CNN raised eyebrows among critics when it announced that Jake Tapper would moderate the first presidential debate this year, specifically over his hostile coverage towards former President Trump.
Trump expressed some optimism that CNN could be fair to him in a podcast interview last week, saying there's a "good 10% chance" of it happening and how he "used to get along" with Tapper, who will be joined by fellow anchor Dana Bash.
"Jake Tapper is a well-respected veteran journalist who has covered politics for decades and has extensive experience moderating major political debates, including CNN’s Republican Presidential Primary Debate this cycle," a spokesperson for CNN told Fox News Digital. "There is no one better equipped to co-moderate a substantial and fact-based discussion and we look forward to the debate on June 27 in Atlanta."
Here are five of Tapper's sharpest anti-Trump moments:
Emotions were high on CNN's airwaves as the presidential election was called for Joe Biden in 2020. Tapper declared, "for tens of millions of our fellow Americans: their long national nightmare is over."
"It's been a time of extreme divisions, many of the divisions caused and exacerbated by President Trump himself," Tapper said in an impassioned monologue.
"It's been a time of several significant and utterly avoidable failures, most tragically, of course, the unwillingness to respect facts and science and do everything that could be done to save lives during a pandemic. It has been a time where truth and fact were treated with distain," he continued. "It was a time of cruelty where official inhumanities such as child separation became the official shameful policy of the United States. But now the Trump presidency is coming to an end."
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The liberal media has normalized comparisons to Adolf Hitler since Trump became president and Tapper was no exception.
In December, Tapper evoked the Nazi dictator while condemning Trump's comments about illegal immigrants "poisoning the blood of our country."
"With four weeks until Ohioans cast the nation’s first votes in the 2024 presidential race, the dehumanizing rhetoric of Adolf Hitler is once again alive and well on the national political stage. This time, of course, in the United States. This time, given life by former president and current Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump, whose thoughts on immigrants were made shockingly crystal clear over the weekend," Tapper said before playing the clip of Trump's remarks. "If you were to open up a copy of Hitler’s ‘Mein Kampf,’ you would find the Nazi leader describing the mixing of non-Germans with Germans as poisoning. The Jew, Hitler wrote, quote, 'poisons the blood of others.'
"This, according to Hitler, posed an existential threat to Germany because, quote, ‘all great cultures of the past perished only because the originally creative race died out from blood poisoning,’ unquote. There’s really no other way to say it. Donald Trump’s language mirrors this directly," he added.
The COVID pandemic marked a particularly turbulent time in the country's history, especially when Trump was hospitalized with the virus in Oct. 2020.
Tapper took the opportunity to scold the president over his handling of COVID.
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"Of course, everyone here at 'The Lead' is hoping for a full and speedy recovery for President Trump," Tapper said at the time. "But we must acknowledge, President Trump has refused to abide by his own administration's health experts about how to avoid contracting this disease."
The anchor called out the president for mocking those who wear masks and the "serious questions" that were raised at various Trump campaign events that lacked masks and social distancing, even calling out members of Trump's family and staff who attended the first debate in Cleveland who refused to wear masks.
"We all sincerely wish the best for everyone at the White House battling this cruel and potentially deadly disease, but they continue to put others at risk not only by setting bad examples, not only by failing in the pandemic response but now, quite literally, as carriers of the virus exposing not just fellow officials and senators or journalists or donors, but exposing the flight crews of Air Force One and Marine One, members of the military, or waiters and support staff at Bedminster in New Jersey." Tapper later continued. "Make no mistake, this was not just reckless behavior, this was a demonstration of a wanton disregard for human life. President Trump, now in quarantine, has become a symbol of his own failures."
Trump's performance at the first presidential debate against Biden in 2020 came under fire, mostly for his repeated interruptions, but Tapper – and Bash – took their heat to a new level in their coverage afterward.
"That was the worst debate I have ever seen," Tapper said afterward. "In fact, it wasn't even a debate. It was a disgrace. And it's primarily because of President Trump who spent the entire time interrupting, not abiding by the rules that he agreed to, lying, maliciously attacking the son of the vice president."
Tapper added he wasn't sure how well Biden did but called it irrelevant because of Trump's performance, also hitting him for not saying he would accept the election's results.
"And what occurred to me is the thought that the president does not think he's going to win this election. And he wants to bring the rest of us down with him," he added.
For her part, Bash called it a "s--tshow" and "disgraceful."
Following the second, more measured debate between the two candidates, Tapper accused Trump of running the "single most negative, sleazy campaign in American history for a major party candidate."
"Trump and his allies in the media and the members of his family and the Trump allied websites and such are leveling with charges so heinous I’m not going to say them, just nonsense, crap, tied into QAnon, tied into Pizzagate, tied into the worst things you could say about a person," he added.
Tapper rebuked his CNN producers last year for continuing to show footage of Trump celebrating with his supporters after he pleaded not guilty to federal charges of mishandling classified documents in Miami.
Trump stopped at the Versailles restaurant in the south Florida city, where he was greeted by religious leaders and supporters who prayed with him and wished him a happy birthday.
"The folks in the control room, I don't need to see any more of that. He's trying to turn it into a spectacle, a campaign ad. That's enough of that," Tapper said. "We've seen it already."
Tapper also told viewers, "And as we watch Donald Trump attempt to turn his arrest and indictment into some sort of campaign commercial, we need to remember that the reason we are watching this is because Donald Trump is accused of breaking some very serious national security laws and then obstructing and refusing to cooperate with the FBI."
