Jake Tapper offered a mea culpa to Lara Trump on Tuesday, sharing that he was wrong to berate the Fox News host in a tense 2020 exchange about President Joe Biden’s alleged mental decline.
The CNN host extended the olive branch during an interview with Megyn Kelly. Tapper, whose new book “Original Sin” dives into an alleged cover-up of Biden’s declining health inside the White House, said that Trump was keyed into something he wasn’t.
“She saw something that I did not see at the time — 100% — and I own that,” Tapper said, admitting that he didn’t dive as deep into the president’s health as he could have. “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.”
During Trump’s visit to “State of the Union,” she mocked the former president’s struggle to “get the words out.” Tapper became irate and rushed her off the air after she mentioned Biden’s “cognitive decline.”
“I think you have no standing to judge somebody’s cognitive decline,” Tapper said. “I’d think the Trump family would be more sensitive to people who don’t have medical licenses and diagnosing politicians from afar.”
Trump resurfaced the confrontation after Tapper announced his book on the Biden White House.
“Seems like a good time to remind everyone that in 2020 Jake Tapper, first, accused me of making fun of people with a stutter (an atrocious accusation) and then attempted to shut me down and ended our interview when I tried to warn people of Joe Biden’s very obvious cognitive issues,” she wrote on X.
Tapper shared on Tuesday that he had already apologized to Trump personally.
“After we did the research for this book and I realized how bad his acuity issues were, I called Lara Trump and I said, ‘You were right,’” he said.
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