Today’s Jewish Birthday: Jake Tapper

Jake Tapper (March 12, 1969) was raised in Philadelphia by pediatrics professor Theodore Tapper and his wife Helen Anne Palmatier, a psychiatric nurse. His schooling included the progressive Philadelphia School, the Akiba Hebrew Academy, and Dartmouth College where he graduate magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa, earning a bachelor’s degree in history.

Following graduation, he worked as a press secretary for Marjorie Margolies-Mezvinsky (D-Pennsylvania) and later with Handgun Control Inc, which later became the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence. From 1994 to 2003, his cartoon strip “Capitol Hell” appeared in Roll Call.

In 1998 he switched from public relations to journalism, writing for the Washington City Paper, then for Salon, and in 2001 Tapper hosted a CNN talk show, Take Five, and also freelanced articles to such major print outlets as The New Yorker, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and The New York Times Magazine. He joined ABC News in 2003, working on major stories in Iraq, New Orleans, and Afghanistan. He served for three months as interim anchor of ABC’s This Week before Christiane Amanpour was named as the host. After covering the 2008 election, he became ABC’s senior White House correspondent, covering the presidential election of 2012. He interviewed President Barack Obama several times.

Tapper’s job as a CNN anchor and chief Washington correspondent began in 2013, when he hosted his own program, The Lead with Jake Tapper. His newscasts about the Boston Marathon bombing and Oklahoma’s tornadoes were honored by his fellow journalists. In 2014, his book The Outpost: An Untold Story of American Valor was critically acclaimed by the Congressional Medal of Honor Society.

In 2015, his show was named State of the Union with Jake Tapper, where he gained a reputation for asking tough questions to such national politicians as Bernie Sanders, Jeb Bush, Hillary Clinton, and Donald Trump. In 2015, he was selected to moderate two Republican presidential primary debates at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library. In 2018, his first novel, The Hellfire Club, was published. In 2021, the sequel, The Devil May Dance, and in 2022 a third volume, All the Demons Are Here, were published. In January 2021, Tapper’s role was expanded to CNN’s lead anchor for all major Washington events, with Dana Bash co-hosting State of the Union on alternate weeks.

Tapper dated Monica Lewinsky platonically in December 1997, prior to news breaking about her affair with President Bill Clinton. In 2006, he and Jennifer Marie Brown were married, and they have two children, Alice and Jack. Alice created a Raise Your Hand patch for the Girl Scouts, had an Op-Ed published in The New York Times, authored a picture book, Raise Your Hand, encouraging girls to be more confident in school, and was interviewed on The Ellen DeGeneres Show, all before the age of 12. Tapper is a lifelong fan of Philadelphia sports teams.

Tomorrow, March 13: Neil Sedaka.

SDJW condensation of a Wikipedia article