NEW ORLEANS, LA, USA - MARCH 16, 2024: Maureen Dowd and Jake Tapper discuss a career in news and novels at the New Orleans Book Festival at Tulane University. (Photo credit: William A. Morgan / Shutterstock)
The rollout of Jake Tapper's new book with co-author Alex Thompson has been going so well that they've hired a crisis management expert.
The CNN anchor and Axios reporter co-authored "Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again," which provoked intensely negative backlash from Democrats and Republicans alike, leading the pair to hire crisis communications expert Risa Heller and her firm Heller Co. to help them through the book's May 20 release, reported Breaker Media.
“Some of the criticism is fair, to be honest – of me, certainly," Tapper said Wednesday on CNN. “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."
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Fox News Digital compiled clips showing Tapper commenting on Biden's age, including his criticism of Lara Trump for accusing Biden of "cognitive decline" due to his stutter. Network contributor Joe Concha accused the CNN anchor of "trying to rewrite history while lining his own pockets in the process."
The book's reception was just as harsh on the left, where commentators wondered whether Tapper and Thompson would write a similar book on Trump's alleged mental decline.
"For the life of me I will never understand why his mental deterioration isn't headline news every single day," said historian Heather Cox Richardson, reacting to a video clip of Trump rambling about groceries to the UAE president.
"Can you imagine the gasket Alex Thompson and Jake Tapper would blow if this brain pudding sentence had come out of Biden's mouth instead of Trump's?" added media studies and communications professor Daniel Gilmore, reacting to the same clip.
"Someone tell Jake Tapper and the rest of the DC media club that theres an elderly out of touch man with his hands on the nukes," said blogger Oliver Willis. "Oh wait, he's a Republican. Doesn't count."
"Thank god for Jake Tapper exposing Biden’s staff for hiding his age," posted the widely followed account Mueller, She Wrote. "I had no idea that Biden was old. Now that we know the truth, we can keep blaming everyone other than ourselves for Trump’s victory."
"The political media is obsessively relitigating the issue of Biden being too old and out of touch while the current president babbles incoherently at press conferences and regularly admits he's not the one making decisions on key policy matters," added historian Kevin Kruse.
"My favorite part of this story is when Jake Tapper is like, 'certainly the people threatening to kill me have a point, that's fair,'" posted attorney Jesse Taylor.
"You all should know by now I criticize Republicans and Democrats, and have no problem calling out Dem leadership and Biden," said writer Wajahat Ali. "However, the media obsessing over Biden's age while ignoring Trump is literally falling asleep during meetings and is the oldest man to be President is infuriating."
"Excited for the hawk-eyed political press, newly charged with protecting the public from mentally declining elderly presidents, to drill down on why the current president thinks the word 'groceries' is unusual enough to repeatedly comment on," added comedian and podcaster Patrick Monahan.