2024: How Trump Retook the White House and the Democrats Lost America is the latest book narrating the events of last year’s presidential election, including how then-President Joe Biden stunned the country by dropping his campaign for reelection, and Democrats’ subsequent and resounding loss months later to President Donald Trump.
The new book, released on Tuesday, is written through the lens of 350 interviews conducted by reporters Tyler Pager, Josh Dawsey, and Isaac Arnsdorf of the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post, respectively. The authors painted Biden’s inner circle in a negative light, highlighting unease about his cognitive decline while accusing his closest allies of sidelining concerns from the public and the press.
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“One of the biggest things the Democrats did wrong was they ignored what their voters were telling them,” Pager told Vanity Fair. “Voters kept saying, ‘We don’t want this choice,’” he said in reference to Biden. “And they ignored them.”
Here are eight takeaways from the book, which also covers the Harris campaign, and follows Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again, a comparable book on the 2024 election that provoked a similar uproar when it was published in May.
1. Obama’s early fears
The authors reported that despite former President Barack Obama’s efforts last year to excite the Democratic base about Biden, including through a now-infamous lecture to young black men, he privately viewed the campaign as “a mess.”
Biden served as Obama’s vice president from 2008 through 2016, leaving the two men with a long-standing relationship, albeit not without a few hiccups along the way. A lunch between the two in 2023 left Obama with concerns about the campaign.
“After the lunch,” in 2023, the authors wrote, “Obama did not leave the White House right away. He stopped to visit with Biden’s senior staff, many of whom used to work for him and shared his account of what he and Biden had discussed. Obama was more blunt with the staff. ‘Your campaign is a mess,’ he told them.”
2. Schumer demands meeting
Another excerpt highlighted by the Washington Post described a meeting between Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Biden, during which the New York lawmaker urged the president to drop his reelection campaign.
The Senate’s top Democrat threatened to publicly request a meeting unless Jeff Zients, Biden’s chief of staff, granted a private conference, according to the book.
“Schumer told Biden that if they held a secret ballot, maybe five of the fifty-one senators would want him to stay in the race. Biden seemed surprised, confirming Schumer’s fears that the president’s advisers had not fully briefed him after a meeting with the senators days earlier. ‘I know my caucus,’ Schumer told him….’If I were you, I wouldn’t run, and I’m urging you not to run,’ he said,” the excerpt reads.
3. Biden makes overtures to AOC and weighs ‘tough love’ from Scarborough
Biden held out hope that collaborating with progressive Democrats, including on matters such as the war in Gaza, would save his campaign, according to the New York Times’ review of the book. He even made a personal appeal to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) during a phone call.
The authors painted a picture of a delusional Biden who, along with his inner circle, refused to accept unflattering poll numbers, leading Democratic aides to scheme over having CNBC talk show host Joe Scarborough “deliver the tough love.”
“Staffers believed Biden would see the information if it came from ‘Morning Joe,’” the authors write.
4. Hunter’s power over father Biden
Similar to Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again, written by CNN’s Jake Tapper and Axios’s Alex Thompson, the authors suggested that Hunter Biden likely held undue sway over his father’s White House. From pushing his father to issue pardons exonerating himself of gun and tax charges, to pressuring the Democratic National Committee to pay for massive legal fees associated with those criminal charges, Hunter played a pivotal role in both his father’s reelection campaign and running day-to-day life in the White House, according to the book.
In one excerpt, Joe Biden’s top White House legal adviser weighed in on Hunter’s participation in a video conference call with the president regarding a high-profile Supreme Court decision, calling the first son’s presence “inappropriate.”
“Suddenly an unidentified voice piped up from Biden’s screen and recommended an Oval Office address,” the book reads in an account detailing White House counsel Ed Siskel’s dismay about Hunter’s participation. “At first, some aides had no idea who was speaking. It soon became clear the voice belonged to Hunter Biden, who the White House staff had not known was on the call. Siskel expressed some concern about the appearance of using the Oval Office.”
The book continued, “After the call ended, Siskel told colleagues. Hunter’s presence was inappropriate.”
5. Guarding Biden’s image with the press
In another anecdote suggesting Biden’s inner circle tightly managed who he interacted with to control public perception, the authors wrote that the former president’s team changed his number after a New York Times journalist obtained the contact information.
Biden’s team expressed outrage after the reporter, also one of the book’s authors, contacted the former president for an interview and blocked his number. The writers described the incident as starkly contrasting with Trump’s more transparent approach, as someone known to take direct calls from journalists.
6. Donors raise concerns
One excerpt from the book details a leaked memo from some of Biden’s closet advisers urging him to debate Trump early on in the 2024 campaign in order to project strength and reach the “widest possible audience.
“The earlier YOU are able to debate the better, so that the American people can see YOU standing next to Trump and showing the strength of YOUR leadership, compared to Trump’s weakness and chaos,” the April 2024 memo reads.
Dawsey, Pager, and Arnsdorf also reported that the advice that Biden should debate Trump as early as possible was not unanimous due to persistent concerns about Biden’s recurring cognitive struggles and frequent inability to cohesively deliver speeches in public settings, including during a donor event in Chicago in 2023. One donor reportedly told Biden’s advisers to “find an excuse” for the former president not to debate after the Chicago fundraiser, while the Washington Post later reported that a business executive who helped arrange the fundraiser for the Chicago event said he was “shocked” the Biden team refused to let even major donors ask questions in a small group.
“I told them my donors don’t care about a photo. They want to talk to him. The Biden people just wouldn’t let them,” the executive told the outlet. “It was clear they were managing him in a way I’ve never experienced before. Donors expect to get to talk to the president if you’re writing a big check and having an event with him.”
The authors reported that “top White House aides debated having [Biden] undergo a cognitive test to prove his fitness for a second term but ultimately decided against the move.”
7. Harris disses strategist’s advice on Biden
The book also examines the Harris campaign during the 2024 presidential election, detailing warnings that the then-vice president should disassociate herself from the flailing Biden White House. As Biden’s No. 2, Harris was a heartbeat away from the presidency and assumed his place at the top of the Democratic ticket when he dropped his reelection bid last year.
Despite warnings to avoid Biden, Harris rejected calls to recast herself as an agent of change, as advised by political strategists such as Maria Comella.
“Create clear daylight/differentiation between a Harris and Biden administration,” Comella wrote in one memo. “Acknowledge where the Democratic Party hasn’t gotten it right — a willingness to not just work with the other side, but call out your own party when necessary. Meet the moment by contrasting the stakes on the issues.”
8. Harris clashes with Shapiro
The book also claimed that Harris decided against asking Gov. Josh Shapiro (D-PA) to be her running mate, not because his Jewish identity would agitate pro-Palestinian factions of the Democratic Party, but because they had ego disputes and lacked chemistry.
The authors attempted to dispel allegations that antisemitism fueled Harris’s decision to select another candidate to be her No. 2, writing that while “on paper, many Democrats thought Shapiro was the obvious choice,” the Pennsylvania governor “came across as overly ambitious, pushing Harris to define what his role would be.”
“He also conceded it would not be natural for him to serve as someone’s number two, leaving Harris with a bad impression,” the book claimed. “Shapiro seemed to want Harris to be invested in his success as much as he was in hers, and he didn’t say he wasn’t interested in potentially running for president in the future.”