NEW: Jake Tapper Under Fire After Resurfaced Clip Undermines His New Book

One political maxim that’s long held true is that the cover-up is worse than the crime. In the case of Jake Tapper, his own cover-up has been revealed while reporting on another.

The CNN anchor, who is already ensnared in a defamation lawsuit, is planning to cash in on the post-Biden era as the co-author of a new tell-all detailing how aides to the former president “covered up” his mental decline during the presidential campaign. Left out is how Tapper was a willing participant.

Long before 2024, there were signs that former President Joe Biden was in the twilight of cognition, according to Lara Trump, daughter-in-law to President Donald Trump and former co-chair of the Republican National Committee. News of Tapper’s forthcoming book, titled “Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again” and release date of March 20th, prompted conservatives online to resurface a testy interview from 2020 where Tapper accused Lara Trump of mocking Biden’s stutter.

Not so, said the Trump family member.

“First and foremost, I had no idea that Joe Biden ever suffered from a stutter,” Lara said when challenged to explain her criticisms of Biden at a campaign event that year. “I think what we see on stage with Biden, Jake, is clearly a cognitive decline. That’s what I’m referring to.”

An incensed Tapper fired back that Lara Trump “has no right… I think you were mocking his stutter, and I think you have absolutely no standing to diagnose somebody’s cognitive decline.”

The CNN anchor may not have known it at the time, but he and other colleagues in the mainstream media brushed aside the well-founded fears of Lara Trump and other Biden critics who were ultimately vindicated four years later.

But to Tapper, hindsight is 20/20, and now it’s acceptable to accuse the Democrat of being “shockingly narcissistic, self-delusional, and reckless” in seeking a second term, according to publisher Penguin Press.

“What you will learn makes President Biden’s decision to run for reelection seem shockingly narcissistic, self-delusional, and reckless — a desperate bet that went bust — and part of a larger act of extended public deception that has few precedents,” Penguin said in a press release obtained by CNN.

Conservative podcaster Stephen Miller was among the voices online calling for Tapper to be a little more self-reflective.

“Here’s Jake Tapper incensed over Joe Biden’s ‘stutter’ and outraged over claims of Biden’s cognitive decline,” he wrote on X. “Now he’s cashing in on a book about Biden’s cognitive decline and media cover up. There is no bottom for these people.”

“His family, and his senior aides were so convinced that only he could beat Trump again, they lied to themselves, allies, and the public about his condition and limitations,” the press release stated.

“Toni Morrison once said, ‘If there’s a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it,’” Jake Tapper said in a statement. “That’s what inspired this book: we wanted to know more about what we all just lived through. More than 200 interviews later, Alex and I have a much better idea. And soon you all will too.”

Tapper, CNN writes, had a “unique vantage point” to witness Biden’s cognitive decline on stage against President Trump during their June 27th, 2024 debate. Less than a month later, he dropped out of the race.

He and Axios correspondent Alex Thompson write in the book, “What the world saw at Joe Biden’s one and only debate was not an anomaly — it was not a cold, it was not someone who was under or overprepared, it was not someone who was just a little tired. It was the natural result of an eighty-one-year-old man whose faculties had been diminishing for years.”

Ironically, Tapper lost a book deal about the Biden presidency in 2023 after publishers declared that a “soft market” for political books was tanking sales. After Biden dropped out, and especially after former Vice President Kamala Harris lost to Trump, sales for books on Biden’s “original sin”—his decision to run for a second term—have shot through the roof.

“The irony is biting: In the name of defeating what they called an existential threat to democracy, Biden and his inner circle ensured it, tossing aside his implicit promise to serve for only one term, denying the existence of health issues the nation had been watching for years, dooming the Democrats to defeat,” the publisher states. “The decision to run again, the Original Sin of this president, led to a campaign of denial and gaslighting, leading directly to Donald Trump’s return to power and all that has happened as a consequence.”