Lara Trump, President Donald Trump’s daughter-in-law, took a victory lap on Tuesday as she reflected on CNN host Jake Tapper calling to apologize after he accused her of mocking Joe Biden’s stutter on the 2020 campaign trail.
“He said, ‘I have this book coming out. And I know everybody is saying that I should apologize to you. I plan, whenever the book comes out, to go on TV and I will say you were right, and I was wrong,‘” said Trump of the call from roughly two months ago in an interview with Fox News’ Laura Ingraham.
“And I guess, to Jake’s credit, he did that.”
Tapper — who is promoting his new book with Axios’ Alex Thompson on an alleged “cover-up” of Biden’s reported health decline — bluntly told Piers Morgan that Trump was right ,and he was wrong, emphasizing that she was able to register Biden’s “cognitive decline” at the time.
In his 2020 interview with Trump, Tapper played a clip of her comments at an Iowa campaign event where she said of the then-Democratic presidential candidate: “Every time he comes on stage or they turn to him, I’m like, ‘Joe, can you get it out? Let’s get the words out, Joe.’ You kinda feel bad for him.”
Trump, after Tapper pressed her over how her comments could make “kids with stutters feel,” repeated her claim that she wasn’t aware that Biden had a stutter before pivoting to talk of him showing signs of “cognitive decline.”
Tapper later told Trump she had “absolutely no standing to diagnose someone’s cognitive decline.”
Last week, Tapper acknowledged on “The Megyn Kelly Show” that his comments to Trump “aged poorly.”
On Tuesday, Trump pointed to Tapper likening the “cover-up” to the Watergate scandal while warning about what could’ve been if Biden won a second term.
“Now that he played a role in the [alleged cover-up], it feels a little bit too late to me,” she said of Tapper’s apology before reiterating that she still appreciates that he kept his word.
Critics pounced on Tapper, including former MSNBC host Keith Olbermann, who demanded CNN fire the on-air personality, and MeidasTouch Network editor-in-chief Ron Filipkowski, who described Tapper’s call as a “contrived fake apology.”