CNN host hires PR flack who repped Elizabeth Holmes, Jeffrey Toobin, and Anthony Weiner to teach him how to be ‘nicer’ to critics
Jake Tapper is getting a lot of press coverage surrounding the upcoming release of his new book, Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again. Excerpts started dropping this week about how Biden’s advisers discussed putting him in a wheelchair if he won reelection, and the time he didn’t recognize George Clooney at a Hollywood fundraiser while behaving like “someone who was not alive.” Biden has hired a PR flack to help defend his reputation, but he’s not the only one receiving professional advice ahead of the book launch.
Breaker reported earlier this month that Tapper has hired Risa Heller, a crisis communication expert described as the “warrior of choice” for “cancellable elites” trying to survive a scandal. In 2022, Heller met with former CNN boss Jeff Zucker days before he was forced to resign for, among other things, concealing a romantic relationship with a subordinate executive. She helped Anthony Weiner navigate his (first) dick-pic scandal in 2011. Jeffrey Toobin, the disgraced CNN personality, sought Heller’s counsel in 2020 after he was caught pleasuring himself on a Zoom call with colleagues. She worked with convicted Theranos fraudster Elizabeth Holmes on a sympathetic puff piece in the New York Times ahead of her sentencing. She represented an Estée Lauder executive who posted a Sesame Street meme using the n-word, and defended the voice of Elmo against allegations of sexual impropriety with minors. Now she’s helping Tapper learn how to be “nicer” to fellow journalists.
Some context: Tapper is a notorious crank with a habit of sending indignant DMs to journalists and other commentators who criticize him on social media. Some have described his stubbornness, thirst for vengeance, and refusal to admit fault as “positively Bidenesque.” There’s at least some evidence that Heller’s human decency training has rubbed off. The day after Breaker revealed the PR flack’s involvement in the book rollout, Tapper praised his co-author, Alex Thompson of Axios, as a “great reporter and a kind person and a good friend,” which was awfully sweet of him.
Tapper is going to need all the help he can get in the coming days, as critics ramp up their attacks on the CNN host for hawking a book about Biden’s obvious cognitive decline (years after the fact) while insisting the media could not have uncovered the scandal when Biden was still president and running for reelection. “The White House was lying,” Tapper said this week, suggesting that journalists bear no responsibility for believing and repeating those lies.
Mark Halperin, among others, has a different view. “One thing that’s not true is that the cover-up was so good that no one could see this, that we couldn’t possibly have gotten to the bottom of this during the election,” he said. “It is not true that it’s only after the election that Jake Tapper could’ve gotten to the bottom of this, and the rest of the Washington press corps could’ve gotten to the bottom of this.” The media were not simply “stymied from getting to the truth” by lying White House aides, Halperin argued. “No, they were part of the conspiracy and the cover-up. They allowed themselves to believe the ridiculous spin on TV and in public, and privately they allowed themselves to be browbeat,” he said. “They were told, you will lose access … Reporters who covered any story the Biden people didn’t like were denied access.”
Media reporter Dylan Byers wrote last week of Tapper’s (and Thompson’s) propensity for “self-promotion and sanctimony,” and predicted that the Original Sin publicity tour was “likely to test the patience not just of the Bidens, but of their fellow journalists as well, many of whom capitulated to the White House press shop.”
Buckle up!
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