“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.

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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)

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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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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.”

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Democratic officials staged “hush-hush talks” to plan for Joe Biden’s withdrawal as the party’s presidential nominee as early as 2023, says a new book, The Guardian reports.

The book also reports that aides to Kamala Harris, the vice-president who assumed the nomination then lost to Trump, “strategized around the possibility that Biden might die in office.”

Fight: Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House

• Amazon Kindle Edition
• Allen, Jonathan (Author)
• English (Publication Language)
• 326 Pages - 04/01/2025 (Publication Date) - William Morrow (Publisher)

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Out next month: Uncharted: How Trump Beat Biden, Harris, and the Odds in the Wildest Campaign in History by Chris Whipple.

Vanity Fair has an excerpt.

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Out next week: Hate Won’t Win: Find Your Power and Leave This Place Better Than You Found It by Mallory McMorrow.

“Mallory pulls back the curtain on what it’s like to work in today’s political arena, rife with conspiracy theories and division—yet emerges clear-eyed, offering actionable steps for building community and creating change.”

Hate Won't Win: Find Your Power and Leave This Place Better Than You Found It

• Amazon Kindle Edition
• McMorrow, Mallory (Author)
• English (Publication Language)
• 281 Pages - 03/25/2025 (Publication Date) - Grand Central Publishing (Publisher)

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“Chuck Schumer, the Democratic Senate minority leader, insisted Republicans would move on from Donald Trump and go back to a past version of the party even as Trump’s return to power loomed last year, according to the authors of a new book on politics during the Biden administration,” The Guardian reports.

Mad House: How Donald Trump, MAGA Mean Girls, a Former Used Car Salesman, a Florida Nepo Baby, and a Man with Rats in His Walls Broke Congress

• Amazon Kindle Edition
• Karni, Annie (Author)
• English (Publication Language)
• 304 Pages - 03/25/2025 (Publication Date) - Random House (Publisher)

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“A new book details the extent of Donald Trump’s obsession with the destruction of Ron DeSantis’ political career during the 2024 presidential campaign and the ruthless tactics his team employed to try and make it impossible for the governor to run for anything ever again,” the Miami Herald reports.

“In Revenge: The Inside Story of Trump’s Return to Power, reporter Alex Isenstadt writes that in the run-up to DeSantis’ presidential campaign launch in 2023, Trump was incredulous that he was actually going through with it.”

Said Trump: “Is Ron really that stupid to run against me? Why doesn’t he just wait until 2028?”

Just out: Who Is Government?: The Untold Story of Public Service edited by Michael Lewis.

“Who works for the government and why does their work matter? An urgent and absorbing civics lesson from an all-star team of writers and storytellers.”

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Who Is Government?: The Untold Story of Public Service

• Hardcover Book
• English (Publication Language)
• 272 Pages - 03/18/2025 (Publication Date) - Riverhead Books (Publisher)

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Just out: Abundance by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson.

“To trace the history of the twenty-first century so far is to trace a history of unaffordability and shortage.”

Thompson, writing in The Atlantic: “For the first time in decades, America has a chance to define its next political order. Trump offers fear, retribution, and scarcity. Liberals can stand for abundance.”

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Abundance

• Hardcover Book
• Klein, Ezra (Author)
• English (Publication Language)
• 304 Pages - 03/18/2025 (Publication Date) - Avid Reader Press / Simon & Schuster (Publisher)

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“Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s (D-NY) book tour announced Monday it will postpone multiple events, citing security concerns, after he helped prevent a government shutdown last week,” Axios reports.

Bloomberg: Schumer cancels book tour amid backlash over government shutdown stance.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) may “get an earful from activists” when he hits the road for his book tour this week, the Washington Post reports.

Michael Wolff claims that the cable news networks are being bullied by the White House to keep him off the air to discuss his new book, All or Nothing: How Trump Recaptured America.

“While the book was greeted by gratifying reviews in many print outlets, including The New York Times, and debuted at No. 9 on the Times’ best-seller list, most every significant television news outlet — ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN — has declined to have it discussed on its news shows.”

“MSNBC, a network whose bread and butter is opposition to the president and which had booked me for several shows, including Lawrence O’Donnell, a show I regularly do when I publish a book, canceled those appearances as soon as portions of the book began to leak, followed shortly by the White House tirades.”