Surprise! The PBS News Hour finally arrived on the Jake Tapper-Alex Thompson book after ignoring it longer than the other networks.
In its introduction to the transcript and video, the PBS website was verbally tip-toeing around the Biden coverup before the fateful debate changed everything: "It also revealed a version of Biden that Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson argue those closest to him tried to conceal from the world."
PBS anchor Geoff Bennett began by suggesting the word "coverup" might be a "loaded phrase." Tapper argued: "I think it's a fair use of the term. We're not alleging a criminal cover-up, but we are saying that the definition of cover-up, when you're hiding something bad from people, is unambiguously true."
Bennett then referred to an "alleged coverup" even though polling showed voters really believed Biden wasn't fit for a second term:
BENNETT: One of the questions that I have heard in connection to this book is, why is this all coming to light now when the American public was clear, I mean, this was documented in polling throughout the campaign, that there were real questions about Joe Biden's age? And you have heard some people, mostly on the right, say all this book does is prove that the press was complicit, that the press had a role to play in this perceived, this alleged cover-up.
ALEX THOMPSON: I mean, if we knew all the things in the book, we would have definitely reported it before the election. The problem was that, if you're doing reporting, you need sources to be honest. And a lot of Democrats basically did not want to speak up because they feared it would hurt Joe Biden and then Kamala Harris and help Donald Trump.
Bennett also asked: “You spoke to 200 Democratic insiders over the course of your reporting…More than 200. How did you vet their motivations to make sure that they weren't engaging in sort of retrospective blame-shifting after the fact?”
Tapper said that was a “great question” and noted “one thing that almost all of them copped to was the fact that this was a disaster, it was hidden from the American people and that it can't happen again. I think a lot of them felt they were unburdening themselves. A lot of them felt they regretted not talking to reporters ahead of time.”
But how aggressively were liberal reporters demanding they talk about Biden’s decline? Thompson suggested on NewsNation that Biden staffers were "amazed" at how most journalists were pushovers.
Bennett’s closing three questions were pro-Biden. First, he read the official Biden statement on the book, claiming "There is nothing in this book that shows Joe Biden failed to do his job, as the authors have alleged, nor did they prove their allegation that there was a cover-up or conspiracy."
The inevitable "but what about Trump" question was there:
What's your response to [leftist] critics who say that this book punches at the wrong target at the wrong time, that focusing on Biden's decline distracts from Trump's threat to democracy, his authoritarian rhetoric, his attempt to dismantle institutions he doesn't like, so on and so forth?
Tapper shot back: "All the stuff we cover every day." Especially on CNN!
Then came the give-the-cancer-man-a-break question: "On the eve of this book's release, the former president announced that he has an aggressive form of prostate cancer. There are those who feel this is hitting a man when he's down, he's no longer in office. Why push forward with this?"
Tapper insisted: "Yes, look, obviously our hearts go out to the Bidens. I don't think the book is mean. I don't think that we're unsympathetic to all of the horrible things he has endured throughout his life."
