Recently, the book Original Sin, by authors Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson, has created a stir for wildly different reasons.
On the Left, many are angered that two journalists with strong liberal credentials would dare to suggest that Man of Dementia, Joe Biden ("MoD"), was in cognitive decline, that his administration and supporters would cover it up and that the media would dare report this. On the Right, people are aghast that the Left couldn't see what millions of Americans saw and heard with their own eyes and ears.
Tapper rudely rebuked Lara Trump, daughter-in-law of the President, for suggesting that MoD was in cognitive decline, sneering that she lacked the credentials to come to such a conclusion. Thompson, in accepting some award from some journalists' society, claimed in accepting the award that the MSM missed the story. Again, the Right was shocked that Thompson claimed that the MSM missed the story since people without journalism backgrounds saw it clear as day.
Since President Trump's mandate, elements of the Left have been engaged in various degrees of self-flagellation. These acts are designed not so much as introspection as they are performance art to show that the Left wasn't engaged in the cover-up, but was honestly and truly deceived by MoD and his administration. These protests are hollow. A review of the language used by the Left together with the efforts to demonize the Right for complaining about MoD's ineptitude shows that any complaints now are disingenuous at best and deceitful at worst. There is no way that people who were so highly educated who had no trouble lecturing the rest of us didn't see and hear what we saw and heard. Despite Jonathan Gruber's declarations, the American people are not that stupid.
Some are saying that this scandal exceeds the scope of Watergate. That's probably true, because the scope of this scandal is far broader than the one perpetrated in Watergate. Combined with the pathetic campaign of the Harris-Walz team, the Democratic Party is crippled now for the foreseeable future. Not only does this scandal damage their brand with the American people, there is no savior on their bench with which they can overcome it. Worse still, the Republican bench is deep...so deep, in fact, that not even JD Vance is assured of succeeding Donald Trump.
I have said this long ago: The Fourth Estate has become a Fifth Column. What I never considered was that this was an unintended insult to Fifth Columns everywhere.
(c) 2025 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles