Jake Tapper faces scrutiny ahead of his book on Biden cover-up

The cognitive decline of former President Joe Biden has been described as one of the biggest cover-ups in American history. Now, one journalist who claims to be getting to the bottom of the scandal in a new book is facing criticism for his participation in it.

CNN anchor Jake Tapper has co-authored a new book, “Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again,” set to be released next week. 

“As viewers of ‘The Lead’ know, I’ve been covering the concerns about President Biden’s age and health for years,” Tapper told CNN viewers when announcing the book in February. “I literally asked him about it in October 2022, and we’ve challenged Democrats and White House officials about it.”

Conservative critics have taken aim at Tapper since the announcement, alleging he was part of the cover-up and “trying to re-write history” with his book.  

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The book’s co-author is Alex Thompson, an Axios correspondent who made a name for himself as one of the few members of the legacy media whose reporting scratched the surface of Biden’s mental acuity long before the now-infamous CNN presidential debate (which Tapper co-moderated) that led to the president’s ouster from the 2024 race. 

Concerns over Biden’s age and stamina go as far back as 2019 as he ran in the Democratic primary. The subject wasn’t just raised by conservatives at the time, it was used as a cudgel by Democratic rivals Julián Castro and Cory Booker, who both cast doubt on the former VP’s sharpness. 

Once Biden clinched the nomination in 2020 during the COVID pandemic, he ran what many dubbed the “basement campaign,” a name meant to signify Biden’s limited public appearances on the campaign trail. Biden frequently went viral for incoherent word jumbles during various events. His campaign repeatedly claimed that his various verbal stumbles stemmed from Biden’s lifelong battle of overcoming a stutter.

In October 2020, Tapper touted the Biden talking point, even showing a clip from the DNC convention of a 13-year-old Biden supporter with a severe stutter who turned to the Democratic nominee for inspiration, during a tense exchange with then-Trump 2020 campaign advisor Lara Trump (now a host), who drew attention to Biden’s cognitive decline at a campaign event. 

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“How do you think it makes little kids with stutters feel when they see you make a comment like that?” Tapper asked indignantly after showing a clip of Lara Trump commenting on Biden struggling for words. 

“First and foremost, I had no idea that Joe Biden ever suffered from a stutter,” Lara Trump responded. “I think what we see on stage with Joe Biden, Jake, is very clearly a cognitive decline-“

“Ok,” Tapper quickly interrupted while talking over her. “It’s so amazing to me- a ‘cognitive decline.’ I think you were mocking his stutter. Yeah. I think you were mocking his stutter and I think you have absolutely no standing to diagnose somebody’s cognitive decline. I would think somebody in the Trump family would be more sensitive to people who do not have medical licenses diagnosing politicians from afar.”

After Lara Trump insisted Biden’s cognitive decline was “very concerning,” Tapper cut the interview short.

“Thank you, Lara. I’m sure it’s from a place of concern. We all believe that,” Tapper sarcastically told her before ending the interview. 

Tapper did press Biden in a September 2020 interview about whether he would pledge to be transparent about his health if elected, to which Biden firmly responded yes.

Tapper accused then-Trump campaign adviser Lara Trump of mocking Biden’s “stutter” after she sounded the alarm about his cognitive decline in a heated Oct. 2020 interview exchange. (Screenshot/CNN)

Digital reviewed Grabien transcript search results of Tapper’s coverage of Biden’s decline throughout his presidency.

His most aggressive coverage took place in February 2024 in the wake of Biden’s press conference responding in outrage to the Hur report. Special Counsel Robert Hur declined to bring charges against Biden in the classified documents case because he determined a jury would not convict someone perceived as an “elderly man with a poor memory,” based on his interview with investigators. 

In a tense exchange with former Biden communications director Kate Bedingfield, Tapper hammered Biden for mixing up the presidents of Mexico and Egypt in the press conference as well as confusing French President Emmanuel Macron with the late French President Francois Mitterrand, who had been dead for nearly 30 years, earlier in the week. 

“It’s about faculty and memory and whether or not somebody [voters] perceive is competent,” Tapper said as Bedingfield shrugged off the leader mix-ups. 

Tapper also challenged then-Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., over his party’s outrage towards Hur, asking him what the special counsel said about Biden that wasn’t accurate.

Shortly after the release of the Hur report, Tapper drew attention to the decision by the Biden White House to skip the traditional pre-Super Bowl interview two years in a row.

“Isn’t the White House signaling with that decision, like, ‘We’re afraid of putting him out there?'” Tapper asked during a panel discussion. 

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As he alluded to in his book announcement, Tapper did broach the subject of Biden’s age in an October 2022 interview with the president, albeit ever so gently. 

“You’re about to turn 80 next month. Happy birthday ahead of time,” Tapper told Biden. “Whenever anyone raises concerns about your age- you’re the oldest president in the history of the United States- you always say, ‘Watch me.’ Voters have been watching you. Democratic voters approve of the job you’re doing. Democratic voters overwhelmingly like you, but one poll shows that almost two-thirds of Democratic voters want a new nominee in 2024 and the top reason they gave was your age. So what’s your message to Democrats who like you, who like what you’ve done but are concerned about your age and the demands of the job?”

Notably, Tapper offered Biden an assist during his response to the question when the president was at a loss for words. 

“We’ve had, you know, dealing with, you know, making sure that veterans get compensated for the, for-” Biden struggled to finish his thought.

“Burn pits,” Tapper chimed in.

“The burn pits,” Biden repeated before listing other things on his agenda. 

CNN’s Jake Tapper gently broached the subject of then-President Joe Biden’s age during an October 2022 interview. (Screenshot/CNN)

Tapper, however, pumped the brakes on covering Biden’s cognitive decline in the heat of the 2024 election cycle. 

In March 2024, following Biden’s high-energy State of the Union address filled with shouting and attacking Republicans, Tapper took a swipe at the president’s conservative critics who previously accused him of being “weak” and “senile.”

“He certainly seemed like an 81-year-old, but he didn’t seem incapable of doing the job,” Tapper told his panel before dismissing “Weekend at Bernie’s” comparisons from the right. 

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Later in the year, Biden had a string of incidents that fueled questions about his acuity, like when he stepped away from other world leaders at the G-7 Summit to give a thumbs up to parachutists off-camera, prompting Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni to corral him back to the group for a photo-op. 

There was also when Biden appeared frozen as others around him danced and swayed to a concert held on the White House lawn commemorating Juneteenth and when he stood still at his star-studded LA fundraiser until former President Obama grabbed his wrist and guided him off the stage with his hand behind Biden’s back. Biden’s White House and allies in the media insisted each of the viral moments, which occurred within the span of a few days in June 2024, were “cheap fakes.”

The CNN anchor avoided covering all three incidents, according to transcripts. In fact, it wasn’t until after George Clooney wrote a scathing New York Times op-ed about Biden’s behavior at the LA fundraiser and urged the president to step aside that Tapper acknowledged the freezing incident.

“This was the same event, we should note, that Republicans later circulated cellphone video that seemed to show President Biden freezing on stage for about seven seconds before being led offstage by former President Obama,” Tapper told viewers July 10. 

Tapper made no mention of President Biden’s viral moments his defenders called “cheap fakes” in the weeks leading up to the CNN debate. (Getty Images)

Tapper similarly ignored Biden’s “Where’s Jackie?” gaffe from September 2022 when he called out for the late Rep. Jackie Walorski, R-Ind., at an event honoring her memory after she died in a tragic car accident weeks prior. 

Fast-forward to September 2023, when Tapper asserted that Biden was mentally “sharp” while discussing Nikki Haley demanding cognitive tests for older politicians, suggesting that questions swirling around the president were only about whether he was “physically” able to do the job. 

The CNN anchor also has a mixed record of putting a spotlight on Biden’s physical stumbles. His program covered Biden tripping up the stairs of Air Force One in March 2021, and his nasty spill at the June 2023 Air Force Academy commencement ceremony, but avoided the viral moment when Biden fell from his bike in June 2022. 

In June 2024, weeks before the debate that exposed Biden’s cognitive decline on the world stage, Tapper addressed the Wall Street Journal’s bombshell report on Biden showing “signs of slipping,” which at the time faced intense backlash from Democrats and the liberal media. Tapper kept his focus on the White House’s aggressive response to the “false” claims made in the report and repeatedly told viewers the report was “mostly based on observations of Republicans.” He had a top Biden surrogate, Sen. Chris Coons, D-Delaware, on to defend the president and attempt to discredit the reporting as agenda-driven.

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Earlier this month, Tapper’s book publisher Penguin Press released a montage, perhaps to combat critics who accused the CNN anchor of not covering Biden’s cognitive decline, of clips showing him and Thompson discussing the now-former president’s age on-air. Notably, the vast majority of Tapper’s comments featured in the video pertained to polls showing Americans believed Biden was too old to seek a second term.

While promoting his book on CNN, Tapper suggested that Biden’s White House was solely responsible for the cover-up versus Democrats and the media broadly. 

“Well, Alex Thompson and I were on the case, as were lots of other reporters trying to figure out what was going on behind the scenes. But the bottom line is the White House was lying, not only to the press, not only to the public, but they were lying to members of their own Cabinet, they were lying to White House staffers, they were lying to Democratic members of Congress, to donors about how bad things had gotten,” Tapper said Tuesday, adding that their Democratic sources refused to speak candidly about Biden until after the 2024 election. 

CNN’s Jake Tapper suggested the Biden White House was solely responsible for the cognitive decline cover-up, insisting staffers “lied” to the media and fellow Democrats. (Getty Images)

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A spokesperson for CNN strongly pushed back at the notion that Tapper offered insufficient coverage of the Biden scandal before the debate.

“Jake Tapper is a veteran journalist whose tenacious and thorough reporting has held those in power to account on both sides of the aisle for decades,” the spokesperson told Digital. “He fairly and accurately covered Senator, Vice President and President Biden through years of dogged Washington reporting, hitting every high and low of the former president’s political career. From the campaign in 2020 to 2024 when he dropped out, Jake raised concerns about President Biden’s mental stamina on his shows, questioned Biden officials directly about his health on air, and consistently encouraged open discussion and debate on the issue.” 

“Despite bad faith allegations otherwise, the record clearly shows Jake covered the Clooney op-ed, the Hur report, and Biden physical limitations. As noted, Jake also covered Biden’s physical falls multiple times, and he happened to be on assignment in Chicago off air the day after his bike fall in June 2022,” the spokesperson added.