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Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. CNN's Jake Tapper is with us. You probably heard some of the national conversation since his book came out last month about President Joe Biden's state of health and state of mind before the troubling debate performance in June of last year that wound up driving him from his reelection campaign. We'll talk about how the response to the book in these weeks might be affecting Democratic Party politics now.

We'll also talk about news of today, including the LA immigration raids and protests, and Trump deployment of the National Guard and the US Marines, and the response by Eric Adams, mayor of New York, of course, in anticipating how he would handle a situation like that here. Jake Tapper is CNN's lead DC anchor and chief Washington correspondent and host of The Lead on CNN from 5:00 to 7:00 PM weekdays. The book is called Original Sin, co-authored with Alex Thompson from Axios. Jake, thanks for joining us. Welcome back to WNYC.

Jake Tapper: Thanks, Brian. Great to be back.

Brian Lehrer: Can we start with some news of the day?

Jake Tapper: Of course.

Brian Lehrer: Here's a clip. Here's a clip your colleague Dana Bash used on CNN and her show yesterday of Donald Trump on the campaign trail last year, seeming to announce in advance the kind of thing he did this week with little historical precedence, call out a state's National Guard without the approval even over the objection of the state's governor.

Donald Trump: You look at these great cities, Los Angeles, San Francisco. You look at what's happening to our country. We cannot let it happen any longer. One of the other things I'll do, because you're supposed to not be involved in that. You just have to be asked by the governor or the mayor to come in. The next time, I'm not waiting--

Brian Lehrer: "The next time, I'm not waiting for the governor or the mayor." Do you know that clip? Because this is the first time since 1965, under very different circumstances, that was to protect civil rights protesters from George Wallace's police in Alabama, so very different circumstances, and the first time since 1965 that this was done without the approval or request of a governor or mayor. What do you think that clip tells us about what's going on right now?

Jake Tapper: I think it shows that President Trump was frustrated in his first term by the guardrails that were imposed upon him by people like the then-chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley, and then Secretary of Defense Mark Esper, who were telling him not to put US troops in the streets of the United States to keep the peace or maintain order in the wake of the murder of George Floyd. He was frustrated by that.

This is not a secret. He was saying it out loud that he wanted the soldiers out there, National Guardsmen out there shooting protesters in the leg, that sort of thing, which is separately and not really an aside, just something people should know if they don't, is that that's not a thing, shooting people in the leg. When you shoot, you shoot for body mass. You shoot for the torso. You don't aim for a leg. That's something in movies. That's not something in real-life law enforcement. In any case--

Brian Lehrer: I'll say, just to that point, that we've had former police officers and law enforcement experts on the show explaining why that is, because if you're shooting at somebody as a law enforcement officer, it's because you think your life or the life of some other civilians are at immediate risk. You don't have the luxury of trying to do something as fine as trying to shoot somebody in the leg and hoping that that will make them drop the gun or whatever it is.

Jake Tapper: Yes, this isn't a movie. When you use a firearm, it's to kill. That's what it is. In any case, that lack of deep knowledge about law enforcement and military and the military's general reluctance to want to be used to quell civil unrest in the United States notwithstanding, this is something that President Trump has wanted to do for quite some time. Now, he's back. It's pretty evident that there are not the guardrails that there were in the first term, such as they were back then.

He wants US troops to be maintaining order in cities. Obviously, people in Los Angeles and California, Mayor Bass, and Governor Newsom believe that the presence of the National Guard, the presence of the ICE agents are creating the disturbance or fomenting the disturbance as much as the protesters and outside agitators are, if not more so. President Trump does not agree. Here we are. I think that he recently announced he's going to be sending even more guardsmen to Los Angeles, and I think it's pretty--

Brian Lehrer: Yes, that came out this morning, yes.

Jake Tapper: Yes, and it's pretty clear that this is going to spread to other cities. This is a topic that he prefers to the topic of his split with Elon Musk, and Elon Musk alleging he's on the Epstein list or the subject of the Big Beautiful Bill's struggles, the legislation, the tax cut, and spending-cut legislation having trouble in the Senate, and on and on. This is a subject he feels strongly about and would prefer to be the topic of conversation. Here we are conversing about it.

Brian Lehrer: He generally wins in public opinion on immigration. Not always when some things are seen as too extreme, but he generally wins on public opinion, even since he has taken office again and done a lot of the things that have been in the news when immigration is the issue. What you were suggesting just now, I've heard from a lot of people. I wonder how explicitly you mean to suggest it, that is--

Jake Tapper: I'm not saying he did this to change the subject.

Brian Lehrer: Yes, that's what I'm asking.

Jake Tapper: No, no, I don't think he did this to change the subject. I think the roots for this, we saw in May. There were articles in CNN and The Wall Street Journal and other places, Axios, in which it was reported about his top aide, who is probably the anti-undocumented immigrant hardliner in the administration, Stephen Miller, his aide Stephen Miller and DHS Secretary Kristi Noem going to immigration officials and saying, "You need to be deporting more people. There need to be more roundups. You need to be going to Home Depots, where day laborers are waiting for work." I think it was reported in The Wall Street Journal this morning that Stephen Miller said something along the lines of, "I could go out in DC right now and find 30 illegal immigrants." I think the roots for this are that, not an attempt to change the subject. I just think it's a byproduct of it, but I don't think it's the reason for it.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, we can take phone calls for Jake Tapper from CNN and co-author of the book, Original Sin. If you've been hearing him talking about his book on other shows on this station or elsewhere in the media, or maybe you even read it and bought it, and you wanted to ask Jake Tapper a question, you can do that. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692, call or text. Anything you always wanted to ask Jake Tapper but you never had him over for dinner, that is fair game, or also what's going on in national politics right now. 212-433-WNYC, call or text, 212-433-9692.

Another take to the one that says Trump has wanted to do this and he was waiting for an opportunity, and, certainly, this is what we hear in a lot of conservative media, is that the LAPD and Governor Newsom at the state level failed to take the instances of violence in the protests. Not to say that these have been anything like the LA riots of 1992 or anything at that level, but there were instances of violence in these early protests seriously enough at the start. That's what gave Trump the reason or the excuse. I'm curious if many of your Washington sources openly or quietly are saying that.

Jake Tapper: Well, Mayor Bass, the Los Angeles mayor, has said that they didn't get a heads-up on the ICE raids. That would have been helpful in terms of any sort of proactive deploying--

Brian Lehrer: Separation?

Jake Tapper: Yes, deploying of law enforcement. It's always a balance for law enforcement, because the presence of law enforcement can also-- for people who are peaceful, it can be reassuring. For people who are not part of the protest or for people who are part of the protests, they can become lightning rods if law enforcement is there. I saw this firsthand when I covered the protests and riots in Ferguson, Missouri, after the murder of Michael Brown or after the death of Michael Brown.

I have not heard the details on all of it, but I will say that there is a larger argument that conservatives make about the degree to which states like California have not enforced immigration laws, which has made California a place that a lot of undocumented immigrants go and are able to get social services. To the point that even though, obviously, most undocumented immigrants are peaceful people trying to just provide for their families and the like, it has also had a deleterious effect on the safety in the communities of legal and undocumented migrants because of the presence of criminal gangs and the like.

There's also the question of, what does sanctuary city policies-- and for people who aren't familiar, sanctuary city policies are implemented in a lot of different cities across the country, including New York, obviously, where there is not an inherent expectation of cooperation with federal immigration authorities for any number of reasons, including the desire for people in law enforcement to want undocumented immigrants to feel comfortable coming forward in identifying somebody who is a criminal and the like.

There are lots of complicated reasons why sanctuary city policies exist, including, of course, not actually supporting federal immigration law. Beyond that, there is a question about, well, what does that mean for LAPD? What does that mean for how much they are able to do the kind of law enforcement beyond just keeping the peace? I think that's also like a wrinkle in this. The bottom line is there is the old saying, "The center cannot hold." It is very difficult. When you have policies that are so different, the Los Angeles policies on immigration and President Trump's policies on immigration, it is very difficult to find any middle ground because they are so completely at polar opposites.

Brian Lehrer: Yes. Well, here's a clip of LA Mayor Karen Bass on Sunday on NPR, seeming to address protesters as well as objecting to Trump's deployment, in saying escalation is not inevitable. That was the question she was asked, is escalation inevitable?

Mayor Karen Bass: There's no reason for this to continue to escalate at all. Now, having said that, we also want to make sure that the protests stay peaceful, that we don't give the National Guard or the Trump administration the excuse. When mayhem breaks out, it's going to be addressed. I'm just hoping that people peacefully demonstrate. They exercise their First Amendment right, but they do not cross the line into violence.

Brian Lehrer: Jake, I realize you're in DC. You're not in LA. Based on reporting that you've done or that you've seen, is anyone addressing the protesters? Is there a concentrated effort to tell the protesters, "Please don't be violent. Don't be stupid. Don't be violent. Non-violent civil disobedience has worked in many successful protests of the past if it's big, if it's well-done, because anything else is self-defeating, because look what Trump is taking the opportunity to do"?

Jake Tapper: There are attempts by people who are not part of the protests to do that. Certainly, we've heard that from Mayor Bass. We've heard it from Governor Newsom, saying along the lines of what Mayor Bass said, "Don't play into the hands of the Trump administration," which is an interesting argument, given the fact that, "Don't commit violence," should just be a request or an order unto itself.

It doesn't have to be because then you're giving Trump what he wants. You shouldn't throw bricks at policemen, period. I don't know how much that is being listened to because, obviously, there are scenes of a lot of violence going on in Los Angeles. The burning of those self-driving cars, bricks, and other things thrown at police cars. There is violence. It is not the overall majority of what's going on, but that almost is irrelevant.

We had a Democratic congresswoman on my show yesterday, Nanette Barragán, who talked about how most of Los Angeles is fine and most of the peace protests are peaceful. I said, "Yes, we don't cover the planes that land safely." That's not really the point. Obviously, there is violence, and that's what we're covering, although we also cover the protests that are peaceful. At that point, we were showing peaceful protests because it was, I don't know, 5:15 East Coast time, so what is that? 2:15 in the West Coast?

Violence gets dark and things get violent. There was violence again last night, and it's spreading. Part of that is that there are anarchists that go to these protests because they want to cause anarchy. That's what anarchists do. Part of it is that passions get the better of people. Part of it is that whenever you have any group of people with passionate views and law enforcement, it's not uncommon for violence to break out, unfortunately.

Brian Lehrer: We're getting a lot of texts on this topic. One person writes, "The protests worked. ICE left Glendale." That's Glendale, California, near LA. I'll ask you if you think that's an accurate take. Someone else writes, "Maybe every California Democratic legislator should join the protest in LA. Let's see if Trump will arrest them all." Another person writes, "The only way it seems to stop this hostile and increasingly militarized immigration policy that's anti-American and ruining people's lives and ripping the social fabric apart is for massive protests. Is this our only recourse?"

Someone else, "I disagree with Jake. Trump escalated with troops even after the LAPD gained control on Sunday. Trump does want to distract media from the disastrous cuts to Medicare and Medicaid in his big, ugly bill." Again, realizing that you're in Washington, but it sounds like you're all over the story. Do you have a take on that timeline that Trump escalated with troops even after the LAPD gained control?

Jake Tapper: Well, as a factual matter, we know that he continues to send National Guard troops into Los Angeles. We also know that he's not coordinating with Governor Newsom, so I'm not just--

Brian Lehrer: Have they gained control yet?

Jake Tapper: As of last time I checked, there was control, but that changes every night. It's not like winning a war. Protests break out, there's violence, there isn't violence, law enforcement gets control of the streets, et cetera. The Glendale thing I want to address, because this is what happened. At 11:30, East Coast time on the 8th, so what would that be? Was that two days ago?

Brian Lehrer: That's Sunday, yes.

Jake Tapper: Sunday, so Glendale said, "After careful consideration, the city of Glendale has decided to end its agreement with DHS and ICE to house federal immigration detainees." Glendale was housing immigration detainees. Now, if that is a mark of success for your listener, okay, I don't know that the protests worked in any sense because, obviously, those detainees will just be housed somewhere else, but I think that's what he or she is referring to.

Brian Lehrer: Yes, we did have an interview with a Glendale official on Morning Edition today, saying that there were currently zero ICE detainees being housed there. It's more of a hypothetical or conceptual change as of this moment.

Jake Tapper: I guess the question-- I'm sorry. Go ahead.

Brian Lehrer: Go ahead. No, go ahead.

Jake Tapper: The question is like, what does success mean? Is success, the federal government should no longer enforce federal immigration law, and anybody in this country illegally should be allowed to stay here? I don't really know what the argument being made there is. Federal immigration law exists. It is obviously not adhered to all over the place, all over the country. The immigration policy in this country is a mess. I think you get bipartisan agreement on this. There have been attempts to create some sort of comprehensive immigration reform bill that, Brian, you and I have been covering literally for decades, because it always fails at the end of the day, because it always comes down to House Republicans who kill the bill.

Brian Lehrer: Right. George W. Bush was for it. Marco Rubio was once for it. John McCain was for it when he was running for president, comprehensive immigration reform, et cetera, but they didn't have the numbers in Congress, ultimately, in any case, based on what you said. One more call on this, then we're going to play a clip of Eric Adams, and then we'll move on to your book and other things. Laura in the Bronx, you're on WNYC with CNN's Jake Tapper. Hi, Laura.

Laura: Hi, Mr. Tapper. Hi, Brian. Look, it is my opinion, and I'd like to know if Mr. Tapper shares it, that given the cumulative effect of Trump's war on education, on freedom of the press, on free speech rights, his eagerness to send in militias, National Guard, and now the Marines, I think that this is a practice coup. I think that this is Trump's trial balloon at seeing how far he can push the American public into open-street warfare so that he can then decide that he has to save the country single-handedly and really kill people. I think that's what this is. This is his first attempt to see how far he can push. Do you think that this is true? Do you think that there is some validity in what I believe?

Brian Lehrer: Laura, thank you. Another way to put it, another aspect of it is, as we played a clip yesterday of Congresswoman Maxine Waters saying what Trump is trying to do is provoke enough of a response that he declares martial law, and then democracy is really undone. Jake, I'm sure you've been hearing that from people.

Jake Tapper: Yes, this is a theory that I've heard and read before. First of all, let me just take issue with the idea that National Guardsmen and women are malicious. I'm sure she meant the intent. I'm sure she was trying to talk about President Trump sending them in and not them themselves, but these are just men and women who are part of the National Guard and to follow orders and do what they're told. There's nothing malicious about them.

Look, I don't think it's a stretch to say President Trump likes to test the borders and the boundaries of what is permissible and allowable. I am a journalist. I'm not an opinion sharer or influencer in that way, so I just stick with the facts of what we know. What we know is he has a record of pushing boundaries as to presidential power. We know that he supported what happened on January 6th, 2021.

We know that there are voices in his administration, and we haven't yet seen what he's going to do, who have been pushing him to declare martial law or invoke the Insurrection Act, and on and on. We know that he's expressed desire for there to be federal law enforcement by National Guard in the past. I understand why people think that or are suspicious of it, but I don't have any evidence to say that that is what he's going to do.

I understand that she likely means he's going to try to hold on to power no matter what after 2029, after his term is over. Obviously, you can't really do a coup if you're already in control of the country, having been elected democratically. I'm a journalist. I stick with facts and evidence. The facts and evidence are not where she is, but I certainly understand people's fears.

Brian Lehrer: You suggested earlier that the protests might spread to other cities. They have already, to some degree, to New York and elsewhere, but they might widen or become more intense, either just in solidarity with LA or if these kinds of immigration raids that triggered what's going on in LA are deployed next to other cities. Here is New York Mayor Eric Adams yesterday, seeming to take a different approach from what we saw early in LA, anticipating if New York might be next in some way. I think we have the Eric Adams clip, do we?

Mayor Eric Adams: The escalation of protests in Los Angeles over the last couple of days is unacceptable. It would not be tolerated if attempted in our city.

Brian Lehrer: Eric Adams was talking back to the protesters. He wasn't talking back to Trump. Obviously, he's running for reelection as mayor. Obviously, he's got this relationship with the Trump administration based on the previous indictment of him and the dropping of those charges. I'm just curious if you have any political analysis of Eric Adams at this moment.

Jake Tapper: Well, I think Eric Adams, one of the reasons he was able to win was because he's a former police officer, NYPD. He talked about restoring order to the streets. The part of his appeal, whatever has survived the last year or so of his mayorality, his appeal is in part about having safe streets and law and order in New York. I think that's also probably part of the appeal of Governor Cuomo running for mayor.

That doesn't surprise me that he would do that. I would just note that, generally speaking, at times of unrest, most Americans just want to be able to go about their day and get to school and get to work and live safely even if they disagree with the policies of the President. I would underestimate that law-and-order appeal for those on the left. I would underestimate it at your own peril.

Brian Lehrer: We'll come back and talk about the impact of your book after a few weeks out, Original Sin. Brian Lehrer on WNYC with Jake Tapper from CNN.

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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC as we continue with Jake Tapper, CNN's lead DC anchor and chief Washington correspondent, host of The Lead on CNN from 5:00 to 7:00 PM weekdays Eastern Time. His book, making a lot of waves about Joe Biden, is called Original Sin, co-authored with Alex Thompson from Axios. To your book, what is the title Original Sin actually refer to? Remind everybody of that. We traditionally hear that as a term from religion, from the Garden of Eden.

Jake Tapper: It's a term that a lot of Democratic officials used when talking about what happened in the election of 2024. A lot of them would say the original sin was Joe Biden, was President Biden deciding to run for reelection. From that spilled out so many other sins, including the hiding of his cognitive deterioration and physical deterioration or attempts to hide it as much as they could.

The idea that President Biden had made implicitly, not explicitly, but implicitly a promise that he would be a one-term president when he ran in 2019, 2020, and then decided to run for reelection anyway, even though he would be 86 at the end of his second term and was showing clear signs of aging in front of the camera and much worse behind the camera. That was the reference. That was the first decision that was a bad decision. From that spilled so many other bad decisions that many Democrats thought that Kamala Harris, at the end of the day, had really not much of a chance because of that original sin.

Brian Lehrer: How much of a cover-up are you alleging, and by whom?

Jake Tapper: We are alleging not a criminal cover-up but a definite cover-up by Joe Biden, Jill Biden, Hunter Biden, and members of his inner circle that were referred to in the Biden administration as the politburo, the chief members of the politburo being top aides, Mike Donilon and Steve Ricchetti, and there were others as well. We are alleging that, well, we spelled out in great investigated detail, their attempts to hide the degree to which the debate and Joe Biden's performance the night of the debate was not a one-off, was not just the result of him having a cold or being tired, but was the natural result of somebody whose communication skills were badly stumbling, badly falling apart, and had been for some time.

It started out innocently enough wanting to present the principal, the President, in the best possible light, having him only do events or mainly do events between 10:00 AM and 4:00 PM, use notecards, use teleprompters, et cetera, et cetera, to the point that he was using teleprompters in private meetings of just a few dozen people, to the point that they were not holding cabinet meetings, that they were sequestering the President from cabinet secretaries, according to cabinet secretaries that we talked to, to the point that it was a shock, what happened debate night, because even though people had seen him aging, they didn't know he was in that bad a shape. That's the cover-up we're discussing.

Brian Lehrer: Jake, I have to say, there is an overwhelming theme to the callers who are on our board.

Jake Tapper: [chuckles] Let me guess. Can I guess?

Brian Lehrer: You can guess, then I'm going to take one of those calls. Go ahead.

Jake Tapper: They are, "Why aren't you covering Trump? Why are you covering this poor man who did so many great things for this country? Just let him be. Donald Trump is the threat. Look at what's going on in Los Angeles. Why are you even discussing what happened last year at all?" Is that right? Did I get it right?

Brian Lehrer: You did not, actually. We do have a few like that. We do.

Jake Tapper: I apologize.

Brian Lehrer: Regarding the book specifically, the overwhelming number of callers on the board are asking a version of what I think Sarah in Manhattan is going to ask. Sarah, you're on WNYC with Jake Tapper. Hello.

Sarah: Oh, my God. It's a great honor. I've watched you for many years, Jake Tapper, so I admire what you do and the amount of work you do. I want to ask, and it doesn't just apply to you, but you wrote the book, was there an original sin of the media, the mainstream, or whatever you call media, in not reporting sooner people's concerns about his age? I started tweeting, "Biden is too old." I'm not going to toot my horn, but it was obvious to many people.

There were starting to be these memes on the right wing, so was the media also complicit? Why I think people care in New York, in particular, why not care about what Trump is doing is because we feel like this enabled Trump to win, and it enabled the narrative. By not reporting, it really hurt the media and people's trust in the media, people's trust in you. We feel like you were part of the cover-up. How do you respond to that?

Jake Tapper: First of all, Sarah, thank you for watching. Thank you for your question. I will say that it is a fair question about the media writ large. I will say Erik Wemple did a really good column about this in The Washington Post yesterday that I would suggest you google. The truth of the matter is the media has been covering Joe Biden's age for a long time in 2019 and 2020. In September 2020, I asked him in an interview, "You'll be the oldest president ever elected. Will you pledge to be transparent about your health records, et cetera?"

Throughout the years of his presidency, there was coverage of his age by me, by lots of other people. Often, where I think the coverage fell short was often we covered the fact that people like you, voters, were concerned about this. That's not to say that there's anything wrong with us covering that way, but we covered it as an electoral liability or a polling issue or something for them to address as if it could be addressed. Once Alex Thompson, my co-author, and I learned what we learned when we started writing this book the day after Election Day 2024, we realized that we had really missed the story.

Yes, there was everything going on in front of the camera that we saw, the right-wing memes, President Biden tripping on stairs, President Biden falling off his bike, et cetera, et cetera, gaffes, uncomfortable gaffes, and the like, but when reporters would cover it or ask people in the know what's going on, people in the know would say, "He's fine. He's old. He's 80. He doesn't walk like he used to. He doesn't move like he used to. His decision-making is sound. His decision-making is sharp. He maybe has lost his step in front of the cameras, but he's still a good president or a great president," they would say.

What we found when we researched this book, and I would urge you to read it. If you don't want to give me money, then borrow a friend's or go to the library. New York still has a great library system. What we found is that it was a lot worse behind the scenes. It was not just an electoral liability. There were serious questions to be asked about how much did this impede his ability to do the job as president. We have scenes in the book of senators, Democratic senators, wondering that.

Now, do I wish that a lot of those sources, or all of those sources, or any of those sources had been as willing to talk before the election as after the election? Of course. The reason they didn't is because they successfully bought what the Biden White House and the Biden campaign sold to the country or to Democrats. Not successfully, but they tried to sell this idea that there are three points of view.

One, Joe Biden is the only person who's ever beaten Donald Trump. Two, therefore, Joe Biden is the only one who can beat Donald Trump in 2024. Three, Donald Trump poses an existential threat to the country. Therefore, get on board or be quiet. I think that that infected the minds of people who saw what was going on behind the scenes, who only, after the election, were willing to come forward.

Now, in my own case, do I wish that I knew then what I know now? Do I wish I'd been more aggressive? Yes, absolutely, but I didn't know the extent of it. Yes, we all saw what was going on in front of the cameras. I asked questions about it as much as I should have. No, in retrospect. No, of course not, now that I know how bad it was. Did I ask Karine Jean-Pierre about it in 2023? Yes.

When the Hur report came out, did I ask Kate Bedingfield, his former comms director, about it? Yes, I did. Knowing how bad it really was, this should have been a five-alarm fire. Let me also say, yes, there are lessons for the news media to learn in all of this, 100%. I'm not taking away that, but this was a cover-up by the most powerful person in the United States and his family and his top aides. There are other Democrats who saw what was going on, and they kept their mouth shut. I lay most of the blame on them.

Brian Lehrer: Let's take one more call on this from Ozier in Harlem, who I think is going to take the concept here and try to apply it to the future, I think. Ozier, you're on WNYC with Jake Tapper. Hello.

Ozier: Hello, Brian. Hello, Mr. Tapper. The reason why I've been upset with the coverage of Joe Biden is because there seems to be, across the board, a lot of misinformation from not only broadcast news media but also print media. That misinformation, for instance, is about what was going on on the campuses of universities. Also, no history behind October 7th. No context to what happened behind October 7th. I think that CNN has been, more or less, propagandizing Israeli policy on the Palestinian people. It's genocide central.

Brian Lehrer: I just want to acknowledge, not that that isn't vitally important to the world topic to bring up, that it's not what the caller told our screener he was going to talk about. It was going to be more in relation to the media breaking through these kinds of cover-ups of the President's health, or anything else going forward. Since you are here to talk about that and we only have a few minutes left in the segment, I'm going to redirect the question to what we thought he was going to ask.

Jake Tapper: Well, what was--

Brian Lehrer: Oh, I'm sorry, like how can--

Jake Tapper: What is his question?

Brian Lehrer: How can journalists prevent something like this in the future?

Jake Tapper: Yes. First of all, the idea that we-- and let me just address this idea that CNN is a propaganda arm of the Israeli government, that would amuse the Israeli government very much because we do a lot of coverage that is very critical of what is going on in Gaza. Often, when people make these allegations about any news media coverage, it's not because about any topic, really. It's not because they're watching CNN or they're watching or reading The New York Times or listening to WNYC. It's because they are being told how CNN is covering something, or The New York Times, or whomever, and they're going by that instead of watching for themselves.

We cover the pain in Gaza all the time. We criticize the Israeli government all the time. People can think what they want to think, but I would just urge folks to think for themselves and not just listen to how the media is being characterized. The way that Fox, for example, characterizes CNN's coverage of anything is not illustrative of how CNN covers things. It is misrepresentative. They do that for a reason. The same is true when it comes to our coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Moving on from that, one of the prescriptions that Alex and I offer in Original Sin is that-- and this comes actually from Dr. Jonathan Reiner, who is, I believe, a cardiologist who advises the White House medical team. His belief is that the White House medical exam, which there's no law that the White House has to release, he thinks that it should be full and complete, and it should be submitted to Congress under penalty of perjury.

I do think that that would be helpful for there to be a full medical exam revealing all of the medications that a president is taking, revealing the results of every test being given to the President, and maybe requiring some tests. It is tragic that Joe Biden apparently hasn't been giving a PSA test since 2014. Now, he finds out quite sadly that he has prostate cancer that has spread to his bones.

He also was not given a cognitive test while he was president. There are any number of tests that I think people could look and say, "I don't know why he was not given that test," but releasing all that information would be very helpful. Especially as the executive branch gets stronger and stronger and stronger, the legislative branch gets weaker and weaker and weaker, and as America ages to the degree it does. There are more members of Congress--

Brian Lehrer: I'm just jumping in because I know you're going to have to go in a second. Trump is almost--

Jake Tapper: He's about to turn 79.

Brian Lehrer: Right, this week.

Jake Tapper: Yes, Saturday. Saturday, he turns 79.

Brian Lehrer: People raise questions about his mental capacity, even though he doesn't present in the way that Joe Biden did.

Jake Tapper: Yes. Look, I think that probably for there to be any law passed, it would have to affect future presidents, not the current one. I think we have more people over the age of 70 in the House of Representatives and the Senate today than ever before. In the last, I think, 13, 14 months, six House Democrats have died in office. Five of the six were in their 70s or 80s. Our leaders are aging. In many cases, they're aging beyond their ability to do their job. I think that this is something that our society needs to acknowledge and comes to terms with and, honestly, maybe even pass some legislation requiring health disclosures.

Brian Lehrer: Jake Tapper, CNN's lead DC anchor. He hosts The Lead from 5:00 to 7:00 PM weekdays. The book is called Original Sin. Jake, thank you for coming on.

Jake Tapper: Thank you, Brian. Appreciate it. It's always great to be on WNYC.

Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Much more to come.

 

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