Revisionist history: Jake Tapper spent years downplaying concerns about Joe Biden’s mental fitness—until the president’s disastrous decline became conventional wisdom and fodder for a book deal. His new release with Axios’s Alex Thompson, Original Sin, documents Biden’s cognitive deterioration and the White House’s efforts to cover it up. But as our Andrew Stiles and Thaleigha Rampersad report, Tapper “helped to conceal that reality when it mattered most.” He should have interviewed himself.
In August 2020, Tapper dismissed Republican concerns about Biden’s sharpness as “unfair” and “frankly hypocritical.” Two months later, he cut off Lara Trump mid-interview for suggesting Biden exhibited “cognitive decline,” accusing her of “mocking his stutter” and saying she had “no standing” to make such claims. He later implied that Republicans raising the issue were parroting Russian disinformation. Even after special counsel Robert Hur’s February 2024 report described Biden as an “elderly man with a poor memory,” Tapper insisted the president “was not the way he is caricatured” on Fox News.
Stiles and Rampersad have the definitive guide to what Tapper was doing, saying, and reporting during Biden’s four years in office. You’ll need it handy as Tapper tries to rewrite history.
READ MORE: The Tapper Dossier: How the CNN Host Covered (Up) the Biden Cover-Up—Before Writing a Book About It
Chaos at CBS: Scott Pelley, the 60 Minutes correspondent and former CBS Evening News anchor, used a Wake Forest commencement address to defend DEI, attack CBS News’s parent company, and denounce the Trump administration, reports our Zach Kessel. It’s all in a day’s work for a non-partisan reporter!
“Freedom of speech is under attack,” Pelley declared on Monday. “Journalism is under attack. Universities are under attack. And insidious fear is reaching through our schools, our businesses, our homes, and into our private thoughts.”
Pelley compared 2025 to the Civil War and World War II and criticized efforts to roll back diversity initiatives. “‘Diversity’ is now described as ‘illegal.’ ‘Equity’ is to be shunned. ‘Inclusion’ is a dirty word,” he told graduates. “Why attack universities? Why attack journalism? Because ignorance works for power.”
Hours after the speech, CBS News CEO Wendy McMahon announced her resignation, telling colleagues she and the company “do not agree on a path forward.” As Kessel notes, McMahon’s departure follows clashes with Paramount chairwoman Shari Redstone over the network’s negotiations in a $20 billion lawsuit from Trump over how 60 Minutes edited an interview with then-vice president Kamala Harris, as well as internal blowback over the network’s anti-Israel slant in its reporting on the war in Gaza.
READ MORE: 60 Minutes’ Scott Pelley Tells College Grads: ‘Freedom of Speech is Under Attack’ By Trump Administration
Ink-stained insurgent: A Bloomberg journalist was among the 81 radicals arrested during the storming of Columbia University’s Butler Library earlier this month, reports our Jon Levine. Jason Kao, a graphics reporter and Columbia alumnus, was charged with criminal trespassing in the third degree, according to the NYPD—a charge that suggests he wasn’t merely covering the incident in his capacity as a journalist.
Kao previously worked at the New York Times and held roles at the Texas Tribune and ProPublica. While he’s reported on a range of topics in his professional work, his personal website “is exclusively devoted to negative coverage of Israel’s war in Gaza,” Levine writes. His now-deleted X account, @cow_portal, “posted frequently about Israel and Gaza,” according to cached Google results.
The May 7 library raids left two public safety officers injured and saw rioters distribute pro-Hamas pamphlets, vandalize the building, and rename it after a Palestinian terrorist. The arrest list included “celebrity nepo baby Ramona Sarsgaard” as well as “a disproportionately large contingent of people who identify as ‘they/them.’”
A Bloomberg spokesman said Kao is no longer with the company.
READ MORE: Bloomberg Journalist Among Anti-Israel Radicals Arrested For Storming Columbia Library
Away from the Beacon:
- Will Lewis, call your office: The Washington Post is all over Joe Biden’s cancer diagnosis. In a quadruple-bylined piece, the Post asserts that “in a reflection of today’s harsh political environment and reignited questions over Biden’s health during his reelection campaign and his inner circle’s handling of the situation, some Republicans and right-wing activists wasted little time asserting, without evidence, that Biden and his circle covered up the diagnosis.”
While the media scolded conservatives for spreading so-called cheap fakes of Joe Biden, Tapper and Thompson’s book reveals team Biden brought in Steven Spielberg to craft misleading videos—including a never-broadcasted, made-for-video town hall. Staffers used “slow motion videos of Biden so people didn’t realize how slowly he was walking in real-time, and used extra edits to clean up his stumbles,” Semafor’s Maxwell Tani reported. Call them expensive fakes!
The University of Minnesota is shutting down its Center for Antiracism Research for Health Equity following plagiarism allegations against its director, who resigned last month, Alpha News reported. “We are currently assessing and reimagining the important work of health equity research and action as we also work closely with our funding partners to align priorities and strategic direction,” Melinda Pettigrew, dean of the School of Public Health, told staff in an email.
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