CNN’s Jake Tapper praised President-elect Joe Biden after interviewing him and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris, saying the experience was “enjoyable as a journalist.”
Tapper interviewed Biden and Harris on Thursday evening in the duo’s first joint interview since the election. The CNN anchor spoke Friday on “New Day” with co-anchors Alisyn Camerota and John Berman about the interview, where he spent time comparing it to one with President Donald Trump.
“First of all, as [CNN reporter] Daniel Dale has said, you know, President-elect Biden says things that aren’t true, but just – in terms of the speed and the brazenness of the falsehoods – nothing compares to outgoing President Trump. It’s just as a factual matter,” Tapper began after noting that Trump hasn’t given CNN an interview since becoming president.
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“Especially these days, with the craziness he’s [Trump] saying about the election, I mean just bizarreness from a different planet,” he continued.
The CNN anchor then said another difference is that a journalist doesn’t “really have to steel” him or herself “for the attacks.” Instead, according to Tapper, “it’s more just like what we’re used to normally … where you ask questions that might be uncomfortable,” pointing to a question he asked Biden about his son, Hunter Biden.
Tapper added that questions about Hunter can be particularly touchy for Biden because of “the way that his son was attacked during the campaign by Trump and his allies.” (RELATED: Raphael Warnock Dodges Question From CNN’s Jake Tapper About Whether He Attended Fidel Castro Speech)
“I didn’t really have to steel myself for it because even if I knew — if he didn’t like the question — and I knew he was going to behave like a rational adult,” Tapper said of the interview with Biden. “Maybe the worst that might happen is he might, you know, ‘get his Irish up a little bit’ as they say, but I didn’t have to prepare for, like, you know, a full-blown emotionally abusive session, which I think a lot of people who interview President Trump have to deal with.”
Lastly, Tapper said the interview overall “was just a substantive” one and noted that this is “enjoyable as a journalist.”
“I think what was enjoyable as a journalist was, I mean look, we all got into this business so that we could cover policy debates and discussions about issues that affect people’s lives,” he declared. “We didn’t get into this … business to fact check or to call out racism or indecency, that’s not why we’re journalists, it’s what we spent a lot of time doing over the last four or five years, but it’s not why we got in the business.”