‘I’m a CNN anchor and hardest part of my job has nothing to do with Trump’

CNN anchor Jake Tapper has exposed the most “challenging” part of his job – and confessed it has nothing to do with US president Donald Trump . CNN is known for its left-leaning political views, and in recent months has dedicated montages of news footage to displaying the president’s hypocrisy over issues including golfing during a monetary crisis. But for Jake, who joined the channel in 2012 after a stint on ABC News, it’s the perils of war reporting that have proved most difficult.

In 2023 he opened up in an interview about the Middle East conflict, with the war between Hamas and Israel still raging on two years later. When he was asked what the most challenging part of reporting on the conflict, Jake explained: “As always, it’s the fog of war. Not knowing exactly what is going on for sure at any given moment, first reports being inadequate, sources for information being biased, the difficulty of knowing what is happening on a battlefield, the near impossibility of getting hard, cold facts in real-time.



” The anchor explained that he “struggles all the time” with trying to decide how graphic to be on air, trying to balance the gruesome reality viewers see with sensitive viewers watching at home. He said: “I generally feel that we in the news media writ large, all over the world, censor too much. There is part of me that thinks if we showed more of what war is and what gun violence is and what fentanyl and opioids actually do, the better the journalism we would be providing.

“But these are fights I lose, and I understand why I lose them. I just don’t think we should pretend that hiding these images is any less of an overt act than showing them.” It comes after Jake denied being “on the left” during a tense exchange with Trump’s agriculture secretary Brooke Rollins.

On the show last week, Rollins said: “I think it's really important to realise that last Wednesday was when the president announced this new American order, the new American economic plan. We‘re now two days in. You‘ve got two days of data, everyone, especially on your side, on the left, is freaking out.

" Jake hit back: “I’m not on the left.” Rollins, seeming amused, said: “All right, Jake, thank you.”.