CNN anchor Jake Tapper has found himself in the hot seat after co-authoring a book that claims the Biden administration and its allies orchestrated a cover-up of President Joe Biden’s cognitive decline. Tapper, who had previously dismissed concerns about Biden’s age and cognitive abilities, is now revealing, through his book Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again, that there was indeed a deliberate effort to downplay the president’s condition. This shift in Tapper’s narrative is raising eyebrows and prompting criticism from both sides of the political spectrum.
In 2020, when Lara Trump pointed out Biden’s potential signs of cognitive decline, Tapper sharply rebuked her, accusing her of unfairly exploiting Biden’s speech impediment and stuttering. “How do you think it makes little kids with stutters feel when they see you make a comment like that?” Tapper had questioned during a tense interview. In subsequent years, Tapper continued to brush off concerns about Biden’s age, attributing his verbal gaffes and physical stumbles to his stutter, rather than cognitive decline.
Fast forward to the present day, and Tapper is now co-authoring a book that explicitly states Biden’s mental faculties were in a clear state of decline for years. In Original Sin, Tapper and Axios correspondent Alex Thompson claim that Biden’s family, aides, and even the president himself were aware of the cognitive issues but chose to hide them from the public, pushing him to run for re-election despite his deteriorating health.
The question on many minds is: why didn’t Tapper speak out earlier, especially when his own reporting could have revealed the truth behind Biden’s condition before it became so glaringly obvious? As several critics have pointed out, Tapper had access to vital information over the past few years, yet it wasn’t until the Biden administration was winding down that Tapper decided to write a book exposing what he now refers to as a “cover-up.”
Conservative commentators, including Sean Spicer and Collin Rugg, were quick to criticize Tapper for taking so long to reveal the apparent cover-up. “Tapper could’ve outed the Biden mental incapacity cover-up at any time over the last four years,” said Sean Davis, a conservative writer, on X (formerly Twitter). “But he didn’t. He waited until Biden was gone before trying to get rich for disclosing facts he claimed were lies the whole time Biden was in office.”
Tapper, a prominent CNN anchor with a large audience, had ample opportunity to scrutinize the president’s health throughout Biden’s tenure. His decision to withhold judgment on Biden’s cognitive decline and instead echo the administration’s narrative about Biden’s “stutter” is difficult to reconcile with his new book, especially since he hasn’t taken accountability for his actions. One could easily argue that this sudden shift from passive observer to outspoken critic is not a noble quest for truth, but rather a convenient way to capitalize on a political moment after the fact.
In his book, Tapper and Thompson state that Biden’s decision to run for re-election was “shockingly narcissistic, self-delusional, and reckless,” claiming it was part of a larger public deception. They argue that Biden’s candidacy was driven by a desperate belief that he was the only one who could defeat Donald Trump, even as his mental faculties were in decline.
While this may be a compelling narrative for a book, the timing of Tapper’s revelations raises serious questions about his journalistic integrity. As many critics have pointed out, Tapper and CNN had the opportunity to address these issues head-on during the 2020 and 2024 election cycles, as well as during his administration.
The reality is that Tapper and others in the mainstream media were complicit in minimizing or outright dismissing concerns about Biden’s age and health. They were quick to label those raising alarms as politically motivated or even cruel, using Biden’s “speech impediment” as a shield against legitimate questions. By failing to give these concerns the weight they deserved, they allowed the public to be misled about the president’s condition, only to now turn around and profit from the very issue they ignored for years.
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Money Grab
Great article.