CNN's Jake Tapper marked a historic moment on Saturday as President Trump was projected to lose his re-election bid, reflecting on an "era of just plain meanness."
Tapper spoke on Saturday morning as CNN and other networks projected that former Vice President Joe Biden will defeat Trump in the 2020 presidential election. He remarked upon the "end of a tumultuous presidency" amid "a time of extreme divisions" in the United States.
"It has been a time where truth and fact were treated with disdain," Tapper said. "It is a time of cruelty, where official inhumanities, such as child separation, became the official, shameful policy of the United States. But now, the Trump presidency is coming to an end. With so many squandered opportunities and ruined potential, but also an era of just plain meanness."
Tapper criticized the Trump administration's response to the coronavirus pandemic, blasting the president's "unwillingness to respect facts and science and do everything that could be done to save lives during a pandemic." The CNN host also described the Trump presidency as a "time of some accomplishments," and a time when many Americans "felt heard" for the first time, "which is important."
But Tapper concluded, "It must be said, to paraphrase President Ford, for tens of millions of our fellow Americans, their long national nightmare is over." Brendan Morrow