CNN anchor Jake Tapper experiences decade-low rating
CNN anchor Jake Tapper (pictured) has suffered his lowest-rated month in a decade amid backlash over his tell-all book about former President Joe Biden's mental health decline. The Lead with Jake Tapper averaged just 525,000 viewers from April 28 through May 25 - shedding a quarter of its audience from the same period last year, new Nielsen ratings show.
The devastating numbers came as the liberal anchor continues his whirlwind book tour to promote the expose. Tapper has been ubiquitous on podcasts, talk shows and cable news to promote the book, which was also widely celebrated on CNN. The tome, 'Original Sin: President Biden's Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again,' was co-written with Axios reporter Alex Thompson. His CNN program was beat out by Fox News' The Five and Special Report with Bret Baier, which averaged 3.3 million viewers, as well as MSNBC's programming in the time slot - which averaged a little over one million viewers.
That means Tapper's show received only 11 percent of the national cable news audience, while MSNBC received 21 percent and Fox received 68 percent. It also represented Tapper's lowest-rated month since August 2015, according to Fox News. Even worse, The Lead with Jake Tapper is seeing a lower audience of 25 to 54 year olds - a demographic that is coveted by advertisers and helps networks earn revenue. He averaged just 95,000 viewers in the demographic from April 28 through May 25, representing a 15 percent drop from last year.
But Tapper was not alone with his abysmal ratings, as CNN itself suffered its second-worst month ever among the coveted demographic across both daytime and primetime shows in May. A spokesperson for CNN did not seem worried, though, noting that Nielsen Media Research only reflects the network's audience in the United States - and Tapper's program airs internationally. 'The award-winning program The Lead with Jake Tapper reaches broad global audiences across CNN, CNN International and Max's streaming platform,' the spokesperson told Fox. 'No single metric can capture the true reach and impact of a program driving the national conversation,' the spokesperson insisted.
Indeed, Tapper's new book - which chronicles Biden's declining health as he served as president - took on new relevance when it was revealed earlier this month that Biden was diagnosed with 'aggressive' prostate cancer. However, his appearances on news programs and the ratings for his new book were overshadowed by claims that Tapper was complicit in the cover-up. Some online have even branded the journalist a 'fraud' and a 'phony' as they shared videos of him hitting out at Republicans who wanted to investigate Biden's mental acuity. In October 2020, he even hit out at Lara Trump, who pointed to a speech Biden gave in October 2020 and said: 'What we see on stage is a very clear cognitive decline.'
Tapper immediately interjected, savaging her with a haughty response that she had 'absolutely no standing to diagnose somebody's cognitive decline' and accusing her of instead 'mocking his stutter.' The journalist, though, claims he trusted Biden and his aides and took them at their word when they assured him that all was well. He said the turning point for him was the disastrous debate between Biden and Trump in June 2024, which he and fellow CNN star Dana Bash moderated. 'Knowing what I know now, obviously I feel tremendous humility about my coverage,' Tapper told Megyn Kelly, as he admitted that 'conservative media was correct' in how it handled the story. 'There should be a lot of soul-searching not just among me but among the legacy media to begin with - all of us - for how this was covered or not covered sufficiently,' he said. 'I wish I could do differently.'
Tapper has since admitted that the cover-up of Joe Biden's cognitive decline in the White House may have been 'worse than Watergate.' He has even reportedly apologized to Lara Trump for his remarks. 'Jake Tapper called me about two months ago and he said "I have this book coming out,"' she told Fox News host Laura Ingraham. Tapper told her 'I know everybody is saying I should apologize to you. I plan, when the book comes out, to go on TV and say you were right and I was wrong.'
Still, Tapper has continued to face criticism for his coverage of the Biden administration - with Lara saying that even though she appreciates his acknowledgement of wrongdoing and that Tapper has stuck to his vow to apologize publicly, 'it feels a little bit too late to me. Jake Tapper can't discount his role in that, no matter how much he wants to come out now,' she said. 'They have lost the American people's trust... It is the reason Donald Trump is in the White House right now. People like authenticity.'
The CNN host then appeared to squirm on Wednesday when Stephen A. Smith called his new book a 'money grab.' Tapper insisted that 'very few people write books to make money' and claimed his and Thompson's 'only agenda was to find out what happened. Our only agenda was to write this book. 'In terms of the left it's a money grab, I mean that's not the case. It's not - this is, I don't want to get into where my money comes from,' the journalist stammered. 'You know, CNN is my main job and that's where my main source of income, by far... Very few people write books to make money,' he babbled on. 'You write a book because you want to say something. You want to have a legacy, you want to uncover something, you have a message you want to get out there,' Tapper insisted.
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