AWKWARD: Chris Wallace and His New CNN Colleague Jake Tapper Recently Threw Down in a Nasty Spat

Rivalries between top cable news personalities are nothing new. But now, after trading periodic barbs over much of the past few years, two of the biggest stars in cable news are about to be co-workers.

The signing of Chris Wallace by CNN+ means that the venerable former Fox News anchor is set to work at the network alongside Jake Tapper. And the two have had a tense public relationship, to put it mildly.

In a 2017 email to Trump officials, which became public in 2019, Wallace criticized a Tapper interview with former Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin.

“As much as I hate the expression ‘fake news’ — this is a perfect example of it,” Wallace wrote in the email.

After that, Tapper took a number of public shots at his soon-to-be colleague. First, he went after Wallace in July of 2020 for failing to confront former President Donald Trump in an interview on reporting that Russian operatives were paying the Taliban bounties to kill U.S. service members. Then, Tapper was one of several prominent journalists to criticize Wallace’s performance as moderator of the first 2020 presidential debate.

“He did not have control of the debate stage for much of the evening,” Tapper said.

Days later, Tapper abruptly shut down an interview with a Trump spokesperson by saying, “You know what? I’m not Chris Wallace” — an apparent shot at Wallace’s inability to get control of the debate.

Wallace then fired back on a Fox News radio show.

“He’s right, he isn’t Chris Wallace,” Wallace said. He added, “It’s easy to criticize from the cheap seats.”

And then, this past June, Wallace and Tapper traded blows over whether Republicans who promoted the Big Lie should be invited to their respective Sunday shows. Tapper has made it a policy not to book those who supported the false premise that the 2020 election was rigged. Wallace dismissed that position as “moral posturing.”

Tapper, in response, said, “This isn’t an easy conversation for some folks — especially for journalists who work for organizations where the Big Lie was platformed — but that’s all the more reason to have this conversation.”

And now, these two longtime rivals are about to be teammates. Tapper, for his part, attempted to bury the hatchet on Twitter Sunday:

Congrats to Chris on a very impressive run at @FoxNewsSunday and best wishes for whatever’s next! 👏 👏 👏 https://t.co/lkaQrLe1wW

— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) December 12, 2021

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