Jake Tapper
Equating brutality and despotism with leadership is not an American value.Collection: Leadership
My mom is from Canada. Both my grandparents were from Canada.Collection: Mom
I did freelance cartooning off and on from college graduation in 1991 through ABC News hiring me in 2003. I did a weekly comic strip for 'Roll Call' for about nine years. I sold cartoons and caricatures to 'The Los Angeles Times' and 'The Washington Post.' I drew as much as I could. It's really tough to make a living doing it.Collection: Graduation
Exercise has its hazards. Runners are sidelined by shinsplints, freestylists by swimmer's ear, and who hasn't heard of tennis elbow? But the fitness buff of the '90s has a far greater worry. StairMaster Butt.Collection: Fitness
There's no bias when it comes to facts, and there's no bias when it comes to decency.
I have very vivid memories of my parents talking about Nixon, my mom watching Watergate on the black-and-white set in the living room. The mayor at the time in Philadelphia was a guy named Frank Rizzo - a Democrat, a real bully, a racist.
The only politician in my family was my grandfather's grandfather, who was the mayor of Winnipeg from Jan. 1, 1917, until Jan. 5, 1917, because he lost the recount. So he was mayor of Winnipeg for four days.
My journalistic heroes are Peter Jennings and Ted Koppel and Tim Russert and Edward R. Murrow, among others, because they were tough.
I have a wife and a son and daughter. What do I need to do to make their lives better, happier? What can I do in terms of my time or my attention given that I am very busy at work? That's a personal rule of thumb I live by from the moment I get up to the moment I go to bed.
They say history doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes.
Nastiness and mockery and meanness sometimes seem as if they're spreading like a contagion.
'MAD Magazine' put out a book that was a collection of Trump cartoons, and they asked me to do the forward because they knew that I was a fan because I'd done stories and tweeted about 'MAD.' So I did the forward and asked them if I could do a cartoon. They let me, and I did caricatures of myself and Wolf Blitzer.
The Patriots cheat. This is just a fact as established by investigations. They're a cheating team.
Probably like a lot of people, my personal politics are all over the map.
I'm not a member of a political party, and I feel very, very comfortable being independent. Even if I weren't a journalist - if I were doing whatever - I would be an independent.
I've always been a ravenous consumer of opinion. When I was in my high school library and my college library, I would read 'National Review' and I would read 'The Nation' and I would read 'The American Spectator' and I would read 'Mother Jones.'
If the Trump White House and their allies in the media want to have this conversation about decency, I welcome them to the table to talk about it. But there's a bunch of stuff that they need to get caught up on before we get to a comedian at the White House dinner.
It matters to people that the president tell them the truth.
A lot of the stuff I blog is either stuff I'm reporting anyway for ABC News internally and figure I might as well put it up on the blog. Or it's stuff I'm just interested in, or I read about it, or I hear about it, and I'm just curious.
You write a story, you do a TV show, and if people don't like it, well, you're going to do it again tomorrow.
What would McCarthy, what would Nixon, what would Bill Clinton have done if they'd had Twitter?
Don't get me wrong: politicians have been lying for a long time, long before Donald Trump was born, but the degree of just nonstop rage, grievance, prevarication, I haven't seen, probably because we haven't had a direct line from a politician's id to the public before.
I listen to a lot of criticism. From the Left and the Right and from everywhere. I mean, everybody's a media critic. And sometimes I think it's on point, and other times, I think about it and consider it and then might ultimately disagree with it. But I do listen to it; I really do.
I think there is room for improvement for all of the media, and that certainly, and especially, includes me.
I still think of myself as a Philadelphian. I still root for the Philadelphia teams. Other than my house, I still feel most at home in terms of cities when I'm in Philly.
My mom is a nurse; my dad is a pediatrician. They were born in the 1940s, and they were both inspired to fight against injustice, whether it was the injustices of the Vietnam War or Watergate or children in poverty or oppression of African Americans in Philadelphia where I was growing up.
I get a lot of heat from the Left, which is bizarre. I get a lot of heat from the Right, too, but the vitriol is from the Left.
It's not always easy for a mainstream organization to accept what a blog is.
CNN wants me to tell the news in a way that seems genuine and authentic. They don't want me to be Ron Burgundy.
Politicians lie.
It is empirically indecent to make fun of the disabled... That's just indecent.
It's not empirically wrong to say that Washington isn't working for the American people and Washington does too many things for powerful special interests and it's broken.
Trump is most fun to draw - just a great mash of caricature-able features, from bouffant to eyebrows and scowl, to the high cheekbones and the regal pride.
It's tough for me to draw myself - usually way too self-critical.
As a fan and collector of 'MAD' magazines as a kid, I am well aware that my art is unworthy. I remain in absolute awe of 'MAD' artist Mort Drucker and loved Wally Wood and Harvey Kurtzman and Al Jaffee and Don Martin and Angelo Torres and Peter Kuper and Sergio Aragones.
Washington, as we know it, is essentially run by men and women who are not elected or even appointed to their posts, staff members unaccountable to traditional constituencies. They rise according to the needs and whims of their own special constituency of elites.
Everybody should work in their nation's capitol and see how politics actually work because it was the most eye opening experience of my life.
I lost a great uncle in World War II who was with the Royal Canadian Air Force.
I certainly don't think that it's the job of any journalist to make the presidency work.
People mess up. They say things when their guard is down.
Professionally and personally, I try to be as agnostic as possible, try to see things as objectively as possible.
I can be fairly boring.
I generally feel that the solution to speech that people find offensive is more speech. You should talk about it, discuss it.
Everyone should work in politics to see how horrible it is.
It took me years to realize I wanted to be in journalism.
I think standing up for facts and decency is important, and we should've done more of it back in 2015 and 2016.
I think there are periods in this country when behavior is abhorrent: McCarthy, Watergate, Bill Clinton. It's just a question of how the checks and balances in the American system work and how leaders stand up to it or don't stand up to it.
My dad's a hero in a lot of ways. He was a 1960s and 1970s hippie and a member of the protest crowd.
My mom is a hero in a lot of ways because she's the most empathetic and kind person I've ever met.
CNN is in the business of sussing out what is true and what is false.