‘President Biden embraces his stutter, talking about it, while Trump mocks it, exaggerates it, belittles it,’ Tapper said in March 2024.
Jake Tapper repeatedly blamed Joe Biden’s frequent gaffes and delayed speech on the former president’s childhood stutter. Now the CNN anchor is coming out with a book arguing that the “cover-up” of Biden’s decline led to President Donald Trump’s 2024 election.
“President Biden embraces his stutter, talking about it, while Trump mocks it, exaggerates it, belittles it,” Tapper said in March 2024.
In his upcoming book with CNN contributor and Axios reporter Alex Thompson, Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, And His Disastrous Decision to Run Again, Tapper concluded that Biden’s declining mental state and fragility was, in fact, concealed from the public. The pair wrote that Biden’s disastrous June 2024 debate was “not an anomaly” but “the natural result of an eighty-one-year-old man whose faculties had been diminishing for years.”
That’s a far cry from Tapper’s previous comments defending, sometimes even praising Biden. After Lara Trump in 2020 said Biden was clearly displaying a “cognitive decline,” Tapper accused her of “mocking his stutter.” Trump denied knowing that Biden had a stutter.
“How do you think it makes little kids with stutters feel when they see you make a comment like that?” Tapper asked Lara Trump in a 2020 interview. “I think you have absolutely no standing to diagnose somebody’s cognitive decline.”
Meanwhile, following Biden’s 2022 State of the Union address, where he mistakenly invoked Iranians when speaking about the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Tapper still lauded the 46th president.
“Considering his speaking talents and challenges, it was a fairly solid performance,” Tapper said.
In 2019, Biden denied that his childhood stutter was not to blame for his verbal stumbles. Yet his frequent, if not increasing, gaffes throughout his presidential term often led to speculation about his mental acuity. After a disastrous debate performance during the 2024 election, the issue became unavoidable.
Penguin Press, the book’s publisher, stated that readers will learn that Biden’s conduct during his reelection campaign was “shockingly narcissistic, self-delusional, and reckless.”
“Toni Morrison once said, ‘If there’s a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it,’” Jake Tapper said in a statement. “That’s what inspired this book: we wanted to know more about what we all just lived through. More than 200 interviews later, Alex and I have a much better idea. And soon you all will too.”
The book is slated to be released on May 20.
Tapper was recently a central figure in a defamation trial against CNN. Navy Veteran Zachary Young accused Tapper and the left-wing network of falsely portraying him as an “illegal profiteer” who operated in a “black market” while evacuating Afghans during the chaotic U.S. withdrawal. During Tapper’s deposition ahead of the January trial, the anchor said CNN shouldn’t have apologized for the segment.
CNN was ultimately ordered to pay Young $5 million in economic and emotional damages as well as an undisclosed amount in punitive damages.
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