“I never say everybody knew,” said CNN stage manager Pablo Parada, when confronted by James O’Keefe after being caught on hidden camera stating that President Joe Biden’s cognitive decline was no secret inside the network.
“Yeah, everybody knew. Come on, even Tapper like wrote a book about it,” Parada had said during the undercover meeting, referring to CNN anchor Jake Tapper’s alleged awareness of Biden’s condition.
But when O’Keefe later confronted Parada face-to-face, he began to deny his previous comments. “I never say ‘everybody knew,’” Parada insisted.
O’Keefe then pressed: “You said, ‘Tapper doesn’t want to reveal that in front of us.’ What is the ‘that’?” Parada replied, “I don’t know what the ‘that’ is.” He later claimed, “I was talking about the Jon Stewart segment,” but gave no further clarity on what Tapper allegedly did not want to reveal.
The exchange grew more awkward when Parada, attempting to deflect from the topic, remarked on O’Keefe’s appearance: “You’re a little bit of diva too.” When questioned about his repeated physical contact during the conversation, Parada claimed, “I’m Latino,” offering cultural reasoning for his touchy behavior.
When asked directly if he worked at CNN, Parada dodged, saying, “None of your business.” In an attempt to deflect, he cast doubt on his own job title, saying, “What if I made it up?”
As the questioning continued, Parada abruptly walked away from the conversation and entered a nearby shoe store, in an apparent effort to evade further questions. “Is he hiding behind the column?” O’Keefe asked on camera. “Are you guys seeing this? He’s staring at a painting.”
Despite these evasions, O’Keefe emphasized that the footage speaks for itself. “These people manufacture the public’s consent. I think it’s a lot of BS and propaganda,” he said after the encounter.
Parada ultimately agreed to return a signed copy of Jake Tapper’s book, Original Sin, which covers Biden’s health and decision to run for re-election. O’Keefe told him, “You can text me. I’ll pay for an address label to ship it back to me.”
O’Keefe closed the confrontation with a simple line: “You can tell Jake Tapper, James O’Keefe says ‘hello.’”
