JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Good evening and welcome to Washington Week.

Tonight, we'll discuss a book that has enthralled Washington and much of the nation, Original Sin, President Biden's decline, its cover-up, and his disastrous choice to run again.

Joining me are its authors, Jake Tapper, CNN's Lead anchor and chief Washington correspondent, and Alex Thompson, a national political correspondent at Axios.

Gentlemen, thank you for being here in what is only your third interview of the day.

I appreciate it.

JAKE TAPPER, Anchor, CNN: But the best.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: But the best.

Certainly, no, save the best for the middle.

The -- let's start with -- let's jump into the key moment, a key moment in American history, one of the most dramatic moments in American political history at the debate co-moderated by you, Jake, June of last year, in which Joe Biden essentially lost the election for the Democrats, perhaps, certainly lost the nomination.

I just want you to watch this key moment with me and we'll talk about it.

JOE BIDEN, Former U.S. President: We'd be able to help make sure that all those things we need to do, child care, elder care, making sure that we continue to strengthen our healthcare system, making sure that we're able to make every single solitary person eligible for what I've been able to do with the with the COVID -- excuse me with dealing with everything we have to do with - - look, if -- we finally beat Medicare.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Jake?

JAKE TAPPER: It's painful.

It's painful to watch.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: You are sitting 15 feet away.

JAKE TAPPER: Yes, something like that.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Maybe next to Dana Bash, your co-moderator.

What are you thinking at that moment?

JAKE TAPPER: I'm thinking -- well, what I wrote on the iPad to communicate with the control room is what I was thinking, a very clean version of what I was thinking, which is, holy smokes, that's what I wrote, holy smokes.

I couldn't believe it.

We had all watched Joe Biden through the years and we'd watched him becoming elderly.

But this was something else.

This was adult.

This was non-functioning.

This was not able to follow his own train of thought.

And, you know, this isn't just like catching him at the beach and asking him a question when he is not in the right spirit or not in the right state of mind.

This is the debate -- JEFFREY GOLDBERG: The debate.

JAKE TAPPER: The debate where he needs to prove his acuity and ability to be president, because so many Americans were worried that he didn't have that ability.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Right, right.

You're watching it, I assume.

ALEX THOMPSON, National Political Correspondent, Axios: Yes, in Atlanta.

And you've already been reporting obviously on Biden and some of the doubts and worries about Biden.

What was going through your mind?

ALEX THOMPSON: That even though -- that, honestly, I thought it was bad, I did not think it was this bad.

And it was sort of shocking that they had let him go out on that stage, especially given that so many people around Joe Biden have been around him for so long and say they love him.

And the fact that they -- and now we know from our reporting in this book that this was not the first time that he had acted that way behind closed scenes - - behind closed doors.

And the fact that they let him go out there with the potential that this could happen and let him, you know, in some ways, hurt his legacy and embarrass himself on the world stage, I was -- I just felt sad.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: So, is this when you realized that the White House was lying to the public, lying to the media about Joe Biden's condition, or was this -- I'm wondering how you moved cognitively through the stages here.

Did you immediately think to yourself, oh my God, I've been lied to, or, wow, he's having a really bad night?

JAKE TAPPER: I thought that they had been misrepresenting his acuity for a little bit then at that point, like -- and our reporting suggests that he really started to deteriorate in the summer and fall of 2023.

I didn't see him all that often and I didn't know how bad it was, but it seemed odd in retrospect.

I mean, I asked people about it and I heard what I'm sure you heard, what I'm sure Alex heard, which is, he's fine, he's fine, he's fine.

He's 81, of course, he's elderly, but he's great.

You know, his decision-making is solid, he's great in meanings, blah, blah, blah.

And I didn't believe them, but I didn't have any evidence to report that they were lying.

When he came out and he could not deliver what any politician should be able to do, a 90-minute debate, discussing why you should be elected -- JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Straightforward questions.

JAKE TAPPER: Yes, and, I mean, some of the questions were, honestly, issues that he should have wanted to talk about and should have been able to talk about brilliantly.

JAKE TAPPER: And that's when I realized it wasn't even about, oh my God, I've been lied to.

It was, I had the same thought that some Democrats told us, Democrats who worked for Biden told us they had that during that debate, which was, oh my God, who's running the country?

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Well, who was running the country in?

ALEX THOMPSON: Well, I just wanted to first add, you know, beginning in April 2023, I really started honing in on this issue because of what some people in the White House were saying about their concerns, not necessarily in the moment, but certainly that he could not do a reelection campaign or serve four more years.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Right.

ALEX THOMPSON: And in response to that reporting, the White House said false.

They denied it.

They denied it.

They denied it.

And I was hearing otherwise.

So, I had stopped believing their denials for a while.

But in terms of who was running the White House, it's a small group of people that have been around.

Some people within the administration called them the Politburo.

That's the term we used in the book.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Give us the names of the three or four.

ALEX THOMPSON: Mike Donilon, Biden's longtime political liaison, Steve Ricchetti, who was sort of the legislative liaison, plus like a friend, Bruce Reed, at times, depending on his situation with the Biden people, Ron Klain.

And then there are some people outside the Politburo bureau that are closer to family, which would be obviously Jill Biden, Hunter Biden, but then Jill's main chief of staff, Anthony Bernal, and sort of his sort of like deputy in some ways, Annie Tomasini, who is often Biden's traveling chief of staff.

JAKE TAPPER: And Jill Biden himself also is part of this.

Joe Biden is not like -- it's not Weekend at Bernie's, right?

He has some purchase here.

He has some agency.

And he's aware of some of what's going on.

He might be in denial about it, but he's aware of the fact that they are keeping the cabinet away from him, they're keeping some White House staffers away from him, they're keeping members of Congress away from him.

He knows what's going on.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Well, it's certainly keeping the press.

JAKE TAPPER: Oh, sure, absolutely.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: You know, it's interesting, you know, and we talked about this on your show a couple of weeks ago, when I saw President Trump a few weeks ago, he started by saying, I bet Joe Biden would never do this, which is true.

And I took that as, and this is the conversation we had, I took it as, oh, man, he never stops talking about Joe Biden.

And you took it as, well, that is actually true.

And it's true.

I interviewed Donald -- I've interviewed Donald Trump more than I've interviewed Joe Biden.

JAKE TAPPER: I remember during the Biden years, because people don't know that you and I are friends, that you would -- you were frustrated.

You would interview -- JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Oh, constantly.

JAKE TAPPER: You were, you had interviewed Obama several times about his presidency.

You wanted to -- you're a very serious journalist and you know a lot about foreign policy, and you wanted to talk about this, which was like a section of his job that he really enjoyed and liked talking about, and they wouldn't let you do it.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Well, let's get -- ALEX THOMPSON: But it wasn't -- and it wasn't just about you or The Atlantic, either.

This is the first president in decades, perhaps, actually ever, it's hard to know with going back decades, who never sat for an interview with reporters with The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, or Reuters, did not do it all four years.

JAKE TAPPER: So, he only did one interview with a national newspaper, and that was on his way out the door with USA today.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: USA Today.

JAKE TAPPER: That was it.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Yes.

No, no, no.

And so this brings -- and we're getting granular, but this is Washington Week.

We're supposed to be granular.

Anita Dunn, who is kind of the -- she was the czar of communications in the Biden White House.

And I asked Anita periodically for four years, and Anita Dunn strung me along for four years, strung a lot of other people along four years.

You didn't name her as part of the Politburo.

JAKE TAPPER: Well, she was right outside it though.

ALEX THOMPSON: Yes, incredibly powerful.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: So, the question that comes to mind, I think, for a lot of people is, was this group around Biden who are obviously trying to keep people from understanding how diminished he was, were they lying to themselves or were they just lying?

ALEX THOMPSON: I think both.

ALEX THOMPSON: But I think there were honest people that realized that, you know, we have one person quote in the book that the interview that Jake did in 2022, that by the next year, he was no longer capable of handling that 15-minute interview.

JAKE TAPPER: It was a nothing interview.

That, you know, is a 15-minute interview.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Straightforward question.

JAKE TAPPER: Yes, just like -- and you have like six questions or whatever, one's on Putin, one's on people think you're too old, one - - I forget what they all were.

But, I mean, it wasn't like a really -- this is going to be more in depth than that.

But even that top aide told us he could not have done that in 2023, one year later.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Let me hone in on this.

This group of people who were essentially running the country, or at least, I think you used in the book, you talk about Biden as kind of the chairman of the board -- JAKE TAPPER: A senior member of the board.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: A senior member.

ALEX THOMPSON: But that's not us.

That's a cabinet secretary.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: No, I understand.

I understand.

And, by the way, the only people who were kept further away from Biden than the press were the members of the cabinet.

But that's a separate subject.

Did these people really believe that he was okay?

JAKE TAPPER: I think they believed this.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Did they convince themselves of that?

JAKE TAPPER: One, Joe Biden is the only person who has ever beaten Donald Trump.

Two, Donald Trump is an existential threat to the country.

Three, Joe Biden's the incumbent president and he has decided he's going to run for reelection.

Four, all we have to do is get through Election Day and then we can figure it out after that.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Then it could be Weekend at Bernie's?

JAKE TAPPER: Yes.

Or then -- yes, who knows after that.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Number three is -- ALEX THOMPSON: It was also in their self-interest to believe that, though.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Right.

Number three -- JAKE TAPPER: Mike Donilon demands before he goes over to the Biden campaign in 2024, he demands that they pay him $4 million for that.

The campaign chair, the campaign manager, essentially, Jen O'Malley Dillon, was paid $300,000 for running the campaign.

$4 million, Biden says, pay him.

And they pay him $4 million.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: That's a good business.

JAKE TAPPER: I don't know if people out there who donated to the Biden campaign knew that that's where some of their money was going, $4 million to Mike Donilon.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Right.

So, you used the term -- let's go on to this -- the cover-up.

Define cover-up.

ALEX THOMPSON: I think that the -- so the way that we define cover-up is the Biden that was on that debate stage.

It was not the first time that that Joe Biden appeared.

And over the course of the nine months proceeding it, you had increasingly hectic efforts to try to hide that, the extent of the decline from the American people, from reporters, from members of the Democratic Party, from members of their own cabinet.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Literal hiding in a kind of way, like he's not going to go do this.

He's not going to go do that.

JAKE TAPPER: Right.

And we're going to -- and we're not going to let him meet with these cabinet officials and we're not going to let him meet with these White House staffers, or we're not going to -- or when he does an event with donors, when he does a fundraiser, just 40 people, we're going to put a teleprompter in the back of the room so he can speak, even though that's something that any politician should be able to do without a teleprompter.

A cover-up is defined as hiding something bad.

That's what's happened.

We're not alleging criminality.

You're allowed to lie to the American people.

That's not a crime.

Politicians have been doing that for since this country was founded.