Another day, another exercise in selective outrage from CNN’s Jake Tapper — a man who has managed to become a caricature of the very thing he pretends to hold accountable: bias in journalism. This time, Tapper is doing verbal gymnastics to defend a bizarre and dangerous political stunt by Democrats, while predictably criticizing Donald Trump for daring to respond.
Here’s the setup: a group of Democratic lawmakers, some of them former military, released a video telling active-duty military personnel to refuse “illegal orders” from Trump — preemptively, without citing a single illegal order he’s given in office, now or during his presidency.
Update: now he’s suggesting the Democratic lawmakers should be executed. https://t.co/pGDmb2bBCC pic.twitter.com/MqJTIWwUh9
— Jake Tapper 🦅 (@jaketapper) November 20, 2025
Let that sink in. There is no evidence that Trump has ever issued an illegal order to the U.S. military. None. But that didn’t stop this group from fearmongering, and in doing so, planting the dangerous idea that troops should pick and choose which orders they follow based on political interpretation, not military chain of command or lawful standards.
This isn’t just political theater — it’s reckless. Encouraging members of the armed forces to second-guess presidential directives, based on a fabricated narrative of “illegal orders” that don’t exist, undermines military discipline and cohesion. Worse, it politicizes the military in a way that no serious country should tolerate.
Remember the years you and your colleagues spent falsely claiming that Trump was a traitor who stole the 2016 election by colluding with Russia?
— Mollie (@MZHemingway) November 20, 2025
But instead of pointing that out, Jake Tapper turned his spotlight — not on the Democrats for spreading baseless paranoia — but on Trump, for being angry about it.
Because of course he did.
Rather than question the wisdom of weaponizing the military against a political opponent, Tapper used his platform to suggest that Trump’s frustration is the real problem, not the insinuation that our service members should defy orders based on party-line hysteria.
This is classic Tapper — feigning objectivity while elevating every anti-Trump narrative, no matter how flimsy, and downplaying any legitimate grievance the former president raises. It’s not journalism. It’s public relations dressed up in a CNN lower-third.
No way… pic.twitter.com/bcWtNObLSD
— Wade Stotts (@wadestotts) November 20, 2025
What’s dangerous here isn’t just the video. It’s the media ecosystem that enables it — reporters who refuse to call out real threats when they come from the left, and instead obsess over Trump’s tone, tweets, and temperament. The double standard isn’t subtle. It’s the entire framework.
Jake Tapper doesn’t have to like Trump. That’s his right. But when a prominent journalist shrugs off a message that could destabilize military discipline just because he dislikes the target, he’s no longer reporting the news — he’s shaping it.
