During an interview with NPR’s “All Things Considered” released on Monday, CNN host and “Original Sin” co-author Jake Tapper stated that “We had all seen evidence of decline” from President Joe Biden but his team told everyone he was fine and “I wish I had been more aggressive.”
Tapper stated that, during the debate, while communicating with the people in the control room, “I wrote, holy smokes, like, during that first rambling, awful non-answer where he said, we finally beat Medicare.”
He added, “I just couldn’t believe it. Look, we had all seen him aging. We had all seen him tripping and misspeaking. We had all seen evidence of decline, but the Biden team, family, and senior advisers were telling everybody — not just media, not just the public, but also Democratic donors and members of Congress, their own Cabinet — he’s fine, he’s fine, he’s fine, he’s fine.”
Later, co-author, Axios National Political Correspondent, and CNN Contributor Alex Thompson talked about there being a functioning and non-functioning Biden and Tapper said that during the debate, we saw “non-functioning Biden, I-cannot-articulate-a-sentence Biden” beyond the normal mental lapses people have and that people who are aging have.
Tapper also stated, “Alex and I covered this — Alex very aggressively from the White House beat, me less so. And I wish I had been more aggressive. There’s a lot of regret. There’s a lot of humility.”
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett
