CNN anchor Jake Tapper’s recent apology to Lara Trump over past comments dismissing concerns about President Biden’s mental fitness has sparked backlash and accusations of media complicity.
Tapper, who co-authored the new book Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again, has acknowledged he failed to adequately report on Biden’s cognitive issues. The CNN host even called Lara Trump ahead of the book’s release to personally apologize for rebuking her during a 2020 interview.
At the time, Lara Trump had voiced concerns about Biden’s mental acuity during an appearance on State of the Union, but Tapper shut her down, accusing her of mocking Biden’s stutter and having “no standing” to discuss cognitive decline. Now, Tapper says she was right.
“Knowing what we know now… she was right, and I was wrong,” Tapper said during an appearance on Piers Morgan Uncensored. He added that the media’s failure to question Biden’s condition was potentially “worse than Watergate.”
Despite the apology, Lara Trump told The Ingraham Angle that it came too late. “I do appreciate that he kept his word, though… but it feels a little bit too late to me,” she said.
She argued that Tapper and other journalists cannot wash their hands of the current situation. “No matter how much he wants to come out now and say, ‘We’re going to start calling the shots like we see them’—it’s too late,” she stated. “You can't do this time and time again… and think that you're going to get any different result.”
Lara Trump concluded that this media failure is part of what helped propel Donald Trump back into the White House.