Jake Tapper Says More Willing To Burn Bridges In Trump Era

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By Daniel J. Solomon April 12, 2017

Jake Tapper has never been afraid of a tough interview. But the CNN politics anchor says that since the election he’s gone one step further, developing the spine to ask hard questions even if it means a guest won’t come back on his program.

“One of the things that I have found myself more willing to do is have an interview and bear down enough that it’s possible that person won’t ever come back,” he told the Hollywood Reporter, in a rountable with other news hosts, including CBS’s Gayle King and ABC’s George Stephanopoulos. “It’s an ugly reality of what we do. Even though you want to challenge them, you don’t want to piss them off so they boycott you for years or forever.”

He cited as an example an interview he did with Vice President-elect Mike Pence during the transition period. Tapper pressed Pence hard over Michael Flynn Jr., the ex-national security adviser’s son whose tweets endorsed the Pizzagate conspiracy theory. Pence has not returned to Tapper’s show on CNN since.

Contact Daniel J. Solomon at [email protected] or on Twitter @DanielJSolomon

Daniel J. Solomon is the former Assistant to the Editor/News Writer at the Forward. Originally from Queens, he attended Harvard as an undergraduate, where he wrote his senior thesis on French-Jewish intellectual history. He is excited to have returned to New York after his time in Massachusetts. Daniel’s passions include folk music, cycling, and pointed argument.

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