Jake Tapper Told A Trump Aide He Was Wasting Viewers’ Time & The Video Is Intense

CNN host Jake Tapper has made a name for himself in the Trump administration as a news anchor who's not willing to take nonsense, and now he's done it again. In a segment discussing Trump's recent "stable genius" tweet storm, Jake Tapper cut off Trump aide Stephen Miller and then simply moved on, talking over Miller's continued protestations and in the process, cementing his own journalistic stardom in the Trump era.

Right before Tapper's big moment came, Miller was talking over Tapper and refusing to answer Tapper's questions. "You have 24 hours a day of anti-Trump material," Miller was saying, "And you're not going to give three minutes for the American people to hear the real experience of Donald Trump."

Tapper, who had been attempting to ask his question for quite a while at that point but always ended up with his words swallowed up under Miller's, finally cut it. "I get it," Tapper said. "There's one viewer that you care about right now, and you're being obsequious, you're being a factotum in order to please him, and I think I've — I think I've wasted enough of my viewers' time. Thank you, Stephen."

Throughout that short statement, Miller tried to cut in multiple times, even saying "Hey Jake!" twice after the cameras had already turned to a direct shot of Tapper — but it was entirely in vain.

Tapper, displaying a remarkable level of resolve and composure in the face of someone yelling at him with hostility, simply moved on with the news and didn't bat an eye. For one thing, the CNN host showed everyone an example of the best way to deal with such unwarranted hostility — that is, by turning the other cheek. For another, Tapper showed yet again that he's not willing to let Trump spokespeople come onto his show and spout non-truths. He did a similar thing once before, early in the administration, when he and Trump advisor Kellyanne Conway faced off in a long, wide-ranging interview that touched on many of Conway's greatest fabrications and lies. That included what Conway called the "Bowling Green Massacre" and a false claim she made about the murder rate.

Not everyone, however, seems to have come away from this Tapper-Miller interview with the same opinion on how it went. President Trump quickly reacted with a tweet, saying "Jake Tapper of Fake News CNN just got destroyed in his interview with Stephen Miller of the Trump Administration. Watch the hatred and unfairness of this CNN flunky!"

Twitter responses to the event also seem to be evenly split between those who think Miller caused Tapper to "snap" and those who saw it is as a definitive victory for Tapper. Given the speed of Trump's response to it, though, it's quite likely that his tweet does reveal one thing: despite his very public dislike of CNN, which has at times even involved him retweeting anti-CNN memes posted by right-wing fringe actors, Trump still clearly watches CNN.

Tapper, for his part, seems unbothered by the president's invectives. He responded to the president by retweeting Trump's tweet insulting him along with a link to the video, saying "Here’s the interview; judge for yourself." He's already made it clear that getting into Trump's good books isn't a priority of his, and in doing so he quickly made himself a darling of the left and an enemy of the right early in the Trump administration. Watching the video of his interview with Miller, with Tapper's repeated attempts to ask Miller questions and Miller's insistence on speaking over Tapper and refusing to answer any questions, it's difficult to see Tapper as anything but a victor when he finally cuts Miller off and turns away.