Jake Tapper, who is tasked with moderating CNN’s Republican presidential debate this week, is anticipating that he won’t emerge from the event unscathed./r
Sunday on CNN’s “Reliable Sources,” Tapper said that just as GOP contender Donald Trump went after Megyn Kelly in the Fox News debate in August, he expects a similar event would play out this time around.
“Look, I anticipate that somebody, and I don’t know who, but I anticipate that at some point, somebody is going to take a shot at me as the straw man, as the stand-in for the media writ large,” Tapper said.
“I don’t know how it’s going to happen,” he said. “I don’t know when it’s going to happen. I don’t know who is going to do it. I mean, we should probably lay some bets down in Vegas as to who is going to be the one who does it. I don’t know that it will be Donald Trump any more than it’s going to be [his rivals] Carly Fiorina or Ben Carson. I mean, the media is a whipping boy, and it’s a Republican debate. Let’s be frank. Republicans often take issue with the media writ large. So, it could happen.”
If Las Vegas were to put odds on it, they might favor Trump, since Trump has been in a few scrapes so far with his media hosts. During the Fox debate, Kelly asked Trump to answer for past disparaging remarks he has made publicly about women in interviews and on his former NBC reality game show, “Celebrity Apprentice.”
Trump fired back with a warning that he might stop being “nice” to Kelly and after the debate, he wrote on social media that Kelly had been unfair toward him and he insulted her Fox show.
Trump has already lashed out at Hugh Hewitt, a conservative radio show who will be a panelist asking some questions at the CNN debate.
During a recent radio interview in which Hewitt asked Trump several detailed questions on foreign affairs, Trump complained that they were “gotcha” questions. Then Trump went on MSNBC and called Hewitt a “third-rate radio announcer.”
CNN’s debate takes place Wednesday.
