Jake Tapper Slams ‘Problematic’ Lawfare Against Trump — and the Media for Indulging It

CNN’s Jake Tapper, the co-author of the bestseller Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again called out the legal action taken against Donald Trump by New York Attorney General Letitia James (D) and Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg during a recent interview with Stephen A. Smith, deeming it “problematic.”

Tapper’s comments came after Smith asked if there is “a level of contrition that you should feel when it comes to the whole MAGA right itself, in terms of how they perceived — whether it was CNN, MSNBC, or anybody that wasn’t a conservative network — covering them? And how the perception was that the left was left off the hook. How do you feel about it when people talk about it in that light?”

“It’s a complicated question, and the answer is that I understand and have been saying for a long time I understood specific grievances that President Trump had with the media or with whatever,” answered Tapper. “I mean, back in the early days of 2017, when BuzzFeed printed the Steele Dossier, which was full of nonsensical, outlandish charges, I said on air, like, I understand why-, I mean, you can Google it, I mean, people covered it at the time. But you know, I understand why he’s frustrated, I would be too — I didn’t think it was responsible to publish the Steele Dossier.”

He continued:

And, you know, I can’t say that I have a blemish-free record on anything. I mean, I look back at Iraq and the weapons of mass destruction, and I was skeptical then, but I wish I had been more skeptical, I wish I had been more brave about it. But as a general rule, I mean I don’t-, I look at the way I covered, you know, the president, some of the trials of the president I thought were, you know-, I think it’s, I think it is problematic when people run for prosecutor and promise to go after a specific politician. And both Letitia James, the attorney general of New York, and Alvin Bragg, the district attorney of New York, both of them did that. And that to me is problematic because you’re not saying, “This is the offense and we need to bring justice to this perpetrator.” You’re saying, “I’m going to go after him.” And I think that there was a degree to which that was tolerated by the media writ large. I mean, I did note it at the time, but like, and when Trump does the same thing — and he’s the president so it’s also a different degree, people perceive it is more problematic.

If the question is, in general: Do I think that there is a liberal bias to the media? The answer is: Yes, sometimes. I mean, sometimes I do think that there is an unfair bias. But I think there are all sorts of unfair biases.

__