Jake Tapper Tells Colbert: If We Can’t Criticize Our Leaders ‘We Are No Longer the USA’
CNN’s Jake Tapper warned Thursday night that if Americans lose the freedom to “mock” or “criticize” their leaders, then the country would be “no longer the United States of America.” Tapper offered the ominous warning as he slammed Jimmy Kimmel’s suspension as a “direct violation of the First Amendment.”
During a Thursday sit-down on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, Tapper outlined the sequence of events that led to Kimmel’s ousting, highlighting remarks by Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr on a podcast on Wednesday. Tapper warned Carr was “telling companies what to do” and triggered a pile-on by affiliate conglomerates with merger ambitions.
Host Stephen Colbert pressed Tapper on whether such agencies had been politicised before.
“Not to this degree,” Tapper replied, adding that he had “never seen an FCC chairman call for a direct action by local affiliates to do something to remove a speaker and speech that they don’t like.”
He added, “It’s chilling and it’s actually the exact opposite of, you know, [MAGA] were supposedly going to be the free-speech champions.”
Tapper then recalled President Donald Trump’s January vow to “immediately stop all government censorship and bring back free speech to never again will the immense power of the state be weaponized to persecute political opponents.”
The audience booed.
The point, Tapper argued, was sharpened by the previously stated stance of Vice President JD Vance.
Reading from a past statement, Tapper cited: “Under Donald Trump’s leadership we may disagree with your views but we will fight to defend your right to offer it in the public square.”
Then, with a pause: “That is JD Vance, our Vice President.”
The crowd jeered again.
Colbert quipped that Tapper sounded “like a guy who doesn’t want a TV show anymore.”
Tapper shot back with his most pointed line of the night: “If we do not have the ability to criticize, mock, investigate our leaders, then we are no longer the United States of America.”
Watch via CBS.
