Original Sin Is Just A Modified Limited Hangout
Coined on the fly by Nixon lawyer John Ehrlichman in 1973, . . . modified limited hangout is the public admission of a wrong in an attempt to hide a more serious wrong, while the media and prosecutors are investigating related crimes. It's a defensive tool in trying to cover-up a conspiracy.
The reviews of Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson's book find its revelations generally unsatisfying. For instance, at Columbia Journalism Review,
Now Original Sin, an eagerly awaited book from Jake Tapper of CNN and Alex Thompson of Axios, combs through post-election interviews to offer the most detailed accounting yet of what the book’s subtitle calls the “cover-up” of Biden’s decline—a “cover-up” of something that the American people knew all along.
. . . There is considerable reporting in Original Sin, and a largely chronological narrative, but not much of a coherent story. The authors seem unable to settle on clear answers to some key questions, including: when Biden began to decline, as opposed to how much he just became more like himself, as we all tend to as we age; how much of the “cover-up” was just a reelection strategy of insulating the president, and how much an active subterfuge with malice aforethought; and whether Biden was simply aging or suffering from some serious illness (Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s are mentioned as possibilities). Even granting that the book was rushed into print—the reporting began in November—these seem to be important gaps.
In fact, there's been so much criticism of Jake Tapper that he's hired a crisis management firm to salvage his reputation -- but the word is, possibly from those same flacks, that Thompson did most of the writing, Tapper was just paid to add the prestige of his name to the project. But now, poor Tapper is taking all the heat! From Jesse Watters:
Jake just admitted he missed the biggest story of the century. Tapper basically admitted he's blind.
Because Watergate was a secret. There was no video. Reporters had to crack it.
Bidengate was on TV. Every day. Aren't news anchors supposed to know the news before the public?
Tapper is saying the public knew the news before he did. Journalists can't be the last ones to know the scandal. That means they're not a journalist.
Tapper should resign. If you missed Bidengate, or you covered it up, what else did you miss? What else did you cover up?
The border? Epstein? The lab leak?
. . . This is only the beginning. The FBI is opening up an investigation into the cover-ups of the White House cocaine, the DNC pipe bomb, and the Supreme Court abortion leaks. The last four years, one big cover-up.
Jerry Dunleavy at Just the News takes the implications a little farther:
The central contention of the best-selling book is that Joe Biden’s mental decline occurred most significantly years after Biden’s 2020 election — during the years of 2023 and 2024 —and resulted in a cover-up by the president’s inner circle and his allies which led to President Donald Trump’s own victory in 2024.
The book nevertheless contains numerous details suggesting that Biden’s lack of physical and mental fitness for the job was actually present as early as 2015, was documented and recorded in 2017, and was concealed — at times even by Tapper and his colleagues — as Biden ran to unseat Trump in 2020.
. . . The authors’ note for the book states that “readers who are convinced that Joe Biden was little more than a husk from the very beginning of his presidency, barely capable of stringing two sentences together, will not find support for that view here.”
But there's plenty of evidence in the book itself that Biden's staff had serious doubts about his ability to campaign effectively in 2020:
The book included a chapter subtitled “The Covid Cocoon” detailing how the deadly COVID-19 pandemic was a blessing for the Biden campaign, allowing a severely physically and mentally diminished candidate to run what was often derisively referred to as a “basement campaign.”
“It was terrible to admit, but Biden’s own aides would say that while the COVID-19 pandemic was one of the worst things to happen to the world, it was one of the best things to happen to Biden’s presidential hopes,” the book states.
“They doubted Biden could have otherwise kept up the pace of campaigning through November. As pandemic lockdowns became widespread in March 2020, Biden could avoid that grueling travel and campaign remotely from Wilmington. He could rest. Close aides pushed for events to start in the afternoon, if possible.”
It sounds as though Tapper could have done a better job defending the book if he'd been more familiar with what was actually in it, which may be the real story here -- Thompson wrote it, Tapper was paid for the use of his name.But the takeaway is that Trump, who has never backed down on his claim that the 2020 election was "stolen", looks a little better on this count every day. "Stolen" means a lot of things, as in "he stole her heart", "she stole the scene", or "for $5 it was a steal". Was the 2020 election "stolen"? You betcha.
In any case, so far, the modified limited hangout strategy hasn't worked very well.
