Jake Tapper shared that he was truly surprised by Biden’s performance in his clash with Donald Trump, so much so that he started frantically messaging ‘Holy F***’ to his colleagues.

The CNN anchor opted instead to write ‘holy smokes’ while moderating the now-infamous face-off that ultimately cost Biden the Democratic nomination. 

Tapper has faced criticism leading up to the publication of his forthcoming book ‘Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Suppression, and His Regrettable Decision to Seek Re-election.’

Critics argue that Tapper himself was directly involved in the cover-up he now is dissecting. 

In a comprehensive discussion with Megyn Kelly, Tapper acknowledged that he may have misjudged Biden during his presidency but disclosed his shock while serving as the debate moderator.

‘That front row seat was really disturbing,’ he said, later describing Biden’s performance as an act of ‘self-immolation.’ 

Tapper revealed he and fellow moderator Dana Bash had iPads which they used to communicate with their production team throughout the debate.

Early on, Tapper sent a message to his crew backstage. He didn’t know which staff were working, so he ‘tried to keep it clean.’

‘I wrote “holy smokes,”‘ he told Kelly. ‘I wanted to write “holy f**k.”‘

Around the same time, Bash slid him a piece of paper, with her own message on it.

It read: ‘He just lost the election.’ 

‘It was – I don’t think this is hyperbole at all – the worst debate in the history of presidential debates going back to 1960.’

The aftermath of Biden’s rambling performance was chaotic as Democrats scrambled to save face and – most importantly – remove Biden from the running.

It was just five months out from the election and Trump was rapidly gaining momentum, shoring up his base and connecting with new voters who were struggling with the cost of living crisis and horrified by Biden’s clear cognitive decline.

Tapper acknowledged this in his sit-down with Kelly, telling her: ‘We all watched President Biden age. We all watched his gaffes. We all watched these moments that were uncomfortable and obviously representative of a decline going on.

‘But there was something about that debate that was utterly shocking.’ Tapper accepted that ‘maybe you and your listeners were not shocked.’

Kelly agreed. ‘It was one of those shocked but not surprised moments for us,’ she said.

Tapper recalled the moment Biden shuffled out onto the stage ‘as had been going on for years because of his degenerative spine’, which he said the White House had also lied about.

‘He has a cold also, so his voice is thinner… he’s obviously coughing a lot.’

The first answer Biden gave was ‘not good’, but it was the second lengthy answer during the economics segment in which he completely unraveled.

Tapper offered muted praise to Trump for showing restraint when he was handed plenty of ammunition to go on the attack.

‘Trump was obviously very Trump-y during the debate,’ Tapper said. ‘He did his thing. If you like it, you like it, and if you don’t, you don’t.

‘For Trump, given what was going on to his left, he was fairly restrained. He wasn’t really commenting on the self immolation that was going on.

‘I think he only made one comment about Biden’s incoherence.’ Trump told the crowd at one stage in the debate: ‘I really don’t know what he said at the end of that sentence. I don’t think he knows what he said either.’

Tapper said after the debate, Biden required help getting off the stage from his wife, Dr Jill. It was just one step down.

But he was even more shocked by Biden’s post-debate reaction. Rather than show distress or overt concern about his poor performance, he seemed blasé about the showdown.

‘They didn’t really seem to have any idea that this has been as bad as it was,’ Tapper revealed. ‘He said something awkward, ”sorry about my cold” and something about how much Trump lies… and he says, ”I guess we’ll go see what the commentators have to say”.’

‘You think… did I just see that?’

Despite Tapper’s horror at the evening, he has now admitted that he did not fully report on Biden’s senility when interviewing the former president over the years.

‘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.

The former Fox News anchor asked why Tapper didn’t grill Biden during a 2022 interview, after the president called out for a colleague who had died nearly two months earlier at an official event.

‘You covered the Biden presidency aggressively throughout the four years, but you barely covered his mental acuity,’ Kelly said.

‘Time and time again, when issues came up, you seemed to be running cover for the president. You didn’t seem interested.’ 

Kelly also brought up a now-infamous 2020 exchange between Tapper and Lara Trump, during which Tapper shamed her for mentioning Biden’s ‘cognitive decline.’

‘That Lara Trump interview, for example, she saw something that I did not see at the time, 100 percent, and I own that,’ Tapper explained of the tense interview with Donald Trump’s daughter-in-law.

In it, Tapper had blasted her for bringing up Biden’s tendency to stutter during a conversation about Biden’s mental acuity.

‘And when you sat with him again… you didn’t ask him about it,’ she said, referring to an October 2022 interview Tapper conducted with Biden.

‘You didn’t follow up on the fact that he was falling up the stairs that he was losing  his train of thought regularly. That he was slurring, that he was incomprehensible, that he was getting lost on the White House lawn.’

‘You sat right across from him and you asked none of that, notwithstanding the fact that he had promised you he would be fully transparent about his health issues.’

Tapper acknowledged that Biden’s mental state was ‘not covered sufficiently’ by stations like CNN and that ‘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,”‘ he added.

Biden this week revealed he has been diagnosed with late-stage prostate cancer, sparking a wave of new concerns about his health in the White House.

He denies covering up the diagnosis.