‘The View’ Cohosts Erupt Over Jake Tapper’s Biden Book Claims

Amanda Bell May 20, 2025, 11:48 am

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Joy Behar and Sunny Hostin on The View — ABC

The first “Hot Topic” of the day on Tuesday’s (May 20) edition of The View devolved into a bit of a shouting session as the cohosts — Whoopi Goldberg, Sara Haines, Joy Behar, Sunny Hostin, and Alyssa Farah Griffin — weighed in on Jake Tapper‘s new book, Original Sin, which features claims that Democrats concealed Joe Biden‘s allegedly declining condition.

After presenting a bad review from Joe Biden’s granddaughter and The Daily Show, Goldberg asked the panel, “Should anonymous sources who talked to Tapper have spoken up about their concerns while he was in office? And my other question is: Why is this important to know now?”

Behar answered the latter first by insisting that it isn’t. “We got a lot of stuff to be concerned about at the moment. Trump’s atrocities, I’m going to list them for you,” she said before reading out that list: “Cutting Medicaid, slashing funding for cancer research, rising prices because of tariffs, dismantling USAID, which helps children and people who are poor around the world, fears of recession, destroying due process, ending birthright citizenship, dismantling the Department of Education, rolling back regulations on air and water quality, destroying our relationships with allies like Canada and the U.K., and targeting his political opponents. And not only that, but he also said that Joe Biden has stage nine cancer.”

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Behar went on to rhetorically ask, “When is Jake Tapper going to write a book about the cognitive decline of the person who is in office?”

Griffin offered a spirited defense of the book’s relevance and Tapper’s journalistic integrity, saying, “A factor in why we’re in the situation we’re in is because Joe Biden decided to stay in the race. And I want to speak to Jake Tapper and Al Thompson specifically, because I’m friends with both of them, colleagues with both of them, and I don’t think there’s anyone who could credibly accuse, especially Jake Tapper, of not critically covering Donald Trump for the last 10 years. He’s one of the top journalists in this country. He moderated that debate, by the way, and I this is where I take issue with some folks on the left. They’re, ‘We stand with journalists. We stand with the free press’ when they’re going after their opponents, like Donald Trump, but when they critically cover Democrats as, ‘Oh no, they’re lying… It’s not true.’ … With political figures who are coming out and attacking these two journalists, how is that pro-democracy? How is it pro-Fourth Estate?”

Behar responded by further criticizing CNN for airing Tapper “hawking his book.” “When did CNN become a place to hawk your book? Is Wolf Blitzer coming out with a cookbook?”

Griffin resumed her defense, however, noting, “The reason he didn’t publish it at the time to respond to the Jon Stewart people said they weren’t willing to talk on the record at the time because of fear of retribution. And I think that speaks to a bigger problem in our government. The people who work for powerful figures feel like they cannot come out with the truth about their concerns, and they have to wait ’til later.”

Haines furthered Griffin’s point, saying, “The only people that were coming out on the record critical of President Biden was when Representative Dean Phillips ran and said, ‘Until we get someone better to come out and run against Biden,’ who he raised concerns about … He said, ‘Until we’re willing to have this conversation out loud.’ the Special Counsel, Robert Kerr who took the biggest attack, when all he said was, ‘There are some things here that are concerning on these tapes.’ Now they’ve been revealed, and everyone’s like, ‘Let’s not focus back on that.’ The problem is there’s a trust issue here.”

Goldberg responded by stating, “There has always been a massive trust issue because politicians, media, nobody does what they’re supposed to do.” She then went on to say that no one has pointed to Biden having done anything wrong while in office, and asked if so many people knew he was having issues, “Where the hell was everybody?!”

Hostin, who’d been trying to nudge in to get a word in edgewise, then got the chance to speak and defended Tapper first. ” He said that 99% of what is reported in the book was discovered after the election,” she said. “So I think we can put that part to bed about journalists holding onto information until so that they could make money off their book.”

However, she did come armed with her own list of those whom she believes did exactly that during the Trump administration, delivering her list with escalating volume. “What I do think that we should be very, very concerned about are the people that were in the Trump administration that did hold on to information about how Trump was conducting the presidency so that they could make money off of their books. We’re talking about former national security adviser John Bolton, who came on this show hawking his book, and I told him, ‘Why did you say something before?’ Former Attorney General Bill Barr, he wrote a book, didn’t say anything while he was in former defense, and that White House press secretary, Stephanie Grisham, all of them knew what Trump was who he was, how he was doing.”

What followed was a massive swell of crosstalk, as Goldberg frantically cut to commercial. When they returned for a second round, they moved onto another topic altogether, and the cohosts’ voices were back to normal volumes.

The View, weekdays, 11 a.m. ET, ABC