Megyn Kelly interviewed CNN's Jack Tapper and Axios' Alex Thompson to discuss their new book "Original Sin," detailing former President Joe Biden's mental decline while in office. During the interview, Tapper doged Kely's question on whether or not he was aware of former Biden's condition during his term in the White House.
Kelly asked Tapper about the criticism over him writing the book, given that he'd not reported on the decline from his anchor position at CNN. "Jake, the criticism has been that you're complaining about a cover-up about Joe Biden's mental acuity that failed; that right-wing pundits saw, the right-wing in general saw, that independent media saw and reported on, and that was no mystery even to left-wing and so-called mainstream reporters, who were not fooled but chose willful blindness instead of honest reporting; and that you were part of it. How do you respond?"
He responded, but essentially dodged the question: "It's a, it's a tough and fair question. I would say that Alex and I, after election day interviewed more than 200 people. 200 mostly Democratic insiders in all these interviews were almost all of these interviews were after the election."
"And they justified to themselves what they had done in terms of misrepresenting how the President was, not just to me and Alex and other reporters, but also just to each other and to the world and to Democrats and to the cabinet, etc., by saying that there was this existential threat of Donald Trump and only Joe Biden could beat Donald Trump, and that justified everything in their minds," Tapper added.
He went onto explain how there were "two Biden's" that emerged in his reporting with the book, one was "fine Biden" and the other was "non-functioning Biden," and that over the last few years, there has been more of "non-functioning Biden."
Kelly pressed, saying that when Tapper held interviews with the former president, he did not push for transparency and even snapped at Lara Trump for bringing up Biden's decline during an interview on CNN.
“I look back at my coverage with humility and I wish I did cover the issues of age and acuity, but I wish I had covered them much more," he said on the broadcast with Kelly.
He was pressed on the issue of trying to dig into his sources at the White House to get more inforation and others, Tapper claimed, "I do not accept that I was part of a cover up. I do not accept that I was just providing cover for Joe Biden." Tapper and Thompson reported that the White House and those around Biden tried to cover up the president's state.
