Lara Trump acknowledged Jake Tapper owned up to his misplaced criticism of her concerns regarding former President Joe Biden‘s cognitive decline, but she said it felt “a little bit too late.”

Trump said Tapper called “about two months ago” to tell her she was right about her assessment of Biden. Tapper has since aligned with Trump’s concerns in several interviews as he promotes his new book on the cover-up of Biden’s mental acuity. Trump, host of Fox News’s My View with Lara Trump, gave Tapper credit for owning up to being wrong about Biden, but she contended that “the damage is done” from his initial scolding.

“We were so close to something so dangerous happening to this country. I mean, look at what actually happened,” Trump said on Fox News’s The Ingraham Angle. “Look at the millions of illegal immigrants able to pour in. People are questioning now who was actually in charge of this country, I guess whoever was in charge of the autopen. We really have to think about what would have happened if Joe Biden had been elected. These people would have swept his condition under the rug even more, and Jake Tapper saying this is like a Watergate level type of situation, now that he played a role in it, it feels a little bit too late to me.”

Biden’s mental decline became a national talking point after his performance in the first 2024 presidential debate, which Tapper co-hosted with fellow CNN anchor Dana Bash.

When asked if she thought the press would have investigated Biden’s decline at all had the debate turned out differently for him, Trump said that was “the scary part” of looking back on this.

She contended that the lack of coverage of Biden’s decline is part of why the public’s distrust of the press is growing. In comparison, she argued that President Donald Trump‘s “authenticity” is why he is back in the White House.

JAKE TAPPER AND THE MEDIA’S CRISIS OF COMPETENCE

The president has argued that Biden’s autopen is “the biggest scandal in American History” outside of the 2020 presidential election, which he has insisted was “rigged.” The president said whoever was in charge of the autopen approved things that Biden, had he been “of sound mind,” would never have agreed to, such as opening the southern border or allowing transgender athletes to compete in female sports.

As the Democratic Party seeks to move on from the 2024 election, Antonio Villaraigosa, who is running as a Democrat in California’s 2026 gubernatorial election, has accused former Vice President Kamala Harris of partaking in a “systematic cover-up” of Biden’s mental acuity. His criticism came amid speculation that Harris will run for the governor’s mansion in California next year.