“Odd,” “bizarre” and “somewhat surreal” are just a few of the words that CNN’s Jake Tapper is using to describe the first three weeks of Donald Trump’s presidency.
The CNN anchor and host of The Lead joined Vassy Kapelos this weekend to discuss his new reality, as clips of Tapper grilling Trump spokesperson Kellyanne Conway continue to circulate widely online.
“A lot of the things he describes as ‘fake news’ are true stories that he simply doesn’t like,” Tapper said of the U.S. president.
“But at the same time it doesn’t deter any of us … we’re just going to keep doing our jobs.”
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CNN and other outlets will report “aggressively” on Trump’s administration, Tapper promised, just as they did with the previous one.
But ultimately, he added, what matters most is how Republican lawmakers on Capitol Hill respond to Trump.
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Many support his policies surrounding tax reform and immigration law, Tapper explained, and “have an interest in preserving a good relationship with the president” to push that agenda forward.
“I don’t think they give a hoot about whether or not I get called a name, but they do, theoretically at least, care about whether or not there is some relationship between the United States government now and (Russian president) Vladimir Putin.”
Tapper’s latest showdown with Conway has been shared widely (The Washington Post even created a game using his various facial expressions), and he said he’s not planning to adjust his journalism in the face of a flood of “falsehoods” coming out of the White House.
“I’m not growing immune to it, and I don’t want anyone in the media to adjust or lower our standards for truth or facts or just basic decency.”
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What baffles him, he said, is that Trump’s behaviour is ultimately “self-defeating.” The president has some solid policy planks related to security and trade on which he was elected, Tapper told Kapelos, but “what’s strange to me is all this other noise that distracts from these things that he wants to do.”
“I would much rather be covering those policies than correcting facts that are not accurate, correcting lies. But we follow his lead.”
Watch the full interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper above
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