CNN anchor Jake Tapper is facing blowback for co-authoring a new book about efforts to allegedly cover up former President Joe Biden’s mental decline.
Penguin Press announced Wednesday that Tapper and Axios correspondent Alex Thompson were co-writing a book about what led to the Democratic Party’s 2024 election defeat, with a focus on Biden’s “serious decline.”
In response, several conservatives have resurfaced old remarks in which Tapper defended Biden in the 2020 election cycle. After President Donald Trump’s daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, criticized Biden’s voice for shaking in his campaign speeches, Tapper wrote on Twitter that politics aside, it is “worth reading this remarkable piece about his stutter” with a link to an Atlantic article describing how Biden’s stutter began in boyhood.
CNN declined Newsweek‘s request for comment. Newsweek reached out to Tapper via Penguin Press for comment.
Why It Matters
The devastating losses for the Democrats last year have largely been attributed to Biden’s decision to run for reelection, despite concerns that had swirled around his age. At 82, he would have been the oldest president to be inaugurated again if he had won. After a disastrous debate performance against Donald Trump that sent Democrats panicking over his mental acuity, Biden ultimately bowed out of the race in July, leaving Democrats with just 107 days before the election to find a new nominee and build a winning campaign.
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What To Know
Despite Tapper’s previous defense of Biden, he was among one of the most vocal critics of the president’s decision to seek reelection in the wake of the June 27 presidential debate. Tapper was the co-moderator of the only debate that took place between Biden and Trump last year.
Twelve days before Biden dropped out, Tapper took direct aim at the president and his team, calling Biden and his family in “complete denial” about his health and the state of his campaign.
In a lengthy monologue, Tapper criticized “Democratic elites” for being “late to acknowledge” the age and ability concerns that the public has long had about Biden. At one point, the CNN anchor played a clip of Biden giving an interview to a Philadelphia-based radio station before responding to the president’s gaffe about being proud to be the first Black woman to serve as vice president and calling it “not coherent.”
Tapper also questioned Biden about his age in a 2022 interview, asked voters about the mental sharpness of Biden and Trump in a 2023 segment, asked White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre in 2023 about Biden being too old and pressed Biden’s former White House communications director, Kate Bedingfield, in 2024 about the alleged memory lapses the president had while being interviewed by the Justice Department.
When Biden skipped the presidential Super Bowl interview in February 2024, in the wake of special counsel Robert Hur’s report calling Biden an “elderly man with poor memory,” Tapper asked Democratic Representative Robert Garcia of California what Biden was “afraid of.”
Still, Tapper’s new book announcement drew attacks from conservatives who accused him of “trying to profit” from the “cover-up” that he was “part of.”
What People Are Saying
Jim Verdi, a producer for the popular conservative show The Don Bongino Radio Show, wrote on X, formerly Twitter, on Wednesday: “Is there an entire chapter devoted to your role in the coverup?”
Stephen L. Miller, the conservative host of Versus Media Podcast, tweeted: “Is it just 300 pages of you guys apologizing to the rest of us you labeled cheap fake artists or are you really trying this?”
Joe Dan Gorman, a conservative commentator, replied to Tapper: “You had a ringside seat for the entire ride… and said nothing.”
CNN anchor Jake Tapper, in a statement announcing his new book: “Toni Morrison once said ‘If there’s a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.’ That’s what inspired this book: we wanted to know more about what we all just lived through. More than 200 interviews later, Alex and I have a much better idea. And soon you all will too.”
Penguin Press, the publisher of Tapper’s upcoming book, in a press release: “What you will learn makes President Biden’s decision to run for reelection seem shockingly narcissistic, self-delusional, and reckless — a desperate bet that went bust — and part of a larger act of extended public deception that has few precedents.”
What Happens Next
Tapper’s upcoming book, titled Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again, is set to be released on May 20.
