Biden Book Bombshell Sparks MAGA Firestorm—CNN’s Jake Tapper Scrambles for Damage Control

The media’s firewall around Joe Biden is cracking—and now the cleanup crew is on standby.

CNN anchor Jake Tapper and Axios reporter Alex Thompson are facing fierce backlash after excerpts from their upcoming book Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again pulled back the curtain on what many Americans in the MAGA movement say they’ve known all along: the President isn’t fit for office.

But instead of standing firm, the authors have done something that’s raising even more eyebrows—they’ve called in a crisis PR specialist.

Covering The Cover-Up

Tapper and Thompson recently hired crisis communications guru Risa Heller, whose client list reads like a tabloid rap sheet: disgraced former Congressman Anthony Weiner, fraudster Elizabeth Holmes, and ex-CNN boss Jeff Zucker. The choice of Heller signals just how serious—and potentially damaging—the blowback could be for Tapper, who now stands accused of gaslighting the American public for years.

Heller’s firm, Heller Communications, will be guiding the promotional rollout of Original Sin, which hits shelves May 20 and has already surged to the top of Amazon’s book charts.

“Risa is helping us make the rollout as smart as possible,” Tapper told Breaker Media, as critics pointed out the irony: a mainstream media figure now relying on damage control tactics to promote a book about deception.

Explosive Revelations

Among the revelations in the book: Biden allegedly forgot George Clooney’s name at a Hollywood fundraiser and aides quietly discussed using a wheelchair for public appearances if Biden won re-election.

These aren’t right-wing rumors. They’re coming straight from the mouths of mainstream media elites who once ran interference every time Biden tripped—literally or figuratively.

Hollywood heavyweight George Clooney, once a vocal Biden supporter, later penned a scathing op-ed urging the President to step aside following his disastrous debate performance in June 2024.

Despite Biden’s appearance on The View last week—where he scoffed at claims of cognitive decline—critics aren’t buying it. And the timing of Tapper’s “revelations” is not sitting well with MAGA Republicans who spent years being mocked for raising these very concerns.

Tapper Faces the Heat

Conservatives aren’t letting Tapper off the hook. Fox News contributor Joe Concha blasted the anchor during a segment Tuesday, calling the book rollout “patently insulting.”

“He was very much part of the media cabal who defended Biden,” Concha said. “And now he wants to profit off the very story he helped suppress.”

Fox also resurfaced Tapper’s now-infamous 2020 exchange with Lara Trump, where he accused her of mocking Biden’s stutter when she brought up his mental fitness. “I think you have absolutely no standing to diagnose someone’s cognitive decline,” he said at the time.

Fast-forward to 2025, and Tapper is doing just that—diagnosing decline and writing a best-seller about it.

Damage Control, Not Accountability

On CNN Wednesday, Tapper tried to strike a humble tone. “Some of the criticism is fair, to be honest,” he said. “I look back on it with humility.”

But Republican voters see it differently. “Humility doesn’t erase years of misinformation,” one conservative commentator posted on X. “This is about rewriting history before November.”

Alex Thompson also jumped to Tapper’s defense, insisting on social media that “the truth is both Jake and I were covering this.”

But as Thompson admitted last month at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, much of the press corps “missed a lot” when it came to Biden’s health. And that, critics say, wasn’t a mistake—it was intentional.

Republican Response

“This is a media reckoning in slow motion,” said Rep. Jim Banks (R-IN), who’s demanded an investigation into how media outlets coordinated with the White House to downplay Biden’s condition.

“This book doesn’t just tell us about Biden’s decline—it exposes the media’s role in propping him up,” Banks added.

Whether the revelations in Original Sin will shift public opinion remains to be seen. But one thing is clear: Tapper and Thompson’s late-game confession isn’t being seen as journalism—it’s being seen as damage control from those who were complicit in the cover-up.

And with Risa Heller now on speed dial, the mainstream media’s spin machine is officially in overdrive.