narrated by: Jake Tapper
- Length: 9 hrs
- Unabridged
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June 2011: a man fleeing the Arab Spring on a refugee boat surrenders himself to Italian authorities. He claims that, as a terrorist, he is responsible for the deaths of American soldiers. This unexpected surrender sets off an unlikely chain of events and one of the most significant, but little-known, cases in American history.
By: Jake Tapper
The media finally gets honest..
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Disappointed
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What it does NOT DO, though, is erase the right to ten years prior. It doesn’t suddenly delete all of the questions I had prior to either of his elections, nor does it make the MANY MANY moments I had of “wait, am I really the only person in the country that thinks Biden has a serious neurological issue? How can that be? Why isn’t the press covering this (outside of conservative media?!?)” Moreover, why does the legacy media go so far as to not only say that what I’m seeing isn’t true - but that I am somehow an awful person for seeing it?
I was a big fan of Jake Tapper once. I trusted him. Believed he was fair, and at one time, I honestly knew what he was reporting would be true. Then he began working for CNN, and Trump came along…and fairness went out the window. It is clear to me that unfortunately, either Tapper and his fellow “journalists” were told to softball an entire presidency and never say a scornful word in the direction of Biden, or they did it of their own accord. Either way, they chose to allow personal feelings to color their journalism. It was and is appalling. One book isn’t going to fix any of that. I am still so angry and honestly disappointed by Jake Tapper that I don’t know if I’ll ever trust or watch legacy media ever again. I’d rather take my chances with a variety of YouTube channels . If Jake really wants to know why CNN lost its audience, I’d hope he’d take a look at his reviews. More importantly, I would hope he’d see that his job should truly be to tell the news. I don’t need it INTERPRETED by any network. I just want to know, truthfully, what is taking place. Do that, and you’ll have an audience begging for more. We can decide, for ourselves, who is bad, who is awful, and what should be done.
On the other hand, Alex Thompson is an excellent writer. I don’t know a lot about his journalistic merits, but I appreciate a book based in truth, investigative interviews and almost an oral history. Jake’s narration (and of course his writing) was fantastic, and I’ll admit I enjoyed hearing his imitations of Obama, Biden, Trump, and others. It added color to a already vibrantly written book.
I cannot give 5 stars to a book that either could have at least been started 10 years ago, nor can I quite buy into the thought that Jake didn’t see what so many of us, even without conservative media pointing it out, could plainly see. My mother has undiagnosed dementia, and so many times I sat watching the President thinking “someone needs to know that there are grave issues here”. And I don’t believe for one single second that Biden could make decisions on his own. Not a chance. Someone else (or many somebodies) ran our country and kept it from us. So, so wrong. 😑
Thanks for gaslighting the public…
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Jake Tapper is a journalist, not an Audible author
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The authors covers many sources and tries to pull it all together in a coherent narrative. But ultimately, because they are hung up on the singular thesis of a cover-up, they fail to ask the bigger questions surrounding the decisions, and how this can be avoided in the future. The media’s role is not covered either.
I did not like the narration which was very similar to Jake Tappers monologues on CNN. Would have preferred a more neutral and less sensational approach.
Overall however, it is an interesting book and topic, making it worth reading. But it could have been much better.
Interesting but could have been better
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Caesarian hubris in the 24 election
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Not A Hatchet Job
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The biggest coverup in history
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Jake gaslit the public for years.
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As to the story, I'm convinced the U.S. electorate has traded a diminished elderly politician protected by his staff for another diminished elderly politician openly hailed by his staff yet, still, softly controlling the executive. Jake and Alex might well find themselves telling a similar story in 2029.
Good Story, Not-So-Good Performance
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