CNN host Jake Tapper tells the Hollywood Reporter that his “dream” interview subject is Russian President Vladimir Putin — after a dose of sodium thiopental, a drug often depicted as a “truth serum” in fiction.
In a roundtable with four other “top TV broadcasters” — ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, NBC’s Savannah Guthrie, CBS’s Gayle King, and Fox News’s Bret Baier — Tapper jokingly hoped that he could uncover real Truth from Putin with the help of barbiturates.
Final question: Who would you most like to interview?
…
TAPPER Are these interviews-interviews or are they sodium pentothal [a trademarked name for the compound] interviews? (Laughter.) I mean, as long as we’re doing a dream [interview], a Putin interview with sodium pentothal would be fantastic.
Tapper’s network CNN has doggedly pursued a conspiracy theory that President Trump and his associates are pawns in an international plot led by Putin. CNN was the first outlet to report on a dossier that claimed Russia had gathered blackmail material on Donald Trump before he ran for office, stating that intelligence officers briefed the then-President-Elect on these specific claims. Following CNN’s lead, the advertorial hub/social justice blog BuzzFeed published this unverified dossier in full — quite obviously to air claims that Trump has a urine fetish. NBC later quashed CNN’s reporting, writing that the dossier was appended to Trump’s daily intel briefing as an example of “unvetted disinformation.”
Tapper himself appears to be a true believer that Russia “influenced” the 2016 election and displays a very healthy interest in the topic, calling several detractors “Russian trolls.”
Not quite. They indeed testified there was no hacking of voting machines; no votes changed.
But influencing the process –rather different https://t.co/myaAmc1Gd9
— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) March 20, 2017
Except:
1) Comey acknowledged for 1st time that FBI is investigating whether there was any 2016 coordination btwn Trump team & Russian govt https://t.co/NVl4jN3T6d— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) March 20, 2017
Five months, eight prominent Russians dead – CNN https://t.co/7oNtKVHtI3
— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) March 25, 2017
next time tune in to when we're discussing how your boss Vladimir Putin is responsible for human rights abuses and cyberattacks of US https://t.co/rHFnty5dHj
— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) January 20, 2017
And how about the deaths of Alexander Litvinenko, Boris Berezovsky, & Boris Nemtsov? Putin or God? https://t.co/HEQXAWLc1o
— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) December 15, 2016
cold in Moscow tonight, Comrade?
— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) February 10, 2017
If all these Russian trolls got off Twitter and got to work maybe they'd finally have an economy bigger than Italy's.
Just a thought. pic.twitter.com/DvTs5jK57r
— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) January 15, 2017
The Hollywood Reporter roundtable provided little else of interest, aside from Tapper and his peers’ newfound outrage, at the start of a Republican administration, that political flacks try to push spin.
Tapper proudly recounts how he tried to make then-Vice President-Elect Mike Pence answer for Mike Flynn Jr’s tweets — then says that he would cover “more policy” if given a chance to do 2016 any differently.
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