OPINION:
Oh, Jake Tapper. From “hard-hitting journalism” to publishing a book on the very thing people accuse you of participating in is a pivot so bold it belongs in a gymnastics routine. But alas, here we are.
CNN’s star anchor has a book hitting the shelves, “Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again,” which purports to probe Mr. Biden’s mental decline and its alleged cover-up by members of the Democratic Party and media. The audacity of it all has people genuinely pondering the state of modern journalism.
Fact: The mainstream media for years ignored Mr. Biden’s obvious descent into darkness (for the millionth time, it’s fine, he’s old, we’ll all go there — but we won’t have a thousand power-hungry sycophants desperately trying to make it all seem OK).
Social media, never one to pass on irony, came for Mr. Tapper. Accounts on X dredged up receipts, namely a 2020 video in which Mr. Tapper lectured President Trump’s daughter-in-law Lara Trump for daring to hint at Mr. Biden’s cognitive decline.
Back then, Mr. Tapper was adamant it was all just a “stutter.” You know, the kind that apparently stops you midsentence as you attempt to name your secretary of, well, literally anything. Add falling down a lot, and you have Mr. Biden in his later White House days. Talk about a dead man walking.
Now, Mr. Tapper is talking about how he has valiantly questioned Mr. Biden’s mental acuity for years. Years! He assured us all on “The Lead” that he has challenged Democrats and even Mr. Biden about the dementia-ridden elephant in the room. “We’ve spent several months talking to people. … You will not believe what was really going on,” he said during one segment.
Trust us, Jake. We can understand everything you say, but we disagree. You said Mr. Biden was fine; we didn’t think so. For the record, subsequent events proved us right and you wrong. So why exactly do you get paid $7 million a year?
Conservative X users wasted no time calling out Mr. Tapper’s sudden nerve to profit from what they see as too-little-too-late journalism. Popular account End Wokeness posted a side-by-side of Mr. Tapper’s “it’s a stutter” spiel and the cover of his book, captioning it with the kind of scathing precision usually reserved for reality TV reunion episodes. “Tapper then: It’s a conspiracy theory. Tapper now: An expose on the conspiracy.”
The Federalist’s Mollie Hemingway lit a rhetorical match and poured gasoline all over Mr. Tapper’s credibility bonfire. “The mother bleeping AUDACITY,” she wrote. Spectator editor Stephen L. Miller sagely noted, “There is no bottom for these people.” Actor James Woods, always one for colorful commentary, likened Mr. Tapper’s actions to a dictionary-worthy definition of “hypocrisy.”
In the weeks before Mr. Biden’s departure from the White House, outlets such as The Wall Street Journal painted a less-than-glowing picture of his capabilities, cataloging behind-the-scenes attempts to protect the president from his mental lapses over four years. Former Biden supporters in the media, too, acknowledged they dropped the ball.
CBS News reporter Jan Crawford went so far as to confess that the press “should have much more forcefully questioned whether he was fit for office for another four years” before he threw his name in the hat for reelection. But months before the election, 100 million Americans saw Mr. Biden in the presidential debate where he could barely compose a coherent sentence.
Even presidential lapdog Chris Cillizza acknowledged how the media failed at their job. “I should have pushed harder earlier for more information about Joe Biden’s mental and physical well-being and any signs of decline,” the former CNN reporter said. “There was a shame factor that went into that. People around Biden worked to make you feel bad when you asked whether he was up to the job.”
Mr. Tapper has no “shame factor” haunting him as he promotes his book investigating Mr. Biden’s mental decline and its alleged cover-up by members of the Democratic Party. Like the mainstream media does every day, it’s “Quick, look over there!” Distract, deflect, defend. It works every day, and Mr. Tapper is hoping it works yet again for him.
• Joseph Curl covered the White House and politics for a decade for The Washington Times. He can be reached at josephcurl@gmail.com and on Twitter @josephcurl.
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