Donald Trump was trying to get CNN to stop broadcasting its report about the heads-up Trump allegedly had gotten from the intelligence community, when he accused CNN’s Jim Acosta of working for a Fake News outfit at last week’s newser, CNN chief Washington correspondent Jake tapper told Seth Meyers on Late Night.
“He was obviously trying to get us to stop focusing on the story and to discredit all of us,” Tapper said of Trump’s reax to CNN’s report intelligence met both Trump, during which he reportedly was given a two page synopsis with information about a possible Russian effort to blackmail him.
“That’s too bad, but it’s not a huge shock that he would try to do that,” Tapper said of Trump. “I’ve never seen the effort to delegitimize an organization for a story you don’t like, that has been proven. Every word of the story we reported last Tuesday has been proven correct,” Tapper said. “It’s been corroborated in one way or other, by the Vice President by the national intelligence. Not one word we got wrong.”
Unfortunately for CNN, Buzzfeed around the same time published a 35-page memo with some salacious allegations about Trump.
Tapper said he “wasn’t happy about Buzzfeed doing what it did.”
“I thought it was irresponsible to put those uncorroborated rumors out there,” the newsman added. “That’s not reporting; that’s just publishing.” Meyers acknowledged late night show hosts enjoyed the Buzzfeed post.
“We’re not supposed to be part of the story,” Tapper said of TV journalists. “Some of the lessons I’ve learned in terms of being reporter, and an aggressive one, is about learning how not to be part of the story. If you’re going to ask a follow-up question eight or nine times, do it in a way that is polite, so you are not the story – the refusal to answer is the story.”
