Recent books about the 2024 election, including the just-published Original Sin: President Biden's Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again by Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson, have made clear what was obvious to most Americans with eyes and ears: Joe Biden was not fit to serve as president for another four years, and was more than likely unfit to serve from day one. They have also provided a clearer picture of who was actually running the country this whole time: a cadre of Biden loyalists who became addicted to the perks of power and did everything they could to stay in charge.

Oliver Darcy, a partisan hack who worked with Tapper at CNN and shamelessly defended Biden at every turn, still doesn't think Biden's conservative critics were right all along. The damning revelations in Original Sin and other books about the election, Darcy writes, do not validate "the deeply irresponsible narrative right-wing media spun for years: that the president of the United States was a mentally incapacitated puppet with dementia, unaware of his own surroundings, and propped up by a 'shadow government' running the country in his name."

It's pretty clear that Darcy hasn't read Original Sin, in which Biden aides openly (albeit anonymously) admit that this is precisely what happened. "Five people were running the country, and Joe Biden was at best a senior member of the board," said one source close to the White House. Thompson told the New Yorker that some less influential Biden aides believed there would have been a "constitutional crisis" if Biden won a second term because "clearly the people in his inner circle were not willing to cede power." They didn't care that Biden was a walking corpse, they just wanted to get him across the finish line. "He just had to win, and then he could disappear for four years—he’d only have to show proof of life every once in a while," said a longtime Biden aide who was eager to continue running the country while Biden wasted away in hospice care. "When you vote for somebody, you are voting for the people around them too."

These are the people around Biden who were actually running the country while their "boss" was "president." Remember their names and faces. They deserve nothing less than a legacy of shame.

Mike Donilon

An adviser to Biden since 1981, Donilon was a leading member of what aides called "The Politburo," the inner circle of longtime Biden aides whose loyalty to the family "was a theology that bordered on zealotry." Biden would do whatever he asked. "The president valued Mike Donilon’s advice so much that aides would later joke that if he wanted, he could get Biden to start a war," Tapper and Thompson write. Donilon aggressively shot down suggestions that Biden's aides should have a conversation about whether running for reelection was a good idea. It's not hard to see why. After earning a fortune on the 2020 campaign—thanks to an unusual uncapped commission on paid ads that some viewed as financial "malpractice"—Donilon refused to accept less than $4 million to advise the 2024 campaign. Biden approved the outrageous salary, infuriating senior staffers who complained that the next highest-paid employee—female campaign manager Jennifer O'Malley Dillon—was earning just $300,000.

Donilon, whose niece got a job at the National Security Council, refused to convey to Biden the dire warnings from campaign pollsters in the days and weeks following the disastrous debate on CNN, which he didn't think were a big deal. He berated Democratic officials who called on Biden to step aside, and (to his credit) reminded them that the only viable alternative, Kamala Harris, was incompetent. He wanted to take it all the way to the convention and force a nasty Democratic civil war, which would have been fun to watch but is also insane. He was desperate not to lose the perks of power. "Nobody walks away from this," Donilon said, according to journalist Chris Whipple. "No one walks away from the house, the plane, the helicopter."

The loyal goon still believes, or claims to believe, that Biden is mentally sharp and would have won reelection if the Democratic Party hadn't "melted down" after his disastrous debate. At a Harvard event earlier this year, Donilon dismissed claims of Biden's decline as a false "impression" created by the media.

Jill Biden/Anthony Bernal/Annie Tomasini

It's evident by now that Dr. Jill Biden played a central role in the cover-up. She also played a central role in the White House and both of her husband's general election campaigns. She was "picking up the slack" while refusing to acknowledge her husband's decline. She weighed in on hiring decisions, led cabinet meetings, and so on. She'd grown accustomed to "the trappings of the most elite levels of power in Washington," write journalists Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes. She was the driving force behind the decision to run again.

Tapper and Thompson recount how, in December 2022, the first lady was boasting about her "rigorous exercise routine" to French president Emmanuel Macron, and explained that "campaigns are tough and she needed to be in shape." Nancy Pelosi's daughter overheard and asked the president if it was true that he was running again. "He looked back at her like he didn't understand," the authors write. Douglas Brinkley, a presidential historian, described Jill's motivation in 2024: "She likes power. She wants to stay. She wants some sense of revenge."

The first lady ruled over the White House with the help of her fiercely loyal chief of staff, Anthony Bernal, who was one of the most powerful people you've never heard of. Bernal joined Jill Biden's staff in 2008 and became "her closest confidant and strategist" on all matters of politics and fashion. He was the only White House staffer who didn't have to call her "Dr. Biden" and wasn't afraid to "criticize her looks and outfits in front of others." If he made a request, the West Wing "usually worked to make it happen," Tapper and Thompson write. He was a "constant source of gossip" and openly "trashed-talked senior, mid-level, and junior aides."

Not surprisingly, Bernal was intensely loathed by everyone he met—except the Bidens. "As we researched this book, it was difficult to find many Bernal defenders among those who have known him longest," the authors write in Original Sin. "Some even described him as the worst person they had ever met." Another longtime Biden aide said Bernal "would not be welcome at my funeral."

Annie Tomasini, the White House deputy chief of staff, worked closely with Bernal to manage the president's calendar and "personal needs." White House residence staff were often sent home early and replaced by the pair of Biden loyalists, who had "all-time access" to the executive living quarters. Allen and Parnes write that Tomasini "had grown so close to the Biden family that his aides rightly thought of her as the representative of the Biden clan’s wishes." She got her start as Biden's press secretary on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and ran communications on his doomed presidential campaign in 2008. Tomasini played a central role in the cover-up of Biden's decline. She guided his movements at fundraisers and made sure that all events were carefully choreographed to limit the president's exposure.

Steve Ricchetti

A former lobbyist who served as Biden's chief of staff during the Obama administration, Ricchetti was in charge of legislative affairs, which meant he worked with Democrats to craft legislation and approve handouts to clients of his old lobbying shop, which his brother Jim Ricchetti continued to run. As luck would have it, the firm's revenue nearly quadrupled after Biden took office.

Longtime Obama adviser David Axelrod said Ricchetti had a talent for dealing with Congress, but "compared him unflatteringly to the obsequious Ditto Boland in Edwin O’Connor’s The Last Hurrah, an aide to the machine mayor who mimics him kind of sadly." All four of his children worked in the Biden administration. Part of his duties included calling up journalists and threatening to destroy them if they wrote negative stories about the president. In most cases, the filthy journalists were easily swayed.

Ricchetti and the other members of The Politburo did "such a disservice to Joe Biden and to the country," Axelrod told the authors of Original Sin. "I don’t understand how you could see him in the condition he’s in and think, Yeah, you oughta go [run for president again]. To do that to someone you love?" Rep. Pete Aguilar (D., Calif.), who chairs the House Democratic Caucus, thought he understood their motivation. "Folks like Ricchetti and Donilon—they’re living the first line of their obituaries right now," he said. "People don’t give that up."

Bruce Reed

Another member of The Politburo, Reed was Biden's de-facto domestic policy czar in the White House and had more power than most cabinet secretaries. "I've never seen a situation like this before, with so few people having so much power," one cabinet secretary told Tapper and Thompson. "They would make huge economic decisions without calling [Treasury] Secretary Yellen." Some aides described Reed as "Biden's security blanket." His daughter got a job as the president's day scheduler.

When Democrats began to question Biden's fitness for office, Reed worked with Donilon to sideline campaign pollsters while falsely claiming the data showed Biden could win. Before joining the Biden campaign in 2019, Reed served as a senior policy adviser to the Emerson Collective, a left-wing activist group founded by billionaire Apple widow Laurene Powell Jobs. Critics have accused the so-called philanthropy of funding propaganda under the guise of local news.

Ron Klain

As White House chief of staff from 2021-2023, Klain "controlled a bit of everything." Republicans mockingly called him "the prime minister," but so did White House aides. Biden sometimes said that Klain was the only person "smarter than me." He was intensely focused on pleasing the Democratic Party's progressive wing, which some found to be "contrary to Biden's centrist reputation." Some accused Klain of taking advantage of the fact that Biden's inability to engage coherently on key issues had "given his aides more power to steer the administration" in a progressive direction.

Klain was among the leading figures urging Biden to pick Kamala Harris as a running mate in 2020 because of her race and gender. Years later, when Democrats started to question Biden's fitness for office, Klain pushed back by trashing Harris as a subpar replacement. He was one of Biden's most ardent defenders up to the moment he dropped out of the race, despite being present at a debate prep session where the president appeared "fatigued, befuddled, and disengaged" before abruptly walking outside and falling asleep in a lounge chair.

Antony Blinken/Jake Sullivan

Secretary of State Antony Blinken was one of the only cabinet members who wasn't "kept at bay" by The Politburo. The other was Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, who did not appear to be fully up to the job. Sullivan was the national security adviser. In 2023, Sen. Mark Warner (D., Va.), chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, began to grow concerned that Biden "seemed oblivious" and "clearly not up to speed" on certain foreign policy issues, causing him to wonder who was really in charge.

Blinken was Biden's "go-to seat filler" on foreign trips when the president wasn't awake or cogent enough to take part. He salvaged a prisoner swap with Russia that Biden almost fumbled. A former European leader told Tapper and Thompson that in meeting with the president, Blinken often "had to remind [Biden] to talk about the crucial issue the meeting was meant to be about" instead of rambling on nonsensically. By 2022, the European leader could tell that Biden was "clearly not at the top of his game" and shouldn't run for reelection. Blinken claims, unbelievably, that he "continually witnessed the president fully able to meet the moment."

Sullivan, meanwhile, did his best to ensure the world would descend into chaos on Biden's "watch." He also denied ever noticing signs of Biden's decline in office, and claims not to recall the time in 2022 when, according to Tapper and Thompson, Biden struggled to remember Sullivan's name before settling on "Steve."

Hunter Biden

A total scumbag, Hunter became "almost like a chief of staff" after the debate in June 2024, sitting in on meetings and "driving the decision-making for the family," Tapper said this week. Even before the debate, Hunter would occasionally stay at the White House for extended periods of time. History suggests the president had a hard time saying no to his crackhead son, even when his top advisers just wanted him to go away. Hunter told Joe and Jill not to acknowledge the child he fathered in 2019 with Lunden Roberts, a former associate he falsely claimed to have "no recollection" of meeting. Hunter suspected that the DNA confirming his paternity "could have been tampered with" by Republican officials in Arkansas, where Roberts was living. The Bidens did as they were told, refusing to acknowledge the child until July 2023 in response to a public shaming from New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd.