White House Cancels Jake Tapper’s Interview With John Bolton A Day After Trump Attacked CNN

White House Cancels Jake Tapper’s Interview With John Bolton A Day After Trump Attacked CNN

Looks like the White House didn’t want one of their senior officials to get pressed on the president’s continued attacks on CNN.

A day after President Donald Trump dissed CNN correspondent Jim Acosta during a joint press conference with UK Prime Minister Theresa May, CNN anchor Jake Tapper noted that the White House had canceled a scheduled locked-in interview with National Security Adviser John Bolton.

Tapper is currently in Helsinki for the president’s controversial summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin and will be hosting three hours of State of the Union on Sunday ahead of the summit. Bolton was scheduled to be a featured guest — that is, until Trump decided to tell Acosta he won’t take questions from CNN because they are “fake news” and instead would take questions from Fox News’ John Roberts, who worked at a “real network.”

The president continued to take shots at Acosta and CNN Saturday morning, tweeting that he didn’t see any coverage on “Fake News CNN” of his “takedown” of Acosta. He added that the network was “sooooo wrong in their election coverage” because of course.

Acosta, meanwhile, took exception at Trump’s description of the encounter as a takedown.

Following the president’s attack on CNN and Acosta, Tapper appeared to be highly critical of the reaction of Fox News’ John Roberts, who didn’t immediately defend Acosta and went ahead with his questions. (Roberts subsequently released a statement on the presser flap, saying it was “unfair” to call CNN fake news.”

So, did the White House pull a locked-in interview — which, quite frankly, is unheard of — because the president said CNN wasn’t a real network and that he doesn’t need to take questions from them? Were they worried that Tapper would ask Bolton about the continued attacks on the free press?

Justin Baragona

Justin Baragona is the founder/publisher of Contemptor and a contributor to The Daily Beast. He was previously the Cable News Correspondent for Mediaite and prior to starting Contemptor, he worked on the editorial staff of PoliticusUSA. During that time, he had his work quoted by USA Today and BBC News, among others. Justin began his published career as a political writer for 411Mania. He resides in St. Louis, MO with his wife and pets.

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