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Jake Tapper has drawn a line: no "Big Prevarication" proponents on-air. The CNN anchor and main Washington correspondent won't volume Republican politicians touting the conspiracy theory that the 2022 presidential ballot was stolen from former President Donald Trump. Just when he's not in front of the camera, Tapper enjoys blurring the lines between fact and fiction by crafting novels near real-life figures like John F. Kennedy and Frank Sinatra. His latest volume, The Devil May Trip the light fantastic, is a sequel to his bestseller,The Hellfire Social club, which has been adjusted into a Television set series by HBO Max.

During a live consequence hosted past Female parent Jones Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery at the Commonwealth Gild in San Francisco in early June, Tapper discussed the biggest threats to our democracy—and how his experience roofing those threats as a journalist informed his piece of work equally a historical fiction writer.

Read an edited transcript of the conversation below, or tune in to this week's bonus episode of the Mother Jones Podcast:

You told Kara Swisher of the New York Times that Republicans who push the election fraud conspiracies are not welcome on your show. How did you lot arrive at this decision?

I oasis't booked any of the liars since the ballot, just it's non a policy. If i of them wanted to come on the show, I would talk about it with my team. I would want to talk about the election lies, not just as a throwaway at the end, only as a focus.

I recollect it'due south important to book conservatives. Merely the election lies are not a departure about tax policy. Information technology'south non a disagreement nearly a social effect. The election lies are lies. It'due south no less a lie than saying that the moon landing was faked or that the Holocaust didn't happen or that Bush knew virtually ix/xi and let it happen. These are offensive ideas.

Look, people lost their lives that day [January six]. The truth is, we're lucky that more people didn't die. And then I think it is incredibly derelict for journalists only to pick upwards and move on.

Chris Wallace characterized your lack of interviews with people pushing election lies as moral posturing and said that the way to deal with this kind of thing is to accept them on and grill them near it. You say that you're not seeing much of that. Why do you recall that is? Is information technology a format issue? Is it a moral backbone issue?

It is not fun. It is non easy. It subjects you to attacks from Republicans, considering Donald Trump so successfully convinced so many millions of Americans that facts are a partisan issue. I have yet to see Kevin McCarthy or Elise Stefanik or Steve Scalise or Josh Hawley or Ted Cruz, who I would consider to exist the five who kind of led this effort—have whatsoever of them been held to account for their election lies? I haven't seen whatsoever of one of these five grilled at all. I haven't seen whatsoever one of those five be actually asked tough questions over and over in an interview most this.

I wonder what you would say to this theory: Historically, politicians continue cable news shows and radio interviews to spin something, and so now, when confronted with the lies and bizarrely deranged theories that they're putting forth, it's very hard for the apparatus around producing the shows to adjust. You're an exception, and I wonder, fifty-fifty within your own network, how that's existence received.

I mean, I'thousand given the elbowroom to do what I desire to exercise. At that place are people who went along with this lie that I liked, that I have had on my shows before to talk about important issues. If ane of these people said, "I made a mistake, I shouldn't take voted to disenfranchise the millions of legal voters who bandage their ballots in Arizona and Pennsylvania, I shouldn't have told those lies," I honestly would then book that person. I really would. I am just proverb, I experience really uncomfortable about the idea of just letting these folks walk away from this as if what happened Jan half dozen didn't happen, as if they played no office.

Sort of a professional jealousy question: You're the lead anchor of CNN. Y'all have two shows. You had to be on mitt for all the craziness that 2022 and early '21 threw at us. Y'all have two kids. How in hell did you lot observe the time to write this book?

Starting time of all, I have an incredibly supportive spouse. And my kids are former plenty at present, 11 and 13, that they want to spend time with me, but they don't want to spend also much time with me.

I wrote this book in most two and a half years. The writing program is similar a diet or similar an exercise routine: You just have to brand a rule and stick to it every bit much equally you tin can. For me, the dominion is, try to sit down downwards every day and write, even if it's just for a minimum of xv minutes, because anybody can find 15 minutes in the day. If all you lot practise is 15 minutes a twenty-four hours for a calendar week, that'south an hour and 45 minutes. That's three or four pages, and it adds up.

I will too say that I wrote a lot of this during the pandemic. I did the show from my house from April to August, and I found myself with a lot more than time than I ever had in my life.

Charlie and Margaret Marder are the protagonists of both your books. The first book, The Hellfire Club, was gear up in DC in the McCarthy era. What made you choose to set this book in Vegas and Hollywood in '62?

Right around the time that I realized that people were ownership the showtime book and that I was going to be able to write a second 1, I heard this amazing true story. Frank Sinatra and the Rat Pack worked their hearts out to get Sen. John F. Kennedy elected in 1960. It was a very narrow election, and also a member of the Rat Pack was married to Kennedy'southward sister.

Sinatra thought that President Kennedy would would come stay with him when he came out to California. He started having all this work done to his estate near Palm Springs. He had rooms put in, he had phone lines installed, he had a helipad synthetic.

And so it'south pointed out to Attorney General Robert Kennedy, who was going after organized law-breaking, that Sinatra—who's friends with the president—is friends with Chicago mob boss Sam Giancana. So Robert Kennedy had this dilemma: Do I insult one of the biggest stars in the globe, a friend of my brother'southward who helped get my brother elected through ways known and secret? Or do I permit my brother sleep in a bed where monsters accept slept?

So when I heard that story, I said, I demand to have Charlie and Margaret get into that, because I can keep playing with the Kennedys, and now I tin can add the Rat Pack, and it just sounds fun.

Your job as a journalist is to unearth truth about powerful people. When you put on your novelist lid, you're likewise inventing some tales well-nigh them. Tell me how you thought near that tension.

You take to just let yourself make stuff upward because it's a novel, but you try to exist true to the idea, to the essence of the person. Marilyn Monroe, for example, appears a few times in the volume, but I never could figure out how to write her into the book in a way that rang true.

You invented a Sinatra song. The title of the book is the title of the vocal. What did you do to ensure that these are in the fashion of lyrics that Sinatra would have sung?

When I wrote The Outpost, which is a nonfiction book about Afghanistan, in that location was a scene where the guys are cranking up Air-conditioning/DC. There'southward another scene at the finish of the book, later on the big battle where eight of their brothers died, where they're singing Johnny Cash songs. I had to take out everything except for one line because the attorneys for Fiddling Brownish said, "You tin can't quote more than one line, or we'll get sued for copyright infringement."

Then this is frustration over the limits of "off-white use"?

Aye. Entirely. The lawyers called me upwards and they're like, Tapper, we've been through this. You lot have an entire song intricately woven into this activeness scene at the climax of the book. And I'g like, "I wrote the song! It'south not a real Sinatra song!"

Every profile that I've read near you has described to you lot as being very confident from a young age. Which came first, the confidence or the accomplishments? And what would you lot say to young journalists who are maybe a different gender or a different race?

First of all, I'thousand plenty insecure, like any other man being on the planet. One of the things I say to immature people constantly, because I don't think anybody prepared me, is that there is a lot more rejection out there than you lot accept been raised to believe there is in life. At that place'due south a cocoon around yous when y'all're young. Mayhap yous didn't get the part you wanted in the schoolhouse play. Or maybe the boy or girl you liked didn't like you back. But generally speaking, you get a lot of what you desire. And so you become into the real world. People but demand to be fix to be rejected. Every successful person you see in journalism has been rejected so many times by so many people. It's just part of it.

I recall at that place's probably never been a better time to be a adult female journalist or a journalist who'due south Black or Latino or Asian. I'm not saying that it's easy. Information technology's all the same much easier to be a white male person announcer, don't get me wrong. Just at least at present it's function of the conversation in a way that it wasn't when I was coming up.

What part of your job exercise you savour the most?

I love doing my evidence. Nosotros comprehend news from all over the world. Whatsoever you think of Trump, him not being in the White House means that I now accept time in my evidence to practice a piece well-nigh foster care in America, or about the elections in Nicaragua. I'm proud of that.

That's an entire show. Is in that location a part that especially charges you lot almost the making of whatever one bear witness?

I hateful, when I have a good, tough interview with somebody, it'southward fun.

Stephen Miller, mayhap? That was a archetype.

But that wasn't pleasant. I would take actually honestly preferred him to have been a normal human beingness, answering my questions, but he was performing for his audience of i. I oasis't watched it. I did Fresh Air a few years ago and they played me a chunk of the interview, and I couldn't believe in retrospect how patient I was with him.

I worry about our republic. In a way, I worry more than now than I did before. I call up people don't really fully understand how close we came to the election being stolen.

And how they're setting up to enshrine the ability to do it over again.

That's what I'thou worried about, because now they're changing laws in states similar Georgia to arrive easier for a country legislature to overturn the will of a secretarial assistant of state, similar Brad Raffensperger, who abided by the law and stuck to the facts, and now may well not be reelected. I call back people don't fully understand necessarily that if like 15, 20 different people were in those positions, the ballot would take been stolen. And I don't know what would have happened. I mean, would there have been some other ceremonious war? What would accept happened?

What was happening at the network when that was going on?

Nosotros were playing it straight as it was during that time. I don't know what they were maxim on other networks. We were just saying what was happening. I'm afraid of what'southward going to happen next time.

I retrieve what's interesting most this moment is that Trump however holds sway. I think it'south a scary new moment for the land that I am non certain people fully understand either.

I mean, you only have to await at Liz Cheney. I'chiliad sure you agree with her about almost cypher, but you merely have to look at what she did. Information technology'southward such a joke when the MAGA people say that Liz Cheney did that to exist popular at cocktail parties. What cocktail parties? It'south such nonsense. There's no upside for Liz Cheney other than she tin can sleep at night.

With our country existence so divided politically, what gives you hope that we could come up closer together? Or are you in a sort of ebb of promise at the moment?

I'm never without hope for this country. And other countries have their issues, too. It'southward not like I look at whatsoever other country and say, they've got it figured out. I think that it'due south a time for politicians to really think near what's more than important: their own private pursuit of power, or the country?

Look, I'm not a liberal Democrat. I'm non advocating that Joe Biden be reelected. I simply think information technology's of import that these very nefarious lies be called out.

Watch the full, unedited live event below:

mackinitan1992.blogspot.com

Source: https://www.motherjones.com/media/2021/07/january-6-insurrection-capitol-cnn-jake-tapper-podcast/

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