CNN anchor Jake Tapper expressed his deep dismay when podcast host Tim Miller accused former President Donald Trump of downplaying the events of January 6th, labeling it as “apologia.” Tapper, a guest on The Bulwark podcast to promote his CNN series “United States of Scandal,” found it challenging to contain his reaction as he engaged in a conversation with Miller about the coverage of Trump’s rallies and speeches.
Tapper’s frustration was evident as he characterized Trump’s supporters at the rallies as criminals and highlighted the shocking nature of Trump’s recent comments regarding Jews. Miller attempted to contextualize Trump’s actions, but Tapper rebuffed him, emphasizing the gravity of Trump’s rhetoric and actions.
Acknowledging the criticism of bias from both sides, Tapper underscored the importance of thoughtful and careful coverage of Trump’s statements. He argued against simply cataloging Trump’s outrageous remarks without providing meaningful analysis, citing a recent example of Trump’s comments about Jewish voters as deserving thorough discussion and rebuttal.
TIM MILLER: No, no, I think now we agree that’s there was a 1 to 1. That’s it. Or even okay. So now here we are today is here. This is a genuine question I talked to Susan Glasser about earlier this week. I don’t know how to deal with it because Donald Trump goes out and does a speech and his speeches are just wheels off nonsense. And he does election fraud stuff every time, which is not true. He does January 6th apologia now every speech. He lies about Joe Biden–
JAKE TAPPER; Not just apologia! He starts his rallies with January 6th criminals singing the national anthem! And he calls them hostages — at a time when there are actual American hostages in Gaza! Yeah. No, it’s it’s it’s you’re you’re downplaying it.
TIM MILLER: All right. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. So there you go. So there’s that. He’s cheering on the insurrectionists. He’s lying about Joe Biden constantly. And you can just go through the list, lying about the economy and the crime and like the stuff that if Jeb had said like, oh, crime is up when crime is down, there would have been a fact-checked about us and we all had to apologize. Right? Like, like that stuff doesn’t even get mentioned.
But if you if you do The Lead every day and talk about the crazy stuff that Trump said, then you know, Republicans will come on and say, Jake, you’re so biased. You’re so biased, right? How do you deal with it? Like how, in this day and age, how do you deal with Trump every day lying and the premise of his campaign really being a lie?
JAKE TAPPER; About, okay, so first of all, I’m not afraid of being called biased. And I get called that by the left and the right all the time. Period, full stop.
I do think that the way that we cover Trump is something that that is something that takes, thought, and, and care because. It. I don’t know that it achieves anything to come on, you know, it’s Chris Cillizza does this great thing on his Substack, which is, you know, the 50 craziest lines from Donald Trump’s speech last night, or the 30 craziest lines from his interview with Howie Kurtz last night. Whatever he does.
And that’s it’s it’s always a great read, but I don’t think a TV version of that would be of service to my viewers. I think when he says something that is shocking, and new, it is worth discussion, like I did yesterday with his comment that any American Jew who votes for Democrats, and Jews vote for the Democratic Party about 70% of the time, roughly hates their religion, hates Israel, and they should be ashamed of themselves, which is an empirically a false statement.
I know plenty of progressive Jews or Jewish Democrats who love Israel and love their religion. I’m even related to a few of them. And two. Shocking, is the nicest thing I can say.
So we covered that. I covered it. We had a discussion with Frum and Kristol. We covered it. It’s not like I don’t cover it, but I can’t. I’m not going to hand over my show to Donald Trump.
