In taking a shot at CNN’s Jake Tapper, Republicans are openly boasting that they’re responsible for spreading democracy-defying conspiracy theories about the 2020 presidential election.
The CNN anchor recently took a stand against inviting election deniers on his programs, saying last week that lawmakers who support former President Donald Trump’s Big Lie—referring to the false claim that the election was stolen—are not welcome on his weekday and weekend shows. It’s “not a policy” but “a philosophy,” Tapper said, noting he hasn’t booked such Republicans since the election. Pro-Trump Republicans have since come forward with emails from CNN bookers requesting their presence on Tapper’s shows. Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York—whom the GOP last month voted to replace Liz Cheney as the party’s conference chair—tweeted screenshots, telling Tapper to read and weep:
On Saturday, Politico reported that Rep. Steve Scalise of Louisiana has received such requests from CNN bookers eight times since the election “including as recently as April,” but that the House GOP whip has declined the invitations. The press secretary for Sen. Josh Hawley, another Republican who voted to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, also chimed in with tweeted screenshots of emails from CNN bookers inviting the Missouri lawmaker onto Tapper’s programs. She claimed the network has done so 18 times since the January 6 insurrection and to “ignore @JakeTapper’s public virtue signaling” because “we have the receipts.”
Responding to these apparent gotcha attempts, Tapper said he “can’t account for every email from my excellent bookers whose job it is to present me with as many options as possible.” He also pointed to the absurdity of Republicans rushing to prove they are, in fact, election deniers. “Kind of stunning to see her proudly identify as a conspiracy theorist,” he said of Stefanik.
Stefanik and Scalise were specifically among the Big Lie pushers whom Tapper named when discussing his booking preferences last week on Kara Swisher’s Sway podcast. “I might be willing to interview one of them” to “talk about their election lies and what they’re doing,” he said, but he is “not asking for the interview and they’re not eager to do it.” (Fox News’ Chris Wallace—whose network has played a central role in amplifying pro-Trump conspiracy theories about the 2020 election—criticized Tapper’s stance as “moral posturing,” prompting a back-and-forth between the two TV anchors in Politico Playbook.)
The apparent rush among Republicans to publicly tie themselves to Trump’s insurrection-inspiring lies speaks volumes about the state of the party and the ongoing spread of pro-Trump misinformation on cable and social media. News outlets’ continued willingness to book election-deniers, and thus help keep Trump’s bogus and dangerous “fraud” narrative alive, has been a problem for months. Few have been more outspoken about it than The Daily Show’s Matt Negrin, who on Sunday continued to hold news platforms accountable for their role in propagating election-related disinformation:
This issue is about more than cable bickering: As Trump and his supporters continue to push the Big Lie today, newly-uncovered emails from the waning days of the Trump administration show how far it was willing to go to defy election results at the time.
Mark Meadows, Trump’s then-chief of staff, repeatedly urged Justice Department leadership to open investigations that would in some way subvert or even invalidate Trump’s loss to Joe Biden, the New York Times reported over the weekend. In a particularly egregious violation of well-established communications guidelines between the Justice Department and the White House, Meadows reached out to Jeffrey Rosen, then the acting attorney general, about looking into a slew of debunked pro-Trump conspiracy theories on election fraud, according to the Times. The paper reported that he “sought official validation for misinformation that was circulating rampantly among Mr. Trump’s supporters.” Rosen however, in the emails and according to people close to him, did not show any sign of bending to these demands, the Times noted.
The emails, revealed as part of a Senate Judiciary Committee probe into Justice Department officials’ potential role in trying to overturn Trump’s loss, reflect “the depths of the White House’s efforts to co-opt the department and influence the electoral vote certification,” Senator Richard Durbin, the chairman of the committee, said in a statement to CNN.
”This is a five-alarm fire for our democracy,” he said.
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