It’s not easy getting Megyn Kelly, Jon Stewart and Hunter Biden all rowing in the same direction.
Jake Tapper, and his new book, have managed to do just that.
Mr. Tapper, the longtime CNN anchor, has become one of the most talked-about figures in the media and political worlds in recent days because of “Original Sin,” a book released on Tuesday that he wrote with Alex Thompson, a political correspondent for Axios.
The book scrutinizes former President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s mental and physical fitness while in office, and reports on his staff’s attempts to shield any decline from the public. The book’s subtitle claims that the efforts amounted to a “cover-up.”
“Original Sin” has received numerous positive reviews and appears to be a runaway sales hit. It has been on Amazon’s best-seller list for over a week, even before its release, and stood at No. 3 on Thursday. The book has also amplified debate about whether more blame should be placed on Democratic leaders, Mr. Biden’s staff and the press for not revealing more about the former president earlier.
“It’s hard to think of a book which has shifted the political dial to this extent in recent years,” Politico Playbook wrote on Tuesday.
But the book has also invited scrutiny of the authors themselves — and Mr. Tapper in particular. Representatives for Mr. Tapper declined to comment for this article.
Intentionally or not, by being an author of a major book on the subject, Mr. Tapper has allowed himself to become a symbol of the establishment press that conservatives have long accused of hiding the former president’s frailty from the public.
Ms. Kelly, the former Fox News star, subjected Mr. Tapper to intense grilling on her popular podcast in an interview that went viral online.
“You covered the Biden presidency aggressively throughout the four years, and you didn’t cover mental acuity, hardly at all,” Ms. Kelly said at one point. “I mean, time and time again when issues came up, you seem to be running cover for the president.”
Mr. Tapper denied the charges. “Conservative media absolutely has every right to say, ‘We were hip to this, and the legacy media was not,’” he said later in the interview. “Now, I do not accept that I was part of a cover-up. I do not accept that I was just providing cover for Joe Biden.”
Mr. Stewart, the liberal comedian who hosts “The Daily Show” on Monday nights, dedicated much of his opening monologue this week to the book. He showed eight different times that Mr. Tapper hawked his book on CNN’s airwaves. “Comes out Tuesday,” Mr. Tapper said in one clip. “You will not believe what we found out.”
“Breaking news!” Mr. Stewart exclaimed before pausing for comedic effect, then added: “In a week.”
“The Daily Show” then showed several clips of Mr. Tapper’s CNN colleagues also repeatedly bringing up the book, with some arguing that the revelation of Mr. Biden’s cancer diagnosis on Sunday may have made the book even more timely. Mr. Stewart vigorously disagreed with that assessment.
“Do these CNN people work on commission?” Mr. Stewart added. “Like, why are they hawking this thing? Is this a Girl Scouts situation? ‘Whoever sells the most Tapper books gets a Schwinn!’”
Even Hunter Biden, the former president’s son, got in the mix. He went on the record this week with Breaker Media, a media newsletter, to say he had been “furious” with Mr. Tapper over past reporting. (Mr. Tapper has said Hunter Biden’s claims about his reporting are not true.)
At every turn, Mr. Tapper seems eager to turn the attention back to the reporting in the book. And its contents have prompted much self-examination within the Democratic Party.
“I can’t get into the details, it’s still embargoed, but it is enraging,” the “Pod Save America” co-host Tommy Vietor said a month before the book came out. The New York Times and The Los Angeles Times, among others, praised the book for what it revealed.
Mika Brzezinski, co-host of the beltway favorite “Morning Joe” and Mr. Tapper’s competitor at MSNBC, also complimented the book for its “beautiful” writing, as well as its “great reporting.”
“I really loved reading the book,” she said.
“Trust me, there has to be a ‘but’ coming here,” replied her co-host, Joe Scarborough, to a chorus of laughter in the studio.
Then Ms. Brzezinski turned to Mr. Tapper and Mr. Thompson, and brought up a subject — the book’s use of “cover up” — that has been criticized elsewhere.
“I want to understand why you’re using words like ‘cover up,’ which insinuates a crime or something,” she said skeptically.
John Koblin covers the television industry for The Times.
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