Latest news with #coverUp
Yahoo
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Jake Tapper Puts Blame for Biden's Downfall Squarely Back on Biden
Jake Tapper, CNN anchor and co-author of the new book Original Sin, detailing the alleged 'cover-up' of the true depths of Joe Biden's cognitive decline, has told Bill Maher that the former president should share some of the blame for his own downfall. 'Who do we blame?' Maher asked on Friday's episode of Real Time With Bill Maher. Maher joked that the president's wife, Dr. Jill Biden, is 'getting the Yoko treatment,' taking the blame when it is perhaps undeserved. 'Yes, I think it was Jill Biden,' Tapper agreed. 'I also think it's Hunter Biden. I also think President Biden has some agency here, too. We're not saying it was Weekend at Bernie's,' Tapper explained. The reference to the 1989 slapstick comedy, in which a pair of insurance brokers puppeteer the corpse of their boss in order to enjoy the perks of his Hamptons beach house, drew laughs from the audience. Tapper doubled down, clarifying that it wasn't like the film. 'He had moments where he was non-functioning but he understood what was going on. We saw him earlier today: He can speak and talk. If he was here right now, he could talk for 10 to 15 minutes, he'd be fine.' Tapper did go on to explain that it was a concerted effort to conceal the president's health issues from the public and the media, as there were fears that unless he ran against Trump in the 2024 election, the Democrats would lose. 'There was a period in 2023-2024 where Democratic lawmakers barely saw the president,' Tapper noted, saying that even senior party officials and White House administration staff had been kept in the dark. Ultimately, as Biden's health issues became too painful to ignore, the president was swapped out for his vice president, Kamala Harris, in the 2024 election—a move that did not reverse Democrats' fortunes. Democratic Rep. Seth Moulton (D-MA), joining Tapper on the show, agreed with his assessment that an 'omerta' was in place amongst the 'inner circle' not to speak openly about the realities of the president's health. 'Donald Trump, Democrats perceived him to be an existential threat to the world and only Joe Biden had ever beaten Trump,' Tapper said. 'Therefore, he had to be the nominee again and any word that deviated from that was helping Trump,' Tapper explained, before concluding: 'That's how the Biden people sold it to themselves.'
Fox News
27-05-2025
- Politics
- Fox News
Credibility crisis: White House reporters speak out on whether Biden's mental decline was deliberately hidden
White House reporters who covered the Biden administration are speaking out about whether they were duped into thinking the president was mentally fit for office and if West Wing staffers attempted to hide the truth from Americans. CNN's Jake Tapper and Axios reporter Alex Thompson's "Original Sin: President Biden's Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again," was released on Tuesday and has created plenty of chatter among the White House press corps while putting the issue back at the forefront. The book details Joe Biden's mental acuity concerns while in office, accusing the Biden White House of lying to reporters and voters. Fox News senior White House correspondent Peter Doocy responded by posting multiple videos to X showing him questioning Biden and the White House about the then-president's cognitive decline, only to be quickly dismissed. Other White House reporters found it odd that CNN is tied to the book, while some had strong feelings about whether there was truly a "cover-up." One White House reporter truly believes the White House clearly tried to hide the truth from everyone. "This was a cover-up by any definition, but a quixotic one for the Biden team to have undertaken, for at the end of the day, there is only so much a White House staff can do to shield the President of the United States from exposure to the press and public. The cover-up had both private and public-facing dimensions," the second White House reporter told Fox News Digital. The reporter said the private dimensions included "secretive strategizing and decision-making," while the public strategy featured "brazen lies" such as video of Biden appearing confused being chalked up as "cheapfakes" and "the silencing of reporters who pressed the issue early on." Doocy, and a handful of other bold reporters, were regularly shut down by press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre if they dared to ask about the president's fitness for office. "The subject that was denounced as so rude and fringe-y to ask about back then eventually emerged as the defining issue of the Biden presidency," the White House reporter said. A second White House reporter echoed the thoughts of "The Daily Show" host Jon Stewart, who on Monday blasted CNN for relentlessly promoting "a book about news they should've told you was news a year ago for free." "Sources are always more eager to talk after the fact, but it's not a good look that CNN -- a heavy hitter with plenty of weight to challenge the White House as the decline happened -- barely scratched the surface of the story that Tapper now reports," the second White House reporter told Fox News Digital. "Late work still deserves half credit though," they added. A third White House reporter initially believed the 82-year-old Biden was merely aging, or perhaps suffering from COVID side effects, and doesn't think the press is culpable. "You know, it's one of those things; the guy is old. He speaks like an old person, and it's getting more pronounced as time goes by," the third White House reporter said of Biden. "I noticed, personally, a dramatic difference between when he took office and the start of the second year. I suspected, and wondered, if it might be because of COVID and the aftereffects of COVID. He had it twice, I think… I know it's been reported that a brain fog kind of thing can happen after you've had it. I left it at that," they continued. "I remember a very different Joe Biden in 2014, 2015. He was a decade younger, so that makes sense." The third White House reporter "doesn't get" the notion that journalists should have been able to uncover the truth about his declining health at the moment. "How? How exactly do you report that? If you're a White House reporter, you have responsibilities to explain what happened that day. Like in any White House, there is usually something happening every single day," they said, noting that reporting on Biden's mental acuity concerns would be a major enterprise story. "People are not going to confirm medical stuff at all, not likely going to tell you what he's like in private… or in Wilmington, because it makes him look bad," they said. "Now, the Biden White House didn't leak. It just didn't, so if you want to go after that story, you're going to spend weeks on it, and you may not get anything. In the meantime, you're not doing other things." That same White House reporter is "puzzled" that Jean-Pierre has taken so much heat for regularly insisting Biden was fit for office. "To the extent that she says, 'He's more energetic than I am,' that's just silly, and she probably shouldn't have said that. On the other hand, to have her come out and say, 'Oh, no, no he's actually incapable of doing the job and ought to resign,' that's not realistic," the White House reporter said, adding that Jean-Pierre and other top Biden staffers had skin in the game. "I mean, come on, you cannot expect the chief of staff to say, 'This guy cannot do the job,'" they said. The third White House reporter isn't sure Biden's age impacted his job performance and believes a lot of his shortcomings were simply "policy issues." "What would he have done much differently if he was younger? I don't know," they said. "Until you can show me that he did bad things because he wasn't up to the job at that moment, you know, I take it with a grain of salt." Margaret Chadbourn covers the White House as a Cheddar correspondent, with a seat in the briefing room, and is a WHCA member. She believes the entire Biden saga has hurt trust in the media because Americans are asking what was missed, and why it was missed. "Reporters need to do some soul-searching, maybe, perhaps, and question did they cover Biden the way they should have, through the lens they should have, asking the questions they should have, taking the facts and putting them together, or should they have looked for more facts," Chadbourn told Fox News Digital. "Should they have done more research?," Chadbourn continued. "I just think there is a whole timeline that the media and reporters need to look through, not just Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson writing a book." Chadbourn, who has been covering Biden on and off since 2005, said he was always affable and always "came alive interacting with voters." But as his legacy is defined, she believes there is anger among Americans over what people perceive as "misinformation about his health." "Not as a media critic, but as a journalist, a political reporter, we need to see what was there that we perhaps missed," Chadbourn said. The first White House reporter who spoke anonymously believes the truth will eventually come out. "We will learn more about all this as time goes by: first, in aides' memoirs, where they will, for money, traffic the pitiable incidents and sad details they knew about at the time, and helped conceal; and secondly, through archival disclosure, as we get our hands on the White House memoranda, emails, and texts that will show the day-to-day mechanics of the cover-up—and maybe answer the question of who was running the country," the reporter told Fox News Digital.
Fox News
23-05-2025
- Health
- Fox News
Trump has not directed administration to declassify Biden documents on health 'cover-up'
President Donald Trump has not directed his administration to declassify documents related to former President Joe Biden's health and an alleged "cover-up" of the 46th president's slipping mental acuity while commander in chief, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said Thursday. "The president can declassify anything that he wants. Has he looked to see if there are any records here that would contradict what we've been told about Joe Biden's decline?" Fox News' Peter Doocy asked Leavitt during a press briefing Thursday. "He has not directed anyone, to my knowledge, to look into that," Leavitt responded. "But, surely, I can ask him if he intends to." Biden's health is back in the national spotlight after audio recordings of his interview with special counsel Robert Hur were released Friday. The recordings showed the former president tripping over his words, slurring sentences, taking long pauses between answers and struggling to remember key moments in his life, including the year his son Beau Biden died of cancer. Hur led an investigation into Biden's handling of classified documents after Biden's departure as vice president during the Obama administration. Hur announced in February 2024 he would not recommend criminal charges against Biden for possessing classified materials after his vice presidency, saying Biden is "a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory." Biden's office revealed Sunday the former president was battling an "aggressive" prostate cancer that had metastasized. After the election cycle, a handful of books documenting the 2024 election cycle and Biden's apparent health decline have hit store shelves claiming that Biden staffers were aware of and fretted about the president's mental decline, but publicly promoted him as physically and mentally fit to serve as president. Fox News Digital has extensively covered concerns about Biden's mental acuity and health dating back to the 2020 election cycle. "I think the president has spoken on this pretty extensively," Leavitt added at the news conference. "And I have spoken about it extensively from this podium as well, how it was truly one of the worst political scandals this country has ever seen, that the previous administration covered up the decline in the former president's mental and physical ability. And it's now all coming out. But the American people knew the truth, and that's one of the many reasons why President Trump won the election on Nov. 5." Doocy asked Leavitt specifically about the Biden administration's use of an autopen, which Trump has argued was used by Biden staffers to sign official White House documents without Biden's approval. "Specifically, (Trump) talks about the autopen. He thinks that staffers were using this autopen. Is there some kind of, like a badge, that you have to swipe to use an autopen? Is there a record of that?" Doocy asked. "I can tell you here at this White House, the president signs any document that has legal implications," Leavitt responded. "The president signs every executive order. He signs every proclamation. He signs pretty much every document that is needed for the president's signature, with the exception of maybe some letters to children. From what we have heard and seen, that was not the case in the previous administration. And the president is raising good questions that are worth looking into." Autopen signatures are automatically produced by a machine, as opposed to an authentic, handwritten signature. The conservative Heritage Foundation's Oversight Project first investigated the Biden administration's use of an autopen earlier this year and found that the same signature was on a bevvy of executive orders and other official documents, while Biden's signature on the document announcing his departure from the 2024 race varied from the apparent machine-produced signature.
Fox News
22-05-2025
- Politics
- Fox News
Flashback: Karine Jean-Pierre declared 'there is no cover-up' of Biden's health after he dropped out of race
Print Close By Gabriel Hays Published May 22, 2025 As new reports allege that former President Biden's handlers secretly knew that he was declining physically and mentally before his 2024 campaign withdrawal, former White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre consistently denied Biden's frailty to the media. During a press briefing just days after Biden withdrew from his re-election campaign in July 2024, Jean-Pierre sparred with Fox News reporter Peter Doocy, refuting his suggestion that party figures and many in the media covered up the president's cognitive decline until it wasn't possible anymore. "First of all, there's been no cover-up," Jean-Pierre told Doocy, adding, "I want to be very clear about that." CONSERVATIVES REACT TO LEAKED BIDEN AUDIO ON SOCIAL MEDIA: 'THIS IS PAINFUL' "I know that that is a narrative that you love to –" the White House official said in response to the Fox News reporter, who had asked, "So, who ordered White House officials to cover up a declining president?" Jean-Pierre's denial of a cover-up has come under more scrutiny following recent bombshell reports alleging that Biden insiders acknowledged the former president's decline privately while strategizing on how to deny it to the media. Axios reporter Alex Thompson told News Nation Now that while researching for his new book "Original Sin" – co-authored with CNN anchor Jake Tapper – a Biden insider admitted "yes, we deserve blame for X, Y, Z. We were hiding [Biden]." FORMER BIDEN MEDICAL ADVISOR SAYS HE 'PROBABLY' HAD CANCER AT BEGINNING OF PRESIDENCY Thompson added that the same insider told him the media were to blame for how much they could get away with in denying Biden's decline, stating, "Listen, the media deserves some blame too. Like we were sort of amazed at some of the stuff we were able to spin." The book also claimed Biden's inner circle kept many White House officials in the dark about the former president's mental and physical state. Former Biden staffers alleged that presidential insiders urged people like former White House deputy press secretary Andrew Bates to deny Biden's health issues when the media asked about them. "Some of Bates's colleagues believed that Biden's inner circle took advantage of his loyalty and told him to deny things they knew were true," Tapper and Thompson wrote, elsewhere adding, "[Bates], along with most of the press team, rarely met with the president and didn't have firsthand knowledge of the president's wherewithal. They relied on senior staff for answers." CLICK HERE FOR MORE COVERAGE OF MEDIA AND CULTURE "Original Sin" also reported that the Biden campaign and White House had a "modus operandi" for "attacking any journalist who covered any questions about the president's age" with the goal to "shame journalists and create a disincentive structure for those curious about the president's condition." Concerns over what was known about Biden's health decline while he was president have only mounted since he left office, as he was recently diagnosed with advanced prostate cancer. The U.S. Department of Justice also recently released the audio recording of his 2024 interview with Special Counsel Robert Hur, providing evidence of Biden's cognitive issues that were present months before he left the presidential race. CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP Jean-Pierre and representatives for Biden did not immediately reply to Fox News Digital's request for comment. Print Close URL
Washington Post
20-05-2025
- Politics
- Washington Post
The Biden cover-up demands deep soul-searching
Those who colluded in the cover-up of Joe Biden's cognitive decline are eager to put it behind them. The election is over, so why dwell on the past? Why not focus on more immediate problems, such as President Donald Trump's continuing offenses against the civic order? You can't blame them for hoping, I suppose. But we can't simply ignore such a shocking institutional failure. Nor can we put off the reckoning in sympathetic deference to Sunday's announcement that the former president has aggressive metastatic prostate cancer.
