CNN anchor Jake Tapper has enlisted a former Biden-Harris campaign official to run damage control and manage backlash over his role in suppressing concerns about President Biden’s cognitive health. Tapper hired Heller Communications, a firm known for rehabilitating scandal-plagued public figures, to oversee the media rollout of his new book Original Sin, a detailed account of the very cover-up he once enabled.
Tapper’s attempt to reshape public perception comes amid growing criticism for his handling of Biden’s mental decline during the 2020 and 2024 elections. Leading the damage control effort is Nate Evans, a former senior Democratic operative with deep ties to the Biden-Harris and Harris-Walz campaigns. Now a senior vice president at Heller Communications, Evans is reportedly spearheading the effort to rebrand Tapper as a repentant insider.
“It’s hysterical,” said a former Biden aide. “It’s a book that the Bidens don’t want anyone to read or believe, but now a former Biden admin official is doing the flacking for the book.”
Evans, who joined Heller in January 2025, brings a résumé packed with Democratic Party credentials, including roles with the U.S. Mission to the United Nations and Senator Amy Klobuchar. He previously served as a deputy press secretary on Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign and worked on Kamala Harris’s failed 2020 primary bid.
Tapper’s media tour includes a rare mea culpa on The Megyn Kelly Show, where he admitted his failure to recognize Biden’s deteriorating mental state. He even revealed a private apology to former RNC chairwoman Lara Trump, whose early concerns he had publicly mocked.
“I called her months ago and said, ‘You were right,’” Tapper said. “She saw something that I did not see at the time, 100 percent, and I own that.”
The book’s coauthor, Alex Thompson of Axios, also acknowledged media failures at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. “We, myself included, missed a lot of this story, and some people trust us less because of it,” he said. “We bear some responsibility for faith in the media being at such lows.”
However, Kelly, who has diligently reported on the former President’s apparent mental decline over the course of his term, pushed back. She argued that it was not a matter of the press missing the story, but rather, that the reporters at the annual D.C. event “intentionally chose not to cover the story or dig into the story.”
