A Lot of People Are Really Mad at Jake Tapper — Was It Something He Wrote?

It feels weird to say this about a news anchor, but Jake Tapper is kind of a cool guy. Outside of his time on CNN, where he is as sharp as they come, Jake hangs with some pretty chill people. The political pundit who claims no allegiance to either party, is pals with director Edgar Wright and late-night talk show host and SNL alumn Seth Meyers, and his Instagram is peppered with adorable photos of his pets. We told you he knows some pretty rad folks, and we are including animals here.

If you catch The Lead with Jake Tapper, you'll also occasionally bear witness to his sense of humor. Before he made the big move to CNN, Alex Weprin, senior editor of TVNewse, told The Philadelphia Inquirer that Jake has a deep news pedigree but can easily bounce from the "political lead to the sports lead to the pop lead, and so on." His critics are usually on the conservative side of the aisle but in May 2025, it felt like people started hating Jake Tapper.

Entering Jake Tapper's name into X usually produces some unsurprising results from folks on the left versus folks on the right. Now it seems as if people on the left are angry at Jake and it's largely because of a book he co-authored about former president Joe Biden. Musician and author Mikel Jollett tagged Jake in a post that also included a screenshot of Donald Trump rambling on Truth Social. Mikel suggested Jake write about Trump unless he can't get a "good book deal" out of his insanity.

Several liberal political posters said similar things along the lines of wanting to send a "hearty f--k you" to Jake Tapper. X user @shesbonky wrote that verbatim, then called Jake a "pick-me b---h" who was "drawing attention away from our democracy literally crumbling at the hands of a felon autocrat so we can chat about Joe Biden's team once discussing a wheelchair he NEVER ENDED UP USING."

The book was co-written with Axios' Alex Thompson and is titled Original Sin: President Biden's Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again. It details the former president's mental decline leading up to the 2024 presidential election and alleges that his inner circle tried to hide how bad things had gotten. Perhaps reactions to the book wouldn't be nearly as volatile had Biden not revealed an aggressive cancer diagnosis mere days before its release.

Several posts on X reference the fact that Jake and his co-author could have brought up their concerns while Biden was president. Some believe that waiting to put their investigations into a book, which they both profit from, smacks of hypocrisy. Jake and Alex were asked about this while chatting with The New Yorker. "A lot of us have covered Joe Biden’s aging, and the accompanying inability to do things the way he used to, throughout his presidency," responded Jake. They uncovered more after he left office.

Jake went on to say, "It was only after the election that we were able to get the insider point of view." More doors opened, allowing Alex and Jake to speak with over 200 people who had direct contact with the former president. Alex chimed in and said he didn't think people were speaking honestly in real-time, and "as Biden’s decline became precipitous, they also began to close ranks."