From The Daily Beast:
Last night’s prime time presidential address may have been like prom to the White House press corps, but every high-schooler knows that reputations are made in the schoolyard. And for the freshman class of 44, the first skirmish happened last Thursday in the White House Briefing room between presidential Press Secretary Robert Gibbs and ABC’s Jake Tapper.
Tapper, the network’s ambitious, telegenic Senior White House Correspondent has made a name for himself as a tough questioner, but last Thursday, Tapper’s tenacity didn’t just get the story – it became the story, in a sudden, testy exchange with Gibbs that was instantly snapped up by blogs, posted on YouTube and rebroadcast for good measure on Fox News’s Hannity.
Tapper had asked Gibbs about getting copies of ethics disclosure forms for Cabinet nominees – a reasonable question, asked with a bit of a jab: “Based on listening to the president’s rhetoric, I’m sure this is something he would want to do.” Retorted Gibbs: “Well, knowing of your crystal clarity on his opinion, I’ll certainly check.” Oh, snap! And it was on:
Tapper: He doesn’t believe in transparency?
Gibbs: Did you have another more pertinent question?
Tapper: I think that’s fairly pertinent to your cabinet nominees and whether not they pay their taxes and whether not they have speaking fees with all sorts of industries you are supposed to regulate, I think that’s fairly pertinent, you don’t?
Ouch.
Tapper won that point—we’ve seen just how pertinent it is to Cabinet nominees that they pay their taxes—but with it came something else: The title of Briefing Room Badass.
Read the rest of the story here.
