3 MKMEDIA BONUS EPISODES: Mark Halperin goes in depth on his knowledge of Joe Biden s cognitive decline, in the wake of a new book by Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson. The Nerve with Maureen Callahan takes on Harry and Meghan, and takes on Taylor Swift and Blake Lively.
00:05:39.600I know Joe Biden decently well, but I, there are plenty of people who know him better.
00:05:44.040I couldn't believe he ran for president in 2020.
00:05:47.100And so to me, his mental decline was apparent in 2017.
00:05:51.000And now what you have is a bunch of people who say it was only apparent to them on the day of the debate in the 2024 campaign.
00:05:59.500The reason this new book is causing such an uproar, even though it's not out until next week, is because the book purports to explain the cover up inside the White House.
00:06:09.440The cover up inside the White House of Joe Biden's mental decline.
00:06:12.180I don't understand how there could be a cover up of something that was on television on a nearly nightly basis in, in either Joe Biden's performance, which was uneven.
00:06:34.300And the ability to have credibility to cover presidents was undermined significantly from 2024 back to 2019, at least.
00:06:45.220Today, Donald Trump, there's so many things that need scrutiny.
00:06:48.780His acceptance of this airplane, his family's business dealings in the Middle East with the very monarchies that he's meeting with on this trip.
00:07:13.640Today, this news of this new book has come leaking out to news organizations reporting on it.
00:07:21.040One is The Guardian, which got a copy of the book, and they report that a lot of Democrats are very unhappy that Joe Biden kept running and he should have gotten out of the race and that and that there was efforts to cover up for him.
00:07:31.900Another report from Alex Thompson, who now writes for Axios, he wrote for Politico previously, says that there was discussion within the Biden camp of perhaps Biden needing a wheelchair.
00:07:42.940But he couldn't use a wheelchair during the campaign and that if he won reelection, there was talk he would use it then.
00:07:49.060That's interesting. Those are interesting things.
00:07:51.040I don't doubt. I don't doubt either of those things are true.
00:07:53.540But it's this question of accountability, this question of did reporters do everything they could to hold Joe Biden and his team accountable for his obvious decline, few interviews, few press conferences, few public appearances, doing things in public not every day, but often that showed obvious mental decline.
00:08:13.460This wasn't something for insiders to know or whisper about the terms of the cover up war.
00:08:18.880But the fact of Biden's decline was not a secret and the public saw it.
00:08:23.720So these two guys have now written this book, OK, and their publisher, aware of the criticism that's already come their way, saying, how can you write a book after the election about a cover up that we all saw with our own eyes during the campaign?
00:08:35.660They made a video, a publisher making a video, not that common.
00:08:40.160Here's a bit of the video they made trying to establish the bona fides of the two authors, Mr. Thompson and Mr. Tapper, that they were on this from the beginning.
00:08:48.720Will you pledge that if you're elected, you will be transparent about your health, all facets of your health with urgency so that we know?
00:08:58.600One poll shows that almost two thirds of Democratic voters want a new nominee in 2024.
00:09:03.440And the top reason they gave was your age.
00:09:05.940You know, that's not a good number for President Biden.
00:09:08.860Two thirds of the American people say he's not sharp enough to be president.
00:09:11.680Yeah, I mean, how can you use the bully pulpit when you don't have a bully you can put in the pulpit?
00:09:15.180OK, so you're part of the 23 percent of adults who are not concerned about the president's ability to be president because of his age and stamina.
00:09:23.000I mean, I know incumbents in general are not popular right now, but do you ever think maybe we should have a new candidate?
00:09:30.960There's a little bit of denialism with the president.
00:09:34.040This is a particularly bad week for this report and its comments about President Biden's faculties and his memory to come out because twice this week he has acted as if he in 2021 spoke to European leaders who have been dead for years.
00:09:49.080Part of the job of president is the having the confidence of the American people in your faculties.
00:09:54.660The White House's response every single time it has come up for three and a half years has been to deflect, to gaslight, to not tell the truth, not just to reporters, not just to other Democrats, but even at times to themselves.
00:10:07.120So you saw and if you're listening on the podcast, you heard there are two voices.
00:10:10.100One is is Alex Thompson, who was an aggressive reporter, as aggressive as almost any reporter in trying to figure out what was going on with Joe Biden's mental acuity and how his team was handling it.
00:10:20.140And then you heard the voice of Jake Tapper and the publisher did as good a job as it could to find clips of Jake Tapper seeming to be at least interested in the topic of Joe Biden's mental decline.
00:10:30.960So we thought, well, what are the counter counters to that?
00:10:35.160Because I know that no one at CNN was particularly aggressive about this, and I had no indication from my memory that Jake Tapper was aggressive.
00:10:43.040So we went and looked at the full appearances, the full segments in which Jake Tapper was in which the clips were pulled for that publisher video to ask ourselves, did the full clips demonstrate that Jake Tapper in attitude and determination and focus was in real time during the campaign, during Biden's presidency, interested in getting to the bottom of this?
00:11:06.920So let's look at some of the clips from the publisher video, but beyond what they chose to include.
00:11:13.700Here is Joe Biden's interview with Jake Tapper in 2022.
00:12:30.140This is, again, from another interview that the public another appearance, the publisher included.
00:12:33.760This is the White House press secretary and Jake Tapper asking her a question.
00:12:38.580Again, this is from the same segment that the publisher used to prove that Jake Tapper was serious about getting to the bottom of this cover up.
00:14:47.820Or are going to cast their vote for president based on whether someone is naming Emmanuel Macron or Francois Mitterrand, whose name they probably don't even know.
00:14:56.220So here is perhaps the biggest tell of all.
00:14:59.000If you're a reporter and you are determined to get to the bottom of this, if you think there may be a cover up at the highest levels of the government, a potential constitutional crisis, you would not treat Biden officials with humor or lightness.
00:15:11.420You would be tough and determined to get to the bottom of it.
00:15:14.560You don't ask about in the context of polls, which is the way he mostly asked about it.
00:15:18.940You don't accept spin that voters don't care.
00:15:22.360If you really are concerned about getting to the bottom of this, you ask the question.
00:15:28.520You ask the question about specific incidents and how they would explain it.
00:15:32.860And the one I always come back to is when there was an event in honor of a congresswoman who had passed away and Joe Biden tried to speak to her as if she were alive and there.
00:15:42.500OK, that's not confusing the names of two European leaders.
00:15:46.400That's not knowing which way to walk off the stage.
00:15:49.040That's not having your first public event at noon.
00:16:39.060OK, right before the 2020 election, Laura Trump, President Trump's daughter in law, didn't interview with Jake Tapper.
00:16:46.360And watch how indignant he gets at the mere suggestion that Joe Biden, who's doing his Delaware basement campaign, has suffered mental decline.
00:17:33.880Well, when you're trying to tell me that what I was suggesting was a stuttering, I have no idea, Joe Biden.
00:17:39.160Yeah, I think you were mocking his stutter.
00:17:40.720And I think you have absolutely no standing to diagnose somebody's cognitive decline.
00:17:44.760I would think that somebody in the Trump family would be more sensitive to people who do not have medical licenses diagnosing politicians from afar.
00:17:55.800Plenty of people have diagnosed your father from afar, and I'm sure it offends you, your father-in-law from afar.
00:18:01.560I'm sure it offends you. You don't have any standing to say.
00:18:04.220I'm not diagnosing him. What I'm saying, Jake, is that we can clearly see that Joe Biden is struggling for many times on stage.
00:18:12.400And it's very concerning to a lot of people that this could be the leader of the free world.
00:18:17.380That is all I'm saying. I genuinely feel sorry for Joe Biden.
00:18:21.620Yeah. So he indignantly cuts off the interview. She's not a doctor. Jake's not a doctor. I'm not a doctor.
00:18:26.180But I talked to a lot of doctors in 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024.
00:18:36.100And many of them said, look, I don't usually diagnose people from afar, but obviously there's mental and cognitive decline.
00:18:43.060He criticized her and cut her off and I think was a little rude to her with indignity saying, how dare you say that you're in a position to say the guy has mental decline?
00:18:54.120Well, guess what? Now that Jake Kapper has written a book about this, he says right in the publicity material for the book that there was this mental decline that was so apparent and that there was this big cover up in the White House.
00:19:05.340Now, I give them credit for pointing out the cover up in the White House because that was not aggressively covered because anytime anyone tried to do it, they were threatened and bullied and spun in public.
00:19:16.320And most reporters just gave up. But you cannot be part of restoring the credibility of the media to cover Donald Trump aggressively.
00:19:23.920If your posture is, oh, we did nothing wrong, we aggressively covered it or worse, in some ways, we didn't even see it.
00:19:31.940How could we have seen it? We didn't we weren't in these private meetings. The cover up was so intense.
00:19:36.080I'll say again, Joe Biden's decline was not uniform. There were days when he was just fine.
00:19:41.980So Republicans who say he was 100 percent gone and weekend at Bernie's and someone else was running the government.
00:19:47.400That's not true. But his decline was pronounced.
00:19:50.400There's a reason why he had a light schedule. He didn't talk to reporters.
00:19:53.940And there's a reason why all these things that happened in public that we all saw were ignored by the press because they didn't want to help Donald Trump win.
00:20:02.120They didn't want to be blamed if he won again. It's it's one of the most embarrassing things I've seen.
00:20:06.160So this morning I'm reading Politico, their daily tip sheet, the hot, the Politico playbook.
00:20:11.980And this is what they write. And it's amazing to me that this is still being this still the way the press, which defended and protected Joe Biden, is framing things for what it's worth.
00:20:23.100Biden has continued to deny any suggestion that he experienced cognitive decline while in office.
00:20:29.440They are wrong, the former president said in an interview last week on The View.
00:20:33.540There is nothing to sustain that. I mean, I get letting Joe Biden have his say.
00:20:37.840But for what it's worth, Joe Biden has continued to deny any suggestion.
00:20:41.900He experienced cognitive decline. I mean, how could they write that?
00:20:46.660How could they how could they credit that?
00:20:48.820It makes no sense. But it's the mindset that most every reporter, not Alex Thompson, but his co-author.
00:20:56.240And again, almost every reporter that's now being asked with the authority and the responsibility of covering Donald Trump to be to be responsible for that.
00:21:06.020But it's the same line. So Jake Tapper, his book coming out in a week.
00:21:10.900Here he is this morning on CNN, creating a whole new set of realities.
00:21:17.200You have an entire White House press corps, though, following him around.
00:21:20.580And I'm just curious as to whether or not this kind of trying to hide what was happening with the president at the time had an impact on the press corps.
00:21:31.420Like, why didn't we hear some of these details from what they actually saw and were dealing with trying to get information?
00:21:37.180Well, Alex Thompson and I were on the case, as were lots of other reporters, trying to figure out what was going on behind the scenes.
00:21:47.860But bottom line is the White House was lying not only to the press, not only to the public, but they were lying to members of their own cabinet.
00:21:54.860They were lying to White House staffers. They were lying to Democratic members of Congress, to donors about how bad things had gotten.
00:22:04.220And in fact, Alex and I started writing this book after the election of 2024.
00:22:09.740And we spoke with more than 200 people, most of whom, almost all of whom were Democrats and almost all of whom wouldn't be honest with us or wouldn't be candid with us until after the election.
00:22:21.360And then after the election, we found out all of these things that when you looked at what was going on with President Biden at the time, it probably doesn't surprise you the extent to which he was deteriorating.
00:22:32.820But now we have anecdotes and facts about what was really going on behind the scenes with details that Democrats wouldn't share with us until after Election Day.
00:22:43.640Here's something true that he said that Jake Tapper said on CNN this morning.
00:22:46.880True that there was a cover up, that senior Biden officials worked very hard to cover up as much as they could his decline, including amongst other people in the government and in the campaign.
00:22:58.280That's true. Here's two things that are not true.
00:23:01.480OK, and this is where the credibility is just so important that people be honest.
00:23:06.380I shouldn't be the only one in the media being honest about this.
00:23:08.920It's bizarre. OK, one thing that's not true is that you needed that the cover up is was so good that no one could see this, that we couldn't possibly have gotten to the bottom of this during the election.
00:23:23.740Again, it makes me mental. It was clear.
00:23:26.920I saw it with my own eyes in 2017 at a public event with hundreds of people.
00:23:32.440You saw it almost every day, not every day, but almost every day, both in what he did and the fact that he had such a limited schedule.
00:23:38.940So it is not true that it's only after the election that Jake Tapper could have gotten to the bottom of this and the rest of the Washington press corps could have gotten to the bottom of it.
00:23:47.180The other thing that's not true is that the press is blameless because they were more than just stymied in the telling of Jake Tapper.
00:23:55.440They were stymied from getting to the truth. No, they weren't.
00:23:59.280They were part of the conspiracy and the cover up.
00:24:02.400They allowed themselves to believe the ridiculous spin on TV in public and privately, they allowed themselves to be browbeat.
00:24:10.720I know reporters. Again, I said before, I don't know that Jake Tapper was browbeat by Biden folks, but I know reporters who were.
00:24:17.180They were told you will lose access. The New York Post lost access because they covered the Hunter Biden story.
00:24:24.080Reporters who covered any story the Biden people didn't like were denied access to sound familiar.
00:24:29.320A White House denying access to the press when they don't like what's written or said.
00:24:32.920This is a crisis. The book's going to come out.
00:24:36.400Conservatives online are already criticizing it along the same lines I am.
00:24:40.240But this should not be a red blue thing where the Democrats pretend that the book is on the up and up and the press pretends the book is on the up and up and they're criticized by red people on X and elsewhere.
00:24:52.420That shouldn't be the way this goes because the true story, the true story of what happened, whatever the book reveals about the cover up within the administration, the true story is that that video that the publisher put together to try to show Jake Tapper in the best light, the best light about how aggressive he was before the election.
00:25:13.160That's weak tea, but it becomes even more watered down when you show the full context of what he said in those very appearances and elsewhere.
00:25:22.520People treated it like a political story, like a polling story, like a partisan story.
00:25:27.440That's not what this was. If you want an America where the press corps can hold Donald Trump accountable, he's the current president, hold Donald Trump accountable.
00:25:36.340You want an America where this book is an opportunity not for Jake Tapper to make money and his co-author to make money.
00:25:42.760It's an opportunity for the press, every organization that participated in the cover up to come clean and to say what, again, is so obvious.
00:25:50.720I shouldn't have to say it. It was clear that Joe Biden had cognitive decline.
00:25:56.160It was clear that it was spun and covered up and bullying tactics were used.
00:26:01.700It was clear that people who didn't say it aloud had a partisan interest in not saying it aloud and that that included the media, which didn't say a word, not because they couldn't see it, but because they didn't want to be accused of helping Donald Trump win.
00:26:14.840I want this to be an opportunity to come clean, because if we don't now, I'm not sure what other opportunity people will take.
00:26:22.420It's not that hard. Be honest. Say what happened. Say what we all saw in countless videos, in countless presidential appearances.
00:26:31.840Say it, because if we do, then we can do our jobs correctly and cover the current president aggressively and with the trust of the American people.
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00:28:57.700Maybe Melania Trump and her amazing, iconic stylist, Herve Pierre, left it in a donation bin that Dylan Mulvaney went to rummage through like a little raccoon.
00:29:10.080Maybe Melania Trump, she's having so much fun on New Year's Eve at Mar-a-Lago.
00:29:13.660She goes up and tosses the dress off the tower at Mar-a-Lago into the bushes, and Dylan Mulvaney, like a little raccoon, takes the dress and runs off with it.
00:29:25.040Donatella Versace herself sent Dylan Mulvaney this iconic dress that our wonderful, beautiful First Lady Melania Trump wore back on New Year's Eve.
00:29:35.080Now, we have a picture of Donatella Versace.
00:29:51.500When I look at this picture, I can't tell who's transgender.
00:29:54.620I can't tell who's had more plastic surgery.
00:29:57.280Honestly, Dylan Mulvaney has had facial feminization surgery, gender transition surgery, hormones, Botox, you name it, and still looks like more of a woman than Donatella Versace, who is slowly morphing into Mickey Rourke.
00:30:09.640I don't think Donatella is going to be sending me clothes after this episode, but nonetheless, who cares?
00:30:25.100They sent Dylan Mulvaney all of these cans with his face on it, and immediately, the stock started to plummet.
00:30:30.900But I'm the type of person, because I call it like I see it, because I'm fair, I actually somewhat defended Dylan Mulvaney and the Bud Light scandal, and let me tell you why.
00:30:40.080This is one of my first big viral videos.
00:30:42.040Some of you who've been with me for years, you might remember this.
00:30:44.980So Dylan Mulvaney was getting lambasted, raked over the coals for this Bud Light scandal, and I said, you know what?
00:30:50.860Bud Light, they're the ones who strayed from their core competencies.
00:30:55.100Bud Light, they're the ones who decided to send all these cans to a man in a dress who mocks women for a living, because that's what Dylan Mulvaney does.
00:31:03.000That's how Dylan Mulvaney became famous.
00:31:04.780He was posting these videos saying, oh, I chipped a nail.
00:32:04.520Donatella Versace, she could send clothes to angel moms, warrior moms, school teachers.
00:32:09.980Some of you out there would love to have a hair and makeup session, have someone come and bring you a fancy $1,000 dress to put on for the day and go to a fabulous event.
00:32:19.140But Donatella Versace, she is telling you where her priorities lie, right?
00:32:23.040She doesn't care about the forgotten men and women of this country.
00:32:25.740She cares about this transgender influencer who makes a mockery of women every single day and then wants to cry and play the victim.
00:32:34.680That's what Dylan Mulvaney does, right?
00:32:36.000Dylan Mulvaney tries to say, oh, my God, everyone's so mean to me.
00:32:47.100I wish I didn't have to work that hard.
00:32:48.680In my next life, we can all come back as Dylan Mulvaney and become rich and famous for doing absolutely nothing.
00:32:55.520Now, Dylan Mulvaney, he was praised by his fashion.
00:32:58.400He had think pieces written on him in vogue.
00:33:00.680But if you're a Republican, if you're a conservative, if you're a real woman who happens to be an independent and goes against the left-wing doctrine, you are going to get attacked by the fashion elites.
00:33:11.620And that's what they did to First Lady Melania Trump just a few months ago in January in vogue.
00:33:16.820They decided to denigrate her official White House portrait where she looks strong, she looks incredible, she looks like she's ready to take on the world.
00:33:25.740But vogue, they really had a problem with this.
00:33:27.720We have a quote right here from the journalist, Hannah Jackson.
00:34:22.100She's doing tons of incredible things, right?
00:34:24.380And the fashion literati, all of these liberals like Hannah Jackson who live in their walk-up apartments in Bushwick and are miserable and just want to tear down anybody they don't like, what they don't understand is this.
00:34:35.360If Melania Trump had a D next to her name, they would love her.
00:34:39.080The same thing with Usha Vance, right?
00:34:41.140The fact that Usha Vance happens to be a Republican, she happens to be married to J.D. Vance, they are going to tear her down.
00:34:48.580Because all of these people, they want to preach feminism and acceptance and lifting women up.
00:34:54.000They want to preach about Roe v. Wade and whine about the Dobbs decision.
00:34:57.040But when it actually comes to uplifting women who have an R next to their name and happen to be Republicans, conservatives, MAGA, even independents, no, no, no, no, no.
00:35:25.100Of course, Melania Trump is the most stunning first lady we've had in decades.
00:35:30.580I also have to point out, Vogue used to love Melania Trump before she was first lady, before her husband got into presidential politics as a Republican.
00:35:38.940They would put Melania on the cover of Vogue.
00:35:40.960Now, they're never going to put her on the cover of Vogue as first lady, which I think is an atrocity.
00:35:45.820Jill Biden has been on the cover of Vogue three times, and she looks like a streetwalker.
00:35:50.340And her fishnet leggings and her leather skirts, that woman, Jill Biden, you look like a streetwalker on Houston Street.
00:36:16.900But the fact that she's been on the cover of Vogue three times is crazy.
00:36:20.780And Melania has never been on the cover of Vogue once as first lady.
00:36:25.020So all of these liberal fashion literati folks who sit in their penthouse apartments, they can continue to tear down conservative women all they want.
01:00:24.740Now, Taylor Swift has been dragged into this Blake Lively lawsuit.
01:00:31.100And she got word last week that she is going to be subpoenaed by Justin Baldoni, who Blake Lively, her former best friend, and Blake's husband, Ryan Reynolds, are trying to take down.
01:00:42.760Okay, they are trying to take this guy down.
01:01:50.100And, like, if she wants to be shot, she's going to be shot by paparazzi.
01:01:53.000Otherwise, we need a back entrance, et cetera, et cetera.
01:01:55.420So when she's shot out, like, with regular people at, like, a regular mid-priced American suburban restaurant, that is a message that she is sending, which is, like, I'm innocent.
01:02:47.400It's part of a legitimate lawsuit that was brought against them by Taylor's former manager, a guy named Daniel, I don't think I'm pronounced, Dimtro, D-Y-M.
01:03:01.100Anyway, this email is, like, for days.
01:03:11.780Now, he starts by saying, we are getting to a very important time in Taylor's career.
01:03:17.960And to keep in mind, quote, I am not quite the idiot that Andrea portrays me to be.
01:03:23.880Andrea is Taylor's mom, Scott's now ex-wife.
01:03:27.080Now, he says, my clients do not want to hear how much stress I am under or what I have done or how much time I have spent copying videotapes and sending them out when Taylor was 11.
01:03:50.840He goes on to say, now, he's a financial advisor and he's bragging a lot about the money he makes for people and why, like, he needs to be taken seriously because he makes a lot of money for a lot of people.
01:03:59.780Who has made every single client listen to Taylor's latest song before we went over their financial plans?
01:04:09.760If my financial planner says, hey, you got to listen to my kids' demo tape before we can, like, address your very real concern.
01:04:18.460Like, I'm, like, parachuting out of there immediately.
01:04:21.300Okay, now we're getting into the martyrdom part of this email.
01:04:24.020Okay, now keep in mind that, remember when it was rumored that the Olsen twins had, there was, like, a third Olsen who, like, the Olsen parents kept in the basement because they were, like, malformed or something?
01:04:38.220But Taylor has a brother named Austin and we never hear about Austin and we never see Austin.
01:04:44.700And I kind of think this may be Austin's choice or he just got the message from his parents and Taylor that, like, he's a total afterthought.
01:04:54.580And if Taylor needs an organ someday, they'll call you back into this picture.
01:05:12.180Dad, who makes sure and takes days off to make sure that whether it was Radio Disney, Brit's camp, I'm guessing that's Britney Spears, or any event that we had stuff to give away, CDs, Frisbees, headshots, who even thought to put that stuff together?
01:05:27.320Who blew up 500 beach balls on the roof for Radio Disney?