CNN's Jake Tapper said during an interview on Wednesday that the many Democratic sources he and Axios reporter Alex Thompson spoke to for their book about the cover-up of former President Biden's decline didn't really express remorse or acknowledgment that a mistake was made.
"We never got somebody that said, 'We should never have done this. I can't believe we did it. In retrospect, it was a mistake. How arrogant we were.' I mean, even, you know, there was a top aide, a top White House aide, who acknowledged to me that this short 10-15 minute interview I did with Joe Biden in October 2022, he would not have been capable of doing in October 2023. That admission was stunning to me," Tapper said on The Stephen A. Smith Show.
He added, "But it did not come with, 'And we really made a mistake, we shouldn't have run him. What an error. I can't believe we did it.' It didn't come with that."
Tapper and Thompson's book, "Original Sin: President Biden's Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again," has detailed the length at which those closest to Biden went to cover up his limitations while in office. The CNN host recently said the scandal may even be "worse than Watergate."
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Tapper said the sources said they thought Biden was the only one who could beat President Donald Trump.
"So I think that most were telling the truth, as much as they had come to terms with it themselves, but I do wonder where they will be in a year, because I heard from one of the people, one of the Democrats I interviewed for the book, who gave me one of the most shocking revelations, and I checked in, 'How are you doing,' they're upset. But they're not upset at us, not upset at the book, they're just upset that it happened and now everybody is talking about it," he added. "They're still working through a lot."
Thompson also discussed one interview he did that occurred before the election for the book, who he described as saying that all the former president had to do was win and "occasionally show proof of life and the people around him would run the country."
"And their justification was when you, first of all, you're not bringing back Trump. And when people vote for president, they're also voting for the people around them, and some people in the Biden world, that is how they justified keeping this going," Thompson added.
Tapper added that view was "crazy."
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"That was somebody who worked for the White House before the election, before Biden dropped out, saying like, it's no big deal, he just needs to show proof of life. That was the term, proof of life.' I mean, that's so offensive," Tapper said.
The CNN host also accused the former president, and those around him, of being anti-democratic.
"And like the idea that Biden thought only he could beat Trump and that he could be president for another four years, both of those are not facts and they both seem odd to me. But the idea that he would deny the Democratic Party an opportunity to have a primary system that would produce, among possible candidates, whether you or Gretchen Whitmer or Josh Shapiro or Gavin Newsom or whoever, that he would deny that to the party, so that this small group of people, including him, and one cabinet secretary said to us that it was, at best, he was a senior member of a board that ran the country. It's anti-democratic, really," he said, speaking to Smith, who has suggested that he was open to a potential bid for the presidency.
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Tapper has admitted that he didn't cover Biden's decline extensively enough since the book's release and has said he looks back on it with "humility."
