Jake Tapper admits he’s been ‘humbled’ after shutting down Lara Trump’s insistence Joe Biden was senile during an infamous interview in 2020.
During an appearance on Megyn Kelly’s show on SiriusXM, Tapper acknowledged his misjudgment regarding Biden’s health issues while discussing his recent exposé on the topic.
As a well-known CNN anchor leading the network’s Washington reporting, Tapper expressed, “With the knowledge I have now, I feel a great sense of humility about how I covered those events.”
He admitted, “Reflecting on the interview with Lara Trump, she noticed something I didn’t see at the time, and I completely accept that,” addressing the challenging conversation that aired on State of the Union back in 2020.
In it, Tapper shamed Trump’s daughter-in-law for an interview she did days before, where she had pointed to Biden’s tendency to stutter during a conversation about the then-candidate’s ‘cognitive decline’.
‘I did ask Joe Biden to be transparent about his health records in an interview in 2020,’ Tapper told a persistent Kelly this time around.
‘But then he wasn’t,’ she pointed out.
‘No, he wasn’t transparent at all,’ Tapper quickly admitted – before repeatedly pointing to other instances of reporting he framed as more dutiful.
Megyn Kelly clashed with CNN star Jake Tapper on Tuesday after he admitted being complicit in the cover-up over Joe Biden’s declining abilities
‘He promised you that he would be transparent about his health records and then he wasn’t,’ Kelly first said, poking holes in the anchor-turned-author’s argument.
‘And when you sat with him again… you didn’t ask him about it,’ she said, referring to Tapper’s second sitdown with Biden in October 2022.
‘You didn’t follow up on the fact that he was falling up the stairs that he was losing his train of thought regularly,’ Kelly recounted, before cycling through a slew of headlines that seem telling in hindsight.
‘That he was slurring, that he was incomprehensible, that he was getting lost on the White House lawn.’
‘You sat right across from him and you asked none of that. Notwithstanding the fact that he had promised you he would be fully transparent about his health issues.’
Following a brief pause, Tapper told Kelly she was correct – before bringing up how he did ask the then-president about his age and the fact that Americans were ‘concerned’ about it.
Kelly also clashed with Tapper about his inability to confront the former president about his infirmity during a White House press conference.
Devastatingly, Tapper also spoke of how there were two Joe Bidens during his time in office – a ‘functioning Biden’ and a ‘non-functioning Biden.
The CNN host said the collapse of a plea deal offered to Biden’s son Hunter over gun charges in 2023 dramatically worsened the 82 year-old’s mental state.
‘That Laura Trump interview for example, she saw some she saw something that I did not see at the time 100 percent and I own that,’ Tapper said, referring to the tense interview with Trump’s daughter-in-law aired on State of the Union in 2020
Tapper’s new book Original Sin, written with fellow journalist Alex Thompson, details the industrial scale of the cover-up surrounding Biden’s health.
The ruse was finally blown during a disastrous presidential debate against Donald Trump in June 2024, which later saw Biden drop out of the race.
On Sunday, the former president announced he has an aggressive form of prostate cancer.
Developing story, check back for updates…
