Political analyst Mark Halperin delivered a scathing takedown of CNN anchor Jake Tapper’s upcoming book, Original Sin, which falsely portrays Tapper as a fearless journalist who aggressively investigated President Joe Biden’s cognitive decline. Halperin dismantled this narrative on his show, Next Up with Mark Halperin, by exposing how Tapper and the liberal media actively avoided pressing Biden on his obvious mental deterioration—a decline that was evident to the American public long before his disastrous June 2024 debate.
The publisher of Tapper’s book, Penguin Press, released a promotional video attempting to frame Tapper as a truth-seeker who questioned Biden’s fitness for office. But Halperin played extended clips of Tapper’s interviews, revealing a far different reality—one of softball questions, deference to Biden’s handlers, and a blatant refusal to confront the administration’s lies.
“The publisher did as good a job as it could to find clips of Jake Tapper seeming to be at least interested in the topic of Joe Biden’s mental decline,” Halperin said. “So, we thought, ‘Well, what are the counters to that?’ Because I know that no one at CNN was particularly aggressive about this, and I had no indication from my memory that Jake Tapper was aggressive.”
One glaring example was Tapper’s October 2022 interview with Biden, where he opened by wishing the president a happy 80th birthday before meekly citing a poll about Democrats’ concerns over his age—without pressing Biden on his alarming public gaffes. “He’s not asking him about what was already in evidence then, which is mental decline,” Halperin noted. “He’s simply saying there’s a poll that says Democrats don’t like you. That’s not a guy who was determined to get beyond just asking about a poll.”
Even when confronting then-White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre in August 2023, Tapper let her off the hook as she laughably claimed Biden “runs circles around the younger staff.” Halperin pointed out: “There’s no evidence of it—it’s a made-up piece of spin, and he seemed to accept it there.”
Perhaps the most damning moment was Tapper’s February 2024 interview with former Biden communications director Kate Bedingfield, where they joked about Biden’s memory lapses instead of treating it as the national crisis it was. “If you’re a reporter and you are determined to get to the bottom of this—if you think there may be a cover-up at the highest levels of the government, a potential constitutional crisis—you would not treat Biden officials with humor or lightness,” Halperin argued.
The contrast between the liberal media’s kid-glove treatment of Biden and their relentless attacks on President Donald Trump could not be starker. While Trump faced endless scrutiny over every word he uttered, Biden’s incoherence was downplayed or ignored. Halperin highlighted Biden’s September 2022 moment when he called for the late Rep. Jackie Walorski to stand up—forgetting she had died weeks earlier. “I don’t understand how there could be a cover-up of something that was on television on a nearly nightly basis,” Halperin said.
The liberal media’s hypocrisy is undeniable. They shielded Biden while smearing Trump—yet now, as Biden’s presidency collapses, they scramble to rewrite history. Meanwhile, President Trump remains sharp, energetic, and ready to restore American greatness in 2024.
Source: SilverCircular
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