During a recent appearance on Piers Morgan Uncensored, CNN’s Jake Tapper, the co-author of Original Sin, which argues “The original sin of Election 2024 was Biden’s decision to run for re-election — followed by aggressive efforts to hide his cognitive diminishment,” managed to further piss off some already enraged Democrats by claiming the decision for Joe Biden to seek a second term is a scandal possibly worse than Watergate.

“It is a scandal,” Tapper said.  “It is without question — and maybe even worse than Watergate in some ways, because Richard Nixon was in control of his faculties when he wasn’t drinking.”

I understand the impulse to immediately boo and hiss away anything coming from Jake Tapper.

Much as journalists like him try to portray otherwise, objectivity is a myth, and Tapper’s politics, while attempting to be obscured in his reporting, are nonetheless ever-present. It has been made clear to me through his previous description of Assata Shakur, his past smearing of Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, and his present whinings about “the left” on the Original Sin press tour that curiously makes steps on shows hosted by the likes of the racist Megyn Kelly.

So yes, I understand the impulse to ignore Jake Tapper, especially on this subject – when mainstream anchors like him should have focused more on the issue at the time when poll after poll after poll year after year showed that voters – including a majority of Democrats – felt that Joe Biden was too damn old to be president for a second term.

Yet, while Tapper may be making a lot of money off this political tragedy after the fact, this is not a subject that ought to be avoided simply out of annoyance towards him.

A few weeks before Tapper made his “worse than Watergate” claim, he interviewed Congressman James Clyburn of South Carolina, the man credited with salvaging Biden’s fledgling primary campaign in 2020 with his endorsement.

Tapper asked Clyburn, “Do you think Joe Biden really would’ve been able to perform as president all the way through January 2029 when he would be 86?”

Clyburn replied: “Yes, I thought that back then. I still think that,” going on to argue that “it’s not all about age.”

“I’ve seen people develop Alzheimer’s when they’re in their 30s and 40s. So it’s not about age,” the 84-year-old and working Clyburn continued. “It’s about the ability to do the job, and I never saw anything that allowed me to think that Joe Biden was not able to do the job.”

Hours later, Biden shared that he had been diagnosed with an aggressive form of prostate cancer.

In his first public remarks since his office made the announcement, he told reporters on Friday that he was feeling “optimistic” about his prognosis.

“Well, the prognosis is good. You know, we’re working on everything. It’s moving along. So, I feel good,” Biden said.

Having lost my mother, uncle, and some of my closest friends in recent years to cancer, my thoughts are with him and anyone else grappling with cancer. May they all beat it. May we all one day exist in a cancer-free world (funding medical research would help that, but alas, the dummies won).

However, and with all due respect to Clyburn, his answer would have been ridiculous even without the diagnosis.

It makes me want to cuss.

I am not around Joe Biden like Clyburn, but my senses worked well enough to recognize through my varying screens that the presidency had aged an already elderly Biden dramatically, and long before last June’s disastrous debate, there were several signs that there were days where he could barely string together a coherent sentence on command.

This is not to be callous, but be for real.

Is this a scandal worse than Watergate? Who cares. It’s a problem, no matter how it is scaled.

After putting aside my feelings about Jake Tapper and recalling that Original Sin’s co-author, Axios reporter Alex Thompson, had been trying to report on Biden’s health struggles but had his book cancelled by the publisher because “Biden books weren’t selling,” I checked out the audiobook myself.

Critics are right to note that Biden’s struggle with getting older wasn’t a well-kept secret as presented, but the extent to which his decline was known, as far back as 2019, and the degree to which his senior advisors scripted his presidency, even to those in the cabinet, is not at all widely known by the public.

Moreover, knowing how much Biden was struggling, I’m even madder that instead of building up Vice President Kamala Harris as his successor, Biden’s allies used her as a shield from criticism.

They set her up to fail as VP and then warned other Democrats that Biden couldn’t be dropped from the ticket because they would be stuck with Kamala.

I know some voters like to pretend Joe Biden is their great uncle or something, but Donald Trump being a racist, erratic man(iac) with his obvious struggles of decline amid aging, doesn’t excuse the Weekend at Bernie’s White House, and none of the Democrats saying anything about it.

Dead racist president Ronald Reagan had his second term struggles covered up, as did the secrets of the other dead racist president, Woodrow Wilson. Biden’s not the first president to have his problems covered, but he should be the last.

As for why the reporting in Original Sin matters, look at the state of the House of Representatives, where a bunch of Democratic congressmen are dying, and as a result of it, much of Trump’s agenda, including the worst tax bill in history, was able to pass.

Democrats are not having a come-to-Jesus moment about their gerontocracy problem; instead, more House members in their 70s are running to fill the chairs of the recently departed. To be clear, there are plenty of aging politicians with a lot of fire in them, including Congresswoman Maxine Waters and Congressman Al Green.

Even so, after Biden’s inability to forgo a second term in a healthier amount of time handed the presidency back to Trump, so many Democratic politicians and their supporters continue to be resistant to the ongoing consequences of not having difficult conversations about the health and ages of their leadership.

I am no ageist and see the value of leaders at any age, but when they present as emfeebled and give way to defeat to bigoted buffoons, at one point do we all decide to stop running away from the discomfort of questions about health and towards them?

Michael Arceneaux is a New York Times bestselling author whose most recent book, “I Finally Bought Some Jordans,” was published last March.

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