Jake Tapper on Trust, Trump and CNN 01:10:57

On September 28th, the Global Citizen Festival will gather thousands of people who took action to end extreme poverty. Join Post Malone, Doja Cat, Lisa, Jelly Roll, and Raul Alejandro as they take the stage with world leaders and activists to defeat poverty, defend the planet, and demand equity. Download the Global Citizen app today and earn your spot at the festival. Learn more at globalcitizen.org.com.

On September 28th, the Global Citizen Festival will gather thousands of people who took action to end extreme poverty. Join Post Malone, Doja Cat, Lisa, Jelly Roll, and Raul Alejandro as they take the stage with world leaders and activists to defeat poverty, defend the planet, and demand equity. Download the Global Citizen app today and earn your spot at the festival. Learn more at globalcitizen.org slash bots. It's on!

Hi, everyone, from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm Fake Tapper, mayor of Skeetown. Just kidding. You'll get that later. This is On with Kara Swisher, and I'm Kara Swisher. And I'm Naima Raza. Our guest today is Jake Tapper, not Fake Tapper. No. The chief Washington correspondent for CNN who carries two hours every weekday, which is no easy feat.

He's also a book author, and we're going to talk about that and a lot more. The fake Tapper is from, obviously, Donald Trump. Frankly, I would have called him fake Flapper or something like that, not just kept Tapper in there. He's getting bad nicknames now, Donald Trump. I have a disclosure to make. I love Jake Tapper. Do you? Okay. I love Jake Tapper. Okay, that's enough. Not because he's a zaddy. He's a zaddy. But I love Jake Tapper because he is a great journalist.

And he's a great interviewer. He has two qualities that make him a great interviewer. He is smart and he is honest. Yes, he does say a lot. He does. And you can see it throughout his social media. The joke I was making about Mayor of Skeetown is he's on Blue Sky and he's really Jake Tapper unplugged.

it's really quite something to watch. And right now he's, you know, flagging his book a lot, but he's very, very funny and sort of a little bit lost his mind over on blue sky, which is one of the competitors. He's lost his mind on blue sky. Well, in a good way, he's just really fun and he's really having a good time there. Right. And he was very honest last time we spoke with him. He was a guest on sway, our old show. And he gave us his thoughts on Chris Cuomo. Yeah, he did. He was not a fan. I would say not a fan. And look,

a lot of people, a lot of journalists, when things happen at their own institutions, they suddenly go mute. You know, when they demand other people give their comments, they're sort of very pressing. And when they themselves are in the middle of something, and often CNN is of late, they just say, oh, nothing, can't say, no comment. And it's always funny to me. I try very hard to say what I'm thinking at any moment in time where I am. And yes, we will have to ask him about how he is surviving the whirlwind at CNN, which has a

high-profile revolving door that is hitting people on the way out from Don Lemon to Chris Licht. It's been a lot of trouble this year, a lot of attention to it. And more importantly, the business is more seriously impacted because of secular trends that have nothing to do with all the screaminess that

has gone on there. Cable news, the competition, social media news, and we're going to ask him about all of that and his epic blue sky game. But before we get to any of that, we have to talk to him about this book because yes, in addition to being the chief White House correspondent, in addition to doing 10 hours of television, in addition to doing a newsletter on Substack and acing social media, he has just written his sixth book. Yeah. It's the third in this series and it's called All the Demons Are Here. It's out on July 11th.

Kara, did you read the book? I read the entire book. Me too. You know, a lot of people do these sort of page-turner thrillers, and David Ignatius, a whole bunch of people do them. Bill O'Reilly actually does a series of them, historical ones. And it sort of taps into Jake's interest in pop culture.

music, you know, the 70s. He did the last one was on the 60s and the Rat Pack. This isn't set in the 70s. It's following this superstar political family. And so it gets him, he probably has a lot of observations he can't share on CNN, but that has to find a way out. And so he wants some creativity in it. And people like these books. It's a very big summer read. I'd say, I call it a summer read. It is not great literature, but it's a summer read.

It is a fun read. And it's also fun because of the insight you get into how Jake Tapper sees the world. Yeah. Sees Washington, what he's nostalgic about historically, what are the chronic illnesses of our society that have lasted over many decades, right? Indeed. Yep. So we thought this was a great time for a Jake Tapper interview because we were talking with Oliver Stone about distrust, disinformation. Mm-hmm.

And really a key part of that conversation was around Watergate, these historical moments that breed distrust in communities and can curdle into conspiracy. Yeah, the United States has been full of this since this beginning. But, you know, McCarthyism, hello. It just pops up. And obviously Watergate and the Vietnam War were, the Pentagon Papers really did bring it into sharp relief. And I think as it combined with cable and more communication

of media that wasn't as controlled, it exploded. And this is the period in which Jake Tapper is writing in this book. He is talking about the 1970s, so Watergate's breaking. There's, you know, Woodward and Bernstein are there. And it really is a moment in which the distrust that we see so clearly now comes to the fore. Yeah.

Yep, 100%. And it changes the role that media should take. Yep, took scales off a lot of people's eyes and also made people more angry about it on both sides. So that's where a lot of it started in many ways. And Tapper's book is set in that period. It follows Charlie Marder, who we met in the last book, who's this dashing and, yes, fictitious war veteran turned lawmaker. And the book is narrated by his two kids, one of whom is this AWOL Marine working with Evel Knievel, and the other is the kind of young baby cub reporter

trying to make it in Washington before she's caught up in tabloid sensationalism. And that's when I think the book is most interesting, at least to me, because it becomes this ironic juxtaposition of this spectacle of entertainment and the substance of news and

and how those worlds really collide. And the question obviously becomes in a viral world, how do we cover political spectacle without getting dragged into the spectacle itself, especially when there's incentive to do that? Yeah. He's talking about yesterday, but he's much talking about today. And they're all standards, evil, good, evil. And Elvis also plays a role in this, his death. And so he's talking about today's

culture in a lot of ways and how we got here by using these historical figures and names to do so. And I think he's talking about a rot in the center of the American experience that's continued to rot. And that's, it really is, it's a very cynical attitude in this book when you step away from it. It's not particularly hopeful, even though this is a sort of a heroic and flawed family.

And one of the things that's nice about the generational aspect and how he looks at time is that I'm a millennial, which means that we either are the most screwed or think we're the most screwed generation in history. But in reading his books, you come to the conclusion that, oh, every generation was the most screwed generation in history. Yeah, it's a really cynical and dark...

way to look at a society. And it's, you know, his whole point is it's been ongoing and gotten worse. But any person in this book, you could sub for Donald Trump, you could sub for the Murdochs. You know, it's the same people. It's about distrust of government. There's that in there. And yes, speaking of which, the Murdochs are in this book. Rupert Murdoch, I think, is mentioned by name. This is set in the 1970s, which is when the Murdochs bought their first paper in the United States, the San Antonio Express News.

And they also seem to be a succession-like inspiration for The Lion Family. It's kind of shady, squillionaire set, minting money and tabloids. Now, Kara, I think you might have to ask him for a piece of his royalties here. I know. We'll talk about that. I suggested that he focus on the Murdochs. In our last interview with him, you suggested this idea. I did. This was taped about a year ago, and you're riffing ideas for the next book. This book. Here's the clip. Well, maybe Rupert Murdoch would make an excellent fictional book character. Just a suggestion. Too broad. No.

I think, you know, yeah, I think you'd do an excellent job with him. I think he is one of the most dangerous people on the planet. But can I just say something like the other thing about the Murdoch's just Lachlan and Rupert is they are in glass houses, right? They have their own lives and all that stuff. And I don't cover it.

It's not my business. I mean, I could do a whole show about how evil, I could do it every day about how evil Rupert Murdoch is. And I'm sure, by the way, it would boost my ratings. But that's not what my gig is. Apparently it is.

It's not his TV gig. It's his book deal. It's his book gig. Read the book. It's his gig. It's the entire story. You're welcome, Jake. I was right once again. Murdochs make a great character, but the true villain of this story is the Trumpy one. Let's take a quick break. And when we're back, we'll have Jake Tapper on to explain himself and give you some royalties. It's on.

Hi, Jake. Welcome. A lot has changed since we spoke, including at CNN. I want to talk about that. But I want to first talk about the book, because there's a lot in there about you, I think. It's called All the Demons Are Here. And it's a series about Charlie Marder. He's a World War II hero and also a congressman, now a senator in this book. You made up the title as if it were a real Led Zeppelin song. You used a lot of music in the book. Why did you make up the title? What's...

Or the song. It's a good song. It's a good song. Thank you. I appreciate it. I really made up a lot of songs in the second book about the Rat Pack. So anyway, so All the Demons Are Here, you know, it's actually a line from Shakespeare, from The Tempest. And the ending of the book is reminiscent, in my mind at least, of

of the insanity on the island in The Tempest. And it also was kind of, I mean, why did I do it? I don't know, because it was fun. I thought it was, I thought it'd be fun. Speaking of demons, when we last spoke, I told you you should make Rupert Murdoch the villain of your next book, a Rupert Murdoch-like character. He's mentioned by name in the book. It's also called

clearly inspiration for your fictional lions family who are aggressively ambitious and very loose with their journalistic ethics. I obviously deserve royalties, but we'll get into that later. Well, you deserve credit. I will give you, I will, you absolutely 100% get credit. You push back. You push back quite a bit. You said it was too broad. I mean,

But you were right. I am directable. I mean, I will tell you... Why did you pick them, though? I'm just curious, since you were not leaning that way. Why did you pick them as the inspirational family? Because it made perfect sense, Cara. I mean, I don't...

you're challenging me for taking your suggestion. No, I wonder why did you want to write about this? Because, so I was writing about the 70s and so many things were going on in the 70s. And you suggested what you suggested that Rupert Murdoch would be a good villain or Rupert Murdoch type would be a good villain or at least character. And I asked Gabe Sherman for some recommendations of

Murdoch books about his earlier time in the 70s. It's when he showed up. Yeah. But why is the Murdoch idea a good one? Because there's a lot of strains through this book, and we'll get to in a second, going through today, right? Is this where you felt it started, this idea of cheapening of media? Yeah. Well, he got his toehold into American media in the 70s with the San Antonio newspapers, where he

Now I know that the reason I had the crap scared out of me as a kid about killer bees was because he made it up. I mean, he didn't make it up. It was always a kernel of something. But the idea that swarms of killer bees were going to be descending on Americans and just slaughtering us wholesale was his invention. And the 70s, because of the summer of Sam in particular, which is also 1977 when this book takes place, is when tabloids really...

became a huge force in the United States. And one of the reasons was, I mean, I hope I achieved what I intended to, which was Rupert Murdoch's stand-in in this book is a guy named Max Lyon, who's starting a fictitious DC tabloid called the Washington Sentinel.

But I didn't want him to be like a mustache twirling villain. I wanted him to be somebody who could understand his point of view. And his point of view is the American newspapers and the American media are not covering things that people want to read about. Yeah. The people love it. The people love it. And there is an argument to be made about that. There is. Yeah. It's not popular. The things that people are talking about are not, except that he juiced it with stupid words.

stories like Killer Bees that were not factually correct. A hundred percent. So your last novel was set in the 60s, involved the Rat Pack, and was narrated by this character, Charlie Martyr, who's a senator now. This one, the central character, which sort of shocked me and someone I know a lot about because I followed a lot, was Evel Knievel. It's narrated also by Martyr's two kids, Ike in Montana and Lucy in D.C. I want you to talk about how the context shifts in between Watergate, this

Evil Knievel, the death of Elvis, and the entrance of Rupert Murdoch into the American scene. It's an era of real mistrust post-Watergate, post-Vietnam War. And one of the things I wanted to capture in this book was the degree to which a lot of the emotions and

and zeitgeist that we are all experiencing right now, we have been through before. Obviously, I goosed it a little bit with Evel Knievel running for president, which didn't happen, but on Earth, too, it could have happened. Sure, we could. Can you imagine Evel Knievel in a world with social media would be a very different kind of environment. But, I mean, there are just a lot of similarities. Obviously, it was the rise of Murdoch and that kind of journalism that

And that's important today because we see where that has led. Just for people who don't know, explain who Evel Knievel is. So Evel Knievel was a stuntman. The youngs might not know him. Right, they don't. Evel Knievel was a quintessentially American character, a stuntman, a showman, something of a flim-flam artist. He started off as a thief in Butte, Montana, and then became...

enamored with motorcycle riding and became a stuntman extraordinaire that captured the attention of ABC wide world of sports. He could pack arenas doing all sorts of stunts, not a gifted motorcycle rider compared to his contemporaries or descendants, but willing to

take bigger risks and break more bones than anyone else. And he was in many ways a precursor to Donald Trump as a showman, not meant in a pejorative way, but just here's a guy who has a real gift for capturing the public's attention. You also, though, bring in, by placing it where he was from, Montana, bring in the survivalists, the UFO nuts, the Nazis, the

It starts right off with Nazis, or neo-Nazis, really. So it's not just, you know, isn't he funny? Isn't he dressed up? Doesn't he jump over trucks? It tries to bring in that stream, which is here again now. Yeah, and one of the things also that I wanted to get at is I wanted to write about followers and mobs, because that's obviously something that's been big in the United States in the last few years, too, because of January 6th. And like,

What would cause people to follow a charismatic figure and do things differently?

they might otherwise not have done. And I wanted to get, again, not with a caricature, not with mustache twirling bad guys, because you mentioned some of the weirder people in the mob following Evel Knievel. The Nazis are not part of the mob following Evel Knievel, but the UFO nuts and the survivalists. But there's also a group of Vietnam veterans with whom Ike embeds and who have legitimate grievances. About Agent Orange? Yeah.

Yeah, and they don't even know what Agent Orange is, but a bunch of them are suffering from it. I thought it was important to get into...

who are these people that would follow a charismatic figure? And, you know, the West seems like a very natural place for those people to be. So distrust the government and follow the demagogue, which is what you're saying. But demagogues need to be created at the same time. So you have Lucy, who's his sister, Ike's sister, is a young reporter. She starts out at the Washington Star before moving on to the tabloid run by this family called the Lyons.

You have not worked for Rupert Murdoch, correct? I have, but you have not. I have not, no. The tabloid thing, did it ever attract you? Because you certainly read it, so do I. You know, we do get pulled into it.

I don't know. I mean, I worked for Salon.com, you know, in 99, 2000. And so and that wasn't a tabloid, but it was a an Internet publication, which at the time, the dot com bubble, it was accused of Salon was accused of being. I mean, it was clickbait. It's basically the same thing as as.

tabloid, the insinuation, as you're only trying to generate readers with the most sensationalist stuff. It's not difficult for me to understand it. Right. So one of the things, you do get a window into how reporters report stories. There's another thing that seems to have

I would say. This is Lucy describing, talking about a source. Being a journalist is about convincing people to share facts with you that you desperately need, but they are reluctant to freely offer and may not even realize they have. Often that means being as friendly as a maitre d', setting a table of understanding, acting as if you already know much of what they're about to tell you. Quite a bit of investigating can be bluffing, not lying, but pretending you know more than you do.

Talk about what you're trying to do here. Is this how you think about reporting? Because you do talk a lot about, you know, the deception of journalism, which is, you know, Joan Didion's written about it. Lots of people have written about it. Well, this, I mean, to be clear, that's not how I perceive journalism. But I

But this is Lucy's point of view as she's 22, 23, starting in journalism, and that's her understanding of it, trying to get information. And I don't think any journalist could read that, what Lucy says and say,

that they don't understand that at all certainly certainly there is always an implication that we know more than we're saying and sometimes we do and sometimes we don't um and this is investigatory journalism also um which which is which is different but i i look i wanted to get into the head of lucy and explain why she ended up with the lion family pursuing the

career path she was choosing. And she ends up covering a serial killer in D.C. And so she and her bosses, which include Max Lyon, the father of the family, but also his son, Harry, get into arguments and journalistic discussions because it is the push and pull between providing information and also

getting readers. And that's not always easy to do. No, it is hard to do. I would say I do bluff quite a bit, a lot, actually, in my career over time. And it's usually educated bluffing. It's usually I have a sense, but they certainly don't know what you don't know. It's not lying, but it's certainly...

assuming you know more than you do in order to get more information. Yeah, I mean, I think that's a part of what we do. Definitely. I mean, I think Lucy is of the opinion that that is most of what she does. But the point is you don't print the bluffs. You print what you get from the bluffs. Well, actually, the lions do print the bluffs. Well, the lions do. Yeah, and then she lets them. And that's the other side, right? That's the other side of the Murdoch empire, as we discussed. There's nothing wrong with wanting readers. There's nothing wrong inherently with wanting to provide information

readers or viewers with content that they are interested in, the question is, how do you do it? What's the execution? Are you providing them with all the nuance and all the context, or are you just feeding dangerous tidbits of information coated with slime in order to just keep feeding this beast? Yeah, and it's all about destruction. Two things that struck me out is one is government hating, which I'll get to in a second, but also, you know,

There's a line you said, she always said that the folly of leadership was that men succeeded to the point that they inevitably removed from their circle anyone who kept them from self-destruction. Obviously, you talk about Elvis a lot, whom you clearly love. You did not rewrite his songs. I do love Elvis. That was the first musician I loved, yeah. Yeah, me too. But...

It sounds like everyone I have covered, I'm just finishing up my own memoir and I'm just writing a section about Tony Hsieh, the CEO of Zappos who died tragically. It could be Elon, it could be the Supreme Court. And then there's the government hating that you're sort of depicting quite a bit. And I'm going to read another thing that says, I mean to state the obvious, governments lie. They lie about matters big and small, about events trifling and seismic. They lie about war. They lie about peace. They lie about death. They lie about taxes."

They lie to incite the public from ugly truths. They lie to shelter themselves from consequences. They lie to make sure they can get good tables at restaurants. So why wouldn't they lie about things flying around? They couldn't identify whether those things came from the Soviet Union or Alpha Centauri. This is quite a dark look at our government.

Jake and people, both of, and I will say both of those expressions. Um, the first one is Lucy quoting her mother, Margaret, right about how great man rise to the level where they remove from their circle. Anyone who will tell them when they're being an asshole or making mistakes, um,

That is something I completely believe. I call it the Jar Jar Binks theory. Someday I'll write a business book about it. Explain me. Jar Jar Binks theory is George Lucas rises to a level where nobody's around him to say, please do not include that Jamaican frog in the prequels. That's an awful idea. What are you doing?

And you see it all over, all over with leader after leader after leader who does not have anyone around them to say no. And that is I never want to be that person because that is always how it ends. And then the other thing, which is Ike talking about.

they're talking about UFOs, uh, and whether or not UFOs exist in the seventies, there was this huge increase in the number of people who claimed they'd seen UFOs, including Jimmy Carter, uh, the president of the United States, although he claimed it earlier in his life. Um, but, um, that, that represents my most skeptical philosophy about government, about not trusting government. And if your knee jerk is to not believe what you're being told, uh,

more times than not, as a journalist, as a journalist, you will be happy that that was your knee jerk. Yeah, probably. The reason I think it's set in the 70s, it's peak Woodward and Bernstein, and each of whom make a cameo in the book, and I can't say they're as complimentary as I think you make fun of their fame and their love of their fame at that moment. How do you think the post-war era has shaped us today? Was it more damaging or more important? Let me just say, first of all, I love Woodward and Bernstein, and I'm

I was describing Lucy's love of them as she saw them as heroes and icons. And, yeah,

That's, yeah, I think they're great. I do too. I do think both of them became a bit of a peacock, each of them, but go ahead. Anyway. But that's okay. They got famous. That's me saying it, not you. But what was the question? The impact of post-Watergate, because there was this government's lying, government's lying, and here we are with people hating the government and hating all leaders in some way or distrusting or, you know, steeped in conspiracy theory and then enter Trump. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, look, first of all, one of the things that was interesting researching this book is so Charlie, who is

A senator in this book, he was a member of the House Judiciary Committee, and obviously he's fictitious. But the only other member of the House Judiciary Committee who was a Republican, because Charlie's a Republican, to vote for the articles of impeachment against Nixon was Congressman Larry Hogan, senior of Maryland, the father, the real-life father of the two-term governor. And Hogan ran for statewide office and lost in the primary.

So it's not as though everybody was upset about Nixon committing crimes as president. There was a diehard in the Republican base that was willing to punish Larry Hogan Sr. for being correct. So it is complicated. Right.

It's not as though everybody saw what Nixon did as bad. Some people, a minority but enough, saw the press as the bad guys or the Democrats as the bad guys or the Republicans who took a stand against Nixon as the bad guys. And many who took a stand didn't really take a stand until it was safe to do so. Right. And that's also one of the points that Charlie makes. Charlie was early against Nixon and felt like he was all alone.

And then all of a sudden Nixon gets impeached, et cetera, et cetera. And then everybody's like, oh, what a horrible guy. He felt like, where have you been? So he was he was disappointed by all that. I mean, the answer to what what can we do is we can just acknowledge the truth and acknowledge when we make mistakes and this and that. And that will be weaponized by bad faith actors.

And it continues to be. So let's move on to that. Okay. Part of what Trump has brought to our elections, and so you do aptly get to in the book, is this spectacle. I want to play a clip of your reaction to the control room playing live footage of diners singing happy birthday to Trump when he was in Versailles, not the French one, but the Cuban restaurant in Miami, after appearing in court in Miami for his indictment. Let's play the clip.

The folks in the control room, I don't need to see any more of that. He's trying to turn this and he's trying to turn it into a spectacle, into a campaign ad. That's enough of that. We've seen it already. Can you talk about that? Because you had just written a book about spectacle and the dangers of spectacle. Well, Donald Trump had just been arrested and arraigned. And he then did something that in the business we call an OTR operation.

It was an unannounced stop that journalists had been given a heads up on, although I had not been given a heads up on. And next thing I knew, we were airing this video of Donald Trump walking into this cafe, and we didn't know if he was going to say something about having been arrested and arraigned or what was going to happen. And it became pretty clear that it was just a campaign stop.

He was trying to make it seem as though nothing had just happened of historical import. This is in the classified documents case, which is even his former attorney, General Bill Barr, has called a very, very serious case and said, if even half of the allegations are true, then he's toast. That's Bill Barr's language, not mine. And I thought that he was and I understand why he and his team were trying to do it, but they were trying to change the subject and trying to get us to air a campaign stop.

And so once the news value became clear, which was zero, nothing, there wasn't much of one. Yeah. Yeah. It was campaign stop. I said, okay, that's enough of that. And it's one of my eternal frustrations that I cannot communicate with the control room while live on air. Like I want to figure out some sort of way for me to be able to write something on a notepad and have it email there. But anyway, that technology does not yet exist.

I didn't want them to loop it because, as you know, in cable news, we get loopy or even network news. We get we get some new live footage and then we just loop it because it's new and live and interesting and people haven't seen it before. And we just show it over and over and over again. And I felt like, OK, well, we've seen it. There's there's no news value beyond what we've already seen. Let's not see that again. Let's move on.

Trump lambasted you later. You, of course, became the story. I think mischaracterized your reaction and his fandom. He said on True Social that, quote, fake Tapper, which is your new name, apparently, just demanded that his broadcast be closed down from Miami because there was far too much enthusiasm on the streets for Trump. The good news, he was the only one to do so. Perhaps a good explanation as to why CNN's ratings are so low. Yeah.

How do you stay on substance when a former president is dragging you into his spectacle and making you a character in it? Well, that was on Truth Social, which is not read by anybody I know. I got put on Twitter, etc., but go ahead.

I mean, we're all used to, I mean, it's been eight years of him doing that kind of thing. I don't, it didn't really have any impact on me. Not at all. It doesn't bother any of you that this happens constantly or is it just more noise? I think that, no, that did not bother me. I think that he is very capable of inciting violence against individuals, but I didn't see that one as, as qualifying. I mean, he, he,

He incites violence. I mean, we've seen it on January 6th, but not only January 6th. I mean, you know, he had there was that Trump superfan who sent bombs to journalists and Democratic officials. And you'd think that would have created a disincentive for Donald Trump to stop and lower the rhetoric. But it hasn't. It didn't.

So, you know, that relatively minor truth social posting was relatively tame compared to

other stuff he has said about other people, particularly women and people of color. 100% true. So let's talk to the substance of this case. As a president who's been indicted on numerous charges, notably this stolen documents case, and a president who's still ongoing investigations on issues from January 6th to Georgia, the Georgia elections, you're the chief Washington correspondent for CNN. What impact do you think the indictment will have first on the GOP primary and second national turnout?

It's tough to it's tough to say predictions when it comes to Donald Trump are a risky venture. I mean, based on polling, it seems as though it has caused a rally around the flag effect to a degree. And there are very few Republicans beyond Will Hurd, Chris Christie and Asa Hutchinson, it seems, unless I'm forgetting any, who have discussed in the

serious terms what these allegations are in a way that is akin to what Mark Esper, Trump's former Secretary of Defense, or Bill Barr, his former Attorney General, has said. So there isn't anybody aggressively making the argument. This is why, I mean, if you're Ron DeSantis and you're running for president against Donald Trump, it seems like that's an opportunity. Like this guy, uh,

Can't be trusted with the nation's secrets. That's at least what Esper said. But because people who would, I think, be able to capture the Trump base have been reluctant to do so, it doesn't seem as though they've really had any effect on his primary support in the terms of his general support. Yeah.

I haven't seen any indication that he has done anything to win over the people who voted for him in 2016 and did not do so in 2020. All those people in the suburbs of Philadelphia or Milwaukee or Chicago.

Detroit, you know, all the all the people who turned out for him, all those Republican women, all those independents, they do not seem to be any more supportive of him than they were. And in fact, you could even make the argument that they're even less supportive given what's happened with Roe v. Wade. So I don't really quite understand it just as a political analyst. But Jonah Goldberg had a really interesting column about.

The other day where he said he thinks the you should read it yourself because I'm not going to do it justice. But but it was something about the purity test in the Republican politics now being more important than victory. It's interesting because in your book, you do talk about people shifting on Nixon. They did make that leap. Why hasn't that, you know, having studied that and written about it in your book, why hasn't it happened here? There are a lot of reasons, of course.

One of them is we're in such a different media environment than we were with so many more channels and voices. And generally speaking, that's a good thing, but it also can be a bad thing because misinformation is so prevalent. And also, I think that at the end of the day, even if the Republican Party was very, very late to it,

Howard Baker and Barry Goldwater and all the rest did take that walk and go to the Nixon White House and tell him that it was time to resign. And we don't see that level of courage

in terms of speaking out against somebody that they do not like and do not trust and do not think will be able to win among current Republican leadership. The most you can hope for is silence, such as Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. But generally speaking, people see Jeff Flake and Bob Corker and Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, and they think, I don't want to end up like that. We'll be back in a minute.

Let's do a lightning round. I want to ask you what lessons you think we've learned from 2016, 2020 and beyond and how media should cover each of these stories. The stakes, particularly the recent Supreme Court decisions impacting everything from affirmative actions to gay marriage or gay marriage wedding.

Right. Well, I mean, I think we should cover those decisions as honestly and accurately as possible and show the ramifications of them. Will the more recent ones have as much motivation as the abortion issue for an action, the 303 case?

We'll see. I mean, it obviously is going to have an impact. I think, you know, a lot of colleges have been preparing for this decision. John Roberts has been against affirmative action as long as I've known who John Roberts was. And so I don't I think a lot of colleges were preparing for this decision.

and have been preparing for ways to keep their student body as diverse in every way, ideologically, geographically, internationally, et cetera, even with a decision like this. So I don't know what the impact is going to be. It is possible the impact will be minimal, but it's certainly something we're going to cover. Biden's age and health, from the sandbag fall to misspeaks on Russia invading Iraq, how are you going to be covering that?

In the same way we covered in 2020, which is to acknowledge it's real. I mean, and anyone who pretends it isn't. He was, look, he was always a gaffe machine when he was in the Senate and then when he was vice president. When he was running for vice president, I had a blog. I was at ABC News and I had a blog called Political Punch. And I had a regular feature that was called Oh That Joe. And it was just transcripts of gaffes that he made from the campaign trail.

Before anybody gets mad at me, it was a favorite among people on the Obama campaign because they knew of his propensity to... Anyway, I had to stop at Joe number 50. I had to stop because he got elected and I'm like, okay, well, probably to retire this feature. And you're not going to bring it back, presumably. Well, now it's...

gaffes on combined with the fact that he's 80. Right. And I can't speak for you, Cara, but I'm 54 and I don't have the same brain I had when I was 30. I'm smarter than before, Jake. Anyway. No, you might be wiser. You might be wiser. No, I'm as sharp as a tack. I'm going to go all at once, Jake. Suddenly I'll be like a doddering fool. Hunter Biden's deal with federal prosecutors is assorted Hunter scandals.

I think we cover it. We have been covering it and we need to cover it. And, you know, there are these whistleblowers who allege that there was much worse. And the DOJ didn't listen and

Then you have the former U.S. attorney Weiss, who says he had complete control and he's a Republican appointee, a Trump appointee. We just we just cover it all. I mean, look, I mean, Hunter Biden is who he is. It's pretty clear who he is. In addition to being an addict, he's a guy who ethically has there been questions raised about his behavior. And I think it's worth covering. It's also worth covering in context.

the context of everything that's being said in terms of like how fact-based any of it is or how evidence-based any of it is. But I'm not going to shy away from covering Hunter Biden. He is the president's son and has made a lot of money being the president's son.

What about Trump's lies? How do you change? Again, this is the third election, presumably from 2016. Many thought the media laid down their job. 2020 made it the media didn't necessarily. How do you do it? How do you cover him as a normal candidate? Well, he's not a normal candidate. Yeah, he's not. He's a former U.S. president who arguably incited violent insurrection.

His lies about the election certainly were the reason for what happened on Capitol Hill that day. He is somebody whose words have caused violence and caused threats of violence. We saw that just a few days ago with one of those. So how do you cover him? As he is. We cover him as he is. He's the leading Republican nominee, and he says things that are not true. But we have to cover him. We can't ignore him. We can't pretend he's not there. We can't pretend he's not

leading, uh, in the polls for his party's nomination. We have to explain why we have to talk about the issues that, uh, people find compelling. Although, you know, to be honest, like the people who are still left in the Trump tent, who want to talk about the Abraham accords and the tax cuts, Trump doesn't really talk about that all that much. No, no, not really other than his grievances and the deep state and, and the rest. Uh,

But he's the leading Republican nominee for president, and he has as good a chance as anyone of becoming the next president of the United States. So that obviously leads us into the CNN part of it. How to Cover Trump blew up a bit at CNN after the Trump town hall. Many think the interview shouldn't have happened. I am not one of them. I think there should be as many interviews of Donald Trump as possible. I'd love you to sort of unpack that. How do you look at the fallout from that at this moment?

I think that a lot of the fallout was, well, look, it's nuanced, so I don't want to paint anything with a broad brush. First of all, there is the question. Donald Trump is the leading Republican nominee for his party's nomination. Should he be covered?

Is a town hall where voters get to ask him questions, the moderator gets to ask follow-ups, is that in the public's interest? I am of the opinion that it is. Now, some people might say no, but I am of the opinion that it is. You agree with me, I think, on that. Yes, I do. So then the question becomes how we do it, we meaning news media, not just CNN, and also what are people offended by?

Because I think a lot of the reaction that there was people like, oh, it was a Trump rally. Well, that wasn't a Trump rally. That was a group of, as we do for all of our town halls, Republican and Republican leaning independents from that state, in this case, New Hampshire, just as we do for Joe Biden. It would be Democrats and Democratic leading independents for Iowa or South Carolina or wherever.

So what were people people? Oh, is it Trump? No, that wasn't a Trump rally. That is a sampling of Republicans and Republican leaning independence in a battleground state. Oh, well, they were behaving like this. They were behaving like that. The question I would have and I say this truly with all due respect, what are you offended by the airing of it or the existence of it? I'm not talking to you, but the people out there who are offended by it. What is it? Is it the airing of it or the existence of those people?

Hmm. Not the existence of those people, but I wouldn't have stacked it with anybody. And I do think, you know, even Tim Alberta's piece, which I'll bring up in a second, the Atlantic piece, repeatedly makes the point that Chris Licht, who was your former boss, quoted as extra Trumpy. I don't think they should be stacked at all with people and supporters. Yeah, I don't think they, I don't, I don't, I saw that quote in the Alberta piece. Chris Sununu said they were. I mean, lots of people said it was pretty Trumpy. I don't.

My understanding, and I was not there and I did not play a role in the town hall, but my understanding is that the audience was picked in the same way the audience was picked for all of our other town halls going back years and years. And I will say, having done the Nikki Haley town hall, which was a few weeks later, I

Again, it was Iowa Republicans and Republican-leaning independents. And Nikki Haley, who's from South Carolina, got a polite applause. And then throughout the night, people liked her. They listened to her. And she got a lot of applause at the end. Now, she's not there saying or doing the same things.

But people could have said, oh, we stacked it with Nikki Haley supporters. We didn't. But it's a Republican and Republican leaning crowd. And she is who she is. Donald Trump is incredibly popular with the Republican Party. I don't know who the individuals were. You can't hear people who were there who were not applauding or not laughing or not clapping.

But regardless of what Chris Sununu or Chris Lick said, my understanding is it was picked the same way as any other one. I'm not sure that's the best way to stack an audience in general, but that's just me. But then you're saying we should have done something different for Donald Trump that we didn't do for the other Republicans. What would you have done differently? Because you said you wouldn't do a town hall, for example, with Robert Kennedy Jr. because he spreads, quote, dangerous misinformation.

I still think Trump needs to be interviewed compared to Robert Kennedy. Let me just say this personally. But what would you have done differently there if you could go back and change it? Well, just to touch on the Robert Kennedy Jr. thing, one thing I'll say is like his entire being in prominence, his entire public position is based on lies about childhood vaccines that have saved the lives of

tens, if not hundreds of millions, if not billions of children throughout the years. And one can see a direct cause and effect of what he says about MMR vaccines and the like breaking out every now and then. Just anybody listening, go Google Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Samoa and measles, and you can read something about what that's what I'm talking about. What would I have done differently? I think there's an argument to be made that what

Fox did when they did their town hall like a week or two later, it was not live. I think there's an argument to be made about that because then it can be produced a little better. Well, he's a bit of a hot item. That's the problem. It's hard to do it live because he's a liar because he's a persistent liar.

I have never seen anybody in public life with the possible exception of Robert Kennedy Jr. who lies with such skill and abandon. That is true. I think Robert Kennedy Jr. is actually worse, but that's just my personal point of view. Right. So you would maybe do it not live. I think there's an argument to be made about not doing it live. But I mean, I think these are all just like tweaks of the fundamental issue. The fundamental issue that I think a lot of people are upset about on the left and in the media is that

Donald Trump is the leading Republican nominee to be president, and he has huge support among the Republican voters. Journalistically, I'm willing to listen to any argument and discuss whether or not such a town hall should happen, how to do it differently, all of that. But I do think that that is for some people...

the fundamental problem they had with the town hall. Okay. All right. But it was followed by, of course, Tim Alberta's piece. It definitely tarnished CNN. Who is this Tim Alberta of which you speak? You didn't read it? It was long. I read it. I read every word. It was the final nail, as they say, for Chris Licht. The reporting was that you liked Licht and you were an advocate for his attempts to reform the network.

Um, is that the case? What has the fallout been from your perspective? So you don't run everything, obviously. I don't. I run my show and I co-run State of the Union and that's it here at CNN. So that's what I can speak to. I will say that I've known Chris for a long time. I've known him since he was at CBS News. And I was very excited when he came because I thought that, uh,

I thought that he would be good. At that point, Zucker had already left and I adored Jeff and I would like for Jeff not to have left, but he did. And so I was in a new reality and the reality was, well, who are they going to pick? And I'd heard a lot of names, some of whom I knew, some of whom I knew by reputation. And Chris was without question the best name I heard. And I was excited about it. Now, in terms of the larger question about what did I think about his mission?

Donald Trump is a disruptor and that is not meant as a criticism. I think any even his fans would agree that he disrupts. Some of that disrupting is probably good in terms of getting the Republican Party to think about wars and involvement in wars in terms of getting.

the Republican Party to think more about the victims of free trade as opposed to just corporate profits. I'm not saying that everything he has done has fallen in line with those principles, but I'm just giving examples of ways that his disrupting has been not negative. There have certainly been a lot of very negative ways of his disruption.

I think that every news organization in America was disrupted by Donald Trump, especially by his attacking the media, his making facts. And CNN in particular, for sure. Well, he focused on CNN. I'm not sure if it was because of his previous relationship with Jeff Zucker. I'm not sure it's because of our position as, you know, the only non, I would argue, partisan, non-ideological 24-hour cable news network, whatever.

But he picked on us a lot. But that's OK. But, you know, as Hyman Roth said, this is the business we've chosen. Godfather. I think he disrupted everybody. I think he knocked everybody in the news media off. I mean, look at the Fox Dominion lawsuit. If you want to see like how one organization was knocked so far off its tracks that they thought that

A reporter like Kristen Fisher should be fired or kicked off air because she was telling the truth about the election. I mean, that is. Sure. I mean, Donald Trump doesn't see CNN as nonpartisan. Let's be clear. I mean, he doesn't. He talks about it is very partisan. But go ahead. Donald Trump. I mean, that's you. But, you know, that he like if Fox airs something that's like not anti DeSantis, he attacks them for being partisan.

I mean, do I think, so back to the CNN thing, do I think CNN or some individuals at CNN or some moments in CNN's history during the Trump years, we were knocked off our equilibrium a little bit? Yes, every media organization was to one degree or another. Did I think that we needed some sort of wholesale revision? No, I do not. Were there some tweaks that were necessary? Yes.

That is what I said to Chris when he came on board. Our North Star here at CNN has always been the journalism, not preaching to the choir, not we're not an entertainment company with a news division. We are a news company and we are not trying to preach to the progressive choir or the or the MAGA choir. We are our own unique organization.

And that is what I thought Chris's mission was. And I agreed with that wholeheartedly. And do I think there were moments that we got knocked off that? Yeah. But I think that we're good now. Right.

So right now, you know, you had a lot of disagreement. Oliver Darcy got his wrist slapped for basically reporting. But name another organization that would have had a guy like Oliver Darcy even writing that, criticizing his own network. Right, but he definitely was pushed back on. Obviously, Anderson Cooper spoke up. Has it stopped? Was the firing the right thing to do?

I'm not here to judge whether the firing was the right thing to do. I'm bummed that it didn't work out with Chris. I am. I'm bummed that it didn't work out. But I will say that things are really good right now.

And this leadership team, and I will say right now, I am highly biased. I have known David Levy since the 90s. And I knew Amy Antilles and Virginia Mosley when I interviewed for a job at ABC News in 2003. And I've known Eric Sherling when he was at GMA. And then he helped me launch the lead. Those four individuals are people whom I legitimately love and respect and admire and have been out for meals with just for fun, not just for work.

So, you know, take what I'm saying with a grain of salt. But I think they're doing a great job. And the focus is back on our journalism, not on palace intrigue and not on media criticism. And morale has hasn't been better in years.

What happened at CNN underscores a larger debate right now about whether more balance is a useful goal. Christiane Amanpour obviously said, be truthful, not neutral. In primetime, people like Hannity and Alex Wagner have higher ratings than a lot of CNN shows. Do you think Americans prefer partisan news, at least on cable? Is that something when you think about let's focus on the news? CNN's done some very good reporting lately.

Is it possible to do both, be neutral and also be popular? It's a good question. I got some really good advice when I got my own show in 2013. And I was freaking out about the day-to-day ratings. And Jimmy Kimmel is a friend of mine. And he said, stop reading them.

Stop reading them. Like you should know what the general trends are for your show. And if there are things that your executive producer thinks you need to work on, that's fine. But that will drive you crazy if you read the day to day ratings. But your fundamental question, which was supposed to be the thesis of the Alberta piece, as I understood it a year ago, is, is there a world for non ideological, nonpartisan TV journalism?

And I think there is. That's what I watch. That's what I want to watch. I don't want to watch anything else. And I do think most Americans feel that way. It's just that most Americans aren't news junkies. And the ones who are, when there isn't a big news story...

might like, especially in prime time, putting on their team jerseys and rooting for their side. I think that's certainly possible, but that's not a long-term play. That's a short-term business decision. And I think that it is important for- Except your book is all about that, isn't it? It's about putting on your team jersey and wanting to be part of something that's angry and

You know, sorry to bring it back to your book, but that's a big message from your book. Well, that's what Lucy does. Lucy joins this. And let me also say, as a student of history, there is a place for ideological journalism. As you know, the origins of journalism in this country, the newspapers, were one party was...

federal, you know, one newspaper would be a federalist newspaper that supported John Adams and the other, the rival paper would be Democrat Republican that hated John Adams. And there is a, there is a place for this. I don't have a problem with ideological journalism. The question is how allegiant are those organizations to facts and truth, even ones that don't comport with the biases of their audience. And are they willing to share those facts? And if they are not, then I don't know you can compare

those organizations with what we are trying to do at CNN. Yeah, I would agree. So I have two last questions. One is, do you see like being on social media like Tucker Carlson's trying to do? You yourself, may I point out, are very good at social media, especially Blue Sky, where I decided to dub you the mayor of Skeet. Many people love you on Blue Sky. I'm just going to read from a few things you've discussed recently on Blue Sky, which is an alternative to Twitter.

You talked about red eyes, DCA versus IAD, which are two airports in Washington. Chicken sandwich toppings, you like special sauce. You tweeted, skeeted, God just isn't in heaven. God is everywhere and God isn't scared of anything. That was in response to a question, by the way. Yes, it was. Yes. You talked about the misuse of the word ironic, which you also talked about in your book.

And one thing that you had is, and I have a keen sense of smell. So before I have lunch and please don't talk to me, you stink of garlic and onions. What's happening, Jake Tapper? So I want to know what's happening to you on blue sky. And do you ever imagine Jake would have a show on blue sky or wherever? Well, they don't even, they don't even have gifts, much less video. So I have to, if I want to post video, I have to provide a link to Instagram. Yeah.

I think that, so for first of all, Blue Sky is fun because it's small. It's under 200,000 people are there, and it's generally a nice community where trolling and attacking is frowned upon. And that's nice. I think some of those tweets were, or some of those skeets, I should say, are from...

I was on like a red-eye from LA and I was wide awake and miserable and I said, "Ask me anything." And so people, somebody asked me, "Where is God?" or something like that. That was where the God one came from. You're just very enthusiastic on these platforms. Well, it's sweet. It's a sweet place.

But the bigger question, will you be on cable in five years or will you be doing a show on one of these social platforms? Well, my contract is through 2025, so I can't speak to anything after 2025. But I will say this. People are clearly not going to be consuming media in 10 years the way they're consuming it now, and we're not consuming it now the way we were 10 years before. And most young people...

Think they get they're on Snapchat, they're on TikTok, they're on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter for old people in their view. And look, I've been online. I've been very online even before there was a very online in 1999. My email address was at the bottom of my stories for Salon.com. And so I've always been very active.

It's tuned into the fact that like we have to meet people where they are and they are not just on TV and they are everywhere and they are streaming and they're on social and we need to be there. So I, the answer is, I don't know. I love CNN. I can't speak to like my future anywhere. I don't take it for granted that CNN would want me in five years, but I will say that there are more opportunities than ever to,

And also, Meteor... You have a sub stack now? I have a sub stack now, kind of. But there are more opportunities than ever, but the audiences are smaller, and it's just a question of where this all shakes out. So...

It's just this hyper-competitive world for eyeballs, and we're all just trying to figure out how to be there. I think that there will always be a place for the kind of news I hope I bring to people. And I don't know if that's on streaming or cable or TikTok or whatever, but I think there will always be a place for it. And CNN and every news organization needs to figure out and position itself how to be there. And to be quite honest, I see no news organizations...

who have really figured this out yet. All right, over and under on Tucker's show working out? I'm not going to talk about Tucker, but I wish him and his four kids and a lovely wife named Susie, and I wish them all health and happiness. All right, I'll leave it at that. And your next book in the 80s, right? It'll be in the 80s? It would be. So get ready for Wham, I suppose. I will say I'm working on the fourth in the installment. I'm also working on a nonfiction book, and I just have to figure out which one I want to write next because...

I do miss the nonfiction as well. And there's a really interesting story that kind of fell into my lap at my son's birthday party. One of the dads kind of like told me this random story about something in his career. He wasn't pitching me a book, but it was really interesting. It had to do with bringing a terrorist to justice. But it was like this real gumshoot prosecuting.

where they got a terrorist and then they had to prove what he did actually happened. And it was really an interesting yarn. And I might want to do that next, but I have to figure it out. You like a yarn. You like a yarn. I like a good thriller and I like a good yarn, both. Nobody uses that term anymore, yarn, but I like that you did.

I enjoy that. I use a lot of terms that the people on my staff look at me and they have no idea what I'm talking about. And I said, yeah, you're still in the 50s, Jake Tapper. I went out to dinner in L.A. and our waitress made a reference to how she lived in a houseboat. I said, oh, like Quincy. And boy, yeah.

Dead eyes. I'm going to end it on that. I'm not even going to explain it to the youngs. I'm not going to explain it to the youngs, but I know what you're talking about, Jake Tapper. Thank you. Anyway, thank you. Your book is great. All the demons are here and they are indeed. All of them. 100%. Led Jake Tapper Zeppelin. Thank you, Jake. What is Quincy?

Quincy is a show with Jack Klugman, who was on The Odd Couple. And he was a medical, the people who do dead people, the medical doctor. Oh, the, what do you call that?

The autopsy report. He was an autopsy doctor and he ended up solving all the murders through the autopsies. And he was always like, in the middle of the show, he'd go, oh, and then he lived on a houseboat. The coroner, the coroner. Yes. Jake and I are of the same era. So we watched Quincy. There were only like seven TV shows on at any one time. So we watched all of them. As opposed to the 500 odd we have now. 5,000 of them, yeah. He did give you credit for the Murdoch.

He did. He didn't want to do it. He didn't want to do it. You got to Venmo request him for some royalties. No, I just want the credit. That's all. I like when people say, especially white men, I love when they say I'm right. That's my favorite part of any equation. I'll have to look at the book and see if you're in the acknowledgments. I didn't see myself there, but that's okay. It's okay. Did you check?

I did. I didn't see it in the digital book I got. Maybe he's since and probably should change it, really. Now, it was just a suggestion because I think he was talking about those issues anyway. And Murdoch, you have to. People don't want to go to Murdoch because it's like, ugh, Murdoch. But honestly, he's a catch-all for evil villains.

I think, for a lot of areas. Politics, media. Succession. I mean, he's the inspiration for the most, you know, successful elite show on television. And Bond. Remember the Bond movie where Jonathan Pryce played him? Yes. That was a Bond movie. There was a Murdoch character who got, like, totally killed at the end in a really spectacular way. Murdoch's everywhere. Yeah.

He is. He's been a persistent evil character in our nation's history since he got here in the 70s. Do you think part of that is the Jar Jar Binks theory? Does Rupert not have enough nose around him? I love that. You know, I think he's as sharp as a tack. That's not his problem. He's just at heart a terrible, terrible person. That's really what it is. He was terrible to start with. That's your official diagnosis? Well, I don't

think he got worse. I think he doesn't. He actually gets a lot of pushback and he loves it. But I don't think it's a yes person. I think he's just an overwhelming character and people around him believe in him. And so that's why. It's like that family in Jake's book. The lions, they're all like that. They're all like that. Well, not James. And I don't think the sister is much like that. And Elizabeth isn't. Yeah. Lachlan certainly is, but he

He's the not as smart one. Maybe there's another theory to the Jar Jar Binks theory, which is that if you have one yes guy, if you have one Gary from Veep, you're screwed because that will be enough to make you think you have a great idea. Yeah, I think it is. I think I've just finished a section of my memoir where I talk about this. It's a real problem. And the section is about people who do have people who push back around them and how much more I like them because they're able to continue to make decisions.

Jake didn't seem to like the discussion of Trump at Versailles and the playing of that clip.

You know, he was clearly irritated. He's very emotional as a broadcaster compared to other broadcasters. You know, you can see what he's thinking. But he said he was unaffected by the Truth Social tweet. Oh, I think he was probably irritated. What he meant is he wasn't calling for my death, so it was minor. I would agree with him that it was minor in comparison to the many things that Trump does. Sure, sure. I think something else was happening there, which is that in our asking the question,

he might have seen us doing the thing that he was trying not to do, which is to give airtime to what he sees as a relatively non-newsworthy moment. His point is he's not a normal candidate. He is a former president who has indictments against him. And so do we have to cover him? Yes, we have to cover him. We have to really cover him, but we don't need to cover the triviality and we don't need to give advertising. Right. I think he's right. You get sucked up into that and you're down Donald Trump Avenue and you're living there.

Yeah, but the important question is how to cover the campaign. And I thought Jake was really clear and compelling on this. It was almost lawyerly how he stipulated how you evaluate that town hall. And he asked a very good question, which you kind of evaded. Not that the question was meant for you. It's meant for those who are offended by the town hall. But the question was, are they offended by the airing of it?

or the existence of it. I think that's an excuse that CNN is using for a shitty interview. I'm sorry, it just was. Do you think so? It wasn't as good. Well, then you looked at the Bret Baier one, which was an excellent interview, right? So you can do excellent interviews. It's not, it's, and there's Bret Baier, who I never would have thought would be better than Caitlyn. I just don't think Caitlyn did the best. I think she was in a bad, they put her in a bad situation.

with a liar in a live setting, gave her the worst, you know, chances of making a good job out of it. She did manage to get some news out of it, but it wasn't, they can't bathe themselves in glory over that event. They just can't. It wasn't good. And Chris, and I put that at Chris Lick's feet completely. I don't put it at Caitlin's or anybody else's. Yeah, and I think for Caitlin, you're right. For Caitlin, it was a very hard choice because it's great for her career, but it's an impossible situation to win in. She wasn't in the best position to do a great job.

Yeah. And not as experienced, honestly. I mean, you know, I suspect Jake Tapper might have done a better job. He wouldn't say that, but he would have. He just would have. So Christiane Amanpour, I would have liked to see that one. Christiane Amanpour would have done a great job. Oh, hello. Good night. But, you know, she might not have agreed to do the live interview because remember when she was asked. She's very, I respect about her. She's very principled in how she does these interviews because when she was asked by the Iranian leader to wear that headscarf,

She said, no, thank you. Do you think that, you know, he seemed to think a lot of the lessons from 2020 and 2016 were kind of keep doing what we've done. He didn't have a lot of tweaks on coverage. No. I would make special allowances for Trump's lies and point them out over and over and over.

He lies more. I mean, it's not, look, every politician lies, as he noted, but this is a special case. This guy deserves special attention and special handling on the lies. It has to be called out because he just lies. And I think Chris Christie's doing a great job of it. Let me just say he's doing it.

And also Will Hurd. Kara, who has contributed to the Chris Christie campaign, is his number one advocate. I would like him and Will Hurd to be on. I contributed to Will Hurd also. Did you? Yeah, I think they're doing a good job at calling out facts. You're contributing to broaden the field, broaden the field. They're doing a great job. The one that he was most offended by is not on that side. It's RFK. He's very concerned about RFK. Yes, he should be. RFK isn't speaking of.

perpetual and damaging liars. Yes, we should. And just to spell out his reference, because he tried to double click there on RFK, there was a measles outbreak in Samoa Island after RFK went to that island to talk about vaccines, which was just one of many challenges of the man. This one recently showed me a video of him wielding a snake. I don't know. I don't like that. The less I talk about RFK, the better.

That's fair. But I think what Jake is getting at in this book and really what he's trying to get to in his coverage is this line between spectacle and substance. And when politics is a spectacle, how do you cover it in substance without becoming part of that spectacle? And this is a question that we have every day as we make this show. When we make this show, there is a, what I'll call a Trump bump on politics.

headlines that have Trump's name. Sure. Elon, Trump, et cetera. Yes, it's true. But I don't think that's why. I think you can make good decisions and do that. You don't have to pick between spectacle and news. You can be interesting. You can do news in an interesting way and not resort to spectacle. And you don't have to be boring. Yeah, you have to make it captivating, but there is a real responsibility to keep it truthful, to keep it based in the substance. It's not as hard as people make it out to be.

It's not as hard, although the challenge becomes when the audience is choosing and the audience prefers one thing or the other. I mean, this is what Ben Smith talked about in Traffic. This is a constant. I prefer Twinkies, but I don't eat them all the time.

That's fair. By the way, Blue Sky isn't big enough for Jake Tapper. Yes, it is. You should go enjoy him over there. He's quite a character. I do enjoy him there. I enjoy his posts. But he is too big to be Blue Sky's star. Well, we'll see. We'll see where it goes. Would you ever do a social media show? No. Maybe. I don't know. I don't have time right now. TikTok star? Not today. All right. Well, we'll conceive that. But why don't you read us the credits in the meantime?

Today's show was produced by Naima Raza, Blakeney Schick, Christian Castro Rossell, Megan Cunane, and Megan Burney. By the way, congratulations, Kristen and Rachel, on your beautiful baby, Olivia. Yes, congratulations. We can't wait to meet you, Olivia.

Special thanks to Kate Gallagher. Our engineers are Fernando Arruda and Rick Kwan. Our theme music is by Trackademics. If you're already following the show, congratulations, no Jar Jar Binks here. If not, too bad. Jar Jar Binks will have a starring role in your next movie. Go wherever you listen to podcasts, search for On With Kara Swisher and hit follow. Thanks for listening to On With Kara Swisher from New York Magazine, the Vox Media Podcast Network, and us. We'll be back on Thursday with more.