On Monday, former NBC chief political analyst Chuck Todd interviewed Jake Tapper on his podcast, The Chuck Toddcast to further discuss Tapper’s book Original Sin. The book skyrocketed into the spotlight in May with its exposé of former President Biden’s mental decline and cover up. The two speculated that the media, however, were being treated as a scapegoat for the cover-up, and the real perpetrators were the Biden family. 

According to Tapper and Todd, the “original sin” referenced in the book was not Biden’s 2024 re-election campaign, but rather his decision to ever run in the first place in light of his son, Hunter’s drug addiction. 

“So for me, the original sin was running in the first place. Because his family was in crisis. I followed that Hunter Biden trial soup to nuts,” Todd said. “I read every single transcript. I read all of the testimony. I cannot believe to this day, Jake, that Joe Biden did this to his kids. I just can’t believe that he did it. I can’t.”

The trial Todd referenced was Hunter Biden’s felony gun charges, of which he was convicted in 2024. Joe Biden infamously pardoned his son in 2024, despite previous claims that he would not involve himself with his son’s issues. 

The pair continued to discuss the “story” of Joe Biden, insinuating that the media was sold a 40-year-old bill of goods by the family. According to them, the Biden family peddled Joe to the media as a dedicated family man, hard worker, and a type of figurative martyr to American politics.

Because of this, reporters like Tapper and Todd saw no need to further investigate something as private as his personal health. It was the excuse they gave for all media who failed to report on Biden’s decline: we, the media, were all lied to. 

While that might have been a seemingly good reason to not investigate further into Biden’s mental decline, there is something the pair failed to note: according to his recall, Tapper began noticing the decline in 2020, five years ago. Perhaps the Biden family did play a large role in the cover-up of the mental acuity of Biden, but the media are just as responsible. 

In fact, Tapper famously called out Lara Trump in 2020 for suggesting that Joe Biden was not mentally able to be President, and even attempted to shame her by bringing up the President’s stutter.

The biggest question on the table was not whether or not the media was sold a lie by the Biden family, or if Joe Biden was really as selfless as was claimed, but why the media continues in their cover-up. Rather than just own up to their own shortcomings, the media has continued to peddle story after story on why they did nothing wrong. Reporters, especially those of the status of Jake Tapper, have been trained to investigate and not take word of mouth at face value. The only way the media could be lied to is if they refuse to do their job as journalists, reporters, and anchors. At best, it’s lazy journalism and at worst it is the strategic cover-up of Joe Biden’s mental decline. Either way, accountability has to be taken by the media, and Tapper and Todd have shown us that is an unlikely outcome. 

The entire transcript is below. Click "expand" to read.

THE CHUCK TODDCAST
6/23/2025
TIME N/A (00:16:20-00:23:12)
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CHUCK TODD: So for me, the original sin was running in the first place.

 

JAKE TAPPER: Oh, well, yes, I've heard you talk about this because–

 

TODD: Because his family was in crisis.

 

TAPPER: Right–

 

TODD: –At this time.

 

TAPPER: Because his daughter and his son were– 

 

TODD: I mean–

 

TAPPER: –addicted to drugs.

 

TODD: When I– I– when I– I read– I read– I followed that Hunter Biden trial soup to nuts. I read every single transcript. I read all of the testimony. I cannot believe to this day, Jake, that Hunter that– that Joe Biden did this to his kids.

 

TAPPER: So somebody close to the family–

 

TODD: I can't believe that he did it. I can’t. 

TAPPER: Somebody close to the family told us, and it's– this is in the book– that everybody knows, you know, some of the family aphorisms like, you know, “my word as a Biden” or, you know, et cetera, et cetera. A lesser known Biden family saying is “don't call a fat person fat”. And by that they mean, it's not about being– it's not about politeness; it's about hiding truths, not acknowledging truths. And this person close to the family suggested that there are lots of truths that the family did not want to face up to. One: Beau is dying. Two: Hunter is addicted to drugs. Three: Joe Biden cares about his family more than he cares about anything else.

And those three are not true, this family– this person close to the family said. And– and– and that's– when you talked about his running in– in 2020, I think that that comes to bear because, um, obviously he was putting his ambition and– if you want to be charitable– his hopes to save the country from Trumpism or whatever, obviously was putting that above what was going on with his family and his– his two children and their struggles.

 

TODD: Look, I mean, you know, you and I covered, you know, for most of our professional lives, the story of Joe Biden was this guy cared about his family so much he commuted home every night from Washington.

TAPPER: Here’s the– now, by the way, here’s the–

 

TODD: By the way, he, you know what else you could say is this man was so ambitious–

 

TAPPER: Right. Right.

 

TODD: –that after his family went through that tragedy, he commuted every day to work, right? Like it's the same story, it’s all about narrative–

 

TAPPER: He had– he had his sister help raise his boys.

 

TODD: and I don't– I sit here, I look at this and the and– and I think where we sold a 40 year bill of goods?

 

TAPPER: Well, there is this, and this is in the book, uh, there is this legend of Joe Biden, and some of it is based in reality and some of it is based in myth, and, and the legend is–

 

TODD: And by the way, he’s not the first president where there's been a myth–

 

TAPPER: Oh, no.

 

TODD:I mean, my God, in fact, most presidential  resumes are– have some myth in them, all of them, you know, we could sit here and do it, but anyway, go ahead.

 

TAPPER: Well, I mean, you could talk about the Obamas' marriage because I mean like, she never wanted him to run for president, period. 

 

TODD: No, oh, I mean, you know.

 

TAPPER: And like, I mean she's been pretty honest and open about that, right? 

 

TODD: Yes, and that memoir, I mean, yeah. I mean it was pretty clear.

 

TAPPER: So, the legend, and– and this is some of the one of the things that people love about Joe Biden, is this idea that no matter what life throws at him, he gets up off the floor and gets back to work. “Get up,” he says his dad used to say, “get up.” 

 

TODD: He always seemed to be opt– find a way to be optimistic.

 

TAPPER: Yeah, debilitating stutter, horrible car crash that killed his wife and daughter, two brain aneurysms and on and on and on. That same quality, however, is what paved the way to this bad decision. This idea that “I'm Joe Biden and I cannot be defeated by age. I cannot be defeated by whatever is going on with my mind and my body right now. I will persevere.” And it's not just a mythology for some people in the family and close to the family, it's a theology. And like any religion, skepticism is not permitted.

 

TODD: So, one of the things that I've– I've been a bit more defensive of the overall media coverage than– than clearly others would like to be, right? Meaning, you know, I– I think the blaming the media is an excuse not to blame the actual people that did this, okay? 

 

TAPPER: Yeah.

 

TODD: Like, the media is a– look, for better or for worse we're a reflection– we're a reflection of the best version of events that we can come up with.

 

TAPPER: We are only as good as our sources.

 

TODD: I– I, you know, and I've brought this up, and I heard you bring this up too, which is the single most difficult thing to report out on a politician is health.

 

TAPPER: So sensitive. Yeah.

 

TODD: Exactly. There is– it is easy to frankly get shamed out of doing it. It's “How dare you. It's a private thing, people’s health is private”.

 

TAPPER: Think about how insanely sensitive people are about getting somebody's college transcript. 

 

TODD: Right.

 

TAPPER: I mean, people are crazy about that. Like that, that should honestly just be like automatic. You're running for president? Okay, here are my grades in college, who even cares? But you can't even get that because they're so crazy. But yeah the health stuff, and we saw this by the–

 

TODD: And it's not an insignificant thing, and– and I do think what– I wanna like sort of focus our conversation is that how should this change sort of our unofficial vetting process of presidential candidates? Because I think it should frankly, we got to be more unpopular in what we do, you know, Wes Moore wants to tell us about this Bronze Star. Well, all right, we're gonna like find out every little thing. How earned was it? How much did this happen? And I said, look, I'm– I'm singling him out because he's maybe running for president, right?

 

TAPPER: Right. And that’s obviously something he's very sensitive about, also.

 

TODD: And– and you and I both know the way political operatives work. Anytime you can identify a topic, if you're an opponent and somebody that you know is going to get under their skin, you're gonna go 10– you know, you're gonna go 10x at it, um. But it–, I do wonder if the Trump-era and the Biden cover up, right, these, the combination of these two. In theory, it should create the single most skeptical press corps for the next decade that we've– we've had in our lifetime. Maybe not since Vietnam and Watergate, what say you?

 

TAPPER: I agree, I– I agree, and you know, it's funny you say that though because the moment you say we– this is a lesson we have learned from Biden, whatever the lesson is, it should now be applied to every president. The right wing goes, oh, so that's the reason he wrote the book on Biden, just to get at Trump. 

 

TODD: No, no.

 

TAPPER: Like, no, but I'm just saying like that's the insanity of this conversation–

 

TODD: It's always a bizarre Trump– like there's always some bizarre Trump angle.

 

TAPPER: So Trump– so forget Trump for a second. Let's talk about post-Trump. Let's talk about post-Trump, just to remove that nonsense from this.

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