Jake Tapper and co-author Alex Thompson have hired a crisis PR expert as they drop revelations of Joe Biden’s cognitive decline from their new book.
The CNN anchor and Axios reporter are the co-authors of Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again. To promote the book, which is out May 20, the two have signed up crisis communications expert Risa Heller and her firm Heller Co. to help navigate the rollout, according to Breaker Media, co-written by former Daily Beast reporter Lachlan Cartwright.
Heller has represented controversial figures across media and politics, including former CNN chief Jeff Zucker, convicted Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes, and former Rep. Anthony Weiner, who was ousted twice from public life over sexting young women and a minor.
Tapper confirmed the news to Breaker Media, saying Heller was helping him with “advice” as they make the book’s “rollout as smart as possible.”
Excerpts from the book published Tuesday revealed that aides considered putting Biden in a wheelchair if he won re-election and that he forgot George Clooney’s name during a fundraiser Clooney organized last year.
Clooney argued in an op-ed after a June 2024 presidential debate that Biden needed to drop out of the race. Biden said on The View last week that there “is nothing to sustain” the claim he suffered from cognitive decline. Original Sin has shot to the top of Amazon’s books chart.
Since the two have started the publicity campaign for the book, MAGA loyalists have claimed Tapper was part of a “media cabal” that shielded Biden from public scrutiny over his age.
A Fox News Digital article on Tuesday collected various clips of Tapper commenting on Biden’s age and noting an October 2020 interview in which the anchor chided Trump daughter-in-law Lara Trump for accusing Biden of “cognitive decline” over his stutter. (Trump, who now hosts a show on Fox News, claimed she didn’t know Biden had a stutter.)
“I think you were mocking his stutter and I think you have absolutely no standing to diagnose somebody’s cognitive decline,” he said at the time. “I would think somebody in the Trump family would be more sensitive to people who do not have medical licenses diagnosing politicians from afar.”
Fox News also blasted Tapper during a segment on Tuesday, with contributor Joe Concha claiming it was “patently insulting” that Tapper “is trying to rewrite history while lining his own pockets in the process.”
“He was very much a part of the media cabal who defended Biden,” Concha said.
Tapper addressed some of the attacks during a CNN appearance on Wednesday, saying he thought “some of the criticism is fair, to be honest. Of me, certainly.”
“Knowing then what I know now, I look back at my coverage during the Biden years—and I did cover some of these issues, but not enough—I look back on it with humility,” he said.
Over the last two years, Tapper has pressed Democrats—including Biden—over concerns over his age. Tapper asked Biden in October 2022 what he would tell Democrats concerned that a man over 80 would run for office again, and he repeatedly brought up special counsel Robert Hur’s report that described Biden as an “elderly man” with memory issues.
CNN defended Tapper to Fox News, saying he “raised concerns about President Biden’s mental stamina on his shows, questioned Biden officials directly about his health on air, and consistently encouraged open discussion and debate on the issue.”
Thompson, one of the reporters most focused on the issue of Biden’s cognitive issues, also defended Tapper on Tuesday. “The truth is both Jake and I were covering this,” he wrote on X.
Thompson said last month at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner that some in the media of “missed a lot” of the story of Biden’s decline and that “every White House, regardless of party, is capable of deception.” Concha called Thompson’s “prognosis” “insulting” in a Washington Examiner op-ed.
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