Jake Tapper, a CNN anchor, has been caught misstating his background on live television on Sunday.
During an interview with President Donald J. Trump’s new White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci, Tapper inflated his background to make it seem as though he was more in touch with people with working- and middle-class beginnings than he really is. At one point late in the lengthy and testy interview—where Scaramucci even offered to bring CNN some Kleenex to wipe away its tears after what he says will be President Trump’s re-election victory in 2020—Scaramucci was discussing how he stands with the “people I grew up with.”
Scaramucci comes from humble beginnings in a blue collar neighborhood on Long Island in New York. He discussed during the Tapper interview, which came after he discussed it even more in his first exclusive interview as communications director for the White House—in an interview with Breitbart News Saturday on SiriusXM Patriot Channel 125.
“I think the thing that Breitbart has done is you’ve captured the spirit of what is actually going on in the country, where there is a large group of people for whatever reason—we can go over all of them—have been disaffected from the economic franchise,” Scaramucci said in that exclusive interview. “One of the most successful things about the president is that he has a vision for these people, but he also identified that way earlier than what I would call the typical politician who really wasn’t focused on it. So what I’m going to be doing over there is bringing staff in and developing messages so we can go out there and reach the people that need the most help in the United States.”
LISTEN TO ANTHONY SCARAMUCCI ON BREITBART NEWS SATURDAY:
Scaramucci further explained in the Breitbart News interview that during the campaign, when he was with the president in New Mexico, “it’s one of my first campaign stops with the president—we’re on then Trump Force One, we land in Albuquerque. We go over to the Albuquerque Civic Center—Matt, I take my Secret Service day pin off and I go behind and around the security perimeter into the crowd. There’s 8,000 people there. I’m shaking hands with these people and then it dawns on me, ‘Oh my God, these are the people I grew up with.’
“These are blue-collar, middle-class people who are shifting into the lower class because of some level of economic desperation. Factories have been shut down, opportunity has been lost in these little towns. Since NAFTA, we have lost 70,000 factories in the United States. So, it was the president—this is one of the most admirable things about him—it was the president who showed me, who grew up in a middle-class area like that what was going on in my hometown. Matt, I was spending too much time trying to spiral my way up into the global elite—I went to some fancy schools and then I worked at Goldman [Sachs] and I was trying to make myself some money to become financially independent and I missed it. So, it’s one of the reasons why I’m so passionate to get reconnected to that and to help the president help those people.”
So, when Scaramucci appeared afterward on Sunday on CNN’s State of the Union with Tapper—who also hosts “The Lead with Jake Tapper” on weekdays—he was talking about it again. And interestingly, Tapper puffed up his own credentials trying to link himself back to the middle class and the working class in America—a link he does not have.
“I grew up in a very similar neighborhood in Philadelphia,” Tapper told Scaramucci on Sunday.
Tapper, when he was growing up, went to a private elite high school with exorbitant tuition rates. The Akiba Hebrew Academy in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania. His father was a graduate of Harvard Medical School, and a wealthy pediatrician. Before Harvard, Tapper’s father went to Dartmouth—another Ivy League school that Tapper would eventually attend.
Tapper and CNN spokeswoman Lauren Pratapas have not answered detailed questions from Breitbart News about how much money Tapper’s family paid for him to go to Akiba or how they paid it—renamed in 2007 the Jack M. Barrack Hebrew Academy after a $5 million donation from the Barrack family. Tuition at the Barrack Hebrew Academy, according to its website, is now in the range of $26,500 to $32,500 per year. The school’s finance director has not responded to a request for comment on how much tuition would have been in the 1980s when Tapper went there.
Tapper and Pratapas have also not answered what years Tapper went to Akiba, but from publicly available news reports it appears Tapper went there from at least eighth grade through his senior year of high school to graduation in 1987. He may have gone there longer, as it appears that the school—at least now—offers classes from sixth grade through high school.
They have also not answered how Tapper got into Dartmouth, and whether the fact that his father was a graduate of the Ivy League school played any part in getting him in—or how much Tapper paid to Dartmouth in tuition and how he and his family paid it. They have also declined to answer how much the house he grew up in was worth.
When Breitbart News contacted Tapper with these questions Sunday afternoon after he made these comments earlier in his interview with Scaramucci, Tapper added Pratapas—CNN’s corporate communications spokeswoman—onto the email. He has not answered any of them, nor has Pratapas. Instead, Tapper took to Twitter to try to pre-empt this Breitbart News investigation into the latest fake news from CNN—going on a Tweet-storm on Sunday afternoon with a number of comments about this matter.
That someone was us at Breitbart News–with the above-mentioned questions.
https://twitter.com/ArthurSchwartz/status/889210620851171328
Tapper went on for many more Tweets.
It is interesting that Tapper decided to Tweet out a non-response in attempt to pre-empt this Breitbart News investigation into his background that he misstated on live television–over-inflating his ties to working-class Americans. It is interesting because many people at CNN, including Tapper, were critical of Donald Trump Jr., for releasing emails via Twitter before the New York Times published them. In fact, CNN reporter Dan Merica Tweeted this just 12 days ago, back on July 11:
Tapper retweeted that Tweet from his colleague Merica.
Tapper and Pratapas have not responded to a follow-up email seeking comment on why Tapper’s behavior–tweeting to pre-empt a news investigation–was acceptable, given the fact it was the same thing Trump Jr., did.
Tapper is already coming under serious criticism for what he did to inflate his connections to blue-collar Americans–when he is in fact an Ivy League elite.
https://twitter.com/ArthurSchwartz/status/889209785140334593
https://twitter.com/ArthurSchwartz/status/889220613314928640
https://twitter.com/ArthurSchwartz/status/889213929968324610
This latest screw-up by CNN comes amid the worst stretch in the network’s history. The network previously attacked, falsely, Scaramucci–accusing him of having “meetings” that never happened and being under Senate Intelligence Committee and Treasury Department investigation for those non-existent meetings, something that was untrue. A Breitbart News investigation uncovered the fact that the Senate Intelligence Committee was not in fact investigating this and that the Treasury Department–at the urging of Sen. Liz Warren (D-MA) to now Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin before Trump’s inauguration–had looked into these scurrilous and inaccurate accusations against Scaramucci and determined them to be entirely “without merit.”
CNN was forced to retract the very fake news hit piece as a result of Breitbart News’ investigation, and three of the network’s senior-most editorial staffers, including the head of CNN’s investigative unit resigned in disgrace. The network–including Pratapas and other spokespersons like Emily Kuhn, Richard Hudock, and Liza Pluto–continue to refuse to answer any questions about the scandal. The network refuses to be transparent about this matter and a whole host of others, abandoning the pretext of journalistic integrity.
More from Breitbart News’ investigation into the very fake news scandal engulfing CNN is forthcoming.
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