Stephen Smith blasts Jake Tapper over book on Biden's mental decline

Stephen Smith is livid with CNN's Jake Tapper over his authorship and promotion of a book documenting President Joe Biden's mental decline.

Tapper co-authored "Original Sin" with Axios's Alex Thompson, documenting the previous president's health and the efforts to keep it out of the spotlight. During an interview with NewsNation, Smith told Chris Cuomo that Tapper's own behavior shutting down criticisms of Biden's mental health warranted the backlash he faced over the book.

"You got the video of him talking to Lara Trump and how — how condescending he was to her, etc," he said, according to The Hill. “And so it’s about how you were acting towards people who had the audacity to be opposite and express some level of dissent to what you were saying, and what you were reporting on, and what your network was reporting on."

“It’s not the fact that you were just wrong," he went on. "It was the defiance and the condescending approach that you had, a dismissive approach that you had towards others."

Smith's comments come on the heels of the release of Biden's interview with special counsel Robert Hur. In his report, Hur noted that Biden often appeared confused and couldn't remember dates. He further stated that he opted against prosecuting Biden, in part, because he believed a jury would find him too sympathetic in light of his age and mental state.

The release of the audio of the interview showed Biden repeatedly stumble, stutter, and fail to remember key facts about his life.