CNN anchor Jake Tapper revealed he apologized to Lara Trump for questioning Joe Biden’s mental decline years after he chastised her for bringing it up.
On Tuesday’s episode of The Megyn Kelly Show, Megyn Kelly cornered Tapper about his past coverage of Biden and used the Trump interview as the prime example. Tapper—the co-author of Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again—then said he called Trump “months ago” to admit he was wrong.
Tapper and Lara Trump, the wife of Donald Trump’s son Eric Trump, sparred in an October 2020 interview over Biden during which she attributed his difficult speaking to “cognitive decline.”
“She saw something that I did not see at the time, 100 percent,” Tapper told Kelly. “I own that.”
“I called her months ago and said, ‘You were right,’” he later added.
Tapper also told NPR’s Fresh Air podcast in Tuesday that Lara Trump insisted she’s “not the type of person that she would ever mock anybody’s stutter,” adding, “I have no reason to doubt that.”
Trump, who now serves as a Fox News host, did not respond to a request for comment. Fox News also did not respond to a request for comment.
In the October 2020 State of the Union exchange, Tapper pressed Lara Trump suggestion that Biden struggled to “get the words out” and accused her of “mocking his stutter.” Trump said she didn’t know Biden suffered from a stutter and claimed the episode reflected an instance of “cognitive decline,” prompting an agitated Tapper to lash out at her live on air.
“I think you have no standing to judge somebody’s cognitive decline,” Tapper said. “I’d think the Trump family would be more sensitive to people who don’t have medical licenses and diagnosing politicians from afar.”
Lara Trump then said she wasn’t trying to diagnose Biden, but instead she felt it must be “concerning to a lot of people” to see the then-Democratic presidential nominee struggle on stage.
“I’m sure it was from a place of concern,” he said sarcastically before ending the interview. “We all believe that.”
Tapper told Kelly he felt “humility” about his past coverage of Biden, admitting he had missed the story.
The CNN host has repeatedly reckoned with his past coverage of the former president as he promotes his book, with scores of conservatives—many on Fox News—attacking him for the Trump interview and a relatively soft 2022 interview with Biden.
Tapper conceded to CNN colleague John Berman last week that some of the critiques were valid.
“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.
Kelly made it known she was “angry” that Lara Trump’s comments were dismissed by Tapper.
“Not only did you not allow her to make her comments, but you seemed to try to humiliate her,” she said. “You had a hostility toward the position, but she was totally right.”
Tapper pointed out that the comments came during an intense time of the 2020 election where both campaigns were saying “crazy things” about Biden and Trump. “So that is the larger context,” he said. “But as I said, her comments have aged well, my comments have aged poorly. I own that.”
The post Jake Tapper Admits Lara Trump Was ‘Right’ About Biden appeared first on The Daily Beast.
