Transcript of 654: Jake Tapper - The Most Important Leadership Skill, Handling Criticism, Chasing Your Curiosity, Understanding Tradeoffs, Responding to Rejection, and Being So Good They Can't Ignore You

We have just opened applications for our once per year Learning Leader circle. I just got a testimonial from, I think, one of the most impressive members in my current circle, Alex Feldmier. She is a sensory sciences manager, wickedly smart. But this is what she said about being a part of our learning leader circle. She said, Our leadership circle meetings are experiences that go unmatched with anything else in my life. The The biggest part is learning that we have so much within ourselves to catalyze massive potential, but we often don't know how to access it. This group is about learning how to unlock it, live it, and most importantly, sustain it. With the carefully crafted discussion points and the intentional people around us, it's like being invited to a machine that gives us the tools to harvest our own superpower. Ours. So cool. If you want to apply to be part of our next Learning Leader Circle, go to learningleadersircle. Com to apply. That is learningleadersircle. Com and apply today. Welcome to The Learning Leader Show, presented by Insight Global. I am your host, Ryan Hawk. Thank you so much for being here. Go to learningleader.

Com for show notes of this and all podcast episodes. Go to learningleader. Com. Now on to tonight's featured leader, Jake Tapper, is an award-winning broadcaster and chief Washington correspondent, currently anchoring The Lead with Jake Tapper every day on CNN. He's also the number one New York Times bestselling author of seven books, including The Outpost, which was later made into a movie, Original Sin, and most recently, Race Against Terror. During our conversation, we discuss the one key leadership lesson he's learned over his decades-long career, interviewing presidents, generals, and other world leaders. This was really good. Then Jake shared how he handles all of the criticism he receives, as well as how he thinks it's important to listen to feedback, even sometimes from strangers on the internet. And then he shares some useful advice he learned from Steve Martin on how to build an excellent career. Ladies and gentlemen, please enjoy my conversation with Jake Tapper. So you opened your book, you dedicated it to 12 people, including Diane Sawyer, Ted Koppel, Charlie Gibson, Peter Jennings, and you write, quote, Thank you for the lessons. What are some of the lessons that you've learned from them?

Well, I mean, a lot of lessons from all the people, and probably each one of them deserve their own book dedication, but who knows how many books I'm going to write. And sadly, some of the people on that list are no longer with us. Peter Jennings, David Carr, Tony Off, Jim Wright. So I wanted to at least get some recognition for them while they're all still here. An example for Ted Koppel. One time, I saw on the in-house channel a pilot that ABC News was working on with me and Bill Weer in the period when Koppel was being pushed out the door by ABC. And Nightline was, it was questionable how long it's going to last. And Bill and I did a pilot and Ted saw it, and I don't think he was particularly impressed with it. And probably thought we were being a little glib. Looking back on it, we were definitely being a little glib. And he took me to lunch and he said, remember, you can always tell them no. You can always tell them no. And that was a lesson that obviously, here I am 20 years later or whatever, that is something to remember.

The other note is when you're done negotiating the salary, put as much vacation day in there because they don't understand the importance of it because it's not a monetary value. So get as many vacation days in there as possible. That's another one.

Is it hard to take days off, though, in your world?

It is. And in the Trump era, too, especially because every day, because he Whether you like him or not, he makes a lot of news. He creates a lot of news. It was something that we had to learn in his first term. I still think it's probably questionable as to how much we've learned it in our second, which is if you miss this news emergency see, there's going to be another one next week. It's okay if you miss it. And for people metabolistically built like me as a newsperson, it is difficult to be away from a story because you want to be covering the story. You want to be involved. It's a drive. I had a hot mic moment when I was covering the summit in Alaska. One, I'm not embarrassed about it all. We were having technical problems, and then Somebody was saying, Okay, we're going to come to you. Are you ready? And I'm like, I'm fine. Give me back my show. Let's go. Some of the clickhunters out there thought this was some big gaffe. I'm like, I'm a very ambitious, aggressive newsman who wants to be covering stories. This is not any revelation.

But anyway, yes, it is difficult.

I say that in a good way, as in it's cool to have a job where you want to do it. You know what I mean? A lot of people don't have that luxury. I feel like I do. It feels like you do where you have a job where I want to do it, man. Part of the reward is that I get to do this really cool. It's hard, right? And you get criticized all the time. That's part of the deal. But it's got to feel rewarding. You've earned it to have a job that you want to show up do it every day.

It is a gift. I know this because I have a lot of friends who have jobs that they love, and I have a lot of friends who have jobs that they do not love. I am very lucky that I have a job that when all is said and done, We're getting the criticism and the difficulties of the news media in this year and blah, blah, blah, it's still just such a thrill to be able to cover this stuff. I would be watching it if I were something else, a screenwriter or cartoonist or whatever. I have a very vivid memory of moderating or co-moderating the Republican debate in 2015 at the Reagan Library in Simi Valley, California. There's 11 candidates there, Trump's there, Rand Paul, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, blah, blah, blah. I was like, I have the best seating the world. I mean, I was also asking the questions, but it was just like, this is so cool just to be here, just to be part of this historic moment.

This is a selfish question. How do you When you're preparing for something like that or just a big interview, what is your process to come up with questions? And then how do you decide, okay, do I go to the next question or do I stay in this moment and ask a follow-up? I'm just curious about how you approach that dance because it's something I think about literally all the time.

Yeah. I mean, it is the big challenge with interviews and with debates, it's even more challenging, which is you have 20 topics and they're all really important. And if I do a follow-up on this, that means I don't get to the question on veterans or I don't get to the questions on the environment. And when is it worth it? I should start off by saying, any interview I do, any debate I moderate, it starts with this incredible team of really, really smart CNN producers and writers. Just a fantastic team, and they don't get enough credit for that work. And that's not false humility. That's legit. These really smart people. And we have debates about what works and what doesn't work and what's the thinking. And then when there's an interview with somebody really of note or it's a big moment, we talk about what's the most important thing in this interview? What do we want to come away from this interview? Because the easiest thing in the world is just to have a list of six questions and just ask each one and just like, Hey, there's six topics, blah, blah, blah. What do we do?

It's a balance, and you just have to figure it and you don't always get it right. There's the question of fact-checking, too. You do that in a debate. Do you do that in an interview? What is somebody's opinion? Look, they're entitled to think that Joe Biden was a horrible president or Donald Trump's a horrible president. That's their opinion. Am I there to push back on that? Am I there to stand up for facts? Am I there to say, Well, the other side would say blah, blah, blah. And it's all just subjective and imperfect, and you're never going to please everybody, and you just try to do the best job you can.

How do you deal with the criticism? Do you just block it out? Do you read it? Combination of things. How do you handle all of the criticism?

Well, there's a lot of it, and I try to filter out the stuff that is just personal attacks or from people that are just going to hate what I do no matter what it is from the left and the right. I'm one of these folks that gets it from both sides.

Which is probably a good sign.

I mean, it can be, and not necessarily, not inherently, but I hope- It might not feel good, but I think it shows that you're trying to be impartial.

I know you're probably criticized on either side saying you're not, but I would imagine that that's a good thing, right?

Yes. I think so. I mean, I guess it comes down to this. Very few of my critics are people that I actually care what they think. And the people that I care what they think, I'm sure they have notes here and there, but folks who I understand. I'm just trying to be a good faith operative here. I'm not a Democrat, I'm not a Republican. I don't have any ideological bias other than facts are important, decency is important. But beyond that, I'm just trying to figure out. I don't know what the answer to the war on Ukraine is. I don't know what the answer to the tax code is, et cetera. But I guess anyway, to answer your first question, I do listen to criticism, and I do read the criticism. I think that's something for people out there, because everybody is an expert on the news media. I think when you are just relentlessly critical of somebody, me or whoever, Nor O'Donnell, Chuck Todd, whatever, those are just two people I came up with, then people stop listening to you because then, Well, you hate everything I do, so who cares? And constructive criticism actually can be effective in the social media age when anybody, when a waitress at a Denny's in Tacoma Park, or in Tacoma, Washington, I should say, can reach anybody.

You can theoretically reach anybody. I think constructive criticism or I think it actually can be much more effective than, You're a hack. You suck. I hate you. Joe Biden is the best. Donald Trump is the best. Whatever. You actually can have an impact if you calm it down and offer a substantive critique. And I have heard those. There's a guy named Elon Green who's a really, really gifted writer, and he used to be very critical, relentlessly critical of me for not covering climate change enough. But he was right. I wasn't, and I listened to him. I think it shocked him when I would cover the environment and say, Hey, just wanted to make sure you saw this. Because I respected him. I didn't care for all of his tweets, but I understood where he was coming from. I guess the point is just the average person can have an impact on news coverage. Hey, I saw your story. Have you thought about covering this? Is much more effective than, You're ignoring blah, blah, blah. Odds are the person doesn't even know about blah, blah, blah.

I'm curious about this pinned tweet. It's since 2017. To see what is in front of one's nose needs a constant struggle from George Orwell. Why have you left that as your pinned tweet since 2017?

In full disclosure, I do, when I have a book to sell, I usually replace it for that month or two. But But generally speaking, that is my pinned tweet because I think it is some of the most... I just thought it was really profound. Orwell was writing about the fact that the Japanese and the Germans, he was writing during World War II, about the fact that the Japanese and the Germans were going to lose the war. That was something that the Japanese and German people did not see because they were constantly being lied to by their leaders. But the evidence was all there. It's just a constant reminder for me. It's advice, honestly, that I wish I had taken more seriously when the evidence of Biden losing his acuity started really presenting itself in 2023. It was right there in the Biden book that I co-wrote with Alex Thompson of Axios, Original Sin. We have that Orwell quote in the opening of the book because it's like it was right there in front of our noses. Then we were just being gaslit by Democrats in the Biden administration, but it was right there. I think that is the stuff that is the easiest to ignore the stuff right in front of your face.

I don't know what the example is going to be, maybe more than one in the Trump era. It's just a question of, are we actually looking and seeing it?

You mentioned when you have a book coming out, and it's crazy, you have one so quickly. That's why when I was talking with your team, he's got another one?

Yeah. Well, this one, Race Against Terror.

Yeah, it's called Race Against Terror: Chasing an Al Qaeda Killer at the Dawn of the Forever War. And you said, I was curious how this book happened. As I was digging in, you're at this paintball birthday party for your son Jack, and somebody comes up and talks to you and says they know a guy, Dave Roller, who's a US veteran who you wrote about in The Outpost, which amazing book. It's got made into other stuff as well. How did this book come about from this paintball birthday party?

So first of all, let me just say, I've been working on Race Against Terror since 2021, 2022. So the Biden book was a rush book. I put everything aside in November, December, January, February. Worked on that. But this book was almost done before that. Got you. Except for editing. This was a multi-year process. We have a paintball party. You have only girls? Or do you have-Yeah. Okay, so you're probably not having paintball parties.

I mean, I'd be down for it. I think maybe a couple of them would do it, but we have not had that birthday party yet, actually.

We had a paintball party. It was a period when my son was rolling to paintball. I live in DC. It's an hour outside of DC. When I do the invitation, I'm like, Parents, stick around. I have pizza, I have drinks. They don't have to make four one-hour trips. It's just, just stick around for a couple of hours, hang out with the grownups. So one of the dads comes over to me and he says, Oh, yeah, Dave Roller from The Outpost. I know him. I'm like, Oh, and we start talking about The Outpost, which is a book I read about Afghanistan. In 2012. And I said, Yeah, you know what? It was really tough to write because the military, either they keep horrible records or they just don't share them. And I was doing the history of this one outpost for three and a half years. And it was really tough. I had to figure out who was in each unit. They just don't help. It's a shame, really, honestly, because it's a very pro-soldier book. Anyway, so I said, military keeps horrible records, and he says, Tell me about it. Then he tells me this incredible story Italy.

It starts off on the deck of an Italian cruise ship that's been commandeered during the Arab Spring. Berlusconi, the Prime Minister of Italy, has commandeered the ship to bring all these refugees from the Southern Italian islands to the mainland because it's a huge refugee crisis in the Mediterranean that summer. And there's an Italian guard on the ship, and this 5'6 African guy in a ship full of Tunisians and Libyans asks him for water, and he gives him some water, and he notices that the guy has bullet wounds. And he says, Where did you get those? And the guy's like, I'm a fighter with Al Qaeda. I got them fighting Americans. So they take this guy to another room and they interrogate him, and the guy starts freaking out, and then they sedate him, and they bring him to the Italian mainland, and they call the Americans They call the FBI. We have this guy named Spin Ghou. He says his name is Spin Ghou. Have you heard of him? And the Americans, so this is now the Eastern district of New York, the Brooklyn prosecutors who are in charge of terrorism in Africa. Each division has their own terrorism cases that they do.

Southern district has Europe, Eastern district has Africa. So he says, Yeah, we've heard of Spin Ghou, and they've heard of them. You and I haven't heard of them, but they have because of all the detainees in Gitmo. This is 2011. So all these detainees in Gitmo are talking and they've heard of Spindle. And what happens is, because this is the Obama era, nobody knew it was going to Gitmo, the Italians say, Okay, well, take them. We don't want them. We can hold them for a month or two for disrupting stuff on the boat, but he didn't do anything to us. And Spin Ghou is there confessing and saying, I killed Americans in Afghanistan, and I tried to blow up the US embassy in Nigeria, and blah, blah, blah. And the Americans have basically a ticking clock to build a case that will stand up in a court of law before the Italians free him. It's a race against time to prove that this random guy from Niger who has all these wild claims, and there's no evidence that anything he did, he can't even tell you what date the attack was in Afghanistan, to lock him up.

Because if he really is who he says he is, he's a mass murderer and he wants to kill as many millions. He loves the 1998 the embassy bombings. So it's a race against terror. They have to race and build a case against this guy before the Italians free him. And it's just this incredible story that Dave Bittkauer, who's one of the prosecutors, who is also the dad of one of my son's friends, tells me. It's just about this like, and then we did this, and then we found this guy, and then we tracked down a guy who took this Quran off the battlefield, and then we sent it to Quantico, and it had a fingerprint. And it's just this CSI story, but real. Wow.

How are you doing this, all this research and writing and listening to stories while at the same time being a full-time head of CNN and husband and a dad? How are you balancing all these things?

Well, I'm obviously a little nuts. I mean, that's got to be part of it, but very wired and driven and always researching and interested in stuff and just always was like that. When I was a kid and I would in the library a lot and reading stuff and just if I liked something or thought something was interesting. I mean, I'm just thinking in 1981, I was really into the TV show MASH, and then I went to the local library, and then I was looking up every article I could read about MASH on Microfish. People out there don't even know what Microfish is. It's like every news week from 1977 is on this file. It's just always how I've been, wired just to... I find something interesting and I want to find out everything I can about it. And thankfully, now I have an outlet for it that's not just a nerd sitting in a library reading Microfish about Alinaldo. I'm actually doing research. And this book was really interesting to write because there were just so many stories about it. And what happens is then you become more of an expert almost than some of the other players because the prosecutors, for example, don't really know everything that the FBI is doing.

The FBI doesn't know everything that the soldiers went through, the soldiers don't know everything that the Gold Star families went through, and on and on. You actually end up being the expert on this whole thing because you know enough of all of the stories. Then you just figure out, Okay, now how do I present this to a reader that is the most interesting and compelling way to bring it to them? That was the thinking of this book. I want to write it like a thriller, except it's 100% true. When I would tell people about the book, halfway through, that friends of mine, they'd be like, Wait, this is fiction or non-fiction? Because I've written some novels, too. I said, No, this is all true every bit of this happened.

That's what's wild when you read it, you're like, How is this real life? Jake, one of the things I've seen amongst leaders who have sustained excellence over time is that thing you just talked about, is they have this peculiar desire to chase down their curiosities with great rigor. They just go, and they go and they keep going. And then they find other things they're curious about, and then they go deep. And before you know it, you've written a ton of books, and you've talked to presidents, and then all this crazy stuff, because it seems like this one central theme of your life is to chase down what you're really curious about. I just love to hear your thoughts on that approach you bring to both your life and your career.

The main thing in my career, I think, has been hard work. And whenever people, like when young reporters want to know the key, I feel like sometimes they just want to hear like, Oh, I'll hook you up with this agent, and then everything will fall into place. That's just not how it is. I actually, unbeknownst to me, had a philosophy that I've since heard Steve Martin talk about when he talks about when young comedians come to him.

Charlie Rose, that one that famous interview with Charlie Rose?

It says, be so good that they can't ignore you. Yeah, I love it. Yeah. When I was a campaign reporter at ABC News, I started at ABC in 2003. I wanted to be a campaign reporter in 2004. They did not give me a candidate. Then in 2008, by then I had earned through fact-checking and being a congressional correspondent, then I was going to get a candidate. I was competing. My fellow ABC news correspondence were All of them just excellent in different ways. There was David Wright and Kate Snow and Dan Harris, and there were just so many, and they were just so good. I knew I had to be better than them in order to be the White House correspondent, which is what I wanted. I couldn't be smoother, I couldn't be prettier. I couldn't be a better broadcaster. I could work on all those things. But the one thing I could do is work harder. I could work harder than all of I could break more stories than all of them, or try to anyway, and I could aspire to do that. I had to be so good that even though on a broadcasting level or an appearance level or whatever, I wouldn't be the number one pick, but I had to be so good that David Weston, the head of ABC News at the time, had to give it to me because otherwise, he would look foolish.

He would look bad. Why would you not give it to him? He broke five stories or whatever. That was always my philosophy. I had to just work harder. And even if that meant pissing off a lot of people, not internally, I mean, but by breaking as many stories as possible. Back then, people had blogs, reporters I set blogs. If I couldn't get it on air, I would just put it on the blog. And the blog just became a place where I broke as many stories as possible. The point was, it was just constantly working, constantly.

What sacrifices did you make in order to be so good that you couldn't be ignored?

Well, I mean, I'm sure there were a lot of sacrifices. Obviously, so this is 2007, 2008. Well, I know that I sacrificed time at home because I was on the road the whole year, 2007, 2008, covering the presidential campaign. My daughter was born in 2007. My son was born in 2009. So I missed some important time there, which sucks. But thankfully, my wife understood that I was trying to build this career that ultimately be able to provide for the family in a way that there would be a payoff for it at the end. I'm sure there were sharp elbows that needlessly provoked other people because I was younger and clumsier and whatever. I'm sure I pissed off a lot of political operatives when I broke stories they didn't like, or maybe broke them in such a way that I could have broken them better. When you're constantly churning out work, that's a risk unto itself because I mean, especially if it's about politics, something that's so inherently controversial. So there were a lot of sacrifices. I think that working hard has been how I've been able to achieve whatever I've been able to achieve, and also follow interests, because any single thing I've done of major significance, in my view, and I would say, aside from the TV work, I would say The Outpost, I would say I wrote a story for The Atlantic about this guy that was one of my dad's, my dad's pediatrician, one of his former patients that he thought was in prison unjustly.

And I wrote a story for The Atlantic about his case And ultimately, that helped get him out of prison. He's a free man now. That, C. J. Rice. And the Biden book, those are probably the most impactful non-TV things I've done. And every single one of them, people were telling me not to do it. Every single one of them. I was told not to do The Outpost because I didn't have any expertise in military reporting, which I didn't. It's true, I didn't. When I started that book, I'd never even been to Afghanistan. Anyway, it's been hard work and it's been following my curiosities, even when people told me, I'm not interested in that. I'm not going to do that, I'm not going to support you, don't do that. That's been how it's worked for better or for worse.

What's made you in the face of that, which is maybe called rejection or people telling you not to do it. I don't know if these are people that you trust and love and that love you. All above. What makes you keep going?

Not family, but professional people. No, my wife's incredible. My wife supports everything I do. It's just the curiosity of wanting to know, of sensing a project that was worthwhile, figuring out that even if I didn't know enough about it that I could learn. Before I wrote The Outpost, I didn't have any experience covering war. I mean, I guess I'd been to Iraq, but I didn't really have any major experience covering war or writing about these things. I think it's the humility of accepting that I didn't know enough about these things. When I was writing The Outpost, I would send chapters to people who were there, who were experts. I found a couple of guys who, one of them had served in this part of Afghanistan with the State Department. Another guy was a linguist who was an expert on this particular region in Afghanistan. It's called Nurestan. It's where the Man Who Would Be King takes place, the Ruddard-Kippling book. It's like the Afghanistan of Afghanistan. It's like this incredibly isolated, dangerous place in Afghanistan. And they would come back with harsh criticism, really harsh criticism. I came to value that so much because it hadn't been published, so it was okay.

I could fix it. And they were unrelentingly harsh. I don't believe the story. This is so ethnocentric, how you're writing this. This is like white savior complex, blah, blah, blah. I'm like, great, great. Thank you. Thank you for the feedback because you can fix it if it hasn't been published yet. I think that's also one of the things that's important is having the humility to accept that I'm not an expert on any particular thing, really. I'm a journalist, which means I try to be an expert on whatever I'm covering at that moment. But having the modesty, the legitimate humility of saying, I don't know what a battalion is versus a company. Explain that to me has been an important part of the process, I think.

I think this willingness to be a beginner, this willingness to show up in places where you're not the expert or you don't know everything of what you're talking about is a superpower. I think it's useful skill for the leaders to have. And I think it is a skill because you got to be tough. You got to have some inborn confidence that's been created throughout your life. So I can show up and be a beginner. I've never done this. I don't know what I'm talking about, but I'm willing to chase down my curiosity. I think more leaders would benefit from developing that skill. Jake, that leads me to another question I have that's leadership-focused. So you've interviewed presidents, generals, world leaders, and I'm sure there's lots of different things you've picked up from those conversations you've had. What are some of the most useful leadership lessons you've learned from talking to some of the most powerful people in the history of our world?

I think the humility part of it is really important. And I don't know, some of this is from interviews, some of this is just from observation. I mean, I've been a journalist now for almost 30 years. I have this theory, the great people often achieve as much as they can to the point that they are able to remove from their inner circle anyone who tells them they're being an asshole or making a wrong decision. They often do that. They often remove any critic from their inner circle. I call it the Jar Jarbinks Theory. It's a bad name, but it's because I think Jar-Jar Binks is a horrible creation in the Star Wars movies, and that somebody should have been there telling George Lucas, Please don't put that Jamaican frog in the movie. It's a horrible idea. The movie still made $6 billion, so whatever. But I think of it that way because it doesn't even matter about the success of the project, per se, as it is about the worth and the quality of the work. So for instance, Joe Biden is a good example of somebody who, by the end, was surrounded by his top aides and his family who They were not honest about what was going on with him.

There are a lot of presidents who have had that problem. I think that that is the number one thing. It is very important to surround yourself with people and not just a spouse who will tell you when you're airing, as my wife without question does, but also your executive producer, your chief of staff, your top... You need people around you, not just to keep you humble, but to protect you from yourself. I think that that is the most important lesson in leadership because I see it violated every day, all the time. I mean, it's just over and over and over. You say, why would they do that? Well, because they have removed every critic from their inner circle. So they don't even have a clear view as to how they look or what this might look like. They don't have anybody like that. And this is not to beat up on Joe Biden, but we saw this when Alex and I wrote the Biden book, Original Sin. That was something that we saw was the removal of any skeptic from the White House. It is something that in Race Against Terror, you don't see because these are incredibly collaborative people working and pushing and stress testing.

Also the guys, the heroes of this book, they are not... It's not the President, it's not the attorney general, it's like assistant US attorneys. It's like people who are... They are the ones to tell other people when they're screwing up. So because it's like upper mid-level people, They don't have the hubris. They have people on top of them pushing down. But I think that's a really, really important lesson, and I see it violated all the time.

I've seen this, too. And it's funny. I actually just had this conversation with my close group of friends, like the coaches I work with. I maybe point to an example of someone who has lost it, meaning they've surrounded themselves with, yes, men and women. I'll say, Do not ever let that happen to me. I'll do my best to do the same for you.

Who do you have in your life that does that? Who Who pushes back on you?

I work with a group of coaches. One of their number one skills, not only for me, but just in life, is they are truth tellers. I think excellent coaches can see the truth, and they're not afraid to tell you, and they're not afraid to say it. Now, a big part is they have to have this underlying care and love for you. Genuine care and love. Genuine. Because some people that are in your life are a little bit envious, they're a little bit jealous. I know you've got these people, even if you don't want them, Because you're a powerful person, you've risen up. And so, yes, hopefully you have those truth tellers. It sounds like you do. But also there are some of those that are on the fringe or around that are like, I don't know, man. I don't know if I... I like Jake, but do I love him? You want the people who love you and care for you and also we'll say, Jake, dude, what are you doing here? You've lost it, or you're just wrong, or what you said last night, I don't know if that was the right way to go about it.

What if you said it this way? And then you to say, I know he loves me, and I appreciate that. You know what I mean? I assume, is that how you try to design your team where it's not only welcomed but encouraged to speak up to you to say, Hey, I think we may be approach that one wrong. We should maybe look at it like this.

Yeah, I mean, and I'm not diluted enough to think that the power imbalance doesn't have an effect on whether or not people are willing to say something to me or to other people. But without question, I have my executive producers and I go back and forth on stuff.

Do you guys fight, like healthy fight?

Yeah. I mean, right now I'm thinking of my State of the Union producer is this incredible executive producer named Rachel Streitfeld. She's fantastic. She and I disagree. I would like to have, and this is just a regular TV discussion, but if we're up to me, I would do one interview for half an hour, and she would rather do two or three. It's a television programming and also a journalistic debate, and it's a discussion, and then we lock horns on it. There's no right answer or wrong answer, but we disagree on that. Look, and I value that. I don't want a yes person. I want somebody... It's a fight we continue to have because it's not like I'm right and she's wrong or vice versa. It's we disagree, and it's a healthy tension, and it's about something substantive. It's not like I'm trying to book Kim Kardashian. It's completely... There's no right answer on that. Sometimes I'll do an analysis, a news analysis, and we'll discuss whether or not I'm going too far or I'm not going far enough. I mean, that's a healthy conversation that we have in the newsroom. I certainly encourage people to speak up.

But like I said, I'm not naive enough to think that means a 23-year-old desk assistant is going to feel like she can just come in my office and I don't like this topic or whatever. She should, but I know that it probably is intimidating. But I hope that there is at least that environment fostered where even if it's not brought up at a meeting, it can be voiced.

Why do you think so many How do you think that powerful leaders struggle with this? Does it stem from an insecurity? Technically, it's more comfortable just to have people blow smoke and tell you how awesome you are. My background is in sports, and so I'm used to getting like, anihilated by coaches coaches every day when they watch practice film and game film. I almost feel like I'm not living if I'm not getting critical feedback because it's been hammered into me since I was five till 26. And so I need it. I need it. Give me some feedback, critical feedback, so I can get better, so I can get better because the people who I love so much in my life were coaches.

I'm the same way. It's funny.

Yeah, you know what I mean? But now you're seeing it, whether it's presidents or other powerful people where it's like, dude, who's around that guy? To tell them, no, man. Why do you think this is such a thing?

I think any leadership is difficult. I think any leadership, especially in this day and age, comes with a tremendous amount of criticism. Often, let me just put myself in the shoes of Donald Trump, just for the sake of this exercise. President Trump has a very difficult job. This is just like, remove what you think about Donald Trump, anybody listening. Remove what you think about him, whether you love him or you hate him or you're in between. He's a very difficult job. If you go online, you will find the nastiest, most personal attacks, not only on him, but his appearance, his wife, his daughter, his sons, his grandkids. There is the nastiest stuff out there. In addition, and this could apply to any president, so don't think this is about Trump, but in addition, he's getting death threats, He had assassination attempts. He literally has to walk around in a protective bubble because people will try to kill him. So you put yourself in that environment and then you say, Well, why isn't he listening to criticism? Yeah, that's a good point. His entire life is criticism. Now, that doesn't mean I don't think he should listen to criticism.

I do, and I think he could probably be an even better president if he had more skeptics around him, all that stuff, as I thought about Biden, et cetera. But to any smaller degree, let's say I'm just going to keep picking people who people won't expect me to sympathize with. Let's say Sean Hannity, right? Sean Hannity, same thing. He does a show every night. I'm sure he brings his best to it. I'm sure he thinks he's doing the best show he can do, and he's providing entertainment and news and analysis, and he's making lots of money for Fox, this and that. And again, he probably has to have a security detail. The criticism on him, I'm sure, is unrelenting. So In a situation like that, it might not be the first impulse of somebody to say, Okay, give me some criticism. I understand how it could happen that somebody removes critiques from their sphere. I'm not saying that about Trump or Panody. I'm just cite them as two examples of how tough it can be in to be in the public sphere. I think it makes sense. Now, add on that, if you're general, you're literally getting shot at.

If you're a Hollywood star, your life or death is like whether or not you get good reviews and the movies come out. If your movie fails, then literally, maybe you're going to lose your job and your money and your power. The stakes are very high on a personal level. So I understand it. My point isn't that the criticism makes me a better person. My point is that it makes me a better journalist. That's, I think, the point. And I'm humble enough to know that every day, I could stand criticism about what we could have done better yesterday and what we should do better tonight.

One of the attributes, I think you're exemplifying that we all would be better served having is the ability to legitimately put yourself in someone else's shoes. I don't think most of us do that. Hardly ever. We don't sit there and actually think, Wait, what would it... A lot of the time, When this happens in a company. It's just so easy to criticize the CEO when you're down multiple layers below. It's so easy to criticize the senior leadership. But if you've never taken the time to have an understanding of what their life is actually like, what are they faced with? What are their struggles, their problems? What you just showed is it actually helped me be a little bit more reasonable because I don't know what that's like. I don't know what death threats and having to have assassination of... I don't know Nobody really knows what that's like. But you're sitting like, hey, why don't you guys think about that a little bit? It might make you just a more reasonable person. Now, that still doesn't say, hey, you should just surround yourself with yes people. But I do think, in general, a good leadership skill is to try to understand the world through somebody else's eyes.

And if you can do that, you'll probably have higher EQ. You'll be able to better relate with people and probably become a better communicator and understanding of others. And that's a good leadership skill in itself.

One of the things that's tough it, and I know this from personal experience, is that it's very difficult to try to maintain that when you're talking about people that are being relentlessly unfair to you.

Yes.

Twisting things you say and attacking you personally and attacking your family, this and that. I have experienced that to a much smaller degree than President Trump or President Biden, but I know what it's like, and it sucks. One of the things I think is so interesting about President Trump is because he drives so many people crazy. But it's not just his supporters who are driven to the point of illogic that they'll support anything he says or does, even if it contradicts itself or whatever. It's also his opponents. He drives his opponents crazy where they are just like knee-jerk, opposing anything he says or does, twisting this, that, the other, and they often beclown themselves in their hatred of him Again, I understand it because it's difficult when you're in the public eye and people are just really coming at you, like other public officials, to try to maintain the state of decorum and grace and respect for them when they're not doing it for you. So I get it. I understand why President Trump or others are so angry and so inclined to lash back because psychologically, it's not pleasant. And I can't say that I've maintained 100% like I have in my in my mind, tweets that I wish I hadn't written, et cetera, since deleted, so you can't find them.

But I'm sure they're out there somewhere. But moments where I got mad and I betrayed the best version of myself that I wanted to be.

Yeah. Well, I think the other thing is to realize, and I've realized this after 650 of these things, is every single person I've talked to, they've sustained excellence, they've done amazing things. They're also humans, and humans are messy, and the world's not black and white. It's really gray, right? And we all We all do stupid stuff from time to time. And I think that's life, man. I think it is weird. We put people on pedestals. We think they're not humans, but then you get to know them and you're like, Yeah, impressive, super hard worker, really smart, gets after it, good leader, good person, also a human who makes mistakes and does dumb stuff sometimes. And I think that's a realization we need to come to.

Yeah, now we're all fallible. I'm a big Dave Matthews fan. I was listening to his channel on SiriusXM. Oh, my God.

I've been to 80 plus shows. Are you one of those guys, too? Do you go to tons of them?

No, I go to one or two a year. I mean, I've been listening to him since '91 or '92. It's the first time I heard him. He came to Philly. He opened for the Spin Doctors at the Chestnut Cabaret at Penn. We went to go see the Spin Doctors, and we're like, Who's this? His opening act is really good. I don't know how many times I've seen him. I just saw him in Montana with my brother. It was incredible. It was an incredible show in Big Sky. Anyway, I was listening to his channel on SiriusXM, channel 30. As I'm sure you know.

Nicki Glazer, yeah, voice of. Yeah.

He's talking about Osi Osborne, who just passed away. He was just saying every time he... He said something along the lines of, They say, Don't meet your heroes because they'll always disappoint you. Basically, that's true, except for Osi Osi was always awesome. I was thinking like, Wow, you're Dave Matthews. You've met everybody. I'm like, Who disappointed you? I wanted to find out who was awful. But I'm sure because he catches them backstage at a concert and they're exhausted and 70 years old, 80 years old. It's like we're all so broken and imperfect and it's okay to acknowledge that.

Yeah. Jake, I meant to say this earlier, but I really dug deep into your work back in 2019 because of your daughter, Alice. Oh, yeah. She wrote a book called Raise Your Hand, which we have read as a family quite a bit.

Because you have how many daughters? You have four or five? Five. Five. Amazing.

God bless. And so I'm curious- How many bathrooms do you have? Not enough.

Okay.

Mine is overtaken from time to time. But I'm curious how you balance an excellent career. You just dropped your daughter off at school and college, which I can't even imagine that day. I'm going to lose my mind. But you just dropped her off at college. She wrote this great book called Raise Your Hand, and And I think it speaks certainly to girls and to women, but also just to, I think, leadership in general, right? I think raise your hand is a good idea. How have you balanced, again, an amazing career where you've sustained excellence over decades, both writing books, bestsellers, and the main dude on CNN for quite a while now, with also being a really good husband and being a great dad?

Well, first of all, let me just say, Alice and her mom get all the credit for raise her hand. Alice noticed when she was eight or nine, that all of a sudden the girls in her class weren't raising their hand and the boys in her class were. Even if the boys didn't know the answer, they just raised their hand. She talked about it with her mom, my wife, Jennifer, and they took it to the Girl Scout troupe, and they came up with a patch, the raise your hand patch, which is basically you promise to raise your hand in class if you think you know the answer, and you promise to get three other friends. If anybody's listening out there who has any connection to Girl Scouts, this is a patch that anybody can She did the patch. I was so proud. I tweeted about it. Barry Weis, who was in at the New York Times, saw that, said, Would Alice like to work with us on an op-ed? She did. That came out online. Penguin Books saw that, said, Would she like to write a book? Yes. She worked with the editor and wrote a book called raise your hand.

I'm very proud of her, but that's all Alice and Jennifer and the Girl Scout troupe, honestly. I have tried to be the best and most supportive dad I can be. We have a son, Jack, too. He's I was 15. I can't sit here and pretend that I've always been here and there have been no sacrifices or that I'm a perfect dad or anything like that. In fact, when Jennifer and I dropped Alice off at Michigan, I came home and I wept for the first time since 2021 when Alice was sick. That's another story. But she's 100% fine now. There was a follow-up book called Use Your Voice about speaking up at the hospital. That's another kid's book. In any case, one of the parts of my weeping was about everything I missed. Because the 18 years goes like that. I thought about all the time I wasn't there because I was at work or because I was in Iowa or Afghanistan or whatever. There are sacrifices. I think what I've been able to provide for Alice is unconditional love, hopefully reasonably wise advice, good editing. I'm a good editor for any email my wife, son, or daughter want to...

Although my son's never used it. But anyway, and support, and financial support so she can do whatever she wants to do. The truth is, that's what I cried about. It's the stuff I missed that I wasn't there for because I was chasing a story or on assignment or whatever. That's something I've been thinking a lot about. Because she's a college, she's not gone from this Earth, so there's still time to rectify that.

We've talked about this a little bit earlier. I just happened to look at the clock and realize how much time has passed so quickly.

This has been such a good conversation. I haven't- Yeah, I really, really appreciate it, man, because like I said, I've followed your work for a long time.

And I love people who are able to take these wild stories and I'm learning them into books because I've done it a few times, and I know how insanely hard it is and how much I doubt and struggle through the process to get a book to the finish line. You've done it so many times, and they're so, so good on top, again, of doing all the stuff you do at CNN. I'm just curious for people who a little bit earlier in their career, and again, we hit on this a little bit earlier, for that person who's like, You know what? I want to leave a positive dent in the world. I don't know how yet, but I do. What are some general pieces of life/ career advice you give to that person?

The first thing I would say is if they're interested in journalism, anybody can be a pundit, and especially in this day and age when punditry is just basically just people insulting other people online. Be a reporter, be a journalist. This is famous last words. I can't imagine writing a memoir because it's really... Who cares?

I think you should.

Well, I even know maybe when I'm 80 and I need to figure out a project and I got... But I'm telling you, the stories of other people are so much more interesting. And what other people think about issues going on, Whether it's like, Johna Goldberg or Ashley Allison, a Democratic pundit we have, or whoever, what they think is much more important than what I think, and what politicians think about issues are much more important than what I think. So as a general rule, other people are more interesting than you in terms of journalism. Hard work is very important. The advice I give to young people, especially people in college who have never really experienced it, so much life is rejection. There's so much rejection in life. It's nonstop. It is just a constant flow. You cannot stop it, and you cannot revel in it. You cannot marinate in it. It just is. And just know that and know how much there is out there and don't take it personally. Or if there is some constructive criticism that's part of it, then learn from that to improve your game. Truth is, most fields in the humanities, there's a tremendous amount of rejection.

Journalism, history, English, fiction, interviews, whatever. So just knowing that and coming to terms with the fact that Dr. Seuss's first book was rejected by 47 publishers or whatever. You can go through a list of them. There are so many examples of really worthy artists and projects being told you're worthless. And you just can't let that be the final word. So, rejection and hard work. And then the other thing I always tell young people is, nobody will give you a job to be nice. It just doesn't work that way. People are nice to you throughout grade school and high school. It's even college. But the idea is nobody will do anything for you, generally speaking, in the professional world, to be nice. They'll do it because you have something they want. Just have that thing. Then it doesn't have to be like Steve Martin's advice of be so good, they can't ignore you, because obviously, so few people are born with the skill of Steve Martin. But for most fields, hard work is enough. For most fields, hard work is enough. For journalism, hard work is enough. And that means like, I really want this job.

I will be here at 6: 00 in the morning, and I will be the last one to leave at night, and I will do anything you want. Tell me where to go, tell me where to be. Here are my clips, blah, blah, blah. I mean, it can be that simple. And then once you accept those truisms, for me, life can become a lot more pleasant because then it doesn't feel like just an unrelenting wave of rejection. It's just like, okay, remember in survivor where Tom Hanks is trying to get out his raft, he's trying to leave the island, and there's this one wave to his raft cannot get past, but he figures out how to do it. It's just this timing, and it's every seven seventh wave, you can sneak in. If you work hard enough, you can sneak past the wave on the seventh time. I mean, just every code can be cracked.

Yeah. You got to keep going. I try to remind people, too, that you get hired to make that person's life better, to help that company, to help your boss. Again, they're not hiring you because like, Oh, my God, you're amazing. It's like, Wait, you can solve a problem? Yes, I can solve a problem. I will figure that out. I will help you. I will make make your life better. That's why you do it. And you get promoted for the same reasons. It's amazing how it works, but you got to get out of your own head to do that. And I love the idea of just you got to keep fighting through the rejection. If you look at the stories of people who have sustained excellence, they've all faced some rejection or adversity, and they just kept at it. They kept at it. Part of winning is just staying in the game. Too many people quit, and that's why they lose because they don't have a chance to win. Oh, 100 %. You know what I'm saying?

Yeah. Yeah. And Look, I mean, so Original Sin was the Biden book I wrote. Look, I have no idea how well this book is going to do. I hope it does well. But honestly, to me, it's just like, I wrote this book. I'm proud of it. I hope people buy it. I hope people enjoy it. I mean, I'd like it to be a best seller, all that stuff. But it is the work that it is. But Original Sin, just to bring it back to the rejection thing, Alex and I started working on the book the day after the election because we were like, What happened? That was not normal, and I still don't... How bad was it behind the scenes? And we started working on it. Alex and I, and I said to Alex, we were working on the book, we didn't have a publisher. I mean, he had an agent, I had an agent, and they were working on shopping around. We wrote a proposal, and then they were working on shopping it around. But I said, I don't care if we self-publish this and put it on eBay. I just want to answer this question and write this book.

Now, it turned out that there were a couple of publishers that were interested, and ultimately, Penguin Random House published it. But I'll say there were publishers that rejected it, that didn't even want to read the proposal. And then there were publishers that offered a low bid or whatever. Again, that's fine. It got almost universally positive reviews from the mainstream critics The New York Times, Washington Post, etc. And it was on the best seller list for seven weeks. It was number one on the non-conviction list for the first and second week. So I only say that by saying, whatever you think of Joe Biden, whatever you think of me, the book was successful. Publishers Publishers rejected it. I'm not going to name them, but there were publishers rejected the book. It was a success, period. Full stop. I'm probably at the top of my craft right now, or at least at the top that I'll ever achieve. And just for anybody out there struggling or whatever, I get rejected every day, every day. And it doesn't matter that I've had New York Times best sellers before or whatever. It's part of life. And it sucks. But you just have to keep fighting through and beating that wave on the seventh one.

I think that message is super inspiring because some would assume, well, you just can do whatever you want. Of course, everybody wanted it. Of course, because we've seen the numbers it's done and the impact it has had. And another one that I've read that is wild that I recommend people reading, too. But yeah, I mean, this current book, it's like a movie is how I would describe it. That's how it reads. I love watching movies, but it feels like that. I think it's really hard to make the written word feel like a movie. And this book, Race Against Terror: Chasing an Al Qaeda Killer at the Dawn of the Forever War, feels like a movie. You're inside of it. It's really, really well done. I really appreciate your team sending me an early copy and for them to connect us because I really enjoyed this, Jake.

Well, this was a lot of fun. I'll just give two... For any aspiring writers out there, I'll give you two of advice that I think I achieved in this book and the last book, and maybe not in any of the previous ones, which is, one, have a really good structure. That's an important part of a book. It's like the beginning, the middle, and the end. There's the old aphorism like, Act one, chase your hero up a tree. Act two, throw rocks at your hero. Act three, get your hero out of the tree. That's the basic dramatic structure for everything. Having a good structure is important. Then Number two is have a good editor and be willing to kill your darlings, as they say. Faulkner, I think, said it. This editor I have for this book, Sean Delone, he's fantastic. I would send him a chapter. I'd done the outline and I was sending him chapter by chapter. That's how we wrote it. No, I'd send him Chapter 7, and he'd be like, Jake, you need to rewrite chapter seven. It's too much like chapter four. Here's my idea for it. I'd be like, Fuck. I don't want to do more work.

I'm doing so much work.

Just tell me it's good, man. No, no, that wouldn't be loving you. That wouldn't be showing you the love.

And literally, I'm sitting here and I sent an outline for a project to my agent, and I'm just waiting for him to say, This is good, this is bad. It should be a screenplay. It should be a novel, whatever. He might say it sucks. I mean, I don't even know, but it's something I've spent the last two months working on. And again, it could be nothing. He could say it's awful. This is all just part of the process. Then if it turns out, I don't think I can sell this, or this isn't any good, or blah, blah, blah, or it needs work or whatever. I'm 56, but I might as well be 22. It doesn't matter. I'm facing rejection. Yes, things are a little easier for me now, but that doesn't mean I'm not in it still the same way as I was back when it was 100% rejection. Now it's only 95% rejection.

It feels like you're speeding up.

Yeah.

Is that accurate? Are you speeding up? Right now, you're going harder. You're not taking it easy and resting on your laurels and all the money and everything. You're getting after it even more.

Yes, that's accurate. I don't know how much longer I have this window where people are paying attention to ideas I have or thoughts I have. I like having multiple projects going. I know if there's anything I've learned from watching peers and older contemporaries, it's that relevance is ephemeral. And when it leaves, it looks fucking brutal. I mean, it hasn't left me yet, but it will at some point. And I just want to make sure that I'm producing as much as possible while I still can.

I think it's inspiring, man. I love the idea of speeding up. I'm going to go, man. I'm going to maximize this thing. Let's get after it. Let's try to help people. Let's make an impact. Let's tell stories. Again, I think it's inspiring when you see somebody who's hit the top of the mountain and they run faster and they go harder. Maybe that's not for everybody, but it's for me, man. I love that approach to this thing, and I think it's inspiring for others to see that you're speeding up at a time when maybe some would relax or would Coast. And I appreciate that.

I thank you. And I have to say your metaphor is making my bones ache. The idea of me hitting the top of a mountain and running faster sounds incredibly painful to my knees and lower back. But I know you mean it as a metaphor. I'll take it in that spirit.

This is great, man. Overall, I really appreciate this, Jake. I would love to continue our dialog as we both progress, man.

Absolutely. This has been so fun.

It is the end of a podcast club. Thank you for being a member of the end of a podcast club. If you are, send me a note, rian@learningleader. Com. Let me know what you learn from this great conversation with Jake Tapper. A few takeaways from my notes. Be so good, they can't ignore you. As Jake said, I might not be as good-looking as you are. I might not be as smart, but I am in control of how hard I work. As leaders, it is our responsibility to work so hard that we become the obvious choice for the job or the promotion. Be so good, they can't ignore you. Then the one leadership skill that is massively important to develop. Do not insulate yourself with, Yes people. You have to have truth tellers in your life. Who are your foxhole friends? Who are the people that are willing and able to tell you the truth? Who are the ones who love you and care enough about you that they'll let you know when you've messed up? Those people are gold. We all need them. Then I thought his life/ career advice was really good at the end.

Dr. Seuss was rejected by 47 publishers. Rejection is part of life. You have to stay in the game for a chance to win it. Keep going. Nobody, nobody will give you a job to be nice. What value do you bring to a company? How will you make your boss's life better? You get hired to solve a problem, not because someone wants to be nice. Once again, I would say thank you so much for continuing to spread the message and telling a friend or two, Hey, you should listen to this episode of The Learning Leader Show with Jake Tapper. I think he'll help you become a more effective leader because you continue to do that and you also go to Apple Podcasts and Spotify, and you subscribe to the show. You're rated, hopefully, five stars, and you write a thoughtful review by doing all of that. You are giving me the opportunity to do what I love on a daily basis, and for that, I will forever be grateful. Thank you so Talk to you soon. Can't wait.