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.
Update: @AmbJohnBolton had been locked in for tomorrow’s @CNNSOTU. Then the president attacked CNN during his UK presser, and our WH correspondent tried to ask a question. We are told Amb. Bolton remains fully prepared to do the interview but the White House has canceled it.
— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) July 14, 2018
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.
So funny! I just checked out Fake News CNN, for the first time in a long time (they are dying in the ratings), to see if they covered my takedown yesterday of Jim Acosta (actually a nice guy). They didn’t! But they did say I already lost in my meeting with Putin. Fake News……
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 14, 2018
….Remember, it was Little Jeff Z and his people, who are told exactly what to say, who said I could not win the election in that “there was no way to 270” (over & over again) in the Electoral College. I got 306! They were sooooo wrong in their election coverage. Still hurting!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 14, 2018
Acosta, meanwhile, took exception at Trump’s description of the encounter as a takedown.
Takedown? I don’t think so. Perhaps we should even the playing field next time and you can take my question. (You’re right about one thing.. I am a nice guy) https://t.co/CpSV9sqiqK
— Jim Acosta (@Acosta) July 14, 2018
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.”
Old enough to remember when other networks came to the defense of Fox News WH correspondents during the Obama years. Such did not happen here.
Lesson for the kids out there: no one should ever try to do the right thing with the expectation it will ever be reciprocated. https://t.co/Ym7E94k2Wz
— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) July 13, 2018
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?
