Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

Jake Tapper: Obama Got Away With Falsehoods Because Media Supported Him

Former president Barack Obama “got away with” making untrue statements because the media supported him more than it does President Trump, CNN anchor Jake Tapper said in an interview with Rolling Stone.

Tapper was asked about his decision to publicly speak out when he thought Trump was saying a falsehood. Tapper replied that he had been consistent on that front across administrations:

A lot of people on the left didn’t like it before, and now they like it. I don’t want to compare President Obama and President Trump on these issues because they’re different and the scale isn’t even remotely the same. But President Obama said things that weren’t true and got away with it more for a variety of reasons, and one is the media was much more supportive of him. The Obama White House thought I was self-righteous and a huge pain in the ass.

Tapper has made similar comments before, including in March at the SXSW festival.

Contact Aiden Pink at [email protected] or on Twitter, @aidenpink.

A message from our Publisher & CEO Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

We’ve set a goal to raise $325,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

With your support, we’ll be ready for whatever 2025 brings.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.