A high-profile CNN figure raised questions about Joe Biden’s devastating cancerdiagnosis before promoting a new book by his network colleague.
Brian Stelter called the timing of Biden’s diagnosis ‘extraordinary’ as the 82-year-old former president faces an onslaught of news about his declining mental state while in the Oval Office.
‘The timing is just extraordinary,’ Stelter said during a discussion.
‘Biden learned of his cancer diagnosis Friday. And what was the biggest Biden story on Friday? It was the release of those excruciating audio excerpts from his 2023 conversations with Robert Hur.’
Axios released audio tapes Biden’s interview with special counsel Robert Hur.
In the tapes, Biden sounds disoriented, struggling to remember basic facts about his own life, including when his son Beau died and when he served as vice president.
Stelter then quickly pivots by plugging Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson’s explosive new book: Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again.
He framed the diagnosis as a moment that may ‘pause’ the political fallout, if only briefly.
The audio of Biden, taken during the classified documents investigation, was already being described as the most damning evidence yet of the president’s mental decline.
‘Am I making any sense to you?’ Biden asks at one point, slurring and trailing off.
Hur, in his official report, described Biden as a ‘well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory’ – a damning assessment that reportedly led him to decline to prosecute the president, citing doubts about how a jury would view his cognitive fitness.
At the time, the political fallout was immediate with calls for Biden to drop out of the race. The White House scrambled to downplay the tapes.
But just as questions over how Biden’s legacy will be shaped by the publication of the book, his cancer diagnosis dropped.
The White House confirmed on Sunday that Biden had been diagnosed with stage IV prostate cancer, which has spread to his bones – a dire and difficult-to-treat condition.
The news prompted an outpouring of support from political figures and prostate cancer survivors alike but the timing, as Stelter stressed, is impossible to ignore.
‘You have that as one element of the timing here,’ Stelter said, ‘and then you have this book coming out… one of the biggest political books in several years.’
That book, Original Sin, paints a harrowing portrait of a presidency in decline, propped up by aides and family members desperate to cling to power.
It alleges that Biden’s top aides, family, and even media allies conspired to hide the true extent of his cognitive decline, all to keep him in the 2024 race.
Its release was already threatening to explode the Democratic Party’s postmortem on Biden’s failed re-election bid but now the cancer news may complicate matters further.
In a particularly damning excerpt, the authors reveal that White House staff had to remind Biden of what year his son died, even during sensitive legal interviews.
They describe a president so impaired that even Democratic insiders were panicking, but were silenced by party loyalty and fear.
According to publisher Penguin, the book exposes a ‘public deception that has few precedents.’
A synopsis for the book provided in a press release, meanwhile, described the liberal-led plot. It frames Biden, ‘his family, and his senior aides’ as ‘so convinced that only he could beat Trump again, they lied to themselves, allies, and the public.’
‘What you will learn makes President Biden’s decision to run for reelection seem shockingly narcissistic, self-delusional, and reckless – a desperate bet that went bust,’ Penguin stated while announcing the book.’
Stelter stopped short of accusing the Biden team of deliberately timing the release of the bad news.
Instead, he tried to frame it more gently: ‘Take out our colleague Jake Tapper for a second. This book… was going to be a blockbuster no matter what.
‘This debate doesn’t end at all… but it is briefly put on pause as a result of today’s news.’
Biden’s diagnosis comes just shortly after he began once again speaking to the media.
He appeared on The View alongside his wife and former first lady Jill Biden for a joint interview on May 8.
The former president also joined BBC for a wide-ranging pre-taped interview to mark the anniversary of Victory in Europe Day.