Tapper: ‘I Do Not Accept That I Was Just Providing Cover for Joe Biden’

Kelly: “All said, in the context of, I know what my audience wants to hear asked, and Jake has told me before, he wanted the opportunity to answer these questions, so here that’s what we’re doing.”
TAPPER: “Megyn, I — we didn’t come on the show thinking that this was going to be a softball interview.”
Kelly: “Right. Right.”
TAPPER: “I understand, like — listen, listen, as a — first of all, nobody flagellates Jake Tapper more than Jake Tapper, OK? Like, I get it. I understand. I am fallible. I make mistakes. It’s not just the Biden coverage. I mean, I go back and I look at, like, I wish I had been covering terrorism more before 9/11. I wish that I had covered the WMD with more skepticism. And there’s — you know, a million things. This is definitely among them. And conservative media absolutely has every right to say we were hip to this and the legacy media was not. Now, I do not accept that I was part of a cover-up. I do not accept that I was just providing cover for Joe Biden. I think a lot of these clips are not fair. The one that is fair is the Lara Trump clip, and I own it, and I regret it, and I’ve told her that privately. And that’s completely fair. But what we uncovered after the election, what people were willing to tell us after the election was so shocking. And yeah, the Jackie Walorski thing is awful, but I would posit that President Biden not being able to come up with the name of his national security advisor in December 2022 is important information. And I would also posit —”
Kelly: “I’m — I’m not — I’m arguing that the book has no place or importance.”
TAPPER: “OK.”
Kelly: “Let me ask Alex something. So you may be aware — the hard time I’ve given you on this show is not because of your coverage of the Biden mental decline.”
Thompson: “Oh, I am aware.”
Kelly: “I’ve given you a hard time over the past couple of weeks because you — you were honored by the White House Correspondents Dinner for covering this story, which honestly is like getting the award for being the thinnest kid at Fat Camp. I mean, there was literally no competition at the White House Correspondents Association Dinner that they would even consider. They’re not going to give awards to anybody in the right-wing ecosphere who covered this from the beginning, with all due respect to you, Alex. But —”