CNN’s Jake Tapper has said an alleged “cover-up” of former president Joe Biden’s declining mental faculties in his final year in power may be “worse than Watergate”.
Tapper made the claims during an interview on Piers Morgan Uncensored on Monday about his new book Original Sin, co-authored with Axios journalist Alex Thompson.
Morgan read aloud a passage stating: “Joe Biden is not Richard Nixon, and the hiding and cover-up of his deterioration is not Watergate” before adding: “I am not entirely sure I agree, Jake, with that conclusion”.
His guest responded: “It is a scandal. It is without question – and maybe even worse than Watergate in some ways because Richard Nixon was in control of his faculties when he was not drinking.”
Tapper went on to explain that he and Thompson had included the disclaimer after quoting Watergate prosecutor Archibald Cox, who had told them “how powerful the presidency is and how presidents get surrounded by people who have a vested interest in keeping that president propped up.”
Donald Trump and his allies had long claimed that Biden – 77 when he won the 2020 election and now 82 – was too old to serve a second term and was suffering from cognitive decline.
While Democrats angrily rejected that suggestion, the narrative changed dramatically last June after Biden endured a torrid evening during a live televised debate against Trump, an event moderated by Tapper and colleague Dana Bash.
After a month of intense pressure on the president to consider dropping out of the election race, he finally did so, making way for his deputy Kamala Harris, who went on to lose to Trump in November.
Tapper and Thompson have faced criticism over their book, notably from Jon Stewart of The Daily Show, who argued they should have presented their findings earlier.
Its publicity push has also been complicated by Biden’s recent announcement that he is battling prostate cancer.
But Tapper has defended the project by insisting that he and his co-author had every reason to trust their White House sources and took their reassurances that the president was perfectly well at face value.
“Knowing what I know now, obviously I feel tremendous humility about my coverage,” Tapper told Megyn Kelly on her SiriusXM radio show last week, also admitting that “conservative media was correct” in its handling of the Biden story at the time.
He added: “There should be a lot of soul-searching not just among me but among the legacy media to begin with – all of us – for how this was covered or not covered sufficiently. I wish I could do differently.”
He repeated that sentiment during his interview with Morgan, who asked him whether he felt he owed the American public an apology.
“I feel like I owe the American people an acknowledgement that I wish I had covered the story better,” Tapper answered.
Among the revelations in Original Sin are claims that the former president’s aides discussed the possibility of putting him in a wheelchair, that Biden failed to recognize the Hollywood star George Clooney at a fundraiser and wanted to testify at his troubled son Hunter Biden’s trial and that Harris’s advisers believed he “f***ed” her campaign.
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