It was a rare week in Washington: President Donald Trump, a walking embodiment of Main Character Syndrome, has been something of a bit player.
That’s in part because the focus has been on Trump’s immediate predecessor in the White House, Joe Biden. The weeks-long promotion of Original Sin, a new book from Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson released Tuesday, has prompted plenty of conversation within the Democratic Party as well as the political media about Biden’s cognitive decline in the final years of his presidency. The central premise of the book is that he and those around him intentionally hid his decline—and that most in the media lacked the curiosity to probe further or were unwilling in doing so.
Our own Steve Hayes reviewed Original Sin for The Dispatch, and focused in particular on the media’s culpability in aiding the cover-up. “The media failure went beyond sins of omission to sins of commission, too,” Steve wrote. “Perceptions of Biden’s struggles were explained away in reported pieces as the result of misleading ‘cheap fakes’ or downplayed as problems anyone might have. Biden partisans denigrated anyone who raised concerns.”
Then, on Sunday, Biden announced he had been diagnosed with an aggressive form of prostate cancer. Some of the Democratic wagons began circling around Biden, but the dire news underscored how irresponsible party leaders had been to wave away concerns that he was fit to continue serving. Still, there have been some signs that Democrats may be reevaluating how they treated those who pointed out Biden’s cognitive problems at the time.
Meanwhile, attention has also turned back to Capitol Hill this week as House Republicans passed their “big, beautiful” bill by just one vote (and as Charles Hilu noted earlier this week, the conference came down to the wire getting it passed). Off to the Senate!
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