Jake Tapper, CNN’s chief Washington correspondent and anchor, is set to kick off his new show Tuesday evening by sitting down to speak with President Joe Biden.
The interview is Biden’s first with CNN since he took office in 2021. It will be taped in the afternoon before airing on “CNN Tonight With Jake Tapper.”
Biden’s interview with Tapper is a relative rarity; he sat with CBS’ “60 Minutes” last month, but has done few televised interviews since taking office in January 2021. While Biden frequently takes questions from reporters after events or while traveling, he has also not held as many formal news conferences as his predecessors.
With the 2022 midterm elections mere weeks away, Biden has been making more public appearances in recent weeks to tout Democratic successes that were racked up over the summer. While his public messaging recently has focused in part on the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act and several bipartisan pieces of legislation, he has also ramped up his attacks on so-called “MAGA Republicans” who he says are enthrall to former President Donald Trump.
The President still faces many challenges as he nears the end of his second year in office. Inflation dominates Republican campaign ads as Biden and the Federal Reserve attempt to slow down a red-hot economy without it falling into recession.
Covid-19 no longer holds the nation in its grip but Biden’s hopes for freedom from the virus appear to have faded into figuring out how to live with it. And Russia’s war in Ukraine has upended European stability, with Biden at one point last week warning of nuclear “Armageddon” if things spiral too far out of control.
