CNN’s Jake Tapper Accused of ‘Gaslighting’ for Saying He Covers Trump’s Health ‘All the Time’ Because the Mainstream Media Ignored Concerns About Biden

‘The gaslighting now is ridiculous and offensive,’ one commentator says.

YouTube
Jake Tapper, appearing on a podcast, has again made controversial comments about presidents and age. YouTube

The CNN news personality Jake Tapper is facing a new round of criticism after stating that he is covering President Trump’s health “all the time” because of the mainstream media’s refusal to probe President Biden’s health.

Mr. Tapper  — who co-wrote a book with Axios’ Alex Thompson about efforts to cover Mr. Biden’s decline, “Original Sin” — was interviewed on the left-wing “Pod Save America” podcast. The host, a former Obama spokesman, Tommy Vietor, asked about how the media is covering questions about Mr. Trump’s health.

“It’s a great question,” Mr. Tapper said. “We cover it all the time on my show, all the time, and I think that is to a large degree because we saw what happened with Biden. And while we covered it … we didn’t ask as many questions as we should have at the time. And I think it is a legitimate question for any president of any age, but particularly anybody who is, like, in range of being an octogenarian, right? We cover it all the time.”

He added, “I didn’t write a book about Joe Biden’s missteps. Alex and I wrote a book about an unprecedented event happening, which was Joe Biden having such a horrible performance at a presidential debate, where his only job was to convince people he was up to the task of being president for another four years.”

Mr. Tapper noted that he covered Mr. Trump’s “crazy Truth Social rant” about the New York Times’s coverage of his health. 

Last week, the CNN host also raised doubts about the White House’s description of Mr. Trump’s health and bruises that have been seen on the president’s hand. 

Mr. Tapper insisted there is “something going on with his health that they’re not telling us.” He also asked why Mr. Trump had an MRI if his health is fine. 

“A lot of extraordinary things have happened when the president of the United States has an MRI and can’t remember or name what part of the body the MRI was about,” Mr. Tapper said. 

Mr. Trump has said that the results of a recent MRI were “perfect,” but he had “no idea” what part of his body had the MRI. The White House has said that the MRI was done as part of Mr. Trump’s “routine physical examination.”

While there are questions about Mr. Trump’s health circulating on social media, critics slammed Mr. Tapper for so closely scrutinizing the president’s health after — by his own admission — not doing so with Mr. Biden.

A conservative media columnist, Joe Concha, wrote on X, “Tapper didn’t drop the ball. He purposely ignored an obvious story for years because he’s not a journalist.”

“He absolutely did not drop the ball on Biden’s mental decline — he and Stelter and almost everyone at CNN purposefully ignored it and called anyone who pointed it out a conspiracy theorist. The gaslighting now is ridiculous and offensive,” a conservative writer, Ian Miller, referring to the anti-Trump CNN “media correspondent” Brian Stelter, posted on X

A conservative strategist, Mike Hahn, wrote on X, “‘We’re hard on President Trump because we weren’t hard on Biden’ is the most  @jaketapper thing ever.”

Mr. Tapper has previously been accused of hypocrisy for the book he co-wrote, with conservatives suggesting he was cashing in with the book after helping to cover up concerns about Mr. Biden’s health.

Mr. Tapper told conservative journalist Megyn Kelly that he apologized to Mr. Trump’s daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, for an infamous 2020 interview when he dismissed her questions about Mr. Biden’s health. He told Ms. Trump at the time, “I think you have absolutely no standing to diagnose somebody’s cognitive decline.”

While promoting his new book, Mr. Tapper told Ms. Kelly that he apologized to Ms. Trump because she “saw something that I did not see at the time.”

CNN did not respond to the Sun’s request for comment by the time of publication. 


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