Mark Halperin takes sledgehammer to two premises about Jake Tapper’s book on Biden’s decline

Political analyst Mark Halperin on Tuesday dismantled the premise that CNN anchor Jake Tapper was one of the journalists who dug into former President Joe Biden’s cognitive decline prior to his disastrous June debate and that there was a cover-up that prevented reporters from knowing about it.

The publisher of Tapper’s upcoming book “Original Sin,” Penguin Press, posted a promotional video on May 5 featuring clips portraying Tapper as asking pressing questions about Biden’s age. However, Halperin, on “Next Up with Mark Halperin,” played the promotional video and then longer versions of the segments to refute that Tapper was diligent in covering the story, asserting that it was obvious Biden was cognitively diminished based on his public appearances or lack thereof.

WATCH: 

“The publisher did as good a job as it could to find clips of Jake Tapper seeming to be at least interested in the topic of Joe Biden’s mental decline. So, we thought, ‘Well, what are the counters to that?’ Because I know that no one at CNN was particularly aggressive about this, and I had no indication from my memory that Jake Tapper was aggressive,” Halperin said. “So, we went and looked at the full appearances, the full segments … to ask ourselves, did the full clips demonstrate that Jake Tapper, in attitude and determination and focus was in real time, during the campaign, during Biden’s presidency, interested in getting to the bottom of this?”

“So, let’s look at some of the clips from the publisher video, but beyond what they chose to include,” he continued. “Here is Joe Biden’s interview with Jake Tapper in 2022.”

Halperin then played a longer version of Tapper’s interview with Biden in October 2022. The clip starts with the CNN anchor beginning the interview wishing the then-president a happy early 80th birthday and then noting that a poll demonstrated that nearly two-thirds of Democrats desired a different 2024 nominee, primarily due to his age.

“So he wishes him happy birthday. He asks him about one poll. He’s not asking him about what was already in evidence then, which is mental decline. He’s simply saying there’s a poll that says Democrats don’t like you,” Halperin said. “So I look at that and I say that’s not the way I would have asked it. That’s not a guy who was determined to get beyond just asking about a poll. That’s a guy who wanted to wish that president a happy birthday.”

The political analyst then played a longer version of Tapper’s interview with then-White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre from August 2023. Jean-Pierre said that people in the White House press corps. told her they found it difficult to “keep up with” Biden after Tapper told her that polling had shown the vast majority of Americans were worried about his age.

“Here again he asked the pro-forma question,” Halperin said. “She bats it away with one of their usual lines of spin: ‘Oh, he’s so energetic, he runs circles around the younger staff.’ There’s no evidence of it — it’s a made-up piece of spin, and he seemed to accept it there.”

Moreover, Halperin played a longer version of Tapper’s February 2024 interview with former communications director Kate Bedingfield, where she humorously brushed off Biden’s memory lapses as something that swing-state voters weren’t concerned about.

“Here is perhaps the biggest tell of all: if you’re a reporter and you are determined to get to the bottom of this — if you think there may be a cover-up at the highest levels of the government, a potential constitutional crisis — you would not treat Biden officials with humor or lightness,” he said. “You would be tough and determined to get to the bottom of it. You don’t ask about it in the context of polls, which is the way he mostly asked about it. You don’t accept spin that voters don’t care.”

“If you really are concerned about getting to the bottom of this, you ask the question — it just is so funny I even have to say this — you ask the question about specific incidents and how they would explain it,” he continued.

The political analyst then noted that Biden publicly appeared to call on the late Republican Indiana Rep. Jackie Walorski to stand up in September 2022, seeming to forget that she had died in a car crash the previous month. He argued that it was a significant lapse.

“I don’t understand how there could be a cover-up of something that was on television on a nearly nightly basis in either Joe Biden’s performance, which was uneven — there were times when he was fine,” Halperin said toward the beginning of his show Tuesday. “We’ve all seen people with mental decline. We know that sometimes things are better than others. But it was on TV every night. And in 2020 and 2024 it was also on TV when Joe Biden wasn’t there, he was not visible.”

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