Next Up with Mark Halperin
Journalistic Corruption Continues with "Original Sin" Tour, and Charlie Kirk on What MAGA Wants Next
Thu, 15 May 2025
Mark Halperin dives into the latest twists in the "Original Sin" Biden book rollout, Jake Tapper's changing PR strategy, how the media keeps failing as it misses more opportunities to win back trust with the audience, the "journalistic corruption" at CNN as Brian Stelter misses the real story in his coverage, and more. Then Meghan McCain, host of "Citizen McCain" on 2WAY, joins to talk about how Jake Tapper writing this Biden cognitive decline book is like O.J. Simpson writing "If I Did It," the McCain family relationship with the Bidens, how to fix the media, and more. Then Turning Point USA's Charlie Kirk joins to talk about how the MAGA grassroots movement works, what MAGA thinks of the "big beautiful bill" coming up for a vote soon, their priorities and what they don't care about, the Bannon wing of the party vs. the GOP establishment, what he'd say to a meeting with Kamala Harris, the future of media, and more.
Chapter 1: Who is Mark Halperin and what is the podcast about?
Greetings, everybody. Welcome back to What is Next. I'm Mark Halpern, Editor-in-Chief at Two-Way, and so happy to have you here. We're happy and grateful we're a new program, and we're off to a pretty quick start. Because of you, those of you who've listened previously or watched previously, we're now the number four top podcast, new podcast, according to the Associated Press and Apple.
And we're the top new news in the news category. And again, we couldn't be more grateful to you as we start out here. So thank you for being part of it. And again, you can watch us on YouTube and you can listen to us wherever you get your podcasts, as they say. Today, also grateful to have Charlie Kirk.
uh of turning point uh usa here to join us to talk about everything uh maga and uh what's going on in the country great guy appear on his program regularly and he's returning the favor today and megan mccain will be here and megan and i are colleagues at two-way megan has a great interest in the topic we're going to spend some of our time talking about today which is
This issue of Joe Biden's cognitive decline and how that story was allowed to play out the way it did. Megan has known the Biden family for years and she knows Jake Tapper, the reporter who's one of the two who wrote the new book that's being discussed elsewhere in a year. She knows them both well and she's got strong feelings about it. So Megan will be here to talk about that.
We're going to talk about Joe Biden and this issue of cognitive decline. And I know a lot of people are going to say, why not talk about Donald Trump and all the controversies involving Donald Trump? Those are important and interesting, too. And they're discussed elsewhere. And I'll continue to hold the Trump administration accountable and to cover that.
But the reason why I'm continuing to talk about this story. about Joe Biden is because there's no way to hold Donald Trump accountable if two institutions in this country aren't capable of doing it because they don't have the credibility. That's the media, my colleagues in the media, and that's the Democratic Party. Every one of you should want those two institutions to have credibility.
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Chapter 2: What are the media's failures in covering Joe Biden's cognitive decline?
even if you don't like the Democrats. And we know that those two organizations don't have credibility. That's true for a lot of reasons with a lot of people. The media is probably at an all-time low in terms of lack of credibility. And there's a new Associated Press poll out this week that shows people not particularly optimistic, including Democrats, about the future of that party.
Democrats don't have no credibility, but they don't have enough. And that's part of why Donald Trump is not held accountable the way he should be. And so now's the time
with this new book coming out next week, to use it as an opportunity not to engage in whitewashes, not to engage in the same kind of lack of truth that existed during this entire saga of the question of Joe Biden's cognitive decline. Now is the time to get people in my business to recognize there's a credibility problem and for Democrats to do it also.
The reason I spend so much time talking about this is I care about the media and I want there to be two strong political parties in the country. And most of the people trying to hold the media accountable for the biggest media scandal in American history, as I call it, are on the right. Jason Miller, who works for President Trump, he tweets about this all the time.
He highlights the lack of credibility on this issue. There are other people on the right who do it. That's not good enough. OK, Byron York, very smart guy, writes for the conservative Washington Examiner. He wrote this morning in his newsletter on this issue of the press's dealing with their failures on Joe Biden's cognitive decline.
Understanding the press's handling of then President Joe Biden's obvious physical and mental infirmity. is probably more a matter for psychologists than for media and analysts. There's some truth to that, because understanding why the media not only failed before but continues to fail, I think does involve a lot about human nature and psychology.
I'm no expert in those areas, but I do know a fair amount about the media, so we'll talk about that. Eric Erickson, another person on the right, he wrote in his newsletter, Now that Joe Biden has lost, the truth can be told except for the part of the press's own complicity in the cover up. I couldn't agree more.
The people in the media now who are writing about this book are ignoring the media's own role in it. And that's a vital part of what happened. And it's extremely important. Eric writes also, had Joe Biden somehow gotten reelected, the press would right now still deny his decline. I think that's true. It's an incredible statement, but I think it's true.
And if Fox News had treated a Republican president's decline the way MSNBC treated Biden's, CNN, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Brian Stelter, who writes for CNN about the media, and Oliver Darcy, who writes his own media newsletter, and the rest of the media's appointed accountability voices would demand accountability.
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Chapter 3: How did Jake Tapper handle reporting on Biden's cognitive decline?
Because now that it's safe to book these Wall Street Journal reporters, I'm going to book them on and say. They're heroes. OK, so he has them on the show this week, but he also had them on in July, several days after the debate, after everybody in the country could not turn their eyes away and understood what happened.
So doesn't have them on when the story comes out, has on a Biden critic and then treats their story more seriously after debate. The press decided to turn and say, well, Joe Biden's no longer useful to us. We'll turn to Kamala Harris to try to beat Donald Trump. OK, so there's there's a there's a credibility issue.
OK, Jay Tapper is fawning over these Wall Street Journal reporters, acknowledging he should have done more. to try to have the credibility to sell his book.
So people won't laugh at the notion that someone who was uninterested, patently uninterested in getting to the bottom of Joe Biden's mental acuity decline, to this day, patently uninterested in holding his own network accountable and himself accountable. He says, well, I could have done better. That's a throwaway line. And again, I'd say this about other reporters.
At least Jake Kappers now said he could have done better. Where's the New York Times saying that about this story? This story matters for credibility. We had a commander in chief with severe mental acuity decline, no access to his doctor, no access to interview him about his health. And the press just let it happen because they didn't want to help Donald Trump win.
OK, so you can say over and over, you know. Like, trust me, I should have done better. Trust me, I'm embracing these Wall Street Journal reporters. But seriously, seriously, that is not full accountability. That is not explaining the failure.
And then you've got at CNN, this guy, Brian Stelter, who's their media reporter, who's an ally of Jake Tapper to protect Tapper's image, to enhance Tapper's image. He's got a media newsletter. He's supposed to cover the media. Guy doesn't write about the biggest failure in the history of American media. Instead, he writes about how great Tapper's book is.
And today in his newsletter, Guy's a fan of irony. He writes about how it was so important for Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson to have the truth in their book, the full truth, that they hired the head of the New Yorker's fact-checking department to fact-check their book. Okay. Again, the job of a media reporter, I would think, is not to protect and promote his colleague.
And this is no innocent here, Brian Stelter, in addition to promoting and protecting Jake Tapper. Brian Stelter has been, over the course of the entire Biden presidency, one of the biggest critics of those on the right and those few people like me in the independent media who have tried to hold Joe Biden accountable. He's accused us of being propagandist, of celebrating cheap fakes and deep fakes.
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Chapter 4: What is Meghan McCain's perspective on Jake Tapper and the Biden family?
Yeah. Maybe, would you watch if Jay Capra interviewed Joe Biden now? Would you watch that?
Yeah, but that's never going to happen. I don't think Jay Capra would do it. Like, I just don't. And also, what's the, I was saying, I was talking to a friend about this yesterday, like, what is the point of this book now? Everyone knows that President Biden had these, you know, issues. They know that he wasn't fit to be president. The American public saw it with their own eyes.
They didn't need journalists to tell them. They saw what they saw in the debate and made their decision. Like, I think the point now is trying to, like, whitewash their reputation and their experience not reporting on this. Like, that's my takeaway. Like, I don't know Jake Tapper anymore. Like, I haven't talked to him in an extremely long time. But my takeaway is, like, he is a smart man.
He sees what's going on culturally. And he's probably like, oh, shit, I have to I have to be someone that that like, you know, I don't know, it helps my reputation. But I just I'm really sick of people who, again, could not pass more judgment, could not be more ugly, could not say more disgusting things about people like me, particularly during that time.
Now making what I can only fathom is an enormous paycheck off of the backs of the good work of so many people, quite frankly, like you, Mark. So it's like, why don't you respectfully have a multimillion dollar book deal? Like, why is Jake Tapper the like?
the person that like the person i'm supposed to listen to in this experience i'm really like flabbergasted by this book and confused it in general and i maybe i shouldn't be but i can't remember having really tough conversations with you on camera that you and i got a lot of shit for saying that joe biden should be president he should drop out and his brain's clearly not functioning the way it should be and now jake tapper's taking all the credit
Amen, sister. You, too, can talk to Megan McCain on the two-way platform every Tuesday and Thursday, noon Eastern time. Citizen McCain.
Monday and Wednesday.
Oh, Monday and Wednesday. Thank you for correcting me. It's a bad promo if you get it wrong. Mondays and Wednesdays, noon Eastern time on two-way. Citizen McCain. Join and, of course, on YouTube as well. Mondays and Wednesdays. Thank you for correcting me. Megan, thank you for making time.
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Chapter 5: How can major news organizations restore credibility after Biden coverage?
Look, I actually grew up as, quote, not a Rush baby, but I was told Rush was too much of an extremist growing up, you know, by people around me, not by my parents. It was just kind of the vibe that he had. And right near 2011, 2012, that's when he had the big Sandra Fluck thing. You remember the whole kind of contraception drama. Those who don't can Google. Right.
And not even worth repeating the elements of it. But it was actually a very interesting early test case of pre-digital cancel culture with advertising. He obviously survived it and came out even stronger. But I remember I would listen to him during my lunch breaks in high school and I was like, this guy's amazing. He's entertaining. He's deep. He's insightful. And so...
The best of the best and very similar to how Joe Rogan kind of invented modern podcasting. Rush didn't invent it, but he saved the AM dial. I mean, without a doubt, he's the AM dial. I mean, several major radio stations owe to Rush. you know, their entire livelihood because it wasn't just his show that made them money, but the morning show then got more popular.
And then the drive time show got more popular and the AM dial was decreasing in popularity. And here comes this guy, you know, from Cape Girardeau, Missouri, who is broadcasting on like five stations in Sacramento and became a phenomenon. So I could talk about Rush all day long and I love your observations there.
I'll say it is more praise for you. I tell I've told people for years, whether you're Democrat, Republican or journalist, whatever, if you want to be a broadcaster on audio, video or both, go listen to Rush hours and hours if you haven't listened, because it's just so much to learn from.
And I'd say I say the same thing about people about you now as both a broadcaster and as a idea political entrepreneur, like. If you're a Democrat and you're not studying Charlie Kirk, you're making a huge mistake because you're doing stuff that is just like Rush. People have done stuff like it, but not exactly what you're doing.
And we'll talk more about that.
We'll talk more about it. But I want to talk about kind of what's going on in the news and something that occurred to me this morning when I was thinking about our conversation. MAGA and your place in it. When you guys mobilize, you're very effective, particularly if it's an intra-Republican fight. So Pete Hegseth's nomination is in danger.
You and Tucker and others, you mobilize and Pete Hegseth gets confirmed. And it's not just you guys. It's your understanding of the grassroots and how to use social media and mobilization. Where is MAGA on this reconciliation bill? Right. Right now.
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