Josh Shapiro’s failed warning to Joe Biden among the Pa. moments highlighted in Jake Tapper’s new book

Joe Biden not remembering the name of an aide who had worked for him for decades. Top staffers keeping him away from his own cabinet. Discussions about the possibility of putting the president in a wheelchair if he were reelected.

Original Sin, the new book written by CNN anchor and Philly’s Jake Tapper and Axios reporter Alex Thompson, argues Biden’s top advisers and family members conspired to keep the aging president’s declining faculties hidden from the public, other Democrats, and even senior members of his own administration.

The official release Tuesday came just days after Biden, 82, announced he has been diagnosed with an aggressive form of prostate cancer.

The book is exactly what those who followed the 2024 election cycle would expect — elected Democrats fretting about Biden’s condition during the campaign but saying nothing publicly out of fear of boosting Donald Trump. It took Biden’s disastrous June debate against Trump for Democrats to publicly call for him to drop out, and even then just a fraction of the party was willing to speak out.

“Democrats remained publicly mum; Biden at any age was better than Trump,” Tapper and Thompson wrote.

While some Democrats have dismissed the book as yesterday’s news and would rather focus on the Trump presidency, others have cast it as a cautionary tale of a winnable election that ended with Trump’s return to the White House. While Trump ended up winning the Electoral College 312-226, Kamala Harris ultimately lost the election by only about 230,000 votes across three states — Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin.

“The Democratic Party needs to be honest,” Rep. Ro Khanna (D., Calif.), a Philadelphia-area native who defended Biden publicly until his exit from the race, said Sunday on ABC‘s This Week. “I don’t think it was a cover-up … but I do think that the advisers and people close to Joe Biden owe an explanation. They were on Zoom calls. They were telling all of us that he is capable, that he is going to be able to make the race. Obviously, that turned out not to be correct."

Amid the palace intrigue and attempts to quash concerns about Biden’s health and age by his small circle of close advisers — his “Politburo,” as it was known — there are a number of local anecdotes sprinkled through the book, thanks to Biden’s strong ties to Pennsylvania and Philadelphia and his constant campaigning across the state.

Here are five moments from the book involving local politicians and Philadelphia settings:

Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro met with Biden at Denim Coffee in Harrisburg in July 2024, a little more than a week after the president’s debate failure against Trump. First lady Jill Biden joined them.

After ordering in front of the cameras, Shapiro sat down and confronted Biden with what he saw as his deteriorating support in Pennsylvania, a state the president needed to win to remain in the White House.

“I have some concerns,” Shapiro said, according to the book, citing recent poll numbers following the debate. Inflation was also a concern among voters, but before Biden could fully respond, he was quickly ushered out by the first lady.

“All right, we gotta go,” Jill Biden said before walking the president to their motorcade and driving off.

According to the book, the abrupt exit made it clear to Shapiro that his circle didn’t want Biden to hear how bad things actually were.

Later, when Biden dropped out and Harris began consolidating support for her campaign, one of her first calls went to Shapiro because they thought he was most likely to challenge her for the nomination.

Instead, Shapiro was immediately on board and was a top contender to become Harris’ running mate before she ultimately selected Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz.

One constant plot line throughout the book is the number of Democrats and high-profile supporters who thought Biden seemed frail and weak during campaign events, but kept their concerns private.

Most famously, actor George Clooney bit his tongue after a fundraiser in June 2024 prior to the debate where Biden appeared “severely diminished” and did not appear to recognize one of the most recognizable people on the planet. It wasn’t until after Biden’s debate performance — and inaction by Democrats — that Clooney wrote an op-ed in the New York Times calling for the president to drop out of the race.

A similar event had played out nearly seven months earlier at a December 2023 fundraiser at the Hilton Philadelphia at Penn’s Landing. Former Pittsburgh Penguins CEO David Morehouse, who served in Bill Clinton’s administration and worked on four presidential campaigns, was “stunned” how frail Biden seemed while shaking his hand during a photo op.

“It was nothing but bones,” Morehouse recalled, according to the book.

Morehouse tried to bring his concerns to Democrats, but one former Clinton administration alum told him: “You can’t talk about this stuff. We’re backing Biden.”

Sen. John Fetterman was an outspoken supporter of Biden even after the debate and defended his decision to run for reelection, up to the moment the president dropped out.

On July 11, about two weeks after the debate, Fetterman joined fellow senators on Capitol Hill in a meeting with top campaign staffers Mike Donilon, Steve Ricchetti, and Jen O’Malley Dillon. Over box lunches, Fetterman sat quietly as his Senate colleagues expressed their concern over Biden’s decision to remain in the race.

In the end, out of 51 senators who caucused with the Democrats, maybe five were with Biden, the book says. Fetterman was among them, informed in part by his own poor debate performance against then-Republican Senate candidate Mehmet Oz in the 2022 election.

“You all have legacies too. And your legacy is going to be f— over a great president after a bad debate," Fetterman said, according to the book. “And if you go ahead and set this in motion, you better own that.”

Fetterman‘s private comments echoed his remarks after the election, where he called on Democrats to “own the outcome” of the election.

”For those that decided and moved to break Biden, and then you got the election that you wanted,” Fetterman told Semafor’s David Weigel in November. “The options: Double down on the only person that’s ever beat Trump, or demand an alternative. … There’s a lot of egos, institutions and reputations that championed the alternative.”

After Biden stepped down and Harris secured the Democratic nomination, the two appeared at a few campaign events together, including a stop at the Shanksville Volunteer Fire Department on Sept. 11, 2024.

At the event, Biden was given a Trump 2024 hat by an elderly man. After a short back-and-forth, Biden put the hat on, an image that spread widely on social media. Trump’s own campaign team shared it with the caption, “Thanks for the support, Joe!”

“What is he doing?” Harris asked her team, according to the book. “This is completely unhelpful. And so unnecessary.”

That was it for Harris. From that point through Election Day, it was the last public event she did with Biden, though not the final headache. Just a week before the election, Biden referred to Trump supporters as “garbage” in a Zoom call with a Latino get-out-the-vote effort, a misplaced riff after a comedian called Puerto Rico “a floating island of garbage” at a Trump rally.

“What are we going to do about this?” Harris asked, according to the book. A week later, she lost the election to Trump.

Former Democratic Rep. Susan Wild, who narrowly lost reelection in her Lehigh Valley congressional district in 2024, was among those who publicly expressed “concerns” over Biden’s chances while not directly calling for him to exit the race.

In private, she was more straightforward about Biden’s prospects and how he would hurt Democrats like herself running in tight districts.

In a conference call with House Democrats in July 2024, Wild made it clear she did not want to campaign with Biden and feared the prospect of defending his ability to serve another four years.

“I’m not going to be able to show up with him. I cannot campaign with Joe Biden,” Wild said, according to the book. “If I defend the president, I lost my integrity. How do we go after Trump for lying if people see us as liars?”

Fast forward to Saturday night. Wild, who already endorsed one Democrat running for the seat she lost, wrote on social media that Democrats would be “so much better off” if instead of pushing Biden out, they “had unified behind him.”