Jake Tapper may have co-authored Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again, but even he was surprised by one quote in the book that he says was “jaw-dropping to me.”
Piers Morgan clearly felt the same way, and asked the CNN anchor about it during an appearance on Piers Morgan Uncensored, his YouTube talk show, on Monday.
The British broadcaster told Tapper about “one line that just sprang out to me” in which “a longtime [Joe] Biden aide says ‘He just had to win and then he could disappear for four years. He’d only have to show proof of life every once in a while.’”
“It’s stunning,” agreed Tapper, who credited his co-author, Axios correspondent Alex Thompson, for getting the quote.
“When we say that almost all of the interviews we did for the book came after the election, that one line is the one exception,” he shared. “That came before the election. And I was stunned, too.”
Tapper said the anecdote “really gets at the premise that so many of these Democrats accepted, which is: only Joe Biden has ever beaten Donald Trump.” And that the Republican had “to be defeated because he’s an existential threat to the nation.”
“And if you buy those two premises, then you can really justify almost anything, which is what the Democrats tried to do,” Tapper said.
“I agree with you,” he added. “That was jaw-dropping to me as well.”
Original Sin has soared to the top of several bestseller lists since its release last week, despite some controversy. It has drawn backlash both from the right—who are accusing Tapper of failing to cover Biden’s mental decline when it was most pertinent—as well as the left, who say it draws focus from Trump’s dangerous threats to democracy.
The book claims that Biden’s inner circle helped to conceal his declining physical and cognitive health as he and his aides insisted he was fit to serve a second term. Democrats are still grappling with his disastrous decision to run again, leading to a last-minute candidate swap that may have cost them the election.
Biden announced last week that he was recently diagnosed with an aggressive form of prostate cancer that has metastasized to the bone.
Amid criticism, Tapper has acknowledged he missed the mark in his previous coverage of Biden. He told Morgan on Monday he feels “tremendous humility” for telling off Lara Trump in a 2020 interview when she said Biden was in “cognitive decline.”
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