Jake Tapper Admits To SXSW That President Obama Probably Thought He ‘Was A Pain In The Ass’


According to Godwin’s Law, “As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.” Thanks to President Donald Trump, a similar adage could be said about pretty much every social media account operated by CNN and its employees. For the longer their tweets and Facebook posts exist, the likelihood of the “fake news” claim or hashtag being used as an insult increases exponentially. Especially station luminary Jake Tapper, who spoke with Ana Marie Cox at South By Southwest on Friday. His Twitter mentions aren’t meant for the living these days.

Which is all the more ironic sense, as Tapper reminded Cox and the audience during their of Trump’s sour relationship with the media, the former ABC News White House correspondent didn’t always maintain a necessarily positive relationship with President Barack Obama. “I think that President Obama didn’t like me. I mean, I think he thought I was a pain in the ass,” he told the crowd. “To be fair, I was a pain in his ass. That’s true. That is accurate. That is a fact.”

Tapper didn’t go into specifics, though Cox and many in the audience knew at least some of what The Lead and State of the Union host was talking about. During his time at ABC News, Tapper went after Obama press secretary Robert Gibbs for the White House’s insistence that Fox News was “not a news organization.” That was in 2009, during the new administration’s first year in office. Eight years later, Tapper and Obama had a testy exchange over whether or not the president had indirectly challenged Republican nominee Trump with his comments about not using the phrase “radical Islamic terrorism.” Obama denied the claim, but Tapper persisted.


For the purposes of updating the SXSW crowd, however, Tapper mentioned his summertime fight with former Obama speechwriter Jon Favreau on Twitter. “I appreciate them, but Favreau and I were fighting last summer,” he explained. “Barack Obama came out and was making fun of Donald Trump’s doom-and-gloom Republican address… I understand why he was doing it, and I understand the message was too doom-and-gloom for the president, but there are a lot of American out there who voted for Donald Trump — and who live in this state, by the way — who are scared.”

Aside from recounting his occasionally rocky relationship with the White House during the Obama administration, Tapper also spent much of his and Cox’s discussion issuing similar criticisms for the Trump administration and his own news organization, CNN. According to Uproxx’s Christian Long, who’s currently attending SXSW, watching Tapper be interviewed was no different from watching him interview someone. His demeanor was identical, and the same no-nonsense attitude applied to everyone — himself included.

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