How Groupthink Protected Biden and Re-elected Trump
About this episode
Jake Tapper joins Klein to discuss Original Sin, his book with Alex Thompson on Joe Biden's decline and the circle that shielded it. They debate whether what happened was a deliberate cover-up or something more like groupthink — loyalty, self-deception, and a party apparatus that normalized a diminished president through the Hur interview, curtailed public exposure, and family-aide gatekeeping. Tapper details insiders' deceptions, the media's failures, and how weak, personality-driven parties elevate loyalty over public responsibility. The conversation widens to Trump's second term, where staff treat him as kissed by destiny rather than resisting him, and to whether the modern presidency needs more institutional guardrails. They close on primaries versus back-room candidate selection, and why elites who knew the truth stayed silent — the tribal costs of telling it.