‘Original Sin’ Tops Bestseller List
Original Sin by Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson debuted at number one of the New York Times bestseller list.
Booker Turns 25-Hour Speech Into a Book
Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) has expanded upon his historic Senate floor speech from last month into an upcoming book, the AP reports.
Billionaire Investor Says Trump Pushing Fascist Policies
“Donald Trump wants to ‘dictate’ policies like those of far-right regimes in the 1930s, a leading billionaire investor has warned,” The Guardian reports.
“Ray Dalio writes in a new book that the US president is acting like a chief executive without a board as he seeks to expand executive power even more aggressively than predecessors Andrew Jackson and Franklin D Roosevelt.”
Writes Dalio: “When I say that the policies President Trump is using to ‘make America great again’ are remarkably like the policies that those of the hard-right countries in the 1930s used, that should not be controversial.”
How Countries Go Broke: The Big Cycle (Principles)
- Amazon Kindle Edition
- Dalio, Ray (Author)
- English (Publication Language)
- 400 Pages - 06/03/2025 (Publication Date) - Avid Reader Press / Simon & Schuster (Publisher)
Everyone Now Has an Opinion on Jake Tapper
New York Times: “A book the CNN host co-wrote has received positive reviews and appears to be a sales hit. But it has also generated intense scrutiny of him and his work.”
Audiobook of Melania’s Memoir Created with AI
“First lady Melania Trump is getting an assist from artificial intelligence for an audiobook version of her memoir that was created entirely with AI and audio technology,” ABC News reports.
Biden Didn’t Think Harris Could Win
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The Biden Book Is Out
The reviews are in for Original Sin by Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson and none push back on the book’s central claims — that Joe Biden’s inner circle actively covered up his health decline.
The New York Times calls the book a “damning portrait of an enfeebled Biden protected by his inner circle.”
The Washington Post describes “an elderly, egotistical president shielded from reality by a slavish coterie of loyalists.”
The Wall Street Journal calls it “a conspiracy in plain view.”
Politico says it’s “a devastating portrait of an ailing, geriatric leader surrounded by mendacious aides.”
Almanac of American Politics 2026
Now available for pre-order: The Almanac of American Politics 2026.
Almanac of American Politics 2026
- Hardcover Book
- Louis Jacobson (Author)
- English (Publication Language)
- 2041 Pages - 09/01/2025 (Publication Date) - Columbia Books Inc (Publisher)
A Few Thoughts on the Biden Book
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Book on Biden Hits #1
Original Sin by Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson is now #1 on Amazon’s new releases list — a rarity for a book about politics, especially for one that hasn’t even come out yet.
From the authors: “The real issue wasn’t his age, per se. It was the clear limitations of his abilities, which got worse throughout his presidency. What the public saw of his functioning was concerning. What was going on in private was worse.”
It will be interesting to see if Biden tries to counter the book with any further television appearances.
Surviving New America
A novel from Political Wire reader Carl Weinschenk was just published: Surviving New America: Hope Thomas and Her Enemies.
“The ascendency of Donald Trump during the past decade is such a dramatic story that it’s easy to overlook what made it possible.”
How Biden Handed the Presidency to Trump
The New Yorker run an excerpt of Original Sin by Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson:
“President Joe Biden got out of bed the day after the 2024 election convinced that he had been wronged. The élites, the Democratic officials, the media, Nancy Pelosi, Barack Obama—they shouldn’t have pushed him out of the race. If he had stayed in, he would have beaten Donald Trump. That’s what the polls suggested, he would say again and again.”
“His pollsters told us that no such polls existed. There was no credible data, they said, to support the notion that he would have won. All unspun information suggested it would have been a loss, likely a spectacular one, far worse than that suffered by his replacement as the Democratic nominee, Vice-President Kamala Harris.”
“The disconnect between Biden’s optimism and the unhappy reality of poll results was a constant throughout his Administration. Many insiders sensed that his inner circle shielded him from bad news. It’s also true that, for Biden to absorb those poll results, he would have had to face the biggest issue driving them: the public had concluded—long before most Democratic officials, media, and other ‘élites’ had—that he was far too old to do the job.”
Sale
Original Sin: President Biden's Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again
- Hardcover Book
- Tapper, Jake (Author)
- English (Publication Language)
- 352 Pages - 05/20/2025 (Publication Date) - Penguin Press (Publisher)
Quote of the Day
“He totally fucked us.”
— David Plouffe, quoted by The Guardian, in the new book, Original Sin, saying President Biden undermined Kamala Harris’ “fucking nightmare” of a presidential campaign.
Sam Altman Is Said to Have Pondered a Presidential Run
A forthcoming book, The Optimist, “reveals the extent of the OpenAI CEO’s political ambitions, including his solicitation of advice from friends and prominent political operators about running for office,” Vanity Fair reports.
Sale
The Optimist: Sam Altman, OpenAI, and the Race to Invent the Future
- Hardcover Book
- Hagey, Keach (Author)
- English (Publication Language)
- 384 Pages - 05/20/2025 (Publication Date) - W. W. Norton & Company (Publisher)
Bonus Quote of the Day
“We, myself included, missed a lot of this story. And some people trust us less because of it. We bear some responsibility for faith in the media at such lows.”
— Alex Thompson, quoted by The Guardian, on the news media not reporting on former President Joe Biden’s decline. He’s got a book with Jake Tapper coming out next week.
Sale
Original Sin: President Biden's Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again
- Hardcover Book
- Tapper, Jake (Author)
- English (Publication Language)
- 352 Pages - 05/20/2025 (Publication Date) - Penguin Press (Publisher)
‘How Are They Letting This Fucking Thing Go On?’
Vanity Fair runs an excerpt from Chris Whipple’s new book, Uncharted:
“The president’s wobbly state should have been a flashing warning light. At his first meeting with Biden, Ron Klain, his former White House chief of staff, who was in charge of debate prep, was startled. He’d never seen Biden so exhausted and out of it. He seemed unaware of what was happening in his own campaign. The president appeared obsessed with foreign policy and uninterested in his second-term plans. During one prep session in Aspen Lodge, the presidential cabin, Biden suddenly got up, walked out to the pool, collapsed on a lounge chair, and fell sound asleep.”
“Yet his advisers were undaunted. With unintended irony, one of them explained their strategy to me: ‘An early debate would quiet fears that the president was infirm.’”
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Biden Aide Describes an ‘Out of It’ President
In a new book, Joe Biden’s former White House chief of staff Ron Klain paints a devastating picture of the then president’s mental and physical state before the debate with Donald Trump that sent his 2024 campaign into a tailspin, The Guardian reports.
According to Klain, who returned to help prep Biden for his debate, it turned out Biden “didn’t know what Trump had been saying and couldn’t grasp what the back and forth was” and left debate preparation “and fell asleep by the pool.”
He obsessed about foreign leaders, saying “these guys say I’m doing a great job as president so I must be a great president”; “didn’t really understand what his argument was on inflation” and “had nothing to say about a second term other than finish the job.”
No products found.
