Jake Tapper Spills Over 14 Mins Lamenting Pelley Axing, Cues Up MacFarlane, Moran

Curtis Houck
June 4th, 2026 1:44 PM

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CNN’s The Lead host Jake Tapper leaned on his sanctimonious reputation late Wednesday afternoon as he devoted the first 14 minutes to huffing about CBS News firing longtime 60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley for his petulant reenactment of Pickett’s Charge, thinking he could eviscerate his bosses and intimidate them in his “house.”

For the second of three segments, Tapper turned to former ABC colleague Terry Moran and former CBS January 6 correspondent-turned-MeidasTouch host Scott MacFarlane. Both are now at Substack.

MacFarlane went first, declaring “[n]obody wins if 60 Minutes is damaged” because “[i]t’s still one of those rare media entities, Jake, that can cut through the noise and cut through the clutter.”

He then embarrassingly referred to Pelley as “the living Mount Rushmore at CBS News” and that, speaking for himself, he wasn’t known at CBS as “Scott” because that name had “reverence” reserved for Pelley.

“I’m surprised that anybody would get rid of a transcendent personality who can attract an audience or who is associated with the strength of a brand. You watch Scott Pelley on 60 Minutes. You knew you were going to get a comprehensive report. You never want to damage a brand by getting rid of the pillar of the entity,” he further opined.

MacFarlane at least conceded much of 60 Minutes’s large ratings are owed to its lead-in from NFL games.

Leaving aside his eyebrow-raising arrogance in telling Tapper he was fired from ABC News for saying “accurate, fair, and true” things about Stephen Miller, Moran declared, “there is no journalism enterprise in the Western Hemisphere that has the cultural impact, the political impact, the stature that 60 Minutes does.”

The only explanation, he argued, for the changes to the show are from Paramount Skydance boss David Ellison “want[ing] to curry favor with Trump.”

Drool was missing from Moran’s shirt as he said this about Pelley’s fellow fired colleagues: “They fired Cecilia Vega and Sharon Alfonso, two fearless, bold journalists, troublemakers. I mean, in a good way, good trouble, right, as John Lewis used to say.”

Tapper presented MacFarlane with the reality that “polls do suggest that the media trust is at an all-time low” and wondered if he saw any validity in that widespread belief in legacy media having “an anti-Trump spin, liberal spin.”

MacFarlane scoffed, deriding the idea that those polls are legitimate or provide context:

Tapper followed with a spit-out-your-coffee hot take of smugness that he doesn’t “cover news media a lot” because “I generally think it’s navel-gazing,” yet this has been “bigger than just this show and just this channel”:

Moran hurled predictable venom in his heart for half the country, arguing we’re too partisan and stupid to appreciate what he believes is real journalism: “I think chasing MAGA audiences are a fool’s errand because they don’t want the kind of journalism that 60 Minutes does, which is in-depth and straight and fearless. They want the journalism that flatters their own prejudices.”

Tapper opened with nearly six minutes relaying a summation of the week’s events, which he said illustrated “a growing debate over how TV networks cover news” that resulted in an “upend[ing]” of 60 Minutes.

Once he read through the statements on both sides, he said the “60 Minutes overhaul...is relevant when it comes to two significant developments in American media right now” with one being “the atomization of where people get their information with cord-cutting” and the rise of social media and streaming.

The other, in Tapper’s mind, is “media consolidation and those who are trying to build big mega-companies in the environment where we have a President who is more than willing to impose his likes and dislikes on the regulatory world,” although “people close to Bari Weiss insist that the CBS overhaul is about culture, not politics.”

Referring to the Weiss camp, Tapper said her side sees 60 Minutes as “an archaic institution that is in urgent need of reinvention” and “the news media needs to be fairer and needs to regain the public’s trust.”

Although he mentioned it minutes later with MacFarlane, notice how neither example included a direct acknowledgment/concession there’s a trust deficit in the press or 60 Minutes.

Tapper then floated the wink, wink, nudge, nudge of a conspiracy and Trump interference (click “expand”): 

TAPPER: But Scott Pelley and others at CBS, and others who used to be at CBS do think there’s something more, something political behind this rebuild. They say that Paramount’s new owners, with David Ellison at the top, are seeking a closer relationship with Donald Trump and his administration and that Ellison appointed Weiss to appease Trump and overhaul 60 Minutes, which Trump doesn’t like, and all of CBS News, which Trump doesn’t like. And this argument goes that all of this is happening in order to get approval of the purchase of Paramount last year by David Ellison’s company and the pending purchase of Warner Bros Discovery any day now. And of course, we should note Warner Bros Discovery owns CNN. If you want to know one of the reasons why people keep suggesting that new ownership of these news organizations is behind wanting to curry favor with Trump, and that’s one of the things driving all this, it’s because of things that President Trump keeps saying, or Secretary Hegseth. Just a few moments ago, President Trump said this to CNN’s Kaitlin Collins:

TRUMP: But CNN in particular — CNN does such false reporting, but now they have new ownership, so maybe it’ll straighten it out. I doubt it, but it’s hard to straighten garbage out.

TAPPER: A reminder that President Trump calls any reporting he doesn’t like felt — false, and any reporting he doesn’t like garbage. Again, CBS News and Paramount reject the assertion of any political influence or interference.

Following MacFarlane and Moran, Tapper brought in Brian Stelter as it wouldn’t have been a proper leftist airing of grievances about non-compliant media outlets without him.

Stelter put into the ether the self-feeding narrative he and his fellow media reporting class have created with their own supposed reporting: “Certainly, these have been some self-inflicted wounds at CBS News, and this is not the first one. The overhaul of the Evening News was also highly controversial and picked apart months ago.”

He also shared with Tapper his CBS sources told him “they believe...some of those staffers” crying over Pelley’s firing “are stubborn and sanctimonious.”

“I would say not just many, but most TV news veterans believe that even if Weiss has the right instincts and is trying to do the right things, she has gone about it the right the wrong way. Maybe the right moves, but the wrong way,” he added, reinforcing this feedback loop that Weiss’s alleged disrespect of and refusal to embrace old kingmakers has put her on thin ice.

Later, Stelter expressed concern about the future of “a treasured American institution” (click “expand”):

But again, most of those TV news veterans look around and they say that’s just a smokescreen for a political agenda here. And I think people are right to be skeptical. I’m joining you from the mountains of Wyoming. People here all day long are asking me about Scott Pelley. So, you’re right, this story is breaking through unlike most media stories, because people see a treasured American institution potentially at risk. And that has been the story of Trump 2.0, not just in media, but in many other fields. People are right to be skeptical, not cynical, but skeptical.

News outlets have to earn and re-earn your trust every day. Controversy [sic] like this one at CBS, they make it harder to earn trust. And the bosses at CBS right now, they know this is a crisis. They know this is a big, big problem. They now have to rebuild 60 Minutes with only three of the seven correspondents that were on the show this season[.]

To see the relevant CNN transcript from June 3, click here.

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