Former ESPN anchor Sage Steele urged the Democratic Party to own up to downplaying former President Joe Biden’s mental decline, arguing that doing so is the “first step” in rebuilding trust.

Biden’s decline has been spotlighted following his departure from the White House thanks to a new book, Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again, in which CNN host Jake Tapper and Axios national political correspondent Alex Thompson detail how the White House shielded Biden’s “deteriorating” health from the public. Steele, however, pointed out that Tapper became visibly upset at Lara Trump when she was critical over Biden’s “cognitive decline” in 2020, noting that he has yet to apologize and questioning, “Why don’t we start there?”

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“The first step to fixing something is usually accountability, owning it, that’s where it begins, but the problem is they lost that, they have proven they can’t do it,” Steele said on Fox News’s Jesse Watters Primetime. “And I keep hearing people say, ‘You know, the debate back in June, that was the moment where I realized’ — I interviewed Joe Biden, Jesse, four years ago, right after he took office, when I was still at ESPN. I’m a sportscaster, I don’t work in Washington D.C., and I saw it, by the way, via satellite!”

The host of The Sage Steele Show podcast then suggested the Democratic Party could have hope to bring back voters if they show “honesty” about Biden. However, she also said it is “too little, too late” given how these new books are trying to capitalize on the story after the 2024 election.

WHO WAS FOOLED BY THE BIDEN DECLINE COVER-UP? NOT THE VOTERS

“And at the end of the day, what is best for America right now would be, regardless of party, when you make a mistake, when you screw up, when you continuously lie to the people that you say that you care about, you’ve got to own it,” Steele said. “Apologize, apologize to Lara Trump, Jake Tapper. … To me, that’s the only way we heal. Am I ridiculous and too much of an optimist to hope that we can get to a better place?”

Tapper and Thompson’s book will come out on Tuesday, though snippets have already been made public, including Biden’s physician reportedly suggesting he use a wheelchair if his condition worsened. Another piece of the book featured an unnamed Cabinet secretary saying Biden’s top aides “shielded him in every meeting.”