CNN’s Tapper: Trump has ‘knocked everybody in the news media off’

CNN anchor Jake Tapper said former President Trump continues to pose a major challenge to media organizations covering him.

“I think that every news organization in America was disrupted by Donald Trump,” Tapper said during an appearance on journalist Kara Swisher’s podcast published Monday. “Especially by his attacking the media.”

Tapper, CNN’s chief Washington correspondent, noted Trump has “picked on us a lot, but that’s OK,” adding “he knocked everybody in the news media off.”

Trump attacked Tapper last month after the anchor directed CNN’s control room during coverage of the former president’s arraignment in Florida to stop showing video of a crowd singing happy birthday to Trump during a campaign stop shortly after he left the courthouse.

The CNN anchor called Trump’s barbs “relatively tame” compared to his attacks on others.

Tapper in the podcast interview also defended the network’s decision to host a town hall with Trump earlier this year, which was panned by media and political observers for what critics said was providing the former president a platform to make misleading statements and attack moderator Kaitlan Collins.

“We have to cover him, we can’t ignore him,” Tapper said of the network’s approach, while maintaining it aims to “cover him as he is.”

“Do I think … we were knocked off our equilibrium a little bit [during the Trump years]? Yes, every media organization was, to some degree or another,” Tapper said later of the network under former chief executive Jeff Zucker.

“But do I think that we needed some sort of wholesale revision? No I do not.”

Zucker was replaced last year by executive Chris Licht, who served just more than one year in the job and was fired amid a slew of internal controversies and ratings declines facing CNN.

Tapper said he believed in Licht’s stated mission of providing more balanced news coverage on CNN and was “bummed” to see him ousted, but argued morale at the cable news company is “really good right now.”