Jake Tapper, host of CNN’s The Lead and State of the Union, had to respond to serious scrutiny about his journalistic credibility and judgment Tuesday morning after this author and others called him out for retweeting an unsubstantiated allegation that President Trump was “100% insane.” In his weak defense, Tapper played the dishonest “RTs do not nec. = agreement” card. The retweet had since been deleted and reposted as a quote-tweet with commentary.
The Monday night retweet that drew questions to Tapper’s credibility and judgment was a common anti-Trump comment made by George Conway, who only got liberal media attention because he’s the husband of White House aide Kellyanne Conway and says the same nasty things they do about President Trump.
This time, Conway tweeted: “He’s 100% insane, and nobody in the administration has the balls to tell him that.” It was also a quote tweet of Clara Jeffery, the far-left editor-in-chief of Mother Jones. Her tweet declared: “Either nobody in the Trump administration has the balls to tell Trump the truth or he’s 100% insane. There’s really not a lot of middle ground.”
So, it was clear what the conversation was about and Tapper decided it was worth sharing with his over 2.4 million followers. The suggestion the President wasn’t mentally well had been a staple of the liberal media’s narrative for years now, particularly on CNN, the supposedly “facts first” outlet.
It wasn’t until Tuesday morning, when George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley called him out in his own tweet did Tapper respond. “Tapper's retweeting that ‘Trump is 100% insane’ only further undermines the media by reaffirming for many that the media is campaigning against Trump rather than covering him,” Turley wrote. “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.”
“I RTed Conway, a conservative attorney and Trump critic, because he wrote that no one in the administration has the courage to stand up to the president which seems newsworthy given how many people in the administration he knows. RTs do not nec. = agreement,” Tapper claimed in his defense.
In his new quote-tweet, Tapper insisted Conway’s tweet was a “Noteworthy comment on folks in the administration from a Trump critic who knows a lot of them.” But, as many had pointed out, what Conway said wasn’t remotely noteworthy since he repeated the same anti-Trump mantra seemingly every day.
Seemingly oblivious to the irony, almost two hours later, Tapper tried to read into one of President Trump’s retweets.
What was actually noteworthy was that Tapper’s retweet of Conway came the day after he went on a self-righteous rant against the President on State of the Union and beclowned himself. According to Tapper, the President and the administration weren’t doing anything to combat the coronavirus crisis and didn’t have a plan. In reality, Tapper was refusing to acknowledge what was being done.
This is CNN.
