This weekend, I will be reading Jake Tapper and Alex Thomas’s Original Sin, their look at the Biden presidency and how Joe Biden’s (or really, Joe Biden’s aides and family’s) insistence that he run for a second term led to Donald Trump returning to the White House.  Actually, I will be continuing to read it as I started it last night.  So far, it’s an interesting read, even though I think that those who claim that Tapper is a bit too quick to let himself off the hook have got a point.  It’s definitely got me thinking about how many of our elected officials are “all there” and how many of them are just repeating whatever their staff tells them to say and do.

Now, if you feel that you don’t have time to read Tapper and Thompson’s 300-page book, you can always check out the Mockbuster version, Uncharted Fight: The Original Sin Of Biden, The Hubris of Harris, The Trump Comeback, & The Shadow of Project 2025 by — *ahem* — Jonathan Chris Tapper.  This 198 page book, which actually came out a month before Original Sin, basically just takes everything that was leaked about Original Sin and that was included in previous books by Chris Whipple and Jonathan Allen & Amie Parnes and repeats it.  The book was obviously put together quickly to capitalize on the interest around the books that hace been coming out about Biden’s withdrawal and the 2024 election.  There’s no original reporting, beyond the fact that somebody flipped through all of the other books and jotted down their main points.  If I had to guess, I’d say there is no “Jonathan Chris Tapper.”  It’s a grift, one that feels like a uniquely 2025 sort of thing.  The main reason any of these books are being published is to make money so why shouldn’t “Jonathan Chris Tapper” give it a shot?  And, to be honest, Uncharted Fight a quick read that gives you the basics so if you don’t want to spend money on four books about the election, it’s there for you, I guess.  Of course, you could probably just ask one of the many online AI programs to give you a quick summary and get the same information for far less money.  (In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if “Jonathan Chris Tapper” is an AI system.)

(Personally, I went ahead and spent money on Original Sin, Uncharted History, Chris Whipple’s Unchartered, Alex Eistenstadt’s Revenge, and Jonathan Allen’s and Amie Parness’s Fight because I’m a history nerd and I think you can never have enough sources!)