CNN’s Jake Tapper Slams Slams Trump’s ’60 minutes’ Legal as’ Nonsense ‘
Jake Tapper has not chopped words when denouncing the lawsuit of President Trump against CBS News about a “60 minutes” segment, which Paramount Global decided by paying Trump $ 16 million.
“I will proudly say this under the Paramount+ Banner, that is, the lawsuit was nonsense against ’60 minutes,” said Tapper on Thursday at the Truth Seekers Summit of Variety & Rolling Stone in New York, referring to the sponsorship of the Paramount ownership of the event.
The CNN anchor and the correspondent of Chief Washington were interviewed on stage by Variety Co-editor-in-chef Ramin Setoodeh. Tapper said that “editing is always done” in TV news and “There was no bias” with the “60 minutes” editing of an interview with Vice President Kamala Harris (who was Trump’s rival in the 2024 elections).
Tapper said that he called an interview in June 2024 on Fox News in which he was asked by “Fox & Friends Weekend” co-gastheer Rachel Campos-Duffy if he would declassify the Epstein files of the government if he chosen president. “Yes, I would do that,” Trump said in the version that was broadcast. However, the “Fox & Friends” segment has edited the rest of his answer, in which he was less decisive: “I think I would do that [release the Epstein files]. I think that less, because you don’t know, you don’t want to influence the lives of people like the fake items there, because they are many fake things with that whole world. “
In the longer answer to the Epstein filed, “it is a bit back,” Tapper said. “That is a more serious example of editing than what ’60 minutes’ with the answer by vice-president Harris to the Middle East, which was in fact one and a half word salad.”
Tapper claimed that the only reason why Paramount arranged the lawsuit was: “Because they wanted to [Skydance-Paramount] Merger to continue. “(Paramount Global, Trump and FCC chairman Brendan Carr said that Trump’s lawsuit was not related to the approval of the FCC for the merger.) Tapper said he believed that CBS News and Paramount would have won the lawsuit. It was about loyalty,” he said, tasked to get the task added, “task added to the task added,” Task is to keep shareholders satisfied and that is a risk in this era, regardless of Donald Trump.
Tapper continued: “There is now a thirst among some to sue media organizations, not for the justice or correcting the file, but for media organizations bankrupt. So that is real. And in this era I think people should be careful about it. But I don’t think that our faith in fact and the other side of the story and the other side of it.”
In January 2025, CNN was commissioned to pay $ 5 million compensation for defaming a security contractor in a story from 2021 by correspondent Alexander Marquardt who was broadcast during the Tapper’s show. The contractor, Zachary Young, charged CNN in 2022, claiming that his livelihood had been destroyed after the network accused him of operating in a “black market” for Afghan refugees who wanted to flee the country. In a statement at the time, a CNN spokesperson said: “We remain proud of our journalists and are 100% dedicated to strong, fearless and honest reporting at CNN, although of course we will take some useful lessons we can from this case.”
Tapper, asked how CNN’s reporting about Trump was different in his second term, said that Trump’s posts received more attention during his first term. In 2025, part of Trump-Net’s social media can try to derive Rosy O’Donnell’s American citizenship as his threat to Rosy O’Donnell’s American citizenship [the] Tap Epstein files or inflation or whatever, “and they do not collect the level of coverage on CNN that they can have in recent years, according to Tapper. What is also different with Trump 2.0: Tapper said: “The people he has around him” offer “no crash barriers, no” and have spent the four previous years for “this attack on the government.” Moreover, Tapper said that there is now a more established right-wing media ecosystem, which ultimately ‘worsened the divisions in our country’.
When covering Trump, Tapper said, it is not always easy to read about what the president really means. “There is what Trump says publicly.” I personally think that what he does is the most important and what he places on social media in the middle of the night is the least important. “
Tapper also spoke about the fateful 27 June 2024, debate between Trump and Biden for which the CNN anchor served as a co-moderator. Biden ended his re -election campaign shortly thereafter. “It was shocking to see personally,” he said. After the answer from Biden in which he said, “We finally have reported medicine,” Tapper said that he had sent “Holy Smokes” a message on his iPad because he didn’t know who would see it. But he said, “I thought,” Holy Fuck. What’s going on? ” … it was not a cold … this was an 81-year-old man who, like many 81-year-olds, had good moments and bad moments. “
During the event, Tapper accepted the 2025 Variety & Rolling Stone Truth Seeker Award, presented by his colleague Abby Phillip, Anker of CNN’s ‘News Night’.
In her introductory comments, Phillip Tapper called a ‘modern Renaissance man’ and called his bestseller ‘Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, the cover-up and his disastrous choice to run again’, co-author of Alex Thompson. In the book, Tapper “does what he does best: annoy people in power by asking the uncomfortable questions and requiring answers to those questions,” said Phillip.
“This is clearly not a job that will necessarily make you a hugely popular person,” Phillip told the audience. “And it may not make you many friends with those people in power. And yet Jake has succeeded in building a career for many years and by many presidents based on his reputation if someone who is not afraid of asking the difficult questions.”
Tapper, 56, came to CNN for the first time in January 2013. “I am very honored to get this prize,” he said. “I am now in a phase of my life where I have a little more gray hair and they start to give you prices on the way to the door. And I take it.”
