Ashley Elizabeth Miller

Timing is a big part of being famous. Timing, luck, nowhere left to fall and curated talent—that’s how it’s done. Mick Jagger said that. Rick Rubin too.

But timing can also lead to one’s downfall.

On this day last year, Donald Trump was on trial in New York City for paying an adult film star, Stormy Daniels, to be quiet about their affair during the run-up to his 2016 election.

“Trump Courtroom Plays Host to Nonstop Spectacle as Prosecution Rests,” reads The Times headline from May 21, 2024.

In nine days, Trump would be convicted on 34 felony counts.

Biden, on the other hand, was still campaigning. He’d just condemned the ICC for its decision to put a warrant out for Israeli officials’ arrest. (A decision we know now was controversial—due to the ICC’s lead prosecutor dodging sexual assault claims, according to reporting by The Wall Street Journal.)

Biden wouldn’t step aside until July 21. This gave Kamala Harris a very short window to run her campaign. Though, let’s be honest, she essentially picked up where Biden left off when it came to policy. There was really no change—just a new figurehead in the lead.

She needed time to win. Biden should have stepped aside earlier. This is what Democrats said after the fact—and now, as the GOP races to pass the president’s “Big Beautiful Bill” before its self-imposed deadline of Memorial Day, the conversation about Biden’s age has curiously become all the rage again.

Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson have been making the media rounds about their new book—Original Sin. I give full credit to them for uncovering, after the fact, that Biden’s advisors were blinded by power and felt their boss could stay in office until the day he died. But was this the right time?

Is the media being honest about what’s important for the country right now, or are we harping on a story that’s easy, about our past president, while our current one looks more and more like a dictator each day?

One man did ring the alarm bell before Biden stepped down last summer—and that man was a silver-haired fox from Hollywood: George Clooney.

Clooney has since spoken out about his decision to write The Times op-ed, detailing how he threw a fundraiser for the president and couldn’t recognize the man he once knew. It caused quite a stir—some Democrats were very angry with the blue-blooded star—but the book says even Obama, at that fundraiser, had concerns.

This is all interesting—sure. And we’d all like an honest president. But the reality of what happened with Biden is this—it happened. We can discuss why this was, but we must admit it happened.

Original Sin would have been a great late summer read for 2025. But was now—as the Big Beautiful Bill goes up for a vote today—the right time to relight this controversy?

To top it all off, Biden has prostate cancer. Some Republicans have accused him of foul play—of not being truthful about his health as president—including Trump and Vance. His sickness—a symptom of timing—is fodder for their hot air.

“We really do need to be honest about whether the former president was capable of doing the job,” said JD Vance… almost sounds as if it could be a quote from Tapper and Thompson’s book.