A new book by CNN’s Jake Tapper and Axios’ Alex Thompson is turning heads—and hitting hard. It accuses Joe Biden’s White House of covering up just how bad the president’s health got before he left office. According to Tapper, the people closest to Biden were hiding the truth not just from the public, but from their own team.
“Bottom line is: The White House was lying not only to the press, not only to the public, but they were lying to members of their own Cabinet,” Tapper said Tuesday on CNN. “They were lying to White House staffers. They were lying to Democratic members of Congress, to donors about how bad things had gotten.”
The claims are laid out in The Last Politician, a book based on interviews with around 200 people, most of them Democrats. Many of them, Tapper said, would never have spoken so bluntly before the 2024 election.
One of the book’s most explosive revelations is that Biden’s health had declined so sharply in 2023 and 2024 that his team quietly discussed the possibility of putting him in a wheelchair. But they worried the optics would be political suicide.
An excerpt published by Axios says: “There were internal discussions about putting the president in a wheelchair.”
The White House denied this, calling it exaggerated. A spokesperson acknowledged that Biden had experienced “physical changes as he got older” but insisted there was no serious decline. “We are still waiting for someone, anyone, to point out where Joe Biden had to make a presidential decision or make a presidential address where he was unable to do his job because of mental decline,” the spokesperson told Axios.
Biden’s doctor, Kevin O’Connor, had previously admitted Biden had a “stiffened gait” due to spinal wear and tear. After Biden’s 2024 physical, O’Connor said the stiffness hadn’t gotten worse.
But by then, the damage was done. Biden, who turned 82 in November 2024, had already dropped out of the race following a brutal debate performance that raised alarms about his fitness to serve. He handed the reins to Vice President Kamala Harris, who later lost the election to Donald Trump.
Now, the Tapper-Thompson book is calling out what many suspected but couldn’t prove: a deliberate effort by Biden’s team to shield the truth.
Watch the CNN report below:
