CNN’s Jake Tapper Slams Fox News Over Trump Insurrection: ‘Huge Part Of Why January 6 Happened’
CNN anchor Jake Tapper slammed Fox News over the ex-President Donald Trump-incited Capitol riot, saying they were a “huge part of why Jan. 6 happened.”
Former Congresswoman Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) is currently on a media tour to promote her book “Oath and Honor: A Memoir and A Warning” — which got a big soft-launch when CNN dropped bomb after bomb from an advance copy they obtained exclusively from Cheney.
On Thursday’s edition of The Lead, Tapper interviewed Cheney and, in one exchange, tore into Fox News. He also singled out Special Report host Bret Baier and host Laura Ingraham for trying to downplay the risk of a second Trump term:
TAPPER: It’s unbelievable. You write about Fox, the T.V. channel a lot, network. They were a huge part of how these lies obviously spread across the country. They’re a huge part of why January 6 happened.
They’re again today challenging this book, challenging your warnings about how if Trump gets elected again, he might never step down if he wins. Take a listen to what Bret Baier had to say earlier this week about your warning.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BRET BAIER, FOX NEWS ANCHOR: We saw four years of Donald Trump, were there issues that crossed lines? Yes, they raised all kinds of questions. But did people for the most part live their lives and were there checks and balances? Yes, there were. Would it be a dictatorship that doesn’t step down from office? It’s hard for me to back that up as of yet.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
TAPPER: And his colleague, Laura Ingraham, tweeted, asking how you think Trump would end elections? Quote, “Is he going to send out a tweet? Does he have a hidden army we’ve never seen? What on earth is she thinking?”
CHENEY: Well, I would say first in response to Bret, he already tried to seize power once. So, you know, it shouldn’t be hard for anybody to imagine that he will do it again. And that’s exactly what he was doing on January 6, and no president has ever done that before. With respect to sort of the mechanics of how he would do this, Donald Trump will refuse to obey the rulings of the courts, he’s already made clear that he will not abide by the rulings of the courts. And if you think about that, in the context of elections, you know, he can — and he’s also, frankly, already suggested postponing elections.
But imagine a situation for example where he concocts an emergency, where he works with state legislators or with Republican officials in the states to suggest that there has been some sort of an emergency that will, you know, prevent the holding of elections in those states. People say, well, the courts will step in, federal courts will, you know, issue an order suggesting that the states have to comply, they’ve got to go forward with elections or they have to certify the legitimate winner. Donald Trump won’t enforce those rulings. And so I would ask people like Laura Ingraham, who’s an attorney, to think very carefully about what happens if a president of the United States will not enforce the rulings of the courts. And you can talk all you want about checks and balances, about separation of powers but at the end of the day that is such a fundamental piece of what keeps us a constitutional republic, that once a president refuses to do that, once a president says, I’m going to be a dictator for a day, once the president decides that he’s above the law as Donald Trump has, everything unravels nearly immediately.
Watch above via CNN’s The Lead.
