During his opening monologue Monday night, Jimmy Kimmel cheered President Joe Biden for getting caught on a hot mic calling Fox News’ White House correspondent Peter Doocy a “stupid son of a bitch.”
“There’s old snarky malarkey, we’ve been wondering where he was!” the late-night host exclaimed with a smile.
But later in the show, his guest Jake Tapper had a very different reaction.
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When Kimmel asked Tapper if his life is “boring” now that Donald Trump is no longer president, the CNN host replied, “No, the current president just called someone a dumb son of a bitch today.”
“That reporter, Peter Doocy, is he a dumb son of a bitch?” Kimmel asked.
“I don’t think any president should be calling any journalist a dumb son of a bitch,” Tapper answered. “And to be fair to Peter Doocy, the question was fairly anodyne.” Doocy’s question concerned whether rising inflation has become a political liability for the president.
“Wait a minute,” Kimmel pushed back, “Fox News says that you’re on Team Biden and you are a mouthpiece for the Democrats and yet here you are defending Peter Doocy, who as far as I have been able to tell, is indeed a dumb son of a bitch.”
Unmoved, Tapper told Kimmel, “I do not agree with that. And I will say, standards for decency don’t have to do with whether or not you like the people that are being treated poorly. It just has to do with the standard. And yes, I recognize that Peter’s channel probably would never come to my defense like that, but it is what it is.”
Finally, after Tapper noted that Biden did call Doocy directly to apologize after the incident, Kimmel joked, “I’m sure Trump did that though.”
Laughing, Tapper replied, “He gave out maps to our homes.”
