You almost have to admire the nerve, the gall, the sheer chutzpah. Here we have a book about the mental decline of Joe Biden and how it was hidden from the public for years, and wasn’t it a terrible thing. Except that the book is from two journalists who for years happily participated in the cover-up. Tapper is a senior anchor with CNN and Thompson is a writer with the far-left magazine Axios, but now they are saying that it was all the fault of other journalists – not the authors of Original Sin, no, of course not.

Much of the book revolves around the debate between Biden and Trump in the early stages of the 2024 campaign, when Biden sounded weak and incoherent. Tapper was a moderator of the debate, and it was then that he realised (he now says) that Biden was not up to the task of being president, let alone running the country for another four years. With the wisdom of hindsight, all the signs had been there. It was no secret that Biden’s inner circle carefully scripted his public appearances, steering him away from anything that might go wrong – although Joe still managed to find a way to get into trouble on many occasions. There were the sentences that stumbled into nonsense, the last-minute cancellations of important meetings, and the huge amount of holiday time. Like many people whose faculties are in decline, he had good days and bad days, and his good days were played up by his supporters in the media while the bad days were explained away if they were covered at all.

Through it all, Tapper had been a constant advocate for Biden. His particular recourse was the ‘stutter defence’, when he attacked anyone who questioned Biden’s roundabout language and blank expressions as sniping at a childhood disability. How a stutter could explain Bidenisms like ‘dog-faced pony soldier’ and an inappropriate ‘God save the Queen’ is anyone’s guess.

The problem for Tapper, as he seeks to rewrite the past, is that history is a stubborn set of facts. A range of conservative commentators have had no difficulty finding numerous clips of Tapper, and to a lesser extent Thompson, speaking in embarrassingly glowing terms about Biden’s legislative and personal achievements. This was not journalism but stenography.

The pace picked up when Trump emerged as the Republican candidate. Yes, the media swung aggressively against Biden after the debate, but the reason was that his encroaching senility could no longer be disguised. It was clear to everyone that Biden was not a viable candidate, and letting Trump back into the Oval Office was unacceptable to the legacy media. This was the Original Sin of Biden: not that he was incapable of governing but that he was going to lose. For his part, Biden and his family always believed that he could defeat Trump, and the Big Guy seemed unable to understand what all the fuss was about.

Tapper and Thompson are a bit vague on exactly how Biden was finally convinced to go, with various members of the cast providing different stories in interviews. Tapper readily accepts the view that Harris, anointed as the new messiah, did not have enough time to establish herself. But this steps around the facts that she had been VP for over three years, enjoyed fawning media support, and had a ton of money to spend. Nevertheless, Tapper and Thompson insist that it was Biden who was responsible for Trump’s victory.

For this, he cannot be forgiven.

One keeps waiting for a mea culpa from the authors, a recognition of their own role in all this. But it never comes. This leads to other questions: how dumb do they think everyone is? Did Tapper and Thompson believe that the rest of the world would simply forget about everything they had said? And what were the publishers of the book thinking?

Original Sin is an exercise in folly and hypocrisy. It is another nail in the coffin of the legacy media and another blow to the too-clever class. In this, it surprises no one.

Proof, if any was needed, that Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS) knows no borders comes in the form of What Trump’s Second Term Means for Australia: The Shocking Consequences for Us and the World. Wolpe is a Senior Fellow at the United States Studies Centre at the University of Sydney and has a long trail of left-wing credentials. He is utterly convinced that Trump indicates the end of civilisation.

This book is actually a revised version of an earlier work, Trump’s Australia, which also predicted dire things. The anticipated apocalypse did not appear but Wolpe charges forward undeterred. He seems amazed that Trump, in his second term, is implementing the economic and trade policies that he said he would implement, and that he would put his country’s interests first. Newsflash, Bruce: Trump was elected as President of the United States. Not the world, not Europe, and certainly not Australia.

Wolpe argues that Australia should, as a bulwark against Trumpism, strengthen its role in international organisations and its treaty arrangements. Not in itself a bad idea, although doing so simply to spite Bad Orange Man seems rather pointless. Wolpe emerges as a defender of the geopolitical status quo, pining for the world as it existed before 2016.

He suggests that Australia should re-consider its long-standing relationship with the United States because… well, it is not clear why. Because Trump is President, presumably. He foresees Trump cancelling elections, declaring martial law and establishing concentration camps. And so on.

Perhaps Wolpe has seen too many bad sci-fi movies. The book would almost be entertaining, except that Wolpe takes it all Very Seriously. That, unfortunately, is the nature of TDS.