“I have very vivid memories of my parents talking about Nixon, my mom watching Watergate on the black-and-white set in the living room. The mayor at the time in Philadelphia was a guy named Frank Rizzo – a Democrat, a real bully, a racist.”
― Jake Tapper
“Whenever journalism students ask me what they should be doing, I say that if you’re on social media, you should be following a ton of people that you don’t necessarily agree with just to get their perspectives.”
― Jake Tapper
“I did freelance cartooning off and on from college graduation in 1991 through ABC News hiring me in 2003. I did a weekly comic strip for ‘Roll Call’ for about nine years. I sold cartoons and caricatures to ‘The Los Angeles Times’ and ‘The Washington Post.’ I drew as much as I could. It’s really tough to make a living doing it.”
― Jake Tapper
“There’s no bias when it comes to facts, and there’s no bias when it comes to decency.”
― Jake Tapper
“Nastiness and mockery and meanness sometimes seem as if they’re spreading like a contagion.”
― Jake Tapper
“There are basic lines of human decency, norms to which society generally agrees and to which we adhere, and we continue to see the Trump presidency eroding these lines.”
― Jake Tapper
“My mom is a nurse; my dad is a pediatrician. They were born in the 1940s, and they were both inspired to fight against injustice, whether it was the injustices of the Vietnam War or Watergate or children in poverty or oppression of African Americans in Philadelphia where I was growing up.”
― Jake Tapper
“The Patriots cheat. This is just a fact as established by investigations. They’re a cheating team.”
― Jake Tapper
“It is empirically indecent to make fun of the disabled… That’s just indecent.”
― Jake Tapper
“They say history doesn’t repeat itself, but it rhymes.”
― Jake Tapper
“Resist the temptation to subject yourself only to that which re-affirms what you already think.”
― Jake Tapper
“You know what takes effort? Being kind. Being patient. Being respectful.”
― Jake Tapper
“’MAD Magazine’ put out a book that was a collection of Trump cartoons, and they asked me to do the forward because they knew that I was a fan because I’d done stories and tweeted about ‘MAD.’ So I did the forward and asked them if I could do a cartoon. They let me, and I did caricatures of myself and Wolf Blitzer.”
― Jake Tapper
“McCarthyism and Trumpism are very different. They stand for very different things, but the technique of the big lie, smearing and telling lies, you know, McCarthy was doing that. At the time, the media, Democrats, and Republicans were all paralyzed – not all, but most of them were paralyzed. They didn’t know how to deal with this.”
― Jake Tapper
“You know what takes effort? Being kind, being patient, being respectful, telling someone how you feel politely instead of just avoiding them for six weeks.”
― Jake Tapper
“I certainly don’t think that it’s the job of any journalist to make the presidency work.”
― Jake Tapper
“I lost a great uncle in World War II who was with the Royal Canadian Air Force.”
― Jake Tapper
“Probably like a lot of people, my personal politics are all over the map.”
― Jake Tapper
“I’m not a member of a political party, and I feel very, very comfortable being independent. Even if I weren’t a journalist – if I were doing whatever – I would be an independent.”
― Jake Tapper
“I’ve always been a ravenous consumer of opinion. When I was in my high school library and my college library, I would read ‘National Review’ and I would read ‘The Nation’ and I would read ‘The American Spectator’ and I would read ‘Mother Jones.’”
― Jake Tapper
“If the Trump White House and their allies in the media want to have this conversation about decency, I welcome them to the table to talk about it. But there’s a bunch of stuff that they need to get caught up on before we get to a comedian at the White House dinner.”
― Jake Tapper
“It matters to people that the president tell them the truth.”
― Jake Tapper
“A lot of the stuff I blog is either stuff I’m reporting anyway for ABC News internally and figure I might as well put it up on the blog. Or it’s stuff I’m just interested in, or I read about it, or I hear about it, and I’m just curious.”
― Jake Tapper
“You write a story, you do a TV show, and if people don’t like it, well, you’re going to do it again tomorrow.”
― Jake Tapper
“What would McCarthy, what would Nixon, what would Bill Clinton have done if they’d had Twitter?”
― Jake Tapper
“Don’t get me wrong: politicians have been lying for a long time, long before Donald Trump was born, but the degree of just nonstop rage, grievance, prevarication, I haven’t seen, probably because we haven’t had a direct line from a politician’s id to the public before.”
― Jake Tapper
“I listen to a lot of criticism. From the Left and the Right and from everywhere. I mean, everybody’s a media critic. And sometimes I think it’s on point, and other times, I think about it and consider it and then might ultimately disagree with it. But I do listen to it; I really do.”
― Jake Tapper
“I think there is room for improvement for all of the media, and that certainly, and especially, includes me.”
― Jake Tapper
“I still think of myself as a Philadelphian. I still root for the Philadelphia teams. Other than my house, I still feel most at home in terms of cities when I’m in Philly.”
― Jake Tapper
“I get a lot of heat from the Left, which is bizarre. I get a lot of heat from the Right, too, but the vitriol is from the Left.”
― Jake Tapper
“It’s not always easy for a mainstream organization to accept what a blog is.”
― Jake Tapper
“CNN wants me to tell the news in a way that seems genuine and authentic. They don’t want me to be Ron Burgundy.”
― Jake Tapper
“Politicians lie.”
― Jake Tapper
“It’s not empirically wrong to say that Washington isn’t working for the American people and Washington does too many things for powerful special interests and it’s broken.”
― Jake Tapper
“Trump is most fun to draw – just a great mash of caricature-able features, from bouffant to eyebrows and scowl, to the high cheekbones and the regal pride.”
― Jake Tapper
“It’s tough for me to draw myself – usually way too self-critical.”
― Jake Tapper
“As a fan and collector of ‘MAD’ magazines as a kid, I am well aware that my art is unworthy. I remain in absolute awe of ‘MAD’ artist Mort Drucker and loved Wally Wood and Harvey Kurtzman and Al Jaffee and Don Martin and Angelo Torres and Peter Kuper and Sergio Aragones.”
― Jake Tapper
“Exercise has its hazards. Runners are sidelined by shinsplints, freestylists by swimmer’s ear, and who hasn’t heard of tennis elbow? But the fitness buff of the ’90s has a far greater worry. StairMaster Butt.”
― Jake Tapper
“Washington, as we know it, is essentially run by men and women who are not elected or even appointed to their posts, staff members unaccountable to traditional constituencies. They rise according to the needs and whims of their own special constituency of elites.”
― Jake Tapper
“Everybody should work in their nation’s capitol and see how politics actually work because it was the most eye opening experience of my life.”
― Jake Tapper
“My mom is from Canada. Both my grandparents were from Canada.”
― Jake Tapper
“The only politician in my family was my grandfather’s grandfather, who was the mayor of Winnipeg from Jan. 1, 1917, until Jan. 5, 1917, because he lost the recount. So he was mayor of Winnipeg for four days.”
― Jake Tapper
“People mess up. They say things when their guard is down.”
― Jake Tapper
“Professionally and personally, I try to be as agnostic as possible, try to see things as objectively as possible.”
― Jake Tapper
“I can be fairly boring.”
― Jake Tapper
“I generally feel that the solution to speech that people find offensive is more speech. You should talk about it, discuss it.”
― Jake Tapper
“Everyone should work in politics to see how horrible it is.”
― Jake Tapper
“It took me years to realize I wanted to be in journalism.”
― Jake Tapper
“I think standing up for facts and decency is important, and we should’ve done more of it back in 2015 and 2016.”
― Jake Tapper
“I think there are periods in this country when behavior is abhorrent: McCarthy, Watergate, Bill Clinton. It’s just a question of how the checks and balances in the American system work and how leaders stand up to it or don’t stand up to it.”
― Jake Tapper
“I have a wife and a son and daughter. What do I need to do to make their lives better, happier? What can I do in terms of my time or my attention given that I am very busy at work? That’s a personal rule of thumb I live by from the moment I get up to the moment I go to bed.”
― Jake Tapper
“My journalistic heroes are Peter Jennings and Ted Koppel and Tim Russert and Edward R. Murrow, among others, because they were tough.”
― Jake Tapper
“My dad’s a hero in a lot of ways. He was a 1960s and 1970s hippie and a member of the protest crowd.”
― Jake Tapper
“My mom is a hero in a lot of ways because she’s the most empathetic and kind person I’ve ever met.”
― Jake Tapper
“CNN is in the business of sussing out what is true and what is false.”
― Jake Tapper
“It’s irresponsible to put uncorroborated information on the Internet.”
― Jake Tapper
“When you write fiction, there were things about Washington that I’ve experienced and wanted to write about, including the swamping nature of it, the compromises people come to town and are forced to make, and also, when writing about Joe McCarthy, the indecency and lies that he put forward that people didn’t take a stand about.”
― Jake Tapper
“My job is not to be liked. My job is to tell the truth.”
― Jake Tapper
“President Obama was not friendly to the press, but the press was very friendly to President Obama.”
― Jake Tapper
“I’m quite calm when all is well.”
― Jake Tapper
“I think that I’m doing my job, and it’s nice to be recognized, but I also know that a lot of the people who are happy with me now are not going to be happy with me in four to eight years and that I’m just going to keep doing what I’m doing.”
― Jake Tapper
“I wanted to be a cartoonist, and then I wanted to go into film – not as an actor, but as a writer-director – and then I found myself during film school at the University of Southern California listening to the Clarence Thomas hearings in class on my Walkman, and I realized L.A. was not really for me.”
― Jake Tapper
“I’m not a particularly good liar.”
― Jake Tapper
“There are a lot of good writers in TV!”
― Jake Tapper
“Print and television journalism are very different, and it’s not like one is better than the other.”
― Jake Tapper
“I’m trying to spend less time with the phone when the kids are awake in general. I need to get better about that. It’s a perennial New Year’s resolution.”
― Jake Tapper
“My first race was ’99/2000. At that time, I was at ‘Salon,’ and I was basically their campaign reporter, so I would just jump around from race to race, candidate to candidate.”
― Jake Tapper
“My back isn’t great.”
― Jake Tapper
“I do breakfast first, which is a small bowl of oatmeal and some sort of protein, like hard-boiled eggs. And then I work out – 40 minutes of cardio and maybe some strength training.”
― Jake Tapper
“Normally, at a debate or a town hall, I would be quick to say to someone, ‘That was rude,’ or, ‘We’re going to try to keep it civil here,’ or, ‘Let’s not have personal attacks.’”
― Jake Tapper
“I have asked people repeated follow-ups for a while and asked people uncomfortable questions for a while. I just try to hold people accountable.”
― Jake Tapper
“Facts matter a great deal to me.”
― Jake Tapper
“Politicians don’t like tough coverage, and their protectors try to destroy the messengers.”
― Jake Tapper
“In 2009, 2010, the Obama people were the ones mad at me.”
― Jake Tapper
“Embrace the humanity of everyone, especially those you don’t understand.”
― Jake Tapper
“My kids are good artists, and they do a pretty good version of Dad in their caricatures.”
― Jake Tapper
“I tried to do a comic strip. I came close, and I met with Universal Press Syndicate in Kansas City, but ultimately, they did not go with my strip.”
― Jake Tapper
“I think it’s important to have as diverse of a feed as possible.”
― Jake Tapper
“There’s a long tradition in this country of questioning generals.”
― Jake Tapper
“You know who has done a lot of questioning of generals? President Trump.”
― Jake Tapper
“I don’t want to compare President Obama and President Trump on these issues, because they’re different, and the scale isn’t even remotely the same. But President Obama said things that weren’t true and got away with it more for a variety of reasons, and one is the media was much more supportive of him.”
― Jake Tapper
“Equating brutality and despotism with leadership is not an American value.”
― Jake Tapper
“I choose to make it my job to not automatically believe what the U.S. government says.”
― Jake Tapper
“My job is to be skeptical: skeptical of people like Edward Snowden and skeptical of the U.S. government.”
― Jake Tapper
“My job is to not take for granted when somebody says, ‘Oh, this is all just a made-up, phony scandal,’ or, ‘What this person did put the U.S. government at risk.’”
― Jake Tapper
“It’s the exact opposite of my job to take what the government says at face value and say, ‘This is the truth because the government says it, and the government never lies.’”
― Jake Tapper
“I’m a collaborative person – it makes me better – and sometimes taking that collaboration to Twitter is helpful.”
― Jake Tapper
“As soon as I wake up, I read my email to see what news developed overnight.”
― Jake Tapper
“We’ve gone through many different permutations of coffee-making, from grinding our own beans to the regular drip to an iced coffee maker.”
― Jake Tapper
“I’ve conditioned myself to believe that almonds are a completely delicious snack, and that they don’t taste like paper or get stuck in the back of my mouth.”
― Jake Tapper
“I definitely pack coffee if I’m going someplace where it might not be available. When I went to Afghanistan in 2011, I brought a bunch of instant coffee. I didn’t need to do that, of course, because army people drink industrial-strength coffee and have it going 24/7.”
― Jake Tapper
“We often think our legacy will be our achievements. But often our legacy will be whether we set a moral standard.”
― Jake Tapper
“Mean is easy. Mean is lazy. Mean is self-satisfied and slothful.”
― Jake Tapper
“There are news sources that are just out-and-out lies coming from Europe, coming from other parts of the world.”
― Jake Tapper
“We all know members of the House and Senate – especially the House – who are just crazy and say things that aren’t true, Democrats and Republicans.”
― Jake Tapper
“Actors are tough because they’re not used to challenging questions – other than from paparazzi. And so you just ask one perfectly legitimate question, but one that they’re not comfortable answering, and all of a sudden they look at you, and you’re the paparazzi.”
― Jake Tapper
“My job, in general, is nonfiction, so writing fiction was liberating. If you can’t find the answer to something, you just make it up!”
― Jake Tapper
“I’m an everyday guy – I’m a try-to-write-at-least-15-minutes-every-day-if-not-an-hour-or-two kind of guy. I write in Google docs so that wherever you go, you have access to it.”
― Jake Tapper
“I don’t really get nervous anymore unless there’s a big interview.”
― Jake Tapper
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