CNN’s Jake Tapper delivered a fierce pushback Friday after Joe Biden's team attempted to downplay newly released audio of the former president appearing to struggle with memory lapses during a special counsel interview.
The audio, obtained by Axios, captures Biden occasionally slurring his words and losing his train of thought during questioning by Special Counsel Robert Hur, who infuriated the Biden White House when he concluded that the Democrat was “a well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”
Tapper on Friday quickly dismissed a Biden spokesperson’s insistence that the audio’s bombshell release was no big deal.
“The transcripts were released by the Biden administration more than a year ago,” according to the statement read by Tapper. “The audio does nothing but confirm what is already public.”
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But the CNN host wasn’t buying it.
“Okay, I mean, nice try,” Tapper said. “You guys kept this from being released publicly. If it really was not a big deal, then you would have released it publicly.”
“Let's be honest,” CNN law and justice correspondent Evan Perez added. “They did not want this to come out before the election. That’s really the reason why this happened.”
Tapper pointed out that Biden “would lose himself in trains of thought.” He also noted that the reason the interview moment is “so significant” is because “so few people were able to have access to President Biden like this for hours at a time when he was showing this less than optimally functioning Joe Biden.”
