Tapper Fires Back at Breitbart: They’re Attacking Me Because They ‘Regret’ Supporting a Neo-Nazi
Earlier this week, Breitbart News published a piece which slammed CNN’s Jake Tapper and Oliver Darcy — after Breitbart backed away from former Congressional candidate Paul Nehlen. Tapper called Nehlen a “Breitbart favorite” while highlighting the fringe candidate’s anti-Semitism, while Darcy reported that the conservative news outlet had cut ties with Nehlen over his embrace of white supremacism. Following those critiques, Breitbart reporter/attack dog Matthew Boyle wrote a rambling hit piece targeting the CNN reporters.
Now, Breitbart is at it again, and it appears it’s because Tapper highlighted that the alt-right website remained closely affiliated with Nehlen until very recently — a story which differed from what Breitbart senior editor-at-large Joel Pollak was trying to sell. Pollak claimed that Breitbart hadn’t covered Nehlen in months and had barely been associated with him.
However, ThinkProgress and Right Wing Watch discovered that Nehlen had, in fact, appeared on Breitbart Radio’s Whatever It Takes with Curt Schilling on Dec. 18. During that interview, host Curt Schilling agreed with Nehlen on a number of issues and endorsed his campaign. As ThinkProgress noted, it appears Breitbart quietly removed the segment from its SoundCloud page in recent days.
(It should also be noted that besides Nehlen’s recent Breitbart Radio appearance, he shared a campaign rally stage with Breitbart chief Steve Bannon earlier this month.)
This morning, Tapper shared the ThinkProgress article on his Twitter timeline, adding quotes from Schilling.
Breitbart radio host this month with Nehlen: “You can go to his website…follow him on Twitter…I’m a fan…I want you to tell people how they can help you out…God bless you. Look forward to having you back.” https://t.co/Yf2RZORoiN
— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) December 29, 2017
Hours later, the CNN anchor explained that he was finding the whole situation “a bit tiresome,” but was told that Breitbart was preparing another factually inaccurate hit piece on him.
I confess I’m finding this all a bit tiresome but I’m told Breitbart is preparing another hit piece full of lies and nonsense presumably because I tweeted this quote of a Breitbart host on Dec 18 promoting and praising white supremacist Nehlen. https://t.co/kgSporvXFI
— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) December 29, 2017
He followed that up by providing some advice to Breitbart:
The easy PR advice when you’re caught being too cozy with white supremacists/neo-Nazis is to apologize for the bad judgment and to vociferously attack the Nazi. Not to obfuscate and attack those who took issue with it. Unless of course you only regret being caught.
— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) December 29, 2017
Of course, Boyle did have another Tapper article in the can, which went up today. In this second Tapper-centric report, Boyle contends that the CNN anchor is at odds with his employer over its “lack of transparency” based on an email exchange Breitbart had with Tapper in June. And, like the previous hatchet job, Boyle calls Tapper “Fake Tapper” and describes CNN as “Fake News.”
Because, as we all know, that’s what real reporters do.
[image via screengrab]
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