Right-wing pundit Megyn Kelly on Tuesday grilled CNN anchor Jake Tapper over what she claimed was his role in covering up former President Joe Biden’s mental decline while in office.
His new book, Original Sin, covers the topic extensively and reveals how Biden’s inner circle helped to conceal his deteriorating health.
Kelly pressed the CNN anchor on his coverage of Biden’s presidency, noting how he is being criticized for complaining about a cover-up of Biden’s mental acuity in his book, even though this has been “something that right-wing pundits, the right wing in general, and independent media all saw and reported on.”
“It wasn’t a mystery, even to left-wing reporters. They weren’t fools, but they chose blindness over honest reporting,” she claimed.
In response, Tapper admitted to making certain oversights about Biden’s condition, but stood by his reporting generally.
The CNN star added that he only later discovered that insiders “justified” covering up Biden’s condition during the 2016 election “by saying that Donald Trump was an existential threat, and only Joe Biden could defeat him.”
“That, in their minds, justified everything,” he said.
Biden revealed Sunday that he was diagnosed with an “aggressive form” of prostate cancer that had spread to his bones, sparking another round of wild speculation that there had been a cover-up of the president‘s condition.
Kelly continued to pressure Tapper, accusing him of seemingly “running cover for the president” during his presidency by deliberately avoiding asking him certain questions in regards to his slurred speech, the way he occasionally lost his train of thought, and his multiple tumbles.
She brought up an incident in 2022, when Biden called out for the deceased Indiana congresswoman Jackie Walorski at the White House Conference on Hunger, Nutrition, and Health, asking the crowd: “Where’s Jackie?”
Walorski had passed away in a car crash a few weeks prior, and a memorial video tribute to her was played moments before Biden’s slip-up. He had also previously ordered that the White House flags be flown at half-staff in her honor.
“There is a way of pressing a man like that on the actual infirmities to bring it home to him and to the audience and you didn’t do it,” Kelly said.
“That‘s correct, I didn’t,” Tapper replied.
Yet, he did note that he questioned Biden about concerns people had about his age, to which the former president replied: “Watch me.”
“And I said, they’re watching you and they are concerned that you are too old for this job,” Tapper said.
He also stated that he feels “humility” about his coverage of Biden, admitting that he didn’t pressure him enough on his visible health issues.
The pair discussed Tapper’s interview with Lara Trump in 2020, when he accused her of mocking Biden’s stutter when she claimed it showed his deteriorating health.
“I think you were mocking his stutter and I think you have absolutely no standing to diagnose somebody’s cognitive decline,” Tapper told Trump in the interview.
He admitted to Kelly that Trump “saw something” that he did not at the time, and he “100 percent” owns that.
Yet Kelly said that she thinks Tapper’s “visceral reaction” to Trump was “because you didn’t want to hear it.”
She went on to state that CNN had their own connections in Biden’s White House, but didn’t use them to further investigate Biden’s condition.
“You’ve been in Washington 30 years Jake, you and CNN have White House connections,” she told him.
“But there was no effort, none, to get to the bottom of this,” she said, accusing them of covering up Biden’s worsening health. “And now for you guys to write this book like ‘there was a cover up’ … There was an attempted cover up, and it could only ever work if you allowed it.”
