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Authors' Note

Our only agenda is to present the disturbing reality of what happened in the White House and the Democratic presidential campaign in 2023– 2024, as told to us by approximately two hundred people, including lawmakers and White House and campaign insiders, some of whom may never acknowledge speaking to us but all of whom know the truth within these pages. Most of the information laid out in this book was shared with us after the election of 2024, when officials and aides felt considerably freer to talk. There are very few people named herein with whom we didn’t speak.

Our most important sources were Democrats inside and outside the White House who were grappling with how so many of them had been so focused on convincing voters that Donald Trump was a true existential threat to the nation that they put blinders on, participating in a charade that delivered the election directly into Trump’s hands.

Some spoke to us with regret that they hadn’t done more, or that they had waited so long to talk to the press about what was going on behind the scenes. Many were angry and felt deeply betrayed, not just by Biden but by his inner circle of advisers, his allies, and his family. They had seen bad moments behind the scenes but had been assured all was well. And then came the debate.

Readers who are convinced that Joe Biden was little more than a husk from the very beginning of his presidency, barely capable of stringing two sentences together, will not find support for that view here. Nor will this book satisfy those seeking comfort that he was, through to the end, unaddled and perfectly capable of being president twenty‑four seven; that his rumored deterioration was all right‑wing propaganda. This is also false. As Biden’s presidency ended, it was difficult to find many top Democrats outside his immediate circle of family and closest aides who thought he could ably serve a second four‑year term.

This book is not an exoneration of the candidacy or presidencies of Biden’s opponent, Donald Trump. Journalism about Biden does not excuse or normalize any actions and statements by anyone else, in‑ cluding the forty‑fifth and now forty‑seventh president. Indeed, for those who tried to justify the behavior described here because of the threat of a second Trump term, those fears should have shocked them into reality, not away from it.

The lessons from this book go beyond one man and one political party. They speak to more universal questions about cognitive disso‑ nance, groupthink, courage, cowardice, and patriotism.

George Orwell once wrote that “we are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue, and then, when we are finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as to show that we were right. Intellectually, it is possible to carry on this process for an indefinite time: the only check on it is that sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality, usually on a battlefield.”

He was writing about World War II, but he could have been writing about any time, any era. “The Germans and the Japanese lost the war quite largely because their rulers were unable to see facts which were plain to any dispassionate eye,” Orwell went on. “To see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle.”

Here is what was in front of our noses.

—Jake and Alex