Episode II: The Biden's Strike Back

Cancer Revelation Detonates Tapper’s Plot—Bidens Open Fire on Party Elites

Tapper Tried to Bury Him; Biden’s Inner Circle Now Buries the Party

Friday, May 23rd, 2025: By Walter Curt

Jake Tapper thought he had wrapped the Biden saga with a neat bow. Original Sin, his new behind-the-drapes chronicle of the 46th presidency, landed last Tuesday with all the fanfare a CNN star can command: splashy excerpts, friendly sit-downs, and the promise that America would finally learn why Democrats cratered at the ballot box. Tapper’s verdict is blunt. Joe Biden, hollowed out by age, surrendered the West Wing to a tight “Politburo” of aides—Ron Klain, Anita Dunn, Mike Donilon, a few others—who micromanaged the president, iced Cabinet secretaries, and drove the party over an electoral cliff. End of story, roll credits, cue the next cycle.

Except the credits had barely started when Episode II roared to life.

Forty-eight hours before Original Sin reached bookstores, the world learned that Biden had likely spent much of his term battling stage-four prostate cancer—a disclosure that recast those constant trips to Delaware as possible runs for targeted radiation. The news is more than a medical footnote; it threatens to blow a crater in every Democratic talking point from the Biden term and detonates the premise of Tapper’s book. If the commander-in-chief was under active treatment during Beltway business hours, “Biden fatigue” is no longer a pundit’s cheap meme; it is a clinical fact that invites challenges to every auto-pen order, every piece of legislation, and, crucially, every pardon he signed while recuperating on the beach.

The timing is too perfect to be coincidence. The cancer disclosure reached newsroom inboxes the same week Tapper’s publisher shipped review copies—an unmistakable “kill shot” from a family that felt ambushed by its own tribe. Episode I of the saga was the Democratic rebellion, a slow burn that began the moment pollsters confirmed Donald Trump’s landslide win. Governors, donors, editorial boards—all whispered that Grandpa Joe had to go. Tapper’s book was supposed to be the epilogue, a carefully sculpted narrative that pinned the party’s humiliation on Biden and his palace guard, while sparing the broader progressive establishment.

Episode II flips the script. By outing the late-stage cancer now, Jill and Hunter destroy the moral high ground and lob a legal grenade. If Joe was undergoing radiation as he signed bills or re-entered the Paris climate accord, defense attorneys can argue that he lacked capacity. Scores of White House actions could be hauled into court on competency grounds, leaving the Democratic agenda dangling over a procedural abyss. And whose fault would that be? Not the Bidens, who dutifully trusted staff advice, but the same party grandees and media gatekeepers who insisted the president was “vigorous” whenever reporters peeped too loudly.

Tapper, unintentionally, laid the foundation for that argument. Original Sin fixates on a handful of staffers—it calls them “The Politburo”—but the anecdotes actually expose a deeper rot: a system in which Cabinet chiefs pursued their own fiefdoms because no one was piloting the cockpit. DHS expanded parole authority while State chased green-energy trade deals; Interior rewrote drilling leases while the Pentagon drafted a Ukraine war doctrine on the back of a napkin. Tapper frames the chaos as a staff coup. Read between the lines and you see the opposite: a vacuum of leadership so total that agency heads freelanced without even bothering to check each other’s calendars.

The Bidens are furious that anyone would pin the fiasco solely on them. Don’t forget, Jill felt “personally betrayed” by Democrats for their treatment during the election. Hunter—whom Tapper himself describes as the family’s take-no-prisoners enforcer— would have insisted on fighting back. Dropping the cancer bombshell in prime time served three purposes: it offered a medical explanation for Joe’s visible decline, it scrambled Tapper’s tidy “Politburo” storyline, and it opened the door for courts to question every controversial order Democrats had spent four years celebrating.

No one should be shocked that the president’s younger son is at the center of the drama. Tapper and Hunter have sparred before—violently. During Beau Biden’s final days at Walter Reed, Tapper called Hunter on a blocked line, angling for a bedside exclusive. According to Chris Jackson at Breaker Media, Hunter told Tapper to “go f*** yourself,” later boasting he would have flattened the anchor “if we weren’t in public.” The grudge never cooled. In Original Sin Tapper paints Hunter as a corrosive influence; the new cancer leak returns the insult with interest.

Hunter’s vindictive streak is no secret. What’s new is the strategic depth. By foregrounding cancer, the family reframes every staggering pause in Robert Hur’s leaked interview tapes—the umms, the blank spaces, the groping for Beau’s death date—as symptoms, not senility. Tapper’s book invites pity and a forensic blame game. The Bidens counter with pathos and potential legal havoc. You can almost hear John Williams’ score swelling: The Bidens Strike Back.

The ripple effects are immediate. Congressional Republicans have already called to subpoena Kevin O’Connor, the White House physician who described Biden as “healthy” eight months before the Gleason-9 diagnosis. Legal scholars now debate whether executive orders signed under sedation can be nullified. Progressive commentators who cheered Tapper’s expose confront a new dilemma: attack the Bidens for political timing and they look heartless; ignore the diagnosis and their own book-tour hero loses relevance.

Some Democrats cling to denial, spinning the cancer story as tragic but irrelevant. That’s whistling past a yawning grave. If Biden’s treatment cycles overlapped with decisions on Afghanistan, border parole, and oil-reserve draws, the party cannot claim those policies are sacrosanct. Agency lawyers face months, maybe years, of litigating presidential capacity. Even if half the allegations fizzle, the optics alone drag every 2026 Senate hopeful into the undertow.

Could there be an Episode III? Tapper surely hopes so; best-sellers breed sequels. But the narrative trajectory is grim. A family that just used a terminal illness as political ordnance will not shy from further scorched-earth tactics. Expect Hunter to surface in friendly podcasts, waving banker’s boxes of “context” that challenge Tapper’s sourcing. Jill Biden may pivot to daytime TV, framing herself as the wronged caregiver blindsided by Washington’s cruelty.

No, we probably won’t end with Hunter dancing among Ewoks on the Rehoboth sand dunes. More likely the finale will resemble a darker franchise entry—Revenge of the Normies, perhaps—where every character is damaged, every institution exposed, and the audience walks out wondering who, if anyone, deserves sympathy. What we know today is simple: Tapper’s book was meant to close the Biden file. The cancer leak blew it open wider than ever, and placed the author—by timing, by past feuds, by his own narrative shortcuts—dead center in the biggest cover-up in American history.

In Hollywood terms, the screen just faded to black. The orchestra paused. But instead of credits, we got a snarling, metallic chord and bright yellow text:

EPISODE II — TO BE CONTINUED…

The audience will be back for more. So, apparently, will the Bidens.