One of CNN’s attack dogs went after Fox News’s Chris Wallace for being too soft on President Trump during his Fox News Sunday interview. This wasn’t Don Lemon or Oliver Darcy, though. It was Jake Tapper.
Tapper complained that Wallace asked about “mean tweets” and not about the report of bounties against American soldiers being offered by Russia to the Taliban. Aside from the fact that CNN’s business model is built on talking about Trump’s mean tweets, Wallace only touched on it to defend his credibility as an interviewer, “wasting” a grand total of two minutes of their 40-minute sit-down.
Tapper has a bit of a reputation, particularly among conservatives, as CNN’s straight-down-the-middle host. It’s one he’s carefully groomed by occasionally pushing back on the narrative. For instance, take Tapper bashing New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo over his coronavirus “victory lap.” That destruction of Cuomo’s incompetence was nice to see, especially since it was CNN itself promoting the victory tour with the Cuomo brothers’ propaganda hour night after night.
Tapper played the part again with his Parkland, Florida, town hall. Tapper was the host of the anti-gun rally thinly disguised as a conversation on gun policy, which ended up netting him a journalism award. CNN allowed Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel to give a hype speech before all the blame for the shooting was placed at the feet of Sen. Marco Rubio and NRA spokeswoman Dana Loesch. There was even a comparison between Rubio and the shooter, in addition to a suggestion that Loesch didn’t love her children.
Tapper then came back four days later to grill Israel on his show. After helping facilitate the attacks on Second Amendment supporters, he now had to clean up and defend his fair journalist reputation. So he threw conservatives a bit of red meat, ripping Israel in a television interview after helping him dodge blame in front of a packed Parkland crowd. It’s no small coincidence that Israel is able to run for sheriff again and landed the endorsement of the South Florida Sun-Sentinel in the process.
Tapper is what Brian Stelter would look like if he put any effort into his job. Chris Wallace would never, say, refuse to fact-check a guest because “Hey, Trump lies too.” But Wallace works for Fox News and is arguably the best in the business at that. Tapper plays the straight news guy, but when your network’s primary purpose is to keep up a sustained attack on Fox News, everyone must play their part.
