Kamala Harris’s New Project Takes Shots at Jake Tapper and His CNN Podcast Set Shakeup: ‘Cable News Is Dead’

Screenshot via CNN

Former Vice President Kamala Harris’s newly-launched content hub dropped a new column putting CNN and Jake Tapper on blast for a recent style change to some shows.

“In case you missed it, which you probably did, because cable news is dead, Jake Tapper is now broadcasting his hour-long slot on CNN from his office. With a podcast mic,” a column posted by Harris’s Headquarters reads.

Harris announced last month that she was relaunching her Kamala HQ campaign accounts into Headquarters, a content hub aimed at younger voters. Since the launch, only two posts have dropped on the actual site, one of which accused MAGA of losing Gen Z. The other contained some harsh words for CNN and specifically Tapper.

In a minor shakeup, both Tapper and Anderson Cooper broadcast from their offices this past week with podcast microphones. Tapper called the new look an “experiment.”

Harris’s Headquarters accused cable news hosts of “cosplaying” as the younger podcasters who have “replaced them.”

The article reads:

What this signifies is clear: cable news has decided that the solution to losing an entire generation of viewers is to cosplay as the thing that replaced them.

The problem is that the cable executives fundamentally don’t understand why podcasters beat them.

You can put Jake Tapper behind a microphone in a cluttered office over and over again, but it won’t make him feel like Joe Rogan, or Alex Cooper, or Carlos Eduardo Espina, or literally anyone else Gen Z actually watches. Because what those creators have, and what no amount of production and set design can manufacture — is the feeling that you’re getting an unfiltered, unscripted version of what someone actually believes.

The piece went on to accuse politicians of doing the same, with older generations copying the style of younger progressives like New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani (D).

“Progressives and media figures alike will have to do a lot more to win this generation,” the column reads. “That includes genuinely investing time and energy into online-first strategies, not just putting a bow on a legacy format and hoping nobody looks closely enough to tell.”

Harris’s Headquarters is meant to act as a “permanent organizing infrastructure” for Democrats, similar to what Republicans have done, according to last month’s press release introducing it.

“Conservatives build permanent organizing infrastructure. Progressives have historically built machines that dismantle after Election Day,” it reads. “Headquarters is the end of that cycle.”

On Friday, Tapper broadcast from his office, addressing the change in look to viewers from the jump.

“So, you’re probably wondering what’s going on, why we’re in my office for the first hour of The Lead today. So, it’s an experiment,” Tapper said. “This is my actual desk where I do my actual work, not the desk in the studio. And we thought we would bring you into the space where we and my team do our actual journalism and plan the show every day.”

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