‘I Look Back on It With Humility’: Jake Tapper Says He Covered Biden’s Cognitive Issues, But Admits ‘Not Enough’
CNN’s Jake Tapper admitted Wednesday morning that he looks back at his coverage of former President Joe Biden’s apparent cognitive decline with “humility,” noting that while he did cover it, it was “not enough.”
Tapper is promoting his new book, Original Sin, which he co-wrote with Axios’s Alex Thompson. The book is about Biden’s decision to run for reelection and a White House cover-up to keep the damning information about his condition out of the public eye.
Earlier this week, anecdotes from the book shared with various news outlets resulted in a number of bombshell reports, including ones about Biden not recognizing actor George Clooney, and White House staffers planning for Biden’s need for a wheelchair due to a degenerative condition in his spine.
Biden’s age had long been an issue in conservative media, who insisted he was too old to run the country as he ran for office in 2020. That may or may not be true, but Biden’s sharpness and ability to communicate effectively became notably worse, particularly towards the end of his administration, perhaps starting in 2023.
A number of conservative television hosts have gone out of their way to mock Tapper’s book, citing an interview he conducted with Lara Trump in 2020 in which she criticized Biden’s ability to speak clearly, which Tapper explained by citing Biden’s struggles with a stutter. Again, Biden’s ability to communicate has long been an Achilles heel, and using a clip from 2020 isn’t exactly hard evidence of Tapper being a hypocrite (not that his critics care.)
CNN colleague and morning anchor John Berman brought this up Wednesday morning, and asked Tapper what he thought of conservatives “criticizing you and the media in general for how President Biden was covered during his administration?”
“I think some of the criticism is fair, to be honest,” Tapper answered candidly. “Of me, certainly. I’m not going to speak for anybody else, but knowing then what I know now, I look back at my coverage during the Biden years — and I did cover some of these issues, but not enough. I look back on it with humility.”
Tapper continued:
Look, what we learned through our reporting is that starting in around 2019, 2020, there were two Bidens. There was a Biden that was perfectly workable, serviceable, seemed fine. And then there was a non-functioning one that couldn’t come up with names of top aides, that would lose his train of thought to an alarming degree. And that non-functioning Biden reared his head increasingly over and over. It really seemed to exacerbate and get much worse in 2023, 2024.
And what Alex and I, Alex Thompson and I were able to uncover through this reporting, almost all with just Democratic insiders and operatives, and almost all of which only happened after the election because they wouldn’t be candid until after the election. What we learned stunned us, shocked us.
And look, while it was very important, and I’m not dismissing the coverage of Biden tripping on stage or falling off his bike, that was obviously indicative of something serious that was going on. I think what we learned about the non-functioning Biden rearing his head increasingly, not being able to come up with the name of George Clooney. Not being able to come up with the name of top aides in the White House. I think that really reveals something even more significant, something even more disturbing about a President, that was not what we, American people, should expect and be able to demand, which is somebody who is there with it 24/7, there for the 2 a.m. emergency phone call in the middle of the night.
Penguin Press, the book’s publisher, released a video montage of examples of Tapper and Thompson openly questioning Biden’s cognitive ability through his administration, but most notably in the later years.
Watch above via CNN.
