My colleague Nick Arama covered how Kelly destroyed Tapper for ignoring the obvious.  

Kelly walked through so many instances that he ignored. She called out how his network called the truthful videos about Biden “cheap fakes.” That’s when he made a truly surprising comment that “conservative media was right.”   

.@MegynKelly calls out CNN and @JakeTapper for parroting the Biden White House lie about “cheap fakes” in June 2024 ahead of the debate. Tapper admits he toned down his coverage of both candidates so neither would drop out…

Kelly: “[L]eading up to the debate, which you… pic.twitter.com/Dbxic3Mfld

— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) May 20, 2025

What Kelly didn’t do was pick apart how the book was written. What words were used – what adjectives and nouns were employed and why. Kelly is one of the best interviewers in the business, so I assume she made choices on what to attack and for what reason. Tapper and his collaborator Alex Thompson knew they would be tarred and feathered, but the endgame would be to create interest in their book. After listening to the entire interview, I thought most of Kelly’s listeners would assume (as I did) that they didn’t need or want to buy “Original Sin.” I had no intentions of buying Tapper’s tome, and I didn’t buy it, but I did listen to the audio version. It was free. I think I got my money’s worth.  

I listened to it during two plane rides, so I didn’t take copious notes or pull quotes, but my impression of Jake Tapper dropped below my own “he’s a hack” level of disrespect. Tapper was the audiobook’s reader. Sure, some authors read their own books, but listening to Jake Tapper’s attempts at regional accents and his changing voice inflections to mimic certain people was occasionally comical and always irritating.  

Tapper’s voice impression of Biden was a strained, poor inflection of a generic old man. It was only recognizable as Biden because Tapper would say, “Biden said.” Tapper muted his impression of Obama to the point of being comical. Almost no part of Obama’s practiced irritating, halting haughtiness was offered. No doubt he didn’t want to go “Full Monty” for fear of being called a racist for doing an impression of a “black man.” His impression of New York’s Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s dress-down of Biden at Biden’s home was something like a Midwestern tourist trying to imitate a New Yorker to a Bostonian cabbie. Tapper even attempted and miserably failed to do Harris. He didn’t try inflections for everyone.  

Also, Jake Tapper speaking in third person was off-putting. Jake Tapper quoting Jake Tapper by saying “Jake said” was grating.  

His use of certain nouns and adjectives was obviously slanted left. For example, he labeled all J6ers “Insurrectionists”. Each instance of Biden’s obvious cognitive fumbles was followed by “but Trump” caveats. He brought up Watergate but claimed that hiding Biden’s cognitive decline and clear inability to act as president wasn’t as bad as Watergate. I beg to differ. Tapper glossed Jill Biden’s complicity. He glided by Biden’s pardon of Hunter. He failed to mention that that pardon was the broadest and longest prospective pardon in the history of presidential pardons. Yet the book is loaded with suggestions that Biden had decades of honorable public service. 

I disagree. 

What I got out of Tapper’s tome was that Tapper is, and will always be, a partisan hack. He admitted that he (and co-author Thompson) “missed” what I consider to be the biggest political cover-up in modern history. And, he admitted (to Megyn Kelly) that “right wing media” was got it “right,” but he never said that in his book. But, of course, he did add a load of “Trump is a threat to democracy” caveats. Perhaps the most salient point I gleaned from listening to Tapper’s book was that Biden wasn’t actually the president. Rather, his “politburo” was in charge. 

Tapper used “politburo” as the term for Biden’s inner circle. That gang ran the executive branch, not Joe Biden.   

Democrats knew that Biden had no business being president, but willingly covered up his infirmity. I think Tapper knew that as well and chose to ignore it because the alternative was, Donald Trump. 

I spent multiple hours (on planes) listening to Tapper drone on so you, dear reader, didn’t have to.  

You’re welcome. 

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