Jake Tapper’s Daughter Tried Her Best to Explain Brat Summer to Him: ‘He Could Only Hope He Could Get to That Level’
Alice Paul Tapper, the best-selling author of two books at age 17 and the daughter of CNN’s Jake Tapper, told Seth Meyers that she was the one who tipped her dad off to the “Kamala is brat” phenomenon.
In an infamous (but self-aware) CNN segment that aired not long after President Joe Biden dropped his bid for reelection and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris, Tapper and other CNN personalities — including Kaitlan Collins and Jamie Gangel — attempted to cover Charlie XCX dubbing Harris “brat” (which was a good thing) and the Harris campaign fully subscribing to it. By the end of the conversation that made the Generation X-aged group look like a bunch of ancient dinosaurs, the elder Tapper vowed to “aspire to be brat.”
As Alice Tapper recounted to Meyers on Thursday while promoting her latest book Use Your Voice, she not only tipped her dad off to the story, which he realized was becoming a Thing, she attempted to explain what it meant. Whether or not she succeeded remains to be seen:
Meyers: Now, your dad had to talk about brat summer because, you know, basically Charlie XCX tweeted about Kamala, Kamala retweeted it, and this became–
Jake Tapper: Yeah, I had no idea. She told me about it.
Meyers: Okay. So, you didn’t even know that–
Jake Tapper: I don’t think it was tweeting. I think there was posting on Instagram, right?
Alice Tapper: And TikTok. They made their, the Twitter, the X background on Kamala’s headquarter page the “brat” thing. And everyone was freaking out online. And me and my friends are just listening to “Brat” all summer. And so I thought it was so funny that she got politics involved with the album. And I was obsessed with it for the whole summer.
Meyers: Now, did your heart drop when your dad called to ask what was happening?
Alice Tapper: Well, once he started getting involved, it started becoming a little bit more distasteful for me just because I was like, “Why are you trying to get involved in my business?”
Meyers: When your dad texted me, “Like, did you hear it was Brat Summer, do you want to do something Brat Summer-themed?” I was like “No.”
Meyer later played the CNN clip, prefacing it with Tapper’s explanation that it was broadcast after Alice sent him a screenshot of the Brat aesthetic on the Harris campaign’s social media pages. Meyers joked before rolling the clip: “And let me just say how natural you all seem talking about Brat Summer.”
Tapper (from CNN clip): I will aspire to be brat.
Meyers: That, I think, really speaks to how you understood. All anybody can do is aspire to be brat.
Jake Tapper: I didn’t say I’d achieved it!
Meyers: No, you just said you–
Alice Tapper: He can only hope he could get to that level.
Meyers: Did you feel like he got any closer?
Alice Tapper: I don’t know. That’s for Charlie XCX to decide.
Meyers: Yeah. All right, when you go to the Sweat Tour, you can maybe get her — get real close, and so you can point to your dad and be like, “Is he?” And she’ll just go, “No.”
In Tapper’s defense, would there have been Brat Summer without the Brat Pack, a product of Generation X? Tapper and we of the older ilk could still qualify as brat. Because we also did neon first. Maybe by overthinking it, we have already disqualified ourselves.
Watch the full interview via Late Night with Seth Meyers on YouTube.
