CNN host Jake Tapper has received substantial backlash after his recent interview with Republican Vice Presidential candidate JD Vance. During the interview, the exchanges between Tapper and the Ohio senator became tense, and emotions flared as the two disagreed on various political controversies surrounding former President Donald Trump.
At several points throughout the conversation, Tapper became visibly frustrated with Vance, raising his voice and cutting him off many times. Some pointed out that while Tapper was “rattled” by the tense back-and-forth with Vance, Trump’s running mate demonstrated why he is praised by conservatives for his ability to handle hostile engagements with the mainstream media professionally.
One user on X commented on footage of the interview, writing, “1. Vance is proving to be a better pick than even the most optimistic of us had imagined 2. I’ve never seen Jake so rattled as this interview, JD deftly balanced his tone and tenor to the moment while cutting to the core of the issue. Tapper doesn’t even know he’s bleeding out at the end.”
At one point in the interview, Tapper was questioning Vance on if he thought Trump’s conduct rendered him a “fascist.” The CNN host asked, “None of that sounds fascist to you at all?” The Ohio senator responded, “I don’t buy into the premise of what you’re saying, Jake, because I just sat on things that I know that he said on things that I know that he said. You’re imputing things. You’re taking words out of context.”
Vance continued rebuking Tapper, stating, ” You’re taking two separate conversations and pretending none were made at the exact same time … So I’m rejecting the premise of your question.” Vance outright asserted that he didn’t believe the supposed quotes from Trump that Tapper was citing. “I frankly don’t believe what you’re saying about Donald Trump’s words. If you’d like to put up a clip and actually put him in context, I think the American people would realize that Donald Trump is a hell of a lot more reasonable than the people like Liz Cheney, who would like to lie us into war,” he said.
Vance further called out CNN’s “network integrity” calling out its coverage of hoaxes. “You guys talked about the Russia hoax nonstop,” he said. “The FBI was investigating it. The FBI was investigating it,” Tapper stammered. “And so you took the words of unnamed FBI agents and put them on your network as if they were the gospel truth,” Vance fired back.
The Republican vice presidential candidate continued, “You did it again and again. A viewer of your network would have believed that Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin conspired in 2016. That was totally and purposed, grossly false…You covered it in a way that gave credence to anonymous sources, accusations. You did it yourself, your network did it, Jake.”
Watch two clips from the interview below:
At another point, Vance called out the former allies of Trump who eventually turned on him. “All of these people, Jake, they came into office thinking that they could control Donald Trump, that when he said he wanted peace in the world, he controlled,” he said. “They all turned on Donald Trump and a lot of them got fired. And we’re running and we’re trying to staff the government with people who are going to govern according to principles of peace and prosper. They’re pissed off about it.”
Note: The featured image is a screenshot from the embedded video.
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