By In a blistering rebuke aired Sunday on CNN’s State of the Union, former Obama adviser Van Jones accused President Biden’s closest aides of deliberately concealing his physical and mental deterioration from the American public during the 2024 campaign. Calling the alleged cover-up “a crime against this republic,” Jones said the deception not only misled voters but severely damaged the Democratic Party—contributing to what he called a “self-inflicted collapse” in last year’s elections.
The remarks came in response to revelations from the forthcoming book Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again, co-authored by CNN anchor Jake Tapper and Axios reporter Alex Thompson. The book reportedly details how top Biden loyalists, including longtime adviser Mike Donilon, kept the extent of the president’s decline from senior party leaders and the press—even as warning signs mounted.
Van Jones on the Biden cover-up: “There are people who knew and said nothing. And that is a crime against this republic. And I think the Democrats are going to pay for a long time.” pic.twitter.com/sxNYKBGmBX
— Thomas Sowell Quotes (@ThomasSowell) May 19, 2025
“I was shocked,” Jones told CNN’s “State of the Union” about the 46th president’s decline. “I love Joe Biden. I got a chance to work with him when I was part of the Obama administration. I loved him more every day. I was shocked to see his condition when he came out, and so was the world.”
The Democratic pundit, who previously worked as a special adviser for green jobs in the Obama administration, harked back to his despondent reaction to Biden’s fumbling debate performance against President Trump last June.
“That wasn’t the first time he was in that condition,” Jones added. “The book makes it very, very clear there are people who knew and said nothing. And that is a crime against this republic. I think the Democrats are going to pay for a long time for being a part of what is now being revealed to be a massive cover-up.”
On Sunday, Jones said that Dems need to do deeper soul-searching and confront hard truths about why they lost in 2024. He compared current conditions to the Dems’ defeat in 2004, noted The New York Post.
“It took 3.5 years before Barack Obama emerged with a message. What did we do in the meantime?” Jones said about former President George W. Bush’s 2004 victory. ” We looked inside. Donors got reorganized.”
The June 2024 debate between Biden and Donald Trump, widely seen as a decisive blow to Biden’s campaign, featured the president struggling to finish sentences, lose his train of thought, and respond coherently. According to Original Sin, multiple aides recognized Biden’s visible decline in private, but opted to “ride it out” rather than confront the implications. Jones called that decision “a betrayal of the American people,” warning that the Democrats would face the fallout “for years.”
Fueling the fire, Biden himself resurfaced earlier this month on ABC’s The View, insisting he could have beaten Trump in a rematch had he not stepped aside.
According to Axelrod, internal party modeling in mid-2024 showed Biden with less than a 5% chance of winning. “I think that’s preposterous,” Axelrod said. “He’s being told that by Mike Donilon, his top political aide. I think [Donilon] is just so tied to Biden emotionally that he could not accept the truth.”
The Democratic effort to conceal President Biden’s cognitive decline—dismissing legitimate concerns as “cheap fakes” and even misrepresenting a credible Justice Department Special Counsel Robert Hur’s interview—has exposed a corrupt liberal apparatus increasingly divorced from reality.
Over the weekend, Axios obtained a recording between Hur and Biden in which the former president clearly was “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”
This is bad. Robert Hur tape of Biden drops. Joe Biden didn't know when his son died. He didn't know when Trump got elected or when he, Biden, left office with Obama. pic.twitter.com/bbSwCp25kB
— John Matrixx (@RealJohnMatrixx) May 17, 2025
As the Democratic Party regroups ahead of the 2026 midterms, pressure is mounting for a top-to-bottom overhaul of its leadership and campaign apparatus. Jones closed his remarks with a warning: “If we don’t confront the truth now, we won’t get another chance.”
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