When Watergate hit, it was real. Reporters uncovered real information, Congress was compelled to act on it, and Nixon resigned. It was a scandal because there were hard consequences where in-the-moment reporting mattered. The Biden cover-up media narrative is the polar opposite: it's unclear what, if any, consequences will result, aside from a few people securing book sales.

I was thinking about the differences between the two events because CNN anchor Jake Tapper continued his media and partial apology tour. This week, he claims that the Biden cover-up may be "worse than Watergate."

If true, the fact that Tapper is coming to this conclusion multiple months after Biden leaves office is a damning indictment of his journalism. In his mea culpa, he keeps claiming the White House lied and there was no one willing to tell the truth among Democrats.

That's simply a bald-faced lie.

In November 2023, NBC News published a deeply reported piece with four journalists. The reporters framed the story around the idea of a "five-alarm fire" surrounding Biden's chances of winning re-election, suggesting that he was doing little to stop the slow decline of his presidency.

But all they could offer was throwing up their hands like there was nothing they could do. "Restive though they are, Democrats can't do much at this stage to give American voters another option. Once Biden decided to run, the party apparatus went all-in for his candidacy. ... The structural barriers to defeat Biden at this stage are daunting."

Left unmentioned in that piece was the already screamingly obvious point about Biden: voters were terrified of his age. Tapper's own book highlights the various videos, reported pieces, and polls that showed everyone in America had the same thought - except those responsible for telling us what happened. Everyone was talking about it - including Democrats.

A curious journalist might have explored why a major party was having a collective panic attack about its incumbent president running again. Because if you scratched anywhere below the surface, you got more.

It's easy to figure this out because Biden's 2024 State of the Union address was billed as one of his last chances to get Democrats back on board. He managed, by a miracle, to provide arguably his last coherent speech that night, saving his candidacy until the debate obliterated all remaining doubts.

Democrats were ready to drop Biden then. And everyone knew why.

Was this worse than Watergate? It is for journalists. If Tapper were a real journalist, he might have reported something in this era, like Woodward and Bernstein, that put pressure on politicians in Congress. Instead, he provided nothing to Congress or the American people.

At no point did any Democrat feel pressure on Biden's decline until after the infamous debate. And the only reason they felt pressure then is because Joe Biden himself removed all doubts. No journalist forced Biden out. Biden's pride loaded that gun and fired it into his campaign.

That brings me to the second glaring omission and hole in this book: a lack of accountability.

Tapper and Thompson devote a mere four-and-a-half pages to discussing the lessons. They have a chapter on conclusions that meekly suggests Congress stepping in and doing things. But for a Watergate moment, and there was an avalanche of Watergate-inspired legislation after Nixon, they have shockingly few ideas.

And their book is part of the problem. They provided cover for Democrats who sought to advance their careers while also enabling the Biden cover-up. Cabinet officials who knew, White House staffers who saw everything, and the "unnamed aides and sources" that make up the content of the book. 

Watergate was about exposing the underbelly of a D.C. crime and cover-up. There's none of that here, and there's little sign that Tapper or Thompson have any desire to bring accountability or exposure to their precious Democratic sources. They even acknowledge that these people only talked off the record to avoid blowback.

In short, Democrats knew Biden was declining and covered it up. The book that digs into this issue the most is willingly giving cover to these Democrats to acknowledge reality while facing no consequences. People went to jail over Watergate. If Tapper is right about this being worse, we should be asking a similar question on criminal charges.

There are real questions, too. For example, were aides engaging in self-dealing when they had Biden sign orders? When did Biden's cancer actually arrive, and did that or his decline impact decision-making in the United States? Trump's attacks on the autopen are valid because we don't know who was running the country, a fact Tapper and Thompson admit.

For a scandal larger than Watergate, there was no attempt to report on it in the moment. And the press continues providing cover for the bad actors at the heart of it all. Some of these White House officials should never be allowed to work in public service again.

But they will, thanks to the dogged determination of journalists brave enough to admit what happened but cowardly enough to hide all the names and evidence. There's a lot of valuable reporting in the book, and I don't deny that. But what good is it if everyone is supposed to shrug their shoulders at the end?

"Original Sin" is a meditation on the systemic failure of the press and Democrats to hold their side accountable. Every page reveals wrongdoing, or "undemocratic acts," as some of the books Democrats admit. And at the end of it all, there's no push to hold anyone accountable. 

It's a worse scandal than Watergate, and Democrats and the press want nothing to come of it. That's the real conclusion, and it's a sad statement on the priorities for everyone involved.