In a revealing moment of media accountability wrapped in political vindication, former RNC co-chair Lara Trump responded publicly this week to CNN anchor Jake Tapper’s apology—an acknowledgment that she had been right about President Joe Biden’s mental decline long before it became mainstream news.
The apology, which Tapper delivered during a media tour for his new book “Original Sin”, arrived nearly four years after a contentious 2020 interview in which he accused Lara Trump of mocking Biden’s stutter and dismissed her warnings about his cognitive health. Now, Tapper admits he was wrong—and Trump says, while she appreciates the gesture, the damage is already done.
Back in October 2020, with the presidential election weeks away, Lara Trump warned on-air that Joe Biden’s mental fitness was visibly deteriorating. Tapper reacted defensively, accusing her of mocking Biden’s speech impediment and asserting she had “no standing to diagnose” cognitive decline.
This week, Trump confirmed that Tapper called her two months ago to give her a heads-up. “He said, ‘I have this book coming out… I plan, whenever the book comes out, to go on TV and I will say you were right and I was wrong.’ And I guess to Jake’s credit, he did that.”
Tapper, promoting Original Sin—which details what he calls a “cover-up of Biden’s decline” within the White House—told Piers Morgan:
“Knowing what we know now, and looking back on that interview… she was right, and I was wrong.”
While Lara Trump acknowledged Tapper’s follow-through, she remained critical of what she described as a delayed and complicit role by the media in shaping public perception during a pivotal election.
“We were so close to something so dangerous happening to this country,” she told Laura Ingraham. “Jake Tapper saying this is like a Watergate-level type of situation, now that he played a role in it, it feels a little bit too late to me.”
Seems like a good time to remind everyone that in 2020 Jake Tapper, first, accused me of making fun of people with a stutter (an atrocious accusation) and then attempted to shut me down and ended our interview when I tried to warn people of Joe Biden’s very obvious cognitive… pic.twitter.com/ZOxSGQP13J
— Lara Trump (@LaraLeaTrump) June 27, 2024
Her broader message echoed a common refrain from conservative media: mainstream networks ignored clear signs of Biden’s decline, ridiculed those who sounded the alarm, and only reversed course once it was politically or commercially viable to do so.
Tapper’s admission comes at a moment when Biden’s mental fitness is no longer taboo in major media outlets. What was once ridiculed as a fringe conspiracy theory is now being openly discussed by Democrats, journalists, and former staffers—but Lara Trump, and many others, argue the timing betrays a deep rot in institutional media credibility.
“You can’t do this time and time again to people and continue to lie to people in the way they did and think that you’re going to get any different result,” she said. “It’s the reason Donald Trump is in the White House right now.”
