The people who watch CNN know why they are watching CNN. They hate Donald Trump, and they love to hear him compared to Hitler, or perhaps murderous dinosaurs. On Thursday’s The Lead, host Jake Tapper fed the CNN base by bringing up a recent “progressive” Trump insult, comparing his second term to the velociraptors in Jurassic Park figuring out how to terrify the humans.
New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman was discussing how Trump is coming into a second term after all the lessons learned in his first, he’s gained a better understanding of how Washington works. “He did come in last time, actually, with a policy agenda that he wanted to enact, and he got totally stymied by, you know, someone in his own administration and flummoxed by the various investigations into him. He’s not facing any of that right now. So it’ll be interesting to see what it looks like.”
Then came the dino-bite, or as Jesse Watters put it on Fox, “Trumposaurus Rex”:
Giggles! Jake Tapper enjoys the metaphor that Trump is coming back to a second term like the velociraptors in “Jurassic Park” learning how to wreak havoc.
From the people who think you shouldn’t compare MS-13 gangsters to animals…. pic.twitter.com/mOmpvwlC4Q
— Tim Graham (@TimJGraham) December 14, 2024
TAPPER: Well, the question then becomes, does this knowledge that he has, does that mean that he will be more Reaganesque in his delivery? Or is it like the velociraptor who tests — tests the door in Jurassic Park and then is now figuring out how he can more successfully wreak havoc?
HABERMAN: Right. Several people who have worked for him over the years have used the Jurassic Park analogy, so I think that seems.
TAPPER: [Laughs] Yes. I didn’t make it up.
HABERMAN: Right. It seems like. Well, I’m just saying, if you have to pick which one you think it’s going to be. I don’t think it’s going to be Reaganesque delivery. I think he is going to say things like, “I’ll be fair to you, as long as you’re fair to me, which we have heard him and his version of fairness is not necessarily everybody else’s.
TAPPER: That means no criticism at all.
HABERMAN: Right. It means — it means doing what he wants or saying what he wants and not opposing him.
It’s a little puzzling how refusing to speak optimistically or idealistically like Ronald Reagan somehow makes you a vicious dinosaur. In his day, Reagan was painted as the dangerous dinosaur. Liberal journalists routinely smear whoever the Republican president is — even the George Bushes.