CNN reporter Jake Tapper received a scolding from podcast host Megyn Kelly on Tuesday for his coverage of President Joe Biden.
Kelly slammed Tapper for the contrast between his new book that claims the Biden White House was rife with concerns about Biden’s physical and mental decline, and the CNN host’s lack of mention of Biden’s decline while covering the former president.
“You covered the Biden presidency aggressively throughout the four years. And you didn’t cover mental acuity — hardly at all,” Kelly said on her show, which was then posted to YouTube.
“I mean, time and time again, when issues came up, you seemed to be running cover for the president,” she further alleged.
Tapper denied the claim.
Earlier, Kelly noted that Biden broke his word to Tapper with no consequences.
“He promised you that he would be transparent about his health records — and then he wasn’t. And when you sat with him again, including one month after the Jackie Walorski thing, you didn’t ask him about it,” Kelly said.
As noted by Newsweek, the September 2022 incident involved Biden asking, “Where’s Jackie?” in reference to Democratic Rep. Jackie Walorski who had died in a car crash the previous week and been memorialized with a video tribute not long before Biden spoke.
Was the mainstream media complicit in the Biden cover-up?
Kelly told Tapper that he did not press Biden on that and other health issued.
“You didn’t follow up on the fact that he was falling up the stairs, that he was losing his train of thought regularly, that he was slurring, that he was incomprehensible, that he was getting lost on the White House lawn,” she said.
“You sat right across from him, and you asked none of that— notwithstanding the fact that he had promised you he would be fully transparent about his health issues,” Kelly pressed.
“That’s true,” an uncomfortable Tapper admitted.
“But I did ask him about his age, and the fact that the American people had concluded that — even though he said whenever anybody brought up the subject of his age, ‘Watch me’ — and I said, yes, they’re watching you. And they are concerned that you’re too old for this job,” he said.
Kelly was not satisfied with the answer.
“ You know as well as I do there’s a way — You could say, ‘Hey, there’s this poll on your age,’ or you could say, ‘You just forgot that Jackie Walorski was dead.’ You asked where she was — moments after watching a videotape tribute to her. You lowered the flags at the White House after she died. This happened 13 days before you sat with him,” she said.
“There is a way of pressing a man like that on the actual infirmities — to bring it home to him and to the audience — and you didn’t do it,” she said.
“That’s correct. I didn’t. And like I said, I feel humility about my coverage,” Tapper said.
During the podcast, Kelly also took Tapper to task for comments denigrating Lara Trump for critical comments she made about Biden in 2020, forcing Tapper to admit “her comments have aged well. My comments have aged poorly.”
Advertise with The Western Journal and reach millions of highly engaged readers, while supporting our work. Advertise Today.
