Meghan McCain compared CNN anchor Jake Tapper’s new account of former President Joe Biden‘s mental decline to O.J. Simpson’s problematic book, If I Did It.
On Thursday’s episode of Next Up with Mark Halperin, Halperin asked McCain about Tapper’s “credibility in writing a book exposing the cover-up about what happened with Joe Biden’s mental acuity and decline.”
McCain, as some on the Right have done following the publication of Tapper and Alex Thompson’s Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again, accused Tapper of contributing to the public’s general lack of knowledge of Biden’s condition.
“When I saw that Jake Tapper… was the co-writer, I literally—I jokingly told my friend, ‘It’s like O.J. Simpson’s If I Did It book,’” McCain recalled. “I thought it was ridiculous and, quite frankly, I think it’s journalistic malfeasance.”
“And he’s kind of dancing a little bit right now, saying that he should have had more humility in his reporting and that he should have known better,” she continued. “But there’s hundreds if not thousands of reporters who did cover the story the right way, including you, and there’s millions and millions of Americans who saw what he was unable to see.”
Tapper, who co-anchored Original Sin with Axios’ Thompson, responded Thursday to journalist Glenn Greenwald claiming he didn’t properly cover the topic.
“Glenn Greenwald did an entire segment based on false attacks that could’ve been fact-checked in seconds,” a representative for the CNN anchor told The Daily Beast.
Thompson also defended his co-anchor earlier this week.
“The truth is both Jake and I were covering this,” he wrote on X in response to one critic.
As their book has garnered attention—and criticism—both Tapper and Thompson have reportedly hired a crisis communications expert.
That may come in handy due to how McCain linked Tapper and Simpson.
Simpson, who was controversially found not guilty of murdering ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend, Ron Goldman, nevertheless saw it fitting to write If I Did It. The book, which was cancelled shortly after its publication was announced in 2006. Though copies of the original cover and copy leaked online, the rights to the novel were handed over to Goldman’s father, Fred Goldman, who allowed it to be published under a new title, If I Did It: Confessions of the Killer, and with additional commentary. The book included some details about the murders, which Simpson claimed were fictional.
Around the time of the book’s release, Simpson participated in a Fox television interview which ultimately damaged his reputation even more given that he also chose to describe the murderers—had he committed them.
Two years after the murder trial, Simpson was found civilly liable for the deaths of Brown and Goldman. The former NFL running back died from cancer on April 10, 2024.
