Jake Tapper Admits ‘Conservative Media Was Right’ About Biden During Frank Megyn Kelly Interview
CNN anchor Jake Tapper conceded on Tuesday that “conservative media was right” about former President Joe Biden’s declining health and that he and the rest of the “legacy media” needed to engage in “a lot of soul-searching” about their coverage of Biden’s presidency.
During an appearance on The Megyn Kelly Show, Tapper was grilled by host Megyn Kelly about his own failure to cover signs of Biden’s declining health and cognitive acuity during the 2024 presidential election.
“When we got to leading up to the debate, which you anchored, that June 27 debate, 2024, there was a ton of news leading into that debate and that month, and we looked back at your coverage and found that you ignored it,” said Kelly, adding:
Not only did you ignore the Jackie Walorski moment when you had him 13 days later, but you ignored the freeze-up that he had at the Juneteenth celebration. You ignored what happened at the G7 when he wandered off and Giorgia Meloni, prime minister of Italy, had to go find him. You ignored the freeze-up at the George Clooney LA fundraiser. You didn’t cover it. You only covered it after the debate, after George Clooney wrote his op-ed.
Jake, nobody made you do that. Your network at every turn was telling us those were, quote, “cheap fakes,” and you were not combatting that narrative. CNN was actively misleading us on what our very eyes were showing us. That’s the truth, that’s the record.
Tapper replied, “I will acknowledge that after I was named moderator, co-moderator of the debate, I tried to make sure that my coverage was fairly vanilla, both about Trump and about Biden, because I just wanted to get to the debate.”
He then said he was “frankly, surprised that either one of them agreed to have me as a moderator because both sides disliked me so much,” before adding:
But yeah, I remember that moment, and I remember that moment, the glitch at the immigration event, not getting much attention outside of conservative media at all. And Alex and I are here to say that conservative media was right and conservative media was correct, and that there should be a lot of soul-searching, not just among me, but among the legacy media to begin with, all of us, for how this was covered or not covered sufficiently. 100%. So, I mean, I’m not here to defend coverage that I’ve already acknowledged I wish I could do differently.
Tapper also revealed that he apologized to President Donald Trump’s daughter-in-law Lara Trump for being wrong about Biden’s “cognitive decline” and blaming it on Biden’s “stutter.”
Watch above via The Megyn Kelly Show.
