Former President Donald Trump attacked CNN host Jake Tapper during a rally in the Bronx on Thursday ahead of his scheduled CNN debate with President Joe Biden.
Trump, who built his political brand on bashing the press and claiming it is biased against him, told the crowd: “You know, I agreed to do a debate with Crooked Joe Biden on CNN with Fake Tapper and I think they’ll be fair.” He then asked his supporters, “Does anybody think they’ll be fair?”
As the crowd shouted, “No!” Trump continued:
No? That’s alright. When they said, “Here’s your story, you can have a debate on CNN with Fake Tapper as the primary host,” and I said, “I’ll do it!” ’cause you know what they thought is you’d say CNN and they’d say various people on the show, various anchors, and you know headed up by Fake Tapper, and they thought I was gonna reject it. “I don’t wanna do it!” Then Biden would say, “I offered to debate, but he wouldn’t do it.” So they said, “We wanna have a debate.” “I’ll take it.” “We haven’t even told you what the debate is all about.” Then they said, today they said, “We’d like to set up
tables so you sit down.” I said I don’t wanna sit down for a debate. Let’s go.
He went on, “So we’re not sitting down, we’re gonna be standing up for the debate, and here’s what you know, if Crooked Joe Biden makes it through the debate, which I think he will, they’re gonna say it was one of the great debate performances in history, one of the greatest debate performances.”
CNN is scheduled to host the first 2024 presidential election debate between Trump and Biden in Georgia on June 27.
The debate will be moderated by Tapper and CNN anchor Dana Bash, both of whom have moderated presidential debates before.
A CNN spokesperson responded to Trump’s comments in a statement: “Jake Tapper and Dana Bash are well-respected veteran journalists who have covered politics for more than five decades combined. They have extensive experience moderating major political debates, including CNN’s Republican Presidential Primary Debate this cycle. There are no two people better equipped to co-moderate a substantial and fact-based discussion and we look forward to the debate on June 27 in Atlanta.”
As Trump pointed to the press at the back of the rally, he concluded, “But there they are, and we’re on every network tonight, I don’t know what’s going on. We’re on Fox, we’re
Unlike Fox News and Newsmax, CNN did not air the rally live.
Tapper has been among the primary targets of Trump’s media bashing. The former president laid into “Fake Tapper” during an appearance on Fox News in March, and again last year on Truth Social after Tapper ordered producers to cut away from live footage of Trump’s visit to a Cuban restaurant in Miami.
Watch above via Real America’s Voice.