MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell blasts CNN’s Jake Tapper for questioning Trump via text

MSNBC anchor Lawrence O’Donnell tore into Jake Tapper after the CNN host interviewed President Trump over text – arguing the network “can’t even prove” the answers were real.

During CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday, Tapper said he was sharing an “exclusive” interview with the president, who “answered my questions on text” about topics ranging from an Israel-Hamas ceasefire to the government shutdown. 

“You gave him the questions in writing. So now, instead of letting Trump hide in a phone call where we can at least know that it’s him talking, Donald Trump gets to hide behind the black screen of texting,” O’Donnell said Monday night during MSNBC’s “The Last Word.”

He accused the longtime CNN reporter of giving the commander-in-chief unfair preferential treatment – lobbing “slow pitch, softball” questions over text while Tapper blasted Biden’s mental decline in his book, “Original Sin.”

“Donald Trump was allowed to become by CNN the first president in history to get questions in writing for an interview, questions that he could take home, as it were, since he was at home,” O’Donnell fumed.

“Something this particular interviewer would be outraged about if Joe Biden had ever done that, or someone pretending to be Joe Biden had done that,” he continued. “This particular interviewer wrote an entire book condemning Joe Biden because he didn’t like the way Joe Biden answered questions.”

During the text interview, Tapper asked Trump what he would do if Hamas insists on staying in power in Gaza. Trump allegedly replied: “Complete obliteration.”

“If Joe Biden had ever given the answer ‘complete obliteration’ to what happens next in Gaza or anywhere else in the world, that same interviewer would have pointed to it correctly, I think, as proof of mental incapacity to do the job of president,” O’Donnell said.

He also implied that CNN might have been duped during the text interview, saying Tapper had communicated with “Donald Trump, or the person playing Donald Trump in that text game yesterday.”

CNN and the White House did not immediately respond to The Post’s requests for comment on the interview.

“In the Sunday morning interview business, and it is a business, every time they lower their standards for Donald Trump, that becomes the new standard,” O’Donnell said.

“And so the other Sunday morning shows desperate to get Donald Trump will, according to all their past practices in following each other into decline, accept written answers from Donald Trump or a person impersonating Donald Trump.”

The anchor also blasted CNN for not sharing which questions the president refused to answer over text.

“What could be more relevant in reporting an exchange that is supposed to be with the president of the United States than including the questions he refused to answer?” O’Donnell said.

“Any questions about Jeffrey Epstein or his sex trafficking friend, Ghislaine Maxwell? … We have no idea what the other questions were that Donald Trump refused to answer, or whoever was on the other end of that phone refused to answer.”