On Tuesday’s broadcast of SiriusXM’s “Megyn Kelly Show,” CNN host and “Original Sin” co-author Jake Tapper responded to criticism of his coverage of then-President Joe Biden in the lead-up to his 2024 debate with Donald Trump and that he didn’t push back on the “cheapfake” narrative by saying that after he has named one of the moderators, “I tried to make sure that my coverage was fairly vanilla, both about Trump and about Biden, because I just wanted to get to the debate — and the Biden people and the Trump people, I’m kind of, frankly, surprised that either one of them agreed to have me as a moderator, because both sides dislike me so much.”
Host Megyn Kelly said, “[T]here was a ton of news leading into that debate in that month, and we looked back at your coverage and found that you ignored it, not only did you ignore the Jackie Walorski moment when you had him thirteen days later, but you ignored the freeze-up that he had at the Juneteenth celebration, you ignored what happened at the G7 when he wandered off…you ignored the freeze-up at the George Clooney L.A. fundraiser. You didn’t cover it. You only covered it after the debate, after George Clooney wrote his op-ed. Jake, nobody made you do that, your network, at every turn, was telling us those were ‘cheapfakes’ and you were not combatting that narrative. CNN was actively misleading us on what our very eyes were showing us, that’s the truth, that’s the record.”
Tapper responded, “I will acknowledge that, after I was named moderator — co-moderator of the debate, I tried to make sure that my coverage was fairly vanilla, both about Trump and about Biden, because I just wanted to get to the debate — and the Biden people and the Trump people, I’m kind of, frankly, surprised that either one of them agreed to have me as a moderator, because both sides dislike me so much. But, yeah, I remember that moment, and I remember that moment, the glitch at the immigration event not getting much attention outside of conservative media at all. And Alex and I are here to say that conservative media was right and conservative media was correct, and that there should be a lot of soul-searching, not just among me, but among the legacy media to begin with, all of us, for how this was covered or not covered sufficiently, 100%. So, I’m not here to defend coverage that I’ve already acknowledged I wish I could do differently.”
Later, Tapper stated that the book does have reporting beyond what people saw publicly.
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