Today's guest is Jake Tapper, the host of The Lead on CNN and author of the new book, Race Against Terror: Chasing an Al Qaeda Killer at the Dawn of the Forever War.
He tells Nick Gillespie why it matters that Donald Trump is following Barack Obama's lead in trying terrorists in criminal courts rather than military tribunals, why he believes the Trump administration is unleashing an all-out offensive against journalists critical of the president, and what the legacy media got way wrong with Joe Biden and COVID.
They also discuss the future of journalism in an age of media consolidation, where Free Press upstart Bari Weiss is heading up CBS News—and possibly CNN, too.
Jake Tapper on
The Hellfire Club, Donald Trump's Big Lies, and D.C.'s 'Bullshit Waterfall', May 11, 2018
The Reason Interview goes deep with the artists, activists, entrepreneurs, and policymakers who are making the world a more libertarian—or at least more interesting—place by challenging worn-out orthodoxies and ideas.
5:25–The Bush administration and the war on terror
8:39–The legality and effectiveness of torture
17:06–President Trump's approach to foreign policy
22:19–Media censorship and the FCC
29:43–CBS News, CNN, and the challenges facing legacy media
40:14–The rise of independent media
52:07–Joe Biden's decline and its impact on the Democratic Party
58:37–What is being underreported in the second Trump administration?
1:06:05–Generational shifts in political views
Transcript
This is an AI-generated, AI-edited transcript. Check all quotes against the audio for accuracy.
Nick Gillespie: Jake Tapper, thanks for talking to Reason.
Jake Tapper: It's great to be here. Thank you.
The new book is Race Against Terror: Chasing an Al-Qaeda Killer at the Dawn of the Forever War. We're going to talk about that. We're going to talk about Trump's attitudes toward the press. We're going to talk a little bit about Joe Biden. And have we actually digested the debacle that was the final months of the Joe Biden presidency?
But let's talk about Race Against Terror: Chasing an Al-Qaeda Killer at the Dawn of the Forever War. This takes us back 25 years almost—to 9/11, Afghanistan, and the beginning of what was called the global war on terror, the global war on terrorism. What brought you back to this topic? Because you've already written about Afghanistan.
So this story is the story of the one and only foreign terrorist that was brought to the U.S. to be tried in a criminal court for killing service members abroad.
I first got interested in the story because I heard about it just randomly at my son's birthday party. One of the prosecutors was a fellow—and he told me the story. He said something about The Outpost, and I said, "That book was really difficult to write because the military keeps bad records and they don't share them."
He said, "Tell me about it." And then he proceeds to tell the story about how he had to prove—he and his colleagues had to prove a case—a criminal case, that would be upheld in court against a terrorist for actions on the battlefield that took place in 2003. And an attempt to blow up the U.S. embassy in Nigeria not long after that. And like all of the sleuthing and the detective work that they all had to do.
It was just this incredible story about all the stuff I love from police procedurals like CSI or Cold Case or whatever. How do you prove a case?
And yeah, it reads—I mean, it's incredible—because the Al-Qaeda killer, who is known…I can't pronounce his actual Nigerian name, but he's known as Spin Ghul. He showed up in Italy. He was arrested by Italian authorities and was bragging to them, basically that, "I killed American soldiers."
Yeah. Very proud of it. Very proud.
Yeah. But then they had to prove it, because that was his assertion, right?
They had to prove it because it was the Obama years, and Obama had closed off Gitmo from any new terrorist suspects. Obama wanted to try terrorists in criminal court. And that was really controversial at the time. People might not remember, but—Trump is trying to do it now. Spin Ghul was the first terrorist tried like this. Trump is trying to do it with a guy named Jafar. Not controversial at all—no hue and outcry. The guy is sitting—this terrorist is sitting in a cell not far from where you and I are sitting, in Virginia, and nobody's acting afraid about it.
But at the time, people acted as though these terrorists had superhuman powers, and if you brought them to Manhattan or Brooklyn, they would escape and wreak havoc.
But in any case, the sleuthing—what was so interesting to me about it because it was just proving a case that was not just cold. I mean nobody…people are generally not brought to court for killing people in a war. It just generally doesn't happen. So the sleuthing was so interesting.
And then the subtext also became the different ways—and this wasn't intentional in terms of like, I wasn't trying to give a history of the war on terror—but you had to tell it. You had to describe what was different about Bush, to Obama, to Trump, because it was part of the hurdles that these prosecutors and FBI agents had to jump over.
Can you explain that a little bit? Again, this is history worth recovering. A couple of weeks ago, I talked to Dan Krauss, who came out with a new documentary about Afghanistan called Bodyguard of Lies, and it again—you know, it's amazing. This is recent history, but it feels like a million years ago, and we've forgotten all the nuances.
The Bush administration—what was their approach to the war on terror, and particularly to military combatants—or noncombatants, but just suspected terrorists? How did they deal with people like that?
Well, they basically set up an entirely new system of law. Now, they would argue that it was rooted in previous systems. But the idea is, these are not criminals, they're enemy combatants. Which is not the same as a prisoner of war, by the way. Prisoners of war have different rights. These are enemy combatants. We're going to send them to Guantanamo Bay. We are going to engage in enhanced interrogation—or what the rest of the world calls torture. We are going to engage in extraordinary rendition—or what the rest of the world calls kidnapping.
And to give them the benefit of the doubt, they were thrown into this situation where America and the world are terrified because 3,000 Americans, almost, had been killed in this attack. And they feel like they can't deal with it in the normal system of criminal laws and justice. And so they create this other system.
Now, that system proved problematic in many, many ways, as your readers and viewers and listeners know very well. One of them is, it didn't exactly endear the rest of the world to the United States.
So when I'm talking about—when I write in this period of 2011, and we're dealing with the Italian government—has this Al-Qaeda terrorist who claims he has killed Americans and tried to blow up the U.S. Embassy. The Italians are not just eager to hand him over to the Americans. I mean, they don't want him. They don't want to hold him. But they will not turn him over if he's going to Gitmo. They will not turn him over if he is going to a military tribunal. And they will not turn him over if the death penalty is on the table.
And the Italians at this point are, by the way, kind of fed up. They have just prosecuted, successfully, a number of CIA agents in absentia, and military officers—American military officers—for kidnapping, for extraordinary rendition of an Egyptian cleric from the streets of Italy.
Now we're in the Obama era, and Obama has what you might want to call a very aspirational notion of how this should be done. He thinks that the criminal courts are good enough. He doesn't follow through on that entirely, because he creates this Gitmo commission to examine everybody in Guantanamo Bay. Some people, he says, can go abroad to other prisons or other countries. Some people can be tried in criminal courts here in the United States. And then there's this third group that is largely still in Gitmo: people that are too dangerous to let go, but the evidence against them is too tainted for even a military tribunal.
So that's where Spin Ghul drops in, in the middle of all of this.
Yeah, so remind us a little bit, where were you in terms of things like putting a suspected terrorist in Gitmo without any kind of due process or any kind of military tribunals that the Red Cross or other organizations would send. Because Reason—you know, it was an interesting book to read because it's a thriller even though you know the outcome. But it was also—it reminded me, like, it was very…I'm not saying it's heroic in any way shape or form, but it was very uncomfortable.
You know what, like, torture and just picking people up off the streets and dropping them in kind of black sites where who knows who is torturing them, etc. Like to speak out against that was considered kind of anti-American at the time.
Yeah, it sure was. Look, Nick, I mean, one of the things I admire about you and the work you guys do is that it's never a good time to be—it's never a comfortable time to be a libertarian. Right?
There were 15 minutes in 2014 when it was looking to be quite a lot.
And you know, being right in your own time is often uncomfortable. That should be your motto.
But yeah. I mean, the thing about the torture, in addition to the questions about whether or not it was effective to begin with, is that it created a whole bunch of situations where terrorists—criminals—could not be successfully put away.
And one of the things that was interesting about this case was, since it started in 2011 during the Obama years, there was this effort to do everything by the book.
But it hadn't always been done that way.
There's this one chapter that was fun to write and interesting to write—it takes place in 2002. It is the capture of a terrorist accomplice named Abu Zubaydah, who was in Pakistan. The FBI is part of this, and they go in there. They seize Abu Zubaydah's stuff. Then the CIA takes over—John Kiriakou and others—and nothing having to do with Abu Zubaydah, who's still at Gitmo today, is ever usable again because it's so tainted. But the FBI was still doing things by the book, and the stuff that they had—there was some evidence there that was part of the trial against Spin Ghul.
So what the book—and I didn't, it's not a polemic; you can read it and like it; a progressive can read it and like it. Hugh Hewitt read it and said he thought this proves why military tribunals and Gitmo are the way to go. I didn't write it to be a political statement. It's just a thriller with political facts.
But I personally do think that like that stuff having to do with tainting evidence because of enhanced interrogation or torture makes us less safe. And the reason I think that is because if Spin Ghul had been captured during the Bush era, 2008, he probably would have been thrown in Gitmo. There would not have been this exhaustive, fascinating search for evidence against him. And then ultimately, probably—just if you look at the history of detainees at Gitmo—probably after 10 years somebody would have said, "This guy doesn't belong here. We don't have any evidence against him. He's just some crazy guy who claimed he did all this stuff. We can't prove it." And he probably would have been sent to Niger, or Saudi Arabia, or Oman, or wherever. And then he probably would have gone and tried to kill as many Americans as he could. Because that was his purpose in life. I mean, no one's claiming these are good people.
No, no, no. I mean, one of the ironies that comes out in the book is that Spin Ghul himself was like, "No! Treat me like an enemy combatant. I'm not a criminal. I am a terrorist. I am like hellfire from Allah to kill Americans. That's what I exist for."
He wanted to go to the Hague.
He was demanding that he talk to Ban Ki-moon and President Obama. He had a very grandiose view of himself, as zealots and people who commit violence in the name of extremism often do.
The ideological point of the book, it strikes me—which I agree with completely—is that ultimately this is a vindication of an approach to terrorism to say, "We are going, as Americans, are going to follow the rule of law and due process, because that is a defining attribute of us."
And it's a rejection of Bush-era policies—many of which I'm sure are still going on but are just not acknowledged by the government—where we do just torture people to tell us what we want to hear. That we put them in black sites. We have other countries or other people murder people, etc.
Is it your argument, ultimately, that torture turns out not to be very good at getting information? That putting people in places like Gitmo really doesn't make us safer? We don't gain the information or we lose sight of these people? That we are in a better place, not just morally but also materially, by doing this kind of criminal prosecution?
Well, I'm not taking a position per se on that. I mean, I think that it is very difficult to make a case for torture just in terms of results. Forgetting the morality of it all or the American ideals of it all. But I think it's very difficult to make the case for it in terms of results. I just think its difficult to say.
Now, does that mean…I don't know that I would have done anything differently than Obama when it comes to the 15 guys who are still at Gitmo: too dangerous to release, and yet the evidence against them is too tainted to prosecute. So what do you do? I don't know.
I do think that it is effective. I think that on Earth Two, where Spin Ghul is picked up in the Bush years, he's free and killing people. It doesn't spoil the book to say that Spin Ghul right now is in a supermax in Colorado. And he's, you know—but that said…
So this is the first terrorist ever tried in the court, the U.S. criminal court, for killing service members abroad. Trump is trying to do the second. This guy Jafar, who is responsible for the Abbey Gate bombing—or is part of…very statement-based. It's based on what he has confessed to. Before the FBI got hold of Jafar and brought him to this country, and there was no hue and outcry the way there was when the Obama years.
Which either suggests that we as a society have evolved—or that only Nixon can go to China, in terms of Trump and terrorism, I guess. But before that, he was in the hands of the Pakistanis.
I wonder about that evidence against Jafar. Because it has been in previous cases—that you learn about when you read the book—it has evidence against these confessed terrorists has been thrown out because of whatever happened to them while they were under the duration of either the CIA at a black site or the Rwandan government or whatever.
I am worried about the Jafar prosecution because the Trump Justice Department is winnowing their department—and the Eastern District of Virginia—of experts. People who know what they're doing, who know how to prove a case against a guy like this. These are not easy cases.
And we're replacing… There was a guy in charge of the Jafar case—Michael Ben'Ary—who was fired for this ridiculous reason. Some MAGA person speculated that because he'd worked under Lisa Monaco at the Deputy Attorney General department, that he was part of the deep state or whatever. He got fired. He wrote a letter saying this weakens the case against Jafar.
How do you feel about Trump more broadly, in terms of things like the war on terror or foreign policy? Because the one thing we know for sure is that Bush's foreign policy was disastrous. Obama's was nothing to write home about. Trump and Biden kind of are different—I'm not saying they're the same thing—but clearly different.
Have we evolved out of…are we really done with the "global war on terror" kind of era of foreign policy?
I don't think it's done with us, is the bottom line. I mean, I think as long as there are dozens, hundreds, thousands—whatever—of radicalized Islamists who are willing to kill Americans and target Westerners, the war is not done with us.
There was an attack, an ISIS-inspired attack, by an American in New Orleans at New Year's this year. So I don't think we're done with it.
I think Trump…he's a complicated guy and I have a lot of complicated feelings about his foreign policy. I mean, I think you can look at…There's a ceasefire in Gaza right now. That's empirically a good thing. People might not like what happened with the strikes against Iran's nuclear infrastructure, but I think the fact that they don't have it is a good thing.
Right. And that he didn't follow it up. I mean, he was saying, "This is something we're gonna do but we're not gonna stick around."
Yeah. "We're not." That's it. "We're dropping the bombs on their facilities, and then we're out." I mean, I think there's…to be cautiously optimistic about.
I also think he's exercising a mix of hard power and soft power. His hard power is the threat of tariffs, the threat of force.
Blowing up Venezuelan boats.
Well, that's another question. So that's a different part of the war on terror powers.
And this is something that you guys at Reason always know, which is like: Once a president establishes for himself that he has a shiny toy, good luck getting that toy ever wrested away from whoever the president is.
Bush used drones. Obama multiplied it by 100. And now Trump is using the same arguments to:
A) label Antifa a domestic terrorist group—which I'm not sure he even has the power to do. And then
B) use these powers to strike terrorists abroad, like going after al-Awlaki or whoever in Yemen.
Using those same powers and saying, "We're going to use them against what we're calling narco-terrorists," because they're killing 100,000 Americans a year through fentanyl.
Which is not really—I mean, it's tragic—but it's not really the same thing as terrorists blowing up Americans in embassies. To say, "We're selling drugs and Americans are overdosing on it."
I don't shed a tear for any narco-terrorist dying, but like I don't know that it's sane.
And as Rand Paul points out, when it comes to those strikes on these boats from Venezuela or Colombia or whatever—even if you're wrong only 25 percent of the time—that's 25 percent of the time you're killing innocent people. And also, there's no judicial process for this.
So I would say, ultimately, as with all presidents, I think it's a mixed bag. I do think it's a positive development that President Trump is using the criminal court system to prosecute Jafar. I don't know that they even remember that it was really controversial to do this in the Obama years.
I had Seb Gorka on specifically to ask him—
Dr. Gorka on this podcast
I had Dr. Gorka on to ask him about this. And now that I know so much about this from The Race Against Terror book, I'm very intrigued by it. I don't think he even had…I don't know that he knew that this had been controversial back in 2011 or 2012.
But either way, I take it as a positive development that President Trump thinks we can use the criminal courts to prosecute foreign terrorists captured abroad. I think that's a good thing.
Yeah. And it is strange that Trump talked a lot actually in 2016—and certainly in 2024—"I'm not doing regime change," even as now he and J.D. Vance are explicitly talking about regime change in Venezuela. So it's like there's something rhyming here, but it seems slightly better. You know, it's not totalizing like it was 20 years ago.
Yeah. TBD when it comes to the South America thing. Because I don't know how much of that is chest-thumping and how much of that is like… I mean, are they really—I can't see them ever sending ground troops anywhere.
You know that the U.S. and Latin America—or South America—have a terrible history. And hopefully, I thought we were past the military version of it. But that remains to be seen.
If we can, let's talk about Trump domestically. It's only been about a month since Brendan Carr, Trump's FCC chair—as well as Trump himself—explicitly said that Jimmy Kimmel, basically, that Disney and ABC should fire Jimmy Kimmel because airing him is not in the public interest. A lot of things along those lines.
And again, this is something else. I mean, that's a month ago, but it seems like it was a decade ago. Almost, right?
And you were very forceful in saying that, in your mind, this was the most direct threat to a free press that you've seen in your lifetime. Do you stand by that? And how are you thinking about it now, a month on?
I absolutely stand by it.
Look, there have been a lot of egregious examples. I don't like what the Biden administration did with social media companies—a lot of it was confirmed years later. But in terms of… I mean, there's a difference between…They used a very slippery slope—which is always the argument—which is, if you say, "Don't put this on the internet because it's going to hurt people," and the social media companies comply, we're in the middle of a once-in-a-century pandemic, etc., etc. Then the next thing they're gonna do is start removing stuff that is just politically untenable, like the lab leak theory, which to me is still insane.
Look, I get that there's anti-Asian hate crime out there, and that's horrific and obviously should be condemned. But I think most Americans are capable of having a conversation about the Chinese government as a force for evil or ill—versus people of Asian descent, or even Chinese citizens.
So I found a lot of it really, really troubling.
But the argument that—I mean, I stood up when the Obama administration was saying that Fox was not a legitimate news organization, when they were declaring that from the White House podium. I said—and I got a lot of shit for it, and I still get shit for it to this day—"Why is it appropriate for a White House to label a credentialed news organization not legitimate?"
This having nothing to do with my feelings about Fox. My feelings about Fox are irrelevant, really. First of all, in 2009, that was a very different Fox than what we have now. And second of all, it's a question about why is it appropriate for the White House to do this. So I do have a history of this.
I will say that this was the most direct. Brendan Carr goes on the podcast of a MAGA right-wing person and says, "I don't like this speech, and Disney should act. And the local affiliates that air this quote-unquote garbage should stop airing it."
Which was followed by the largest owner of local TV stations, Nexstar—which needs Brendan Carr for some business transactions they want to do. Not just approval, but to lift a limit on how many households they can reach. They need Brendan Carr. And it was basically, "Aye aye, sir, how high do you want us to jump?" And they did that.
I have not seen ever before a direct infringement on the right to free speech like that before ever.
I think we both might be—thankfully, we're not very young anymore—but we're too young for LBJ and whatnot. But yeah, this is…
I mean, I wrote a piece for The Free Press: "Abolish the FCC," in the wake of this. Partly because there is no reason, I think, why the government or a group called the FCC should have the ability to license content in any way, shape, or form. I realize that is an outlier position, but…
Do you feel like this threat—this most recent threat—plus the lawsuit that Trump is bringing against CBS, and he's done against other broadcasts or other news organizations… is it actually having a chilling effect? Or are people developing a backbone in the regulated media to push back?
Well, both is the answer.
I think the Trump assertions of… Look, anybody has the right to sue anybody in this country. And corporations don't have to acquiesce if they don't want to.
One of the things that's troubling is that this is coming at the same time that, for want of a better term, the oligarchs are out oligarching. And they are very susceptible to what one CBS News employee called "legalized bribery," to me.
And look, the lawsuit against CBS News was absolute nonsense. The idea that CBS, in making an edit like that, was defaming President Trump in any way… it was an edit to a Kamala Harris interview. And yeah, she spoke in word salads. They took one clip and used it, and they took another clip and used it.
And as you showed on CNN, on your show, that Fox News had done the same thing for Donald Trump. None of this rises to the level of even notice, much less legal action.
Yeah. Look, I'm not crazy about taped interviews to begin with, because I think people get lazy in terms of the talkers—they're not concise. They're long.
But generally speaking, most of the time, no every time, that we're trying to edit an interview we're just trying to save time. "Ok, here's this 20 minutes of whatever. Can we find like a minute that answers the question?" Because that's the business here.
And that's what 60 Minutes was doing. That lawsuit was nonsense. And the only reason, in my view, that it was settled was because Shari Redstone wanted this merger to go through. She wanted Brendan Carr….
And in the middle of this, Colbert gets fired. And while you can make the argument that there is an economic issue when it comes to late night in general—including Colbert's show—announcing it then? There's no reason for it, other than to announce it so as to please Trump and Brendan Carr.
There's no other reason to announce it then just in terms of television. You would announce it on your own terms after the New Year or something like that. The only reason to do it during this merger week was to please Trump.
The Stephanopoulos interview is a different thing, because I also suspect there was a lot of discovery that nobody wants all their emails and text messages turned over.
But that said, now President Trump is using this stuff to argue that he's constantly defamed, that he's consistently attacked by the media unfairly. And it's not true. I mean, I see stuff about him that's not fair, of course. Yeah. So I think there is a chilling effect.
What are you worried about? What comes next? What does the White House do next to turn the pressure up even higher?
Well, I mean, they're already doing it to CBS News.
There's already… I mean, Bari Weiss—who I like and have only the highest hopes for, and I don't think is… Look, I think legacy media—Nick, you and I have been talking about this for a long time—I think the legacy media has work to do. Absolutely. In terms of credibility, in terms of inclusivity of voices. Not just from the right, by the way, but also libertarians, independents, and all the rest.
But I mean, the degree to which it feels as though President Trump feels very empowered… He only insults NBC and ABC when he talks about networks. He always excludes CBS now, ever since the Ellisons took over. And he says, "Larry Ellison is a good friend of mine. He's a good guy, blah blah blah. They're gonna make it fair, da da da da."
Which, you know, that's not how presidents should be talking about people who cover them. Presidents in general should think we're all pains in the ass. Every president. About every news outlet.
Well, we're also talking about a president who—and I'm jumping ahead now a little bit—but we're talking about a president who, in response to the No Kings rallies or marches, released an AI video where he is wearing a crown and literally dumped shit on protesters.
So we're talking about a different president. Now, what does the media do to push back against this in any kind of meaningful way?
Well, I think, first of all, we have an obligation to point out that…
You know, when Hillary Clinton referred to half of Trump supporters in 2016 as fitting in a "basket of deplorables," or when Joe Biden said what he said about Donald Trump's supporters being "garbage" or whatever he said—I know that's disputed. Those were considered gaffes.
Those were, you know, as Michael Kinsley's famous saying that, "a gaffe is when a politician accidentally tells the truth." But those were accidents. Those were mistakes. Them accidentally revealing what they really think about millions of Americans.
But here's Donald Trump, in a strategic way, showing himself dropping shit not on MS-13 gang members, not on Antifa rioters, but on Americans demonstrating peacefully. The No Kings rallies were peaceful—largely, as far as I know.
They were virtually completely peaceful, yeah.
Yeah. And certainly the ones in the AI were that. If you look closely, you can see he's dropping shit on a woman holding a baby. He's dropping shit on an American flag.
So I think it's incumbent upon us to cover the president—including when he does things like that. We don't have to use adjectives. Just use verbs.
This is the president…as a strategy, attacking millions of Americans and dividing the country. That is what he is doing.
And then you ask people for their opinions on it. But I think we can't shy away from covering it.
But at the same time, it's not for us in the news media—unless you're an opinion journalist—to say how you feel about it. You just state the facts of it and let opinion people talk about it.
And also, we have to cover everything else he's doing, whether you like it or not: tariffs, Mideast peace. There's a lot going on.
Do you—David Ellison, who installed Barry Weiss—and I should say I'm friends with Barry; I write for The Free Press from time to time—installed her as the editor in chief at CBS News. He's also rumored to be talking about buying CNN. Puck and others have said that if he does that, he's going to extend her role to CNN.
How would you feel about Barry Weiss being the head of CNN's operation?
I only know her personally. I don't know her professionally, so I can't really say.
I read The Free Press. I subscribe to The Free Press, as you know—as one of many places I read.
I read Reason. I read you know, whatever. I read a lot. And I try to read as many perspectives that I don't think automatically or what I knee-jerk think.
And you know, sometimes I like it, sometimes I don't. Just like every publication I read.
I don't know. I mean, I suspect it would be fine. I mean I look at legacy media, and I see flaws. And I think there are flaws that need to be fixed.
What are the biggest flaws—and you're considering CNN should be considered legacy media, even though it's the original cable show. Fox News is legacy media at this point.
What's the big failing of legacy media right now, do you think?
Well, look. I mean, Fox has its own issues, right?
I don't think I'm spilling any secrets when I say they are commodifying preaching to the choir. That is a channel for Trump supporters—not for conservatives, not for Republicans. It is for Trump's supporters.
Very seldom—although there is that one woman on Outnumbered—very seldom are there voices that are allowed to criticize Donald Trump or even question what he's doing. Period. Full stop.
There is another channel on cable that is the exact mirror image of that, and that is commodifying ideology. And that's fine. I think that's a fine supplement for a news diet. I don't think it's a news diet.
Ideological media has been part of this country since it was founded.
I think legacy media, as a general rule—and this is difficult to do in an era of cost-cutting, etc.—but I think we should be doing more stories outside the Delta Shuttle corridor and Los Angeles. I think we need to be covering the heartland more.
Like, if I had unlimited funds and I were running any network—CNN, let's say—I would have a big office in Kansas City.
Could you move—I mean, you film out of D.C.—would you move? Even to Philadelphia would be…I mean, it's in the Acela corridor, but that would be radically different, wouldn't it?
I mean, yes. I think that you would want to go to—I don't know that I would.
Look, I mean, it's such an interesting question because when CNN was founded, it was founded in Atlanta. And that was done purposely. And I don't know that that made CNN different ideologically than any other network.
But I think there should be more voices from all over the country included in coverage. And I do think that the biggest bias is often story selection. It's not necessarily in coverage. It's: Are we covering this? Are we covering that?
And I just think ideologically, we need to expand our aperture in terms of what we think is news. And I don't only mean issues that conservatives are interested in or libertarians are interested in. But I'm also interested in: Are we covering the opioid crisis enough? Are we covering poverty in America enough?
I just think there are all sorts of things we should…we could be doing better. And that's what I would do.
But the problem is—one of the problems is—this is happening at a time of media consolidation. It's happening at a time of oligarchs taking over news media. And it's also happening at a time where there is this commodification of rage-bait, of making people hate each other.
And I don't just mean Fox or MS. I also mean social media driving people away from each other. Villainizing each other.
CNN as a network has flat-to-falling ratings. The cable system writ large seems to be fading. I think most networks had peak years in 2020 for a variety of reasons that are probably not going to come back anytime soon.
Cable as a distribution mechanism is dying. I mean, C-SPAN, of all things, has to come up with a radically new business model because not enough people subscribe to cable anymore.
How much of it is that when industries are kind of sunsetting, they don't actually experiment, they don't do something new—they just kind of double and triple down on what has brought them to decline in the first place?
First of all, I think everyone's ratings are going down. Including Fox.
They're just losing viewers at a slower rate than others.
Or they have a bigger audience, but it's down from where it was a year ago—and 4 or 5 years ago, for sure.
Cable is…the cord-cutting is a real thing. But it's not just the cord-cutting.
There is just a plate tectonic shift in how we are all, as individuals, consuming information.
So, I've written eight books now, and the difference between how much people factor in e-books and audiobooks today is light-years away from just 2 years ago. There is a recognition now that people are listening to books and reading them on their phones in a way that just a few years ago people did not recognize—they were only looking at hardcover.
It's everything. It's entertainment. It's news. It's movies. It's everything. And everybody's trying to figure out how to do it.
I don't know what the future is. I know that Mark Thompson, who is our boss at CNN, he helped The New York Times get from a newspaper with a website to a website with a newspaper.
Or a game company with a newspaper, right?
A game and recipe company with a newsletter. Hey, I play those games every day.
You know, it's interesting because your—was your first book, or one of your first books, about Jesse "The Body" Ventura?
That was the first one, yeah.
And this is going back—you started kind of in a big way… I mean, you were at Philadelphia magazine, if I'm remembering correctly, but at Salon, which is still soldiering on and things like that.
Is the decline of the networks—legacy or otherwise—is that being supplanted by another kind of rush toward independent journalism or alternative journalism? Or is it just that credibility among media people everywhere is kind of fatal?
I don't know where it's going to land.
I mean, people can say, "Compare the ratings for, let's say, CBS Evening News with Joe Rogan." Well, they're not doing the same thing, right?
People might be getting information from both of them, but they're not doing the same thing. So I don't think that's a fair comparison. But I do think—and I'm not belittling Rogan—he's created this giant empire based on long-form, authentic conversations.
But he's not calling himself an expert on anything. And these aren't news reports.
I just think we, as reporters, need to figure out how to get in that space where viewers are.
Publishing has figured it out, in the sense of audiobooks and Kindle books. That's how…basically that's how I consume books now. I'm listening to them in my car and then I'm reading them on my phone.
So how do we get there? I don't know. CNN has been doing a lot more in terms of the vertical video space. And that's different, right?
People don't want a highly produced news report in that space. They want—or they seem to want—a much more authentic, produced but Instagram or TikTok-friendly presentation of information in under three minutes.
So I don't know. We're all just trying to figure this out.
Yeah, I mean, and it's interesting to see the experimentation. I know even at Reason, we started our video site in late 2007, and our signature were long-form documentaries and interview programs.
We are now…our biggest successes with short-form, info-rich vertical videos. So there's actual information, reporting, and things like that.
But does it feel like—you know, you may be one of a dying breed, right? Where you are an old-style newsman. You have a politics, but it's subsidiary to the journalism that you're doing.
Do you think your days as a kind of, you know, Wolf Blitzer–type voice of authority—are those days numbered?
I don't think so. Because I think there will always be a need for somebody who is not a Democrat, not a Republican, who is able to moderate debates. Who is able to perform—or provide, rather—a news service and accounting of the day.
Who can have on Speaker Johnson, who can have on Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic leader. I think there's always going to be a need for that.
I don't know the format for that in 5 years, 10 years.
While you and I are both having success in these short vertical videos—CNN and Reason—there is also simultaneously—and this is fascinating—this explosion of these incredibly long-form podcasts or YouTube podcasts. Hour-long conversations. Three-hour-long conversations, in the case of Joe Rogan, sometimes. Right?
So, I don't know where this lands. I just know that I think we, as you note, need to experiment, need to get out there, need to try stuff. Hue closely to the brand of nonpartisan, nonideological, trying to get information.
Yeah, you stand up for facts. And yeah, you stand up for democracy. But as a general note, I'm not saying that like this politician is better than that politician. I just think we're all trying to figure out how to get there.
I don't see any news organizations, by the way—in terms of legacy media—knocking the cover off the ball in terms of getting to that place.
So I think there is an opening.
CNN is gonna launch a streaming service. I hope that we are able to get in that space. And I hope people, you know…
What happened to CNN+? Because you guys—you took a swing at this, right? That lasted, what, a week or something?
Yeah, that didn't really…
So what happened was—that was an attempt by the previous regime—Jeff Zucker and his team—to get into the streaming space. And there were other shows that were non-normal, like me having a book club, or Anderson having a parenting show.
But my book club was honestly just for CNN. No one's covered it this way, but that was us trying to get into the book space. Like, right now—although it's changing a little bit—but right now, the book space is 60 Minutes and CBS Sunday Morning, and then you go on Colbert, and maybe you do Today Show or whatever.
And it was us trying to get into the book space by offering a half hour to 45 minutes with the author. It was a way for us to try to get in early on that stuff.
But in any case, what happened was that happened right around the time Discovery took over. That it became Warner Bros. Discovery. And they came in, and they had a lot of debt, and they had this huge expense that three weeks into it, or whatever it was, had not caught fire. And most things take years to build.
It's interesting because Fox also—I mean, Fox has Fox Nation—but it does not seem to be particularly robust. What, in the new CNN streaming service, are the types of things you'll be doing for that?
Well, I think my show is going to be on it. And then I have a bunch of ideas of stuff I want to do for them once it's off the ground.
But right now, I've been told that since The Lead is going to be one of the shows on the streaming, just to focus on The Lead. And I'm talking to them right now about other stuff I could do that would be value-added.
And in terms of the long-form interview space—where there is this ability, whether it's on streaming or podcasts or whatever—to do a long interview with somebody who's a newsmaker that they might find appealing.
If you're canoeing with Nick Gillespie—I mean, maybe somebody would watch that. I don't know.
Yeah, I don't think anybody wants to see that. And I don't blame them for that.
But it is true. I mean, one of the great things about long-form possibilities, which are easier to do now that we're freed from, you know, network kind of patterns or templates or whatever—is that people run out of bullshit to say. Right?
What I mean is, if you're talking to somebody like Mike Johnson, and he's got to do a second take at a topic, it's probably going to be less hype and more, hopefully, thoughtful or thoughtless in a way.
Well, you tell me, because you do this. Do you think…? I mean, most libertarian politicians are pretty candid, so I don't know. I don't know what it would be like. It would be interesting.
I would be interested to see—like, if I go, I'm just making this all up, Ok? But if I got oyster fishing with Mike Johnson in Louisiana, right? Is he less inclined to talk like a speaker on TV if he's, you know, knee-deep in a bayou? I mean, like, I don't know.
One of the things I think everybody wants out there—or it seems to be, at least, based on viewing patterns in the new media is authenticity. "This is actually what this person thinks." Now, they might be nuts and they might be wrong, but they're getting millions of viewers.
I think… The way I think about it is…it's interesting that his career seems to be mostly over now—but Howard Stern, going back to the '80s… his genius was that people—celebrities or other public figures—were coming on, and they would have three or four talking points. And he would have them hurry through those, and then ask, "Keep talking," and they would say something unguarded.
And that was authentic. It was interesting. It was often embarrassing or humiliating or illuminating. And I mean, I think that's the hope. Like, I don't want to see Mike Johnson for 30 seconds, because I can figure out what he's going to say. But maybe in the second or the last 10 minutes of an hour-long interview, he might actually get around to saying what he really thinks. And that matters.
Howard is such an interesting character or case study. Because he also makes it look easy because he's done a lot of research. He knows a lot about the people and he's asking them about obscure…
Like, there's this famous fight that took place in the early days of SNL, when Chevy Chase and Bill Murray got into a fight. I forget who broke it up—it was like Billy Joel. It was this very unlikely group that broke it up.
There's a video going around of each one of those individuals, at a different point in the last 20 years, being asked about it by Howard. And it's really just illuminating and interesting.
Howard's ability to attract guests, and also to go long—which means you're likely going to start getting some good stuff at some point, unless the person's a complete dud. And also to have information and know what's interesting, is really unparalleled. There's no one else doing it.
I mean, Charlie Rose was doing a version of it for a while before his troubles. But there really isn't anything that's replaced it. I mean, the guy from Inside the Acting Studio was doing it for a little while.
Right. James Lipton. And Bill Maher sometimes does a version of it in his podcast before it devolves into kind of high, drunken chatter.
But I think it's also partly if you're a fan, you want to ask these people the questions that fans have, as opposed to, "I am a very serious person. Let's talk about very serious things."
Yeah. Club Random—is Club Random still going on?
I thought he said he was going to…maybe I misunderstood. I thought they weren't going to do it anymore or something. But like no, Club Random's really good.
But it also, you know, then you need somebody to curate it afterward. Because I don't have eight hours a day to listen to podcasts. I want somebody afterwards to clean it up.
Let me ask you about—I guess it was earlier this year, right? You published a book about Biden…
Original Sin, in May, with Alex Thompson.
And what was stunning to me—it's a fascinating book—you took a huge amount of shit for it. Because it's like, "Why weren't you doing this in real time?" Can you explain that a little bit? Like, at what point did you think it became a kind of journalistic imperative to say, "You know what? This guy, he's not there anymore."
I mean, I, along with everybody else in the mainstream media—in the legacy media—knew that when he took office, he was older and showing signs of age.
I didn't see huge evidence of acuity issues until…you know, 2023, maybe. And even then, you'd ask people what's going on and they'd insist—
I mean, look. People in the White House were lying. Not just to not just journalists, but they were lying to Democrats.
Oh, they were lying to themselves, I'm sure, as well.
And I would see weird moments, but it wasn't… Look, I had the same reaction to the debate that everybody else did. I just had a better view of it, which is this guy cannot form a coherent sentence.
He's there to show he's up to the task, and he's proving the exact opposite. He can't even articulate a vision for the country, or even argue why he should be entrusted with the most powerful job in the world.
So, I mean, I would say, look—I wish I had… I can look back and say I wish I'd done more reporting on it. But I will also say the people that were writing about it were doing good journalism.
And I include my co-author Alex. You know, some other people wrote commentary pieces. That's a little different.
But in terms of journalism—from The Wall Street Journal, they did it in June. There wasn't a ton of investigative work being done about what was going on behind the scenes, because people were not talking.
I mean, conservatives were making fun of Biden as old and slow and this and that. But there wasn't any investigative work that was like, "And here's the smoking gun."
Do you think we've processed it as a country?
Because the Trump presidency—like winning—I'm not saying he shouldn't have won or didn't win in 2016, but it was such a weird thing that nobody saw coming. That's a lot to process.
And then he governed kind of as a centrist Republican, really, that first term around. You could—there are issues—but he wasn't the way he is now.
But then Biden—that is another giant thing to digest. The idea that you're like, "Oh my God, this guy is out of it. When did this start? It's unmistakable. It's unavoidable."
And now we don't talk about it anymore.
The other thing that's a huge wrinkle in the whole thing about when we look back on it—is that, I think it was February or March or April, I forget the exact date. But his last State of the Union address—Biden's—it was good. It was fine.
And he actually had moments of playing off the crowd and whatever. I think that did a lot to shut people up. Because remember, that came after the Hur report. The Hur report came out in which Hur accurately described Biden as seeming like a well-meaning elderly man with a poor memory. And got an untold amount of shit for it.
And then he did the State of the Union, Biden, and he seemed fine. Old, but fine.
And then came the debate.
I don't know about the American people. I think that the Democratic Party has yet to reckon with this. I think that the progressives—no, it's not the progressives—it's the Democrats, the Democratic base. It's not the progressive base. The progressive base saw what happened because they never loved Joe Biden to begin with.
And they recognize it as an opportunity for them to kind of move into a more powerful position within the party, I think.
That's probably true. Although, Joe Biden was probably the most progressive president.
Absolutely. The Washington Post called him the most liberal candidate the Democrats have ever run for the presidency, and I think that was accurate going in, but—
That's true in 2024—not in 2020.
In 2020, he was kind of like "Centrist Joe," which is who he was his entire career. But then, to unite the party, they agreed to take on all this stuff. And then, because I think he wasn't really paying attention—because he didn't have the wherewithal—he just outsourced the border to the activist wing of his party.
I think that the degree to which Democrat voters have yet to reckon with the fact that they were lied to by Democratic officials. and the reluctance of Democratic officials to reckon with the fact that Joe Biden and his inner circle did the country dirty and did the Democratic Party dirty.
I think that's still a problem.
And I think it's one of the reasons why Democratic approval ratings are still so low. Who knows what's going to happen in the midterms? But I don't think they're doing themselves any favors.
And I see it online all the time, still. Just this reaction like, there's this obliviousness. It's not just online; it's on MSNBC and elsewhere. This idea that there was nothing wrong. Everything was fine with Joe Biden. Everything was great with him.
And it's like, what planet are you on? Go watch a video of him from the fall of 2024.
Kamala Harris writes in her book that it was reckless to make that decision without more input. And that he was not up to the task of running for president in 2024. I'm paraphrasing, but she says something like that.
She's talking about how she had to go and do a lot of the campaigning he was not capable of doing. That's a real problem.
And I have yet to see anyone other than Kamala Harris even reckon with it—just a little bit—in terms of the 2028ers, the potential candidates.
With Trump—because Trump is now what 79—he, of course, has a clean bill of health, and he is the strongest president of all time. And he's doing math quicker than he did when he was a teenager, and all of that…
I go back to that AI video. If that was my father or grandfather, I would be like, "Dad, you know you can't drive the car anymore. Like, what the fuck is wrong with you?"
Should we be looking at Donald Trump for the same kind of senility that seemed to overtake Biden? Or are we kind of captive to that "This is just Donald Trump"? There's nothing he can do or say that isn't just the character he was in 1990 or 2000 or 2016.
The truth is: I don't know.
I mean obviously he's always been a pugilist. And obviously, he has not exactly run on uniting the country. He likes to attack people. He likes to attack the media and Democrats. And, as we saw by the AI video, millions of Americans.
I'm really going to have a difficult time taking seriously the next time some Democrat says something that's vaguely insulting to Republican voters. I'm really going to have a tough time taking seriously anybody just, like, clutching their pearls.
Because this is Trump literally dropping shit on people peacefully demonstrating in this AI video. I'm not offended by it. But don't pretend you're offended by "deplorables" if you're not offended by that.
But beyond that, like sure. We should be keeping an eye out.
We cover this stuff all the time. I mean, the question is, when Donald Trump says that he warned the country about bin Laden a year before 9/11 and it's in his book—he can't even remember the title of the book—is that something to do with acuity? Or is that just him, as he always does, lying? Saying things that aren't true?
I don't know. I'm not a doctor. I mean he was doing that sort of thing before, when he was in his 60s.
Remember, he had the whole thing about Muslims dancing in the streets of New Jersey after 9/11? Never happened. Never happened. No evidence it ever happened.
What are the things that the Trump administration is doing now that you don't think are getting enough attention, either good or bad?
So I think the way they're hollowing out experts from the Justice Department and the FBI is bad.
One of the things I've learned from writing this book is how important it is—if you want to put terrorists away forever—how important it is to have really good prosecutors who know what they're doing. And really good supervision of those prosecutors.
And they're firing them for nakedly political reasons.
There's a guy in the book named George Toscas—one of the toughest guys in the National Security Division of the Justice Department. There since '93. Just an incredible… You had to get everything through him before you could get it to the attorney general or the president—indictments, extraditions. And he's been sidelined because he approved the Mar-a-Lago classified documents warrant.
The guy in charge of the Jafar case in the Eastern District of Virginia—fired because some MAGA person hypothesized that he was against the Comey indictments, which he wasn't.
We're getting rid of really good people who are there to protect us.
That concerns me a lot in the national security space.
I was covering it a lot—like, every day—and we're not doing it as much. And I want to get back to it.
The effect of tariffs on small businesses is really important. I think we are covering the Mideast peace achievements—such as it is right now. We're covering it plenty, but I think that's important and significant.
Another thing that I think is important, that we're not covering enough, is and, we'll see what the effects will be—but the cuts to Medicaid. Is it reform? That's what Speaker Johnson says: "It's reform to Medicaid. We're just making able-bodied men have to work," etc., etc.
Or is it going to actually hurt people?
That's to be determined because it's just starting to happen now.
But all of that, I think, is important.
What about you? What do you think?
I don't—this is… I'm running. I own this microphone, Jake Tapper.
Well, I'll say one other thing that I want to know more about—and people are doing investigative journalism about it. The Times has done it, we've covered it on my show, but it's really tough.
All the money that the Trump boys are making with this crypto venture makes Hunter Biden look like a Boy Scout. Right? I mean, this is some real—
Which is an achievement, right? To make people think like, "You know, Hunter Biden was not really corrupt or a horrible human being. Kind of a good artist, really, when you think about it" compared to the various scams that are going on.
The naked shakedowns that are happening—both in the Trump family industries, but also out of the Trump White House in the name of the government. I mean that's something that concerns me a huge amount.
Like, the idea that Intel or Nvidia or other companies have to cough up a certain amount of revenue in order to do business, to get golden shares in companies and things like that.
This is deeply disturbing, because the MAGA state capitalism and a kind of progressive industrial policy—it's not a horseshoe anymore. It is forming a kind of solid ring now.
I would also say that when our Founding Fathers set up this system of checks and balances—that I think you and I agree, Nick, is like no other, and is a beautiful thing, and one of the geniuses of America. I don't know if they thought that the Congress, as opposed to the Continental Congress, was going to be populated by the Madisons and Jeffersons and…
I was going to say Adams, but I hate Adams.
But by that type of people. And then you look at the Congress, and you look at who's in there, and you think, like, I mean this makes Harrisburg look like the Algonquin.
Yeah, it's amazing. Like ancient Greece or something like that.
With very few exceptions—and I'm not only talking about Republicans, because Democrats did not bathe themselves in glory during the Biden years when it came to standing up and saying, "What the hell is going on here?"
But with very few exceptions, they seem entirely concerned about their own reelection possibilities and nothing else. Nothing else.
There are a few here and there that get away with whatever, but… I mean, Rand Paul praises the hell out of Trump but also criticizes the extrajudicial killings. And I get it. You have to make compromises. But this is very, very distressing.
I think they thought we were going to keep evolving as a country. They didn't think we were going to go the other way.
Yeah. That we had peaked in 1800.
Final question: You are Gen X, right?
Ok. So do you see—and obviously Gen X and boomers spent most of the '80s and '90s fighting with each other because they're mortal enemies—now it's becoming clear boomers and Xers are kind of on one side of a generational divide, and Millennials and Gen Z are kind of on the other side.
Do you see anything coming out of younger Americans—say, people under 45 or under 40—that will radically alter the politics of the country? Or the energy? Or the optimism level?
My impression of Millennials and Gen Z is that there's actually going to be quite a division between them.
I think Millennials—and this is just anecdotal, do not hold me to this, and do not reply in the comments. My impression of Millennials is that they are fairly. Obviously there are exceptions, but they're fairly progressive.
And I think Gen Z is going to be a lot more conservative. I think that—just my experience knowing Gen Z kids—my kids and their friends and whatever—I sense much more skepticism.
And I think it's a reaction to Gen Xers and Millennials forcing on them progressive views on them in school. And I think there are going to be some conservatives. This just my general impression.
That was an early read of Gen Z and kind of a beta—but it may be what ends up happening, right?
Trump did not win young voters, as he constantly says he did. But he did do better with them than other previous Republicans.
And I just think that it's not just that he is reshaping and remaking politics and normalizing things that weren't normal 10 years ago.
I also think it is a reaction to the failures of progressive movements to achieve what they wanted to achieve. Whether it's Bernie Sanders, whether it's Black Lives Matter, whether it's Me Too.
I think it's COVID. I think it's a lot of progressive politics being forced down their throats in school.
I think there's a lot of stuff going on.
All right, we're going to leave it there. The person is Jake Tapper. And the new book is Race Against Terror.
Jake, thanks so much for talking.
Always great being here. Thanks so much, Nick.
- Producer: Paul Alexander
- Audio Mixer: Ian Keyser
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