Things can get messy when cable news hosts collide.
In the past week, a beef involving CNN’s Chris Cuomo (he started it), Jake Tapper and NBC’s Chuck Todd boiled over. But Cuomo is apparently the only one who knows why there’s grief in the first place.
During an interview with the Hollywood Reporter for a longform profile on Cuomo that was published Monday, the New York governor’s brother exposed his belief that his colleague Tapper might hold more political clout than his NBC Sunday morning rival, Todd.
“Anderson Cooper is a hell of a lot bigger than any male anywhere on network television,” Cuomo said, discussing his rationale for sticking in his primetime show instead of switching to a morning show with higher ratings. Cuomo’s primetime show has risen to hold the highest ratings at CNN, but is outranked by his primetime rivals: Fox’s Sean Hannity and MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow. “I would argue that Chuck Todd ain’t Jake Tapper. Jake Tapper has a much bigger footprint in politics than Chuck Todd does.”
The unprompted swipe garnered a response from Todd, who was apparently befuddled by the insult.
“I don’t know much about him, I’m not kidding. I have no idea where he’s coming from,” Todd said when asked on WABC’s “Bernie and Sid” about Cuomo’s jab. “I just read it as somebody who wanted to defend that fact that nobody in broadcast television wanted to hire him I guess or he couldn’t get the job that he wanted. I don’t know what it was but he was awfully defensive so he took shots at other people.”
Todd told “Bernie and Sid” that Tapper is “probably one of my closest friends” and was likely more bothered by the wallop than he was.
