CNN host Jake Tapper urged Republican congressional candidate Sean Parnell, a decorated combat veteran, to not run against Democrat Rep. Conor Lamb in Pennsylvania’s 17th Congressional District, according to media reports.
“Tapper suggested that Parnell, a U.S. Army combat veteran who recently delivered a speech at the Republican National Convention, would be better off running in a safer district for Republicans, according to a source close to, but unaffiliated with, Parnell’s campaign who feels the CNN anchor was unethically participating in political activism,” Fox News reported. “Fox News obtained a Twitter direct message that Tapper sent Parnell’s @SeanParnellUSA account on Nov. 8, 2019, after he officially declared his candidacy for Pennsylvania’s 17th congressional district against Democrat Rep. Lamb.”
The message that Tapper, a former Democrat aide, sent to Parnell stated:
And best of luck in your race. For the record, I wasn’t trying to talk you out of running — I was trying to talk you into running in a safer R district! lol
Fox News media reporter Brian Flood tweeted out a screenshot of the message that Tapper sent to Parnell over Twitter’s Direct Message feature.
This is a DM Tapper sent Parnell pic.twitter.com/SPA8YndGwu
— Brian Flood (@briansflood) September 10, 2020
Breitbart News first reported on Tapper’s communications with Parnell earlier this week, a story that sources confirmed to The Daily Wire was accurate.
Former Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell said that he asked Tapper if he asked Parnell to not run against Lamb and that Tapper denied it.
Update.
I just asked @jaketapper “Is it true you asked Sean Parnell to not run against Conor Lamb?”
He told me “nope”.
So there is his answer. https://t.co/Nh8LdVKmrD
— Richard Grenell (@RichardGrenell) September 6, 2020
The news comes after Fox News host Tucker Carlson released an audio recording of CNN host Chris Cuomo coaching former-Trump attorney Michael Cohen on how to answer questions on the network.
“Michael Cohen was worried about doing the interview because he knew he’d get questions about the payments he made to Stormy Daniels. He wanted Chris Cuomo to tell him what to say,” Carlson said. “Now on TV, Cuomo might’ve launched into a lecture about how it’s wrong to send money to strippers, but in private, he skipped that lecture.”
“‘You will be asked that,’ Chris Cuomo told Michael Cohen, and you can say, ‘I did it for him, for Donald Trump. My relationship has always been for him. I’ve always said I don’t speak for the campaign, I speak for him as his attorney,’” Carlson continued. “Cuomo went on to elaborate, ‘And to the question of motive,’ he told Cohen, ‘the response would have to be, you can speculate as to why you think I did it all day long, but the only answer is my answer, and I just told you why I did it. You don’t get to speculate because if you can’t prove that I got paid back by Trump or the campaign, it is slander and defamation for you to say that I did.’”
“Then he gamed out what would happen next when Cohen went on his own channel,” Carlson continued.
“I think the way this conversation goes is almost exactly the way we’re having it right now, which is where I say, ‘this looks shady’ and you say, ‘it looks shady to you because you’re coming in with a specific intention,’” Carlson read from the script of what Cuomo told Cohen. “Again, Cuomo advised Cohen to attack the anchor.”
“Chris Cuomo began acting out both sides of the exchange—he acted out the news anchor’s question and then he acted Cohen’s scripted response to that question,” Carlson continued. “The conversation devolved into a kind of one-man play with Chris Cuomo as the performer and Michael Cohen as the audience.”