Jake Tapper is moving from ABC to CNN, or in media terms, he’s going from left to a little bit more left. Many on Twitter, across the political spectrum, have congratulated CNN for their hire.
Frankly, the Washington Free Beacon summed it up best for me: Former Dem Spokesman Joins Third Place Network.
Tapper’s big break in media was having dated Monica Lewinsky shortly before Bill Clinton made her and her dress famous. Tapper wrote about dating her. That’ll make ya famous and “accomplished” in Washington.
That’s not to take anything away from what has made Mr. Tapper popular lately, even among conservatives. He asks Barack Obama tough questions, when most in the media won’t. That’s not nothing. He does stand out, along with Ed Henry and a few others, for not taking the White House’s line with mind-killing consistency. He makes Jay Carney earn his paycheck.
But his latest tough question to Obama came from the point of view one might expect from someone who once worked for Handgun Control, Inc. Knowing that fact helps explain what I’m about to say next.
On Wednesday, after President Obama announced he was placing VP Joe Biden atop a new gun control effort in the wake of the Sandy Hook massacre, Tapper asked: “This is not the first incident of horrific gun violence of your four years. Where have you been?”
Do you see the spin built into that question? Apparently many very smart conservatives do not.
Is this a question conservatives who favor gun rights ought to be praising? It’s a tough question, alright, but it’s tough from the left and anti-gun point of view. It spurs Obama to defend his record, from a gun control point of view, not a Second Amendment or liberty point of view.
A better question might have noted that Connecticut already has an “assault weapons” ban in place and it didn’t stop the Sandy Hook killer, so what makes the president think renewing the federal ban would do any good? Or, Mr. President, in your opinion, just what is an “assault weapon?” Or, given Biden’s poor record managing the stimulus, what makes the president think he’ll do any better on a gun control commission? Or, you once said that you were working on gun control measures “under the radar.” What were those, and do you judge them successes or failures at this point?
I could go all day like this. No one in the mainstream media, which includes both CNN and ABC, ever does.
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