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On Tuesday, Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson, the co-authors of Original Sin, the heavily hyped book about President Biden’s cognitive decline and how it was allegedly covered up, launched the opening salvo of their promotional blitz via an excerpt in The New Yorker. The piece was a scathing indictment of Biden’s decision to run for reelection despite his condition, and then drag his feet on withdrawing from the race, even after his infamously disastrous debate performance. There was David Plouffe, the former Obama campaign manager and Harris advisor, stating on the record that Biden had “screwed” and “fucked” the Democrats. There was another Democratic strategist accusing Biden of stealing an election “from the American people.” And there was George Clooney, gutted by Biden’s feebleness and his failure to even recognize him at a Hollywood fundraiser, asserting that the Democrats’ attempt to deceive the country about Biden’s acuity was “how Trump won.” Also on Tuesday, an addition excerpt published by Axios, where Thompson serves as national political correspondent, revealed that Biden’s advisors had discussed letting the president use a wheelchair after reelection—but only after reelection, so as to avoid the “politically untenable” optics. The New York Times review described Original Sin as “a damning portrait of an enfeebled president” protected and enabled by his family and handlers. In an appearance that day on CNN, Tapper excoriated the White House for “lying”—“not only to the press, not only to the public, but … to members of their own cabinet … to White House staffers … to Democratic members of Congress.” And this is merely the beginning; the book itself doesn’t hit shelves for another week, at which point the inevitable deluge of podcast appearances will begin.

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In the still-early days of Trump 2.0, Original Sin has become a catalyst for some cathartic scapegoating among Democrats. If Biden “fucked” the party, as Plouffe and Tapper and Thompson posit, then the Democrats’ failure to defeat Trump can be attributed to the pride and vanity of one geriatric man and his enablers rather than a structural failure of the party to prevent the reeleciton of a convicted felon who blatantly disregards truth, law, and civility. In this self-serving narrative, the Democrats can move toward the midterms having cast off the Biden albatross, Kamala can pursue a gubernatorial bid without the humiliating stain of defeat, and the media itself can blame their mostly tepid coverage of Biden’s acuity on a well-hidden White House conspiracy. Meanwhile, those who did sound some semblance of alarm, Tapper and Thompson included, can take a self-satisfied victory lap. Needless to say, Biden and his loyalists take a different view. With help from former deputy press secretary Chris Meagher, the Biden team has launched a woefully misguided campaign to win back the narrative by denying Biden’s mental decline. This began with a soft BBC interview and continued with a humiliating appearance on The View that only bolstered the co-authors’ thesis and, presumably, their book sales. In response to the New Yorker excerpt, the Biden team shifted its defense to a focus on performance: “No one has been able to point out where Joe Biden had to make a presidential decision or make a presidential address where he was unable to do his job because of mental decline.” (I have not yet read Original Sin, though I have reason to believe the book may provide such evidence.) Biden, who served his party mostly admirably for 50 years and remains the only political candidate who has so far defeated Trump, undoubtedly looks at his fellow Democrats and feels a level of betrayal and injustice most mere mortals can’t even countenance. Nevertheless, his refusal to leave the bar when everyone is telling him to go home is difficult to watch.

Indeed, there’s some notable history here. In February 2018, both Tapper and then-Vice President Biden and his son Hunter found themselves at U.S. Bank Stadium in Minneapolis for Super Bowl LII. Both Tapper and the Bidens are lifelong Philadelphia Eagles fans—the Eagles would beat the Patriots that day, 41 to 33—and both had been invited to a pregame party at the stadium with various Philly-adjacent notables, including Joel Embid, Danny DeVito, and Rob McElhenney and Kaitlin Olson. Upon entering the room, Tapper said hello to the vice president, as well as former Rep. Kevin McCarthy, before going over to shake hands with Hunter. There are contrasting, almost Rashomon-like accounts of what happened next. But what is certain, according to three sources present in the room, is that Hunter put his arm around Tapper’s shoulders and told him that, if the two men were not in a public setting, “I would knock you out.” By most accounts, Hunter appeared to believe that Tapper had reported on allegations of his adultery and drug use, stemming from an acrimonious divorce with his ex-wife Kathleen Buhle the previous year. With hands raised, these sources said, Tapper sought to assure Hunter that he had done no such reporting—and, indeed, he hadn’t. Two sources in Bidenworld attribute Hunter’s anger that day to something else entirely: an alleged phone call between him and Tapper that took place around the time of his brother Beau Biden’s death three years previously, in which Tapper allegedly called repeatedly from an unknown number and then asked Hunter to notify him when Beau died. According to these sources, Hunter was so irate at Tapper that he told him to “fuck off,” and, according to one source, continued to express his anger to family members for a week following his brother’s death. Notably, neither source agreed to level this charge on the record. Tapper did go on the record, however, and called the insinuation “a patently false lie. At no point in my life have I ever called Hunter Biden—I’ve never even had his phone number—and I would never have contacted a person’s immediate family during such a challenging and personal time.” Presumably, if Hunter remembers that differently, he can say so on the record. In any event, Tapper did confirm the Super Bowl run-in: “Hunter did once confront me at a Super Bowl party, but it was over an unrelated issue—coverage he wrongly believed I had done regarding divorce allegations of drug use and using prostitutes, which I actually had never done.” I surmise this isn’t the last these two have seen of each other.