Why Does Jake Tapper Hate Bobby Kennedy?

Tonight, CNN’s Jake Tapper, with Dana Bash, will moderate a debate between Joe Biden and Donald Trump. All three parties actively colluded to keep Robert F. Kennedy Jr. off of the debate stage, so Kennedy will be holding his own debate at www.TheRealDebate.com 

Jake Tapper has despised Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for a long time.

But it wasn’t always this way. In a 1999 article for Salon, Tapper described Kennedy as “almost a mini-me of his father” and added that Kennedy was “the favorite to assume the family mantle.” On April 7, 2023, shortly after Kennedy announced his candidacy for president, Tapper called Kennedy an “anti-vaccine quack” on CNN.

What happened between 1999 and 2024?

Let’s start with Kennedy’s most recent legal action against CNN. Kennedy filed a Federal Elections Commission (FEC) complaint on Tuesday, May 28, 2024, alleging that “President Joe Biden’s campaign, former President Donald Trump’s campaign and CNN violated federal campaign laws in scheduling the network’s June 27 presidential debate,” according to CNN itself.

Thus far, the FEC has sided with Kennedy, but, as the Wall Street Journal recently reported, CNN seems unconcerned with playing by the rules and has decided to “blackball” Kennedy. 

There are a host of questions about Kennedy’s assertion that CNN is colluding with presidents Biden and Trump to exclude him. Since Kennedy is drawing equally from their voter bases, according to Nate Silver, it’s no mystery why Trump and Biden want Kennedy banned from the stage. 

The elephant in the room is Tapper. 

Why does Tapper loathe Kennedy, and does Tapper’s recent unprofessional conduct constitute election interference? What transpired between 1999 and 2024 to cause such a rift between the “mini-me” of Kennedy and the lead anchor of CNN?

To answer this question, one must travel back in time to the moment of Kennedy’s cultural cancellation. Over the space of a decade, Kennedy went from being, in the words of New York Magazine, “The Kennedy Who Matters,” to a pariah in the Democratic Party. What catalyzed this shift? 

Here’s the story: In 2004, Kennedy was still a darling of the Democrats. At the 2004 Democratic National Convention, he spoke just before a young, relatively unknown senator from Illinois named Barack Obama. Then, in 2005, Kennedy published an article titled, “Deadly Immunity” in Rolling Stone and Salon on vaccines, autism, and the suppression of inconvenient truths by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Tapper, then working as a senior producer for ABC, read Kennedy’s article and, according to reporting from Dick Russell, Tapper reached out to Kennedy. Tapper “proposed that, in exchange for exclusivity, he would do a companion piece for ABC” timed to coincide with the magazine publication of the story. In other words, fifteen years before the COVID pandemic, Kennedy and Tapper worked together on an exposé that reported on the CDC’s habit of censoring research that challenged the efficacy of federal vaccine safety. 

But under pressure from Big Pharma advertisers, ABC pulled the plug on the Tapper/Kennedy collaboration, and aired a sanitized version of the story. The Kennedy/Tapper report never aired. According to Kennedy, Tapper “chose career over character” in July 2005. Rather than speak out against the whitewash, Tapper put Kennedy and serious journalism in his rearview mirror.

Unfortunately for Tapper, Kennedy’s critiques of Big Pharma and agency capture have aged well. Over the past five years, due in part to his independent run for the presidency and bestselling book, The Real Anthony Fauci, the American public has awoken from its slumber and witnessed the vindication of Kennedy’s critiques.

According to the United Nations, nearly fifteen million people worldwide are now dead due to the biosecurity agenda that Kennedy reported on in both The Real Anthony Fauci and The Wuhan Cover-Up. In light of this apocalyptic casualty count and the public’s hunger for an honest reckoning with the pandemic, a fearless conversation threatens the standing of Tapper, to say nothing of Biden and Trump.

In an honest presidential debate, Biden, Trump, and Kennedy would stand together on the CNN stage together, with the American people in the live audience. (Neither will be present, as reported by CNN).

In that ideal world, Tapper – who Fox News identified this week as the culpable journalist in a massive defamation suit against CNN – would recuse himself, allowing that his presence in the room would risk bias on account of his history with Kennedy. But sadly, we don’t live in that utopia, much less a political culture that values integrity and accountability.

However, in an America where everyone has a tribe (Republicans 27%, Democrats 27%, Independents 43% at the start of 2024 according to Gallup polling), we at Honest Media think a fair compromise would be as follows: CNN would allow all three candidates to appear on its stage and a question from Tapper for Kennedy would go something like this:

“Mr. Kennedy: Public health is a divisive issue in light of the pandemic and recent reports of vaccine injury in the New York Times and elsewhere. Furthermore, you and I have a complicated history all our own on these issues. Fifteen years ago, we collaborated on a story for ABC News about vaccine safety and agency capture. But ABC killed the story and now there’s a great deal of vitriol and misunderstanding between us. If you were elected president, Mr. Kennedy, how would you tell the story of vaccine safety in order to bring our country together, rather than tear it further apart? How, in the realm of public health, would you heal the divide?”