CNN host Jake Tapper appeared for another jovial liberal go-around on NBC's Late Night with Seth Meyers last night. Meyers and Tapper discussed how President Trump was "crazy," Rep. Steve King was "crazy," and Republicans were somehow crazy to avoid a hostile CNN interview a few hours after two mass shootings.
Republicans at home surely shot back at the TV: "Maybe the Republicans watched Tapper's emotionally manipulative CNN town hall after the Parkland shooting! You know, the one where Senator Marco Rubio was abused as being like the Parkland killer? And Dana Loesch was called a bad mother? And Tapper stood by, saying nothing?"
On August 4, in the overwrought aftermath of two mass shootings, without any context yet about how the killers secured their guns -- in ways background checks would not have stopped -- Tapper began his Sunday show State of the Union by calmly noting all the Republicans he invited turned him down. Meyers:
MEYERS: You mentioned even having a Republican on the panel to be able to talk to you. You also talked about after the horrific weekend of shootings in El Paso and Dayton, you sort of opened your show by saying -- your Sunday show -- by saying that you had reached out and could not get any elected Republican official to come on the show.
TAPPER: Yeah, except for the mayor of El Paso. And the reason we did this, and you know this just from your booking, it's part of your show, too, is we don't make a habit of saying who we tried to get and didn't get....But we did it because we were doing a special four hours of State of the Union, because of those two horrific shootings, and we had booked literally seven Democratic presidential candidates and we wanted people to know that we had made an effort to get national Republican figures. But the governor of Texas, the two Republican senators from Texas, the governor of Ohio, the Republican senator of Ohio, all these people had turned us down. It wasn't for lack of effort.
Neither Meyers nor Tapper would address the issue of fairness. It was only the issue of having no answer for mass shootings, being too firmly in the gun lobby's pocket to support popular "solutions" that wouldn't stop these shootings.
MEYERS: And do you -- is that, like, a very fast no you get from them? Are you surprised when they say no or is this what you've come to expect, especially with an issue like gun control where there's very little they could probably say in the wake of the tragedy.
TAPPER: In fact, we have Republicans on State of the Union all the time. In fact, we did end up having the governor of Ohio on, like, a day or two later, on The Lead. But yeah, I don't think Republicans like to talk after gun massacres, because I don't think they have a lot of answers as to why they hold a position that, you know, for instance on universal background checks. 90% of the American people support universal background checks, a majority of Republicans, a majority of NRA members. So why wouldn't you support that? And I think they don't want to talk about it.
Meanwhile, these were the kind of puffy non-questions Tapper was throwing at Democratic presidential candidates on August 4.
To Beto O'Rourke: "I do want to share this picture of you visiting with a victim named Rosemary, who you said was shot in the chest, but she is doing well after surgery. Obviously, we want to bring as many attention to the victims of this as much as possible. So, I do want to talk about how we can stop it in one second, but if you could tell me about that moment meeting Rosemary."
To Cory Booker: "As you know, the Senate has been reluctant to take up any gun legislation in the wake of mass shootings, including after 20 little children were killed at Sandy Hook, whether it's universal background checks or red flag laws. What are you proposing that you think you could actually get through the Senate? And I'm sorry to put it -- you're talking about morality, and I totally appreciate that on a morning like this. But there also is the -- there's morality and then there's what can get through the Senate."
To Julian Castro: "Law enforcement officials are right now investigating a document that they believe was written by the alleged shooter, the alleged terrorist. And this document is filled with white nationalist and racist hatred towards immigrants, specifically Hispanics. You would be the first Latino man ever elected president. I don't know if you read the document or have read about it. But I'm wondering what your reaction is."
And to Pete Buttigieg: "I can just tell you, as a journalist, I have literally -- pardon me -- I have been literally been covering the debate over the gun show loophole since you were in high school.... There is a tweet out there -- I forget who wrote it -- it says something along the lines -- the moment this country decided that it was acceptable for 20 first and second graders to be massacred of Sandy Hook was the moment this country decided that it was not going to do gun control no matter what."
Yeah, why wouldn't a Republican want to be risk being asked on national TV if they find mass shootings of children acceptable?
