Viewers outraged as Jake Tapper absolves Joe Scarborough of Biden health cover-up: 'Like they didn't know!'
Proper news from Britain - News from Britain you won’t find anywhere else. Not the tosh the big media force-feed you every day!
CNN's Jake Tapper gave a pass to MSNBC host Joe Scarborough for talking up Joe Biden's mental fitness last year - telling the Morning Joe host that Biden focused specifically on convincing Scarborough he was fine.
Tapper, who has been making the talk-show rounds to promote his new book Original Sin: President Biden's Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again, joined Morning Joe on Wednesday and announced that Biden targeted Scarborough to persuade the host he was mentally sound.
Tapper said that Biden was 'a frequent viewer of [Scarborough's] show' and that the president wanted to wipe any notion of his fading faculties from Scarborough's mind in 2023.
'Joe Biden said to staffers that he wanted to convince you that you were wrong, and he focused on you like you were a constituency,' Tapper said.
'Like you were farmers in Iowa, like you were the Kiwanis Clubs in New Hampshire. And he made sure that you thought differently.'
During March 2024 episode of Morning Joe, Scarborough said Biden was 'better than he has ever been, intellectually, analytically.'
'F*** you if you can’t handle the truth,' he continued. 'This version of Biden… is the best Biden ever.'
Scroll down for full video:
Viewers of Wednesday's exchange were incensed, with many saying both Tapper and Scarborough have known the truth all along.
'Club chatting like they didn’t know… they all knew!' wrote one X user.
'"Journalism" right now is a bunch of ppl consoling each other that nothing is their fault,' another added. 'Jake Tapper's job isn't to relay information to the public, it's to help Joe Scarborough feel better about himself.'
'The left KNEW the lights were flickering in Joe’s ballroom,' a third chimed in. 'They didn't care. They weren’t about to let Donald Trump win. So the lying was cranked high.'
During a separate interview with former ABC exec Mark Halperin Tuesday, Scarborough engaged in a fierce, three-minute defense of his March 2024 statement that Biden was 'far beyond cogent.'
He insisted Biden had both 'good and bad days' and that Scarborough was only made privy to the former.
The 'Morning Joe' host stuck with that story Wednesday.
'I said that this was Biden that is at his best - that's what I saw,' Scaborough said.
The exchange occurred after Biden's office on Sunday issued a statement revealing he has an 'advanced' form of prostate cancer that has already spread to his bones.
Tapper's book came out on Tuesday, spurred a torrent of criticism.
During a conversation with Megyn Kelly that same day, Tapper admitted legacy media failed on covering Biden - while conservative outlets, for more than a year, had it right.
'Knowing what I know now, obviously I feel tremendous humility about my coverage,' Tapper told Kelly, while also admitting that 'conservative media was correct' in how it handled the story.
Biden's mental state was 'not covered sufficiently' by stations like CNN, he admitted, adding, 'conservative media was right.'
'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,' he said. 'I wish I could do differently.'
'Conservative media absolutely has every right to say, "We were hip to this and the legacy media was not."'
