CNN's Tapper rips media smear campaign against Hur, WSJ report on Biden decline without mentioning own network

CNN anchor Jake Tapper has taken aim at the media's treatment of those who sounded the alarm about former President Joe Biden's cognitive decline before it was fully exposed at the now-infamous presidential debate, despite the fact that his own network was guilty of lobbing such attacks. 

As Biden was actively seeking reelection, there were two explosive moments that drew attention to his mental acuity before the debate. The first was in February 2024 with the release of the Hur report, which determined the Justice Department would not seek criminal charges over the then-president's mishandling of classified information, in part because a jury would deem him as a "sympathetic, well-meaning elderly man with a poor memory." The report also revealed Biden couldn't remember key dates, such as when he was in office and when his son Beau died. 

The second was in June 2024, weeks before the debate, when The Wall Street Journal published a bombshell report titled, "Behind Closed Doors, Biden Shows Signs of Slipping," a months-long investigation by reporters Annie Linskey and Siobhan Hughes involving more than 45 sources who were either directly involved or briefed on meetings with Biden, who they said "appears slower now, someone who has both good moments and bad ones." 

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Questions about then-President Joe Biden’s fitness to serve another term exploded following a disastrous presidential debate in June 2024.  (Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images)

On Bari Weiss' "Honestly" podcast Thursday, Tapper spoke about how the Biden White House went to "war" with Special Counsel Robert Hur, who he described to Weiss as a "serious civil servant," and how members of the media participated. 

"A lot of people in the media are very complicit and part of the smear machine against Robert Hur," Tapper told Weiss. "Robert Hur is smeared and cannot get a job for months. And he was – honestly, if you look back at what he said, that was polite!"

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He also praised "great reporters" Linksey and Hughes, noting they, too, were viciously attacked. 

"[They] are garroted by the Democratic Party and by journalists and by media critics, and by journalism professors and this whole industry of people who claim to be non-partisan assessors of truth… that had to have been traumatizing for them," Tapper said. 

What Tapper failed to mention was that CNN was among those "complicit" in Team Biden's attacks on Hur and The Wall Street Journal. 

Jake Tapper took aim at the media "smear machine" that targeted Robert Hur and The Wall Street Journal to protect Joe Biden. (Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for Warner Bros. Discovery)

Jim Acosta, who at the time was Tapper's CNN colleague, wondered aloud if Hur’s assessment was "out of bounds," while CNN commentator and former Biden White House communications director Kate Bedingfield accused Hur of "editorializing" his report, and then-CNN political analyst John Avlon wondered why "some spin on the ball" was included. 

One of CNN's go-to legal experts, Jeffrey Toobin, scolded Hur for making "unnecessary points" about Biden’s advanced age, characterizing the special counsel as a "Republican partisan" who "trashed" the president despite not bringing charges. 

"Part of that report was an outrage, was a disgrace," Toobin said at the time.  "I mean, the idea that they that he would make such a big point of Biden being elderly is not something a prosecutor needed to do."

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CNN liberal pundit Paul Begala similarly attacked the "partisan Trumper" for "editorializing way out of his league," even suggesting Hur was motivated to seek revenge on Biden for voting against William Rehnquist, for whom Hur had clerked, during his Supreme Court confirmation as Chief Justice in 1986 when Biden served as a senator.

"This guy has donated to Republicans. He is a partisan," Begala said. "The only job he had was to indict or not indict, and to add all this — the only thing he didn't add was the legal disclaimer that this is a political ad in support of Donald Trump. It was a total cheap shot."

CNN's then-senior political analyst Gloria Borger immediately took Biden's side, insisting, "This is not a man who's going to forget the day his son died" and echoed Biden's falsehood that Hur was the one who brought up Beau's death in the interview when, in fact, it was the president. 

Jeffrey Toobin, one of CNN's go-to legal experts, called the Hur report a "disgrace" and labeled the special counsel a "Republican partisan."

Perhaps Biden's biggest defender at CNN at the time was its media reporter, Oliver Darcy (who has since left the network), who declared Hur's depiction of Biden's mental state "didn’t match reality."

"The acknowledgement from some, but not all, news outlets on Tuesday about the true nature of Biden’s deposition marked another embarrassing moment for the national press, which has floundered at pivotal moments in the lead up to the crucial 2024 presidential election," Darcy wrote in March 2024. "The deposition transcripts not only indicated that Biden appeared fairly sharp during his testimony, joking with investigators and retelling stories with granular detail, but that Hur was misleading in how he presented some of the information included in his report."

"Hur chose to portray the president as a mentally diminished elderly man who struggled to recall basic information during his deposition, raising alarm bells about whether he had the fitness to serve in the nation’s highest office. Hur’s characterization of Biden played directly into a years-long campaign waged by Biden’s political opponents and the powerful right-wing media machine to depict the president as a senile, aloof man," he continued.

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CNN talking heads repeatedly attacked the integrity of Special Counsel Robert Hur, labeling him a "partisan Trumper" and accusing him of being politically motivated.  (Win McNamee/Getty Images)

Following The Wall Street Journal's report, several CNN anchors stressed that the paper's story heavily relied on Republican criticism of Biden and called out former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who gave the only on-the-record statement, for appearing to flip-flop on Biden's sharpness in previous comments (the Journal reporters later explained it as a tactical PR move at the time for McCarthy to bolster cooperation with the Biden White House). 

CNN's Boris Sanchez grilled Hughes over Democratic allegations that her story was "slanted," a question that would be unfathomable to a journalist covering Donald Trump.  

Darcy erupted at The Wall Street Journal, insisting its reporting "suffers from glaring problems," lecturing the paper it "owes its readers — and the public — better."

"It is difficult to imagine that the newspaper, or any outlet, would run a similar story declaring that Trump is ‘slipping’ behind the scenes based on the word of top Democratic figures — despite the fact that the Democratic leadership has demonstrated a much stronger relationship with the truth in recent years than their Republican counterparts," Darcy wrote. 

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CNN anchor Boris Sanchez pressed Wall Street Journal journalist Siobhan Hughes on accusations from Democrats that her Biden report was "slanted."

"More broadly speaking, The Journal’s piece pointed to a continued problem roiling the news media as it covers the 2024 election. Trump is permitted to fall asleep in court and make nonsensical public statements on a routine basis without any serious questions raised about his mental acuity," the ex-CNN pundit continued. "Meanwhile, Biden is judged on an entirely different standard."

A spokesperson for CNN declined to comment.   

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