By Joe Kovacs

‘You have become a symbol of your own failures’

Will CNN’s Jake Tapper be fair to former President Trump as he moderates the first presidential debate of the 2024 election cycle?

Or a better question might be: Is it even possible for Jake Tapper to be fair?

The issue is at the forefront of many Americans’ minds as they yearn for a balanced presentation, since Tapper has a long history of anti-Trump statements on the air. He’ll be co-hosting with CNN’s Dana Bash.

“Tapper’s on-air record is extensive and the campaign sees good reason for Trump to not expect even-handed treatment,” said Ben Whedon at Just the News.

Just this week, the cable news network actually cut off a Trump surrogate who was shining the light on his biased history.

It was CNN’s Kasie Hunt who did the televised wet work by cutting off Trump spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt after she dared to mention Tapper’s years of comparing Trump to the infamous Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler.

Leavitt said, “It takes about five minutes to Google Jake Tapper, Donald Trump to see that Jake Tapper has … compared Trump to Adolf Hitler.”

That shutdown by CNN is echoing across the globe, as Sky News Australia interviewed Sean Spicer, the former White House communications director under Trump.

“They don’t even want you to see Jake Tapper’s past,” Spicer said. “Jake Tapper was a Democratic House staffer who worked for Chelsea Clinton’s mother-in-law when she was a member of Congress from Pennsylvania … he also worked for a very left-wing organization called Handgun Control.”

“I don’t know what they’re afraid of… but the reality is that’s what I think we can get used to expecting,” he went on. “On the debate stage, when Jake Tapper doesn’t like what Trump is saying, he’s just gonna mute his mic. On Thursday, it’s gonna be Trump versus the moderators and Joe Biden.”

Leavitt was not blowing smoke when she tried to publicize Tapper’s comparison of Trump to Hitler.

Tapper said on the air during this election season: “The dehumanizing rhetoric of Adolf Hitler is once again alive and well on a 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.”

Tapper was also on the bandwagon pushing the false and now thoroughly debunked Trump-Russia collusion narrative.

In 2019, he slammed Trump’s “lies” about the issue, saying: “Now, there was a time in the Trump presidency when his people would try to either explain his falsehoods as somehow in the neighborhood of something possibly accurate or they would just change the subject, but there has been a long slow slide and to just taking his lies and asserting them to you and you are paying for those lies in more ways than just making a sign.”

During the COVID pandemic, Tapper told Trump: “Mr. President, you have become a symbol of your own failures. Failures of recklessness, ignorance, arrogance. The same failures you have been inflicting on the rest of us.”

In March 2020, Tapper said: “We cannot ignore that much of Mr. Trump’s personal response to the pandemic has been insufficient and deceptive and not focused enough clearly on one issue: saving lives.”

He even urged the commander in chief to let other people control the coronavirus briefing, saying: “If President Trump is not capable of leading stably and effectively, he should at least for his own reputation, for the good of the country, stop making things worse and consider leaving the podium to others.”

In 2019, Tapper planted the seed that anyone voting for Trump might be racist, as he asked leftist Democrat Beto O’Rourke, “Do you think it’s racist to vote for President Trump?”

Meanwhile, in June 2024, after Trump pleaded not guilty in the Palm Beach, Florida, classified documents case being prosecuted by special counsel Jack Smith, Tapper instructed CNN directors to stop airing footage of a pro-Trump crowd in Miami that was being shown on screen.

“The folks in the control room: I don’t need to see any more of that,” he said. He’s trying to turn this into a spectacle, into a campaign ad. That’s enough of that. We’ve seen it already.”

CNN is defending its moderators with this statement: “Jake Tapper and Dana Bash are well respected veteran journalists who have covered politics for more than five decades combined.”

“They have extensive experience moderating major political debates, including CNN’s Republican Presidential Primary Debate this cycle. There are no two people better equipped to co-moderate a substantial and fact-based discussion and we look forward to the debate on June 27 in Atlanta.”