Jake Tapper and the Biden Run for Office Blame Game
Christine Merser, May 14, 2025
“In the end, isn’t it just a bunch of compromised old men with nuclear codes? What could go wrong?” - Christine Merser
Jake Tapper’s new book, Original Sin: President Biden's Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again, co-written with Alex Thompson, is ready to go. Excerpts abound. The premise is that it’s Joe Biden’s fault Donald Trump is president. Seriously?
Let’s be clear. Biden was cognitively impaired and should not have run for a second term. Let’s not dispute that. But let’s also not buy that book. The blame game isn’t where we should spend our time. This is one of those moments when I believe we have a chance to come out better. If we have the courage to look back.
One of the mantras we use in my company is that the rearview mirror is smaller than the windshield for a reason. You need to look at it occasionally, but don’t dwell in it.
Today is a rearview mirror day.
Let’s go back in my lifetime.
Jack Kennedy. I asked my AI assistant, Celeste, for a list of all the drugs Kennedy was on. The list is staggering.
He was taking cortisone to manage Addison’s disease. That alone can cause mood swings and brain fog. Then came the amphetamines. Dr Jacobson, (the quack that scared everyone at the White House) gave him B12 injections laced with speed. That’s right. The President of the United States was getting secret injections of speed. He took codeine and demerol for back pain. Methadone too. He used barbiturates and tranquilizers like librium and seconal for anxiety and insomnia. He had to take antibiotics constantly for GI infections. At one point, he was taking as many as ten medications at once, sometimes all in the same day.
If you think that kind of cocktail doesn’t affect someone’s ability to think clearly or see the world as it really is, then you’ve got a problem I can’t help you with.
And let’s be honest. Bringing women, including Marilyn Monroe, so blatantly into his bedroom compromised him. One of his girlfriends was also the girlfriend of a major mob boss. Who knows what he told her. Or what she was in a position to tell others. J Edgar Hoover, an entirely unscrupulous human being, often bragged that he could get Kennedy to do what he wanted through blackmail. Hell, he tried to blackmail Martin Luther King Jr.
And Reagan. I’ll never forget a story I heard at a dinner party during his last two years in office. An investment banker who was working on the privatization of Mexico attended a meeting with Reagan and the Mexican president and everyone’s team. At one point, Reagan started talking about cows. “As long as the cows are in the field,” he said. And then he drifted. One of his aides leaned in and said they were going to take a break. Reagan never returned to the meeting.
After hearing that story, I started watching his press conferences more closely. He wore a hearing aid in his right ear. He’d pause after a question, longer than seemed necessary, and tilt his head toward that ear. Then he’d answer. I used to joke with H2, my fabulous ex-husband and father of my even more fabulous daughter about whom I’m not allowed to write, that Nancy was feeding him the answers. I’d say, “Maybe we should get you one of those.” I really can be quite funny.
People say the hearing aid wasn’t wired for that kind of communication. Maybe not. But this was the United States of America. If they wanted to make it happen, they could’ve made it happen. I still think I might be right, and others noticed the same thing I did.
And now, Joe Biden. George Clooney’s account of that fundraiser last June is hard to read. The conversations that leaked from senators, congresspeople, even past presidents are even harder. Apparently everyone around Biden knew he shouldn’t be running. Everyone, that is, except you and me, the voters. Silly us, thinking the people we elected would tell us the truth.
Clearly, people around Biden kept this secret. And frankly, shouldn’t that be a felony? Don’t those in the room take an oath to the Constitution, not to a single man?
And let’s talk about our obsession with a single scapegoat. It’s so American, it might as well be printed on our currency. Harvey Weinstein. Bernie Madoff. Joe Biden. One villain. One name. Case closed. Never mind the dozens, sometimes hundreds, of people who were in the room, who signed off, who looked the other way, who enabled. Paid off. Weinstein didn’t rape in secret. He had staff, who scheduled meetings with young women, who ushered them into hotel rooms, who covered up what happened after. Some of them knew. Some of them helped. And what about his board of directors? Not one of them faced consequences. They either didn’t know, which is dereliction, or they did, which is complicity. Same with Madoff. You think he was the only one who understood the math. Please. But we love the clean hit. The lone bad guy. It lets everyone else off the hook. It keeps the structure intact. I see it in business too. The rush to find someone to blame is always faster than the urge to fix what’s broken. People will go silent, look busy, point fingers, anything but be the one who owns the mistake.
In America, saving face is often more important than saving each other. So now they want to hang it all on Biden, as if no one else had a role, a voice, or a responsibility. It’s not just dishonest. It’s cowardly.
This Biden moment is just the latest in a long line of examples where we the people allowed ourselves to be duped. We drifted along in our boats, admiring the flowers planted for us on shore, while never looking down at the dark current underneath our feet. Real issues. Real problems. Real deception by the very people we trusted to protect us.
And it’s not new. Probably since the very beginning. Didn’t they hide the fact that Roosevelt was in a wheelchair.
We are responsible for holding people accountable. If the politicians in Jake Tapper’s book really knew Biden’s condition and stayed silent, they should step down. Right now. This country can’t keep being run on secrets and spin.
It’s not just Joe Biden’s burden to carry. He tried. He did his best. But this isn’t about him anymore. It’s about everyone. From Obama to Jill Biden to Schumer and Pelosi. Maybe even the Republicans who wanted him to be the nominee, hoping they could break the news close to the election and hand Trump a victory.
I saw him shuffling into press conferences, and I saw the confusion on his face when he spoke. I moved on with my day without even thinking about it. Uncomfortable moment for me. Mea culpa Joe.
And while we’re here, let’s not pretend the current president is cognitively sharp. The man can barely follow the plot. I don’t expect his people to speak up either. But we should. And McConnell? He’s hasn’t been all there in more than two years. And, while he has agreed to not run again, he’s still in office? Why are we good with that?
So I’m sorry, Joe. They’re trying to blame it all on you. But there’s plenty of blame to go around. And I’ll take my share. I’ll take my share, lift a little of the weight you’re carrying. And I think my friends will too.
Because those days of silence and looking away are over. I’m all in. And I know I’m not alone.