Jake Tapper, one of the co-authors of “Original Sin,” the inside account of President Joe Biden’s decline, told Piers Morgan last month that the cover-up of Biden’s health was “maybe even worse than Watergate.”
Except it’s not “maybe.”
For more than four years, Biden perpetuated the biggest fraud on the American people in the history of the republic. And all the president’s men and women were his co-conspirators. Every day, they told the public that Biden was not just physically and cognitively fine, but that he was in better shape than anyone in the White House.
White House officials not only dismissed questions about Biden’s age and acuity but claimed he was so fit that he was wearing his staff out.
On one of the rare occasions when the liberal media gently inquired about Biden’s health, Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, told CNN that “I can’t even keep up with him.”
This is from the same woman who told the country that videos of Biden falling down and wandering off were “cheap fakes.”
She lied. They all did.
All administrations bend the truth. But the Biden team went further than any other.
When Special Counsel Robert Hur issued his report last February, in which he noted that Biden had broken the law but that a jury would likely not convict because they would find him to be “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory,” Biden responded with a tirade against Hur for asking in the interview about when his son Beau had passed away — which Biden could not remember.
“How in the hell dare he raise that?” Biden shouted indignantly. But Hur never asked about it. It was Biden who had brought up Beau’s death in a meandering, nonsensical reply to a question about where in his house he had placed classified documents.
The rest of the White House piled on Hur, with Kamala Harris leading the charge. She called Hur’s description of Biden’s faltering memory “gratuitous, inaccurate and inappropriate.”
It was none of those. Everything Hur stated was true. Hur showed enormous restraint and decency in dealing with Biden. How was he rewarded? According to Tapper and Alex Thompson, Hur was blackballed by the legal establishment and could not find a job for months.
Even as they were smearing this honest public servant, White House officials continued to peddle the idea that Joe Biden was, at age 81, almost superhuman.
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told Meet the Press that “The most difficult part about a meeting with President Biden is preparing for it because he is sharp, intensely probing and detail-oriented and focused.”
No, he wasn’t. Biden was largely incapacitated, worked only a few hours a day and couldn’t recognize long-term friends and staffers. It wasn’t until June 2024, after Biden’s debate, that the farce could no longer hold.
But even in the wake of that disaster, Biden and company kept lying to everyone, insisting that Biden only had a cold and was still up to the task of running against Trump — and serving another four years. Only after intense pressure from his own party did Biden finally, and reluctantly, drop out.
And we know now that Biden likely had cancer. According to a Biden spokesman, Biden last had a prostate specific antigen test 11 years ago. Having compassion for Biden at this time does not preclude asking why he wasn’t tested, or if that is simply another lie.
House Oversight Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) has announced his committee will ask members of the Biden administration to testify about what they knew and when they knew about Biden’s health. The public deserves answers but more than that, those who engaged in the sham need to be held accountable.
It’s worth remembering that, as a first-term senator from Delaware, while Biden reportedly advocated for fairness and not rushing to judgment, he demanded accountability from President Nixon during the Watergate affair and ultimately called for Nixon’s resignation.
There is a key difference between Nixon and Watergate and Biden and his decline. While Nixon certainly tried to limit the fallout from the Watergate break-in, he did not know of, order, or approve the Watergate break-in. He only learned of it after the burglars were arrested.
Biden, on the other hand, from the beginning of his presidency, orchestrated his administration’s malfeasance. From the moment he announced his candidacy in 2019, Biden was deliberately lying to the country when he claimed he was in great health. He also insisted that all his aides repeat that canard.
None of this was true, but thanks to a compliant media, which Nixon certainly did not have during Watergate, he was shielded from the public. By 2024, he was working a few days a day, a couple of days a week, and was clearly not in charge of the White House or the country.
That was criminal. For at least a year, likely longer, the U.S. did not have a functioning president, and the president’s men and women knew it. Yet they lied and covered it up. And that is far, far worse than Watergate.
Justin Coffey is a professor of history at Quincy University.
