Tapper joined CNN in January 2013. He currently anchors an award-winning two-hour weekday program, The Lead with Jake Tapper, which debuted in March 2013. He has hosted CNN’s Sunday morning show, State of the Union, since June 2015. In April 2021, he became the lead anchor for CNN for Washington, D.C. events.
Tapper imparts his political expertise on State of the Union by conducting interviews with top newsmakers on politics and policy, covering Washington, the country and the world. The Lead, which has won two Emmy awards and twice been nominated for best live news broadcast, covers headlines from around the country and the globe, the top stories in national and international news, politics, health, money, the environment, sports and popular culture, and concentrates on bringing stories that aren’t found on front pages—buried leads—to the forefront.
Most recently, Tapper played a leading role in the unprecedented 2024 election cycle, co-moderating along with his State of the Union co-anchor Dana Bash CNN’s historic Presidential Debate, an event that changed the course of political history and led to President Biden dropping out of the race.
Tapper was at the forefront of the network’s expansive special coverage of the Democratic National Convention, Republican National Convention, and led CNN’s 2024 Election Night in America coverage, providing real-time analysis of key states and exit polls ahead of Donald Trump’s historic victory.
Previously, Tapper extensively covered the 2022 midterm elections and 2020 election, playing a pivotal role in the network’s extended coverage of the race with expert analysis on projections throughout the week-long event. Called “tough and quick” and “a staunch defender of facts in the Trump era” by The New York Times, Tapper has been celebrated for standing up in a nonpartisan way for truth and decency during a period where the U.S. political world has seen shortages of both.
“Tough and quick” and “a staunch defender of facts in the Trump era.”The New York Times
Tapper has been a widely-respected reporter in the nation’s capital for more than 20 years. His reporting on the 2016 election has been recognized with a number of awards, including a 2017 Walter Cronkite Award for Excellence in Television Political Journalism, the Los Angeles Press Club’s Presidents Award for Impact on Media, the John F. Hogan Distinguished Service Award from the Radio Television Digital News Association, and The Canadian Journalism Foundation’s Tribute to Exemplary Journalism. In 2025, he was awarded the Truth Seekers Award by Variety and Rolling Stone for his commitment to investigative storytelling.
Tapper won Emmy Awards in 2023 for Outstanding Live Breaking News Coverage as part of the team that covered the Russian invasion of Ukraine and for Outstanding Live News Special for being one of the co-anchors of “Live from the Capitol: January 6, One Year Later.” He also won Emmy Awards in 2024 for Outstanding Live News Special for “A CNN Town Hall: Toxic Train Disaster, Ohio Residents Speak Out,” which he hosted, and for Outstanding Live Breaking News Coverage for being part of the team that covered the Gaza war.
Tapper has also moderated many presidential debates for CNN, including the GOP debate at the Reagan Library in 2015, the last Democratic debate of the 2020 cycle between Joe Biden and Sen. Bernie Sanders, the 2024 Republican primary debate between Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis, and the presidential debate between Joe Biden and Donald Trump. He hosts the highly acclaimed CNN Original series United States of Scandal, and has written and hosted numerous documentaries with subjects including the January 6 insurrection, former Russian hostage and U.S. Marine Trevor Reed, what went wrong in the U.S. war in Afghanistan, and the stories of Medal of Honor recipients Clint Romesha and Ty Carter.
He has held world leaders across the aisle to account, including UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, UK Prime Minister Liz Truss, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
The Lead with Jake Tapper won three National Headliner Awards for its reporting in 2013. Among broadcast television networks, cable networks and syndicators, The Lead with Jake Tapper won first prize for its coverage of the Boston Marathon bombing and second prize for its coverage of the Oklahoma tornadoes in the category of “Coverage of a Major News Event.” It won third prize for its coverage of the Boston Marathon bombing in the category of “Continuing Coverage of a Major News Event.” In 2014, The Lead was honored for a series of reports on academic fraud at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill by correspondent Sara Ganim with a Society of Professional Journalists’ Sigma Delta Chi Award for Investigative Reporting.
The Lead was nominated for numerous News & Documentary Emmy Awards, including for Outstanding Live News Broadcast. A report for The Lead by correspondent Isa Soares, called “Maduro’s Blood Gold,” was awarded an Emmy in 2020; a story by Anna Coren on a “9-Year-Old Afghan Sold into Marriage” was awarded an Emmy in 2022.
In January 2015, Tapper’s reporting on a new Pentagon policy resulted in the U.S. military changing a rule that was adversely impacting caregivers—“non-medical attendants” or NMAs—for wounded servicemembers. The Pentagon had started to limit reimbursements for NMAs as they worked with servicemembers who had been severely wounded, often with missing limbs or debilitating brain injuries. Upon Tapper’s inquiry, the Pentagon reinstated the previous policy.
On the 80th anniversary of D-Day in 2024, Tapper reported on Gold Star families protesting a 2014 change in policy by the American Battle Monuments Commission that had previously allowed families to pay for flowers, which the ABMC would ensure be placed on the graves of their loved ones in cemeteries abroad, such as Normandy. After the piece aired, crediting Tapper, the White House pushed the ABMC to change the policy back.
Upon Tapper’s inquiry, the Pentagon reinstated the previous policy.
In 2018, Tapper was part of a four-person team at CNN that included Carl Bernstein, Jim Sciutto, and Evan Perez that won the Merriman Smith Award for broadcast reporting on the White House under deadline pressure.
On September 16, 2015, Tapper moderated two Republican primary debates from the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California. The main debate drew an average of 23.1 million viewers, making it the most watched program in the history of CNN and at the time the second most watched primary debate ever. He also moderated the March 10, 2016, Republican presidential debate in Miami, which drew almost 12 million viewers and according to Variety “garnered acclaim for its substance.”
viewers for the 2015 Republican primary debate he moderated, the most watched program in the history of CNN
in a row, 2010 to 2012, he won the Merriman Smith Memorial Award for presidential coverage under deadline pressure
Tapper worked at ABC News from 2003 until 2012, reporting primarily in Washington, D.C., but also from Baghdad, Afghanistan, and New Orleans after the levees broke following Hurricane Katrina. As senior White House correspondent, he was awarded the Merriman Smith Memorial Award for presidential coverage under deadline pressure by the White House Correspondents’ Association an unprecedented three years in a row – in 2010, 2011, and 2012. He was a key part of the ABC News coverage of the inauguration of President Obama that was awarded an Emmy Award for Outstanding Live Coverage of a Current News Story.
In 1998, after working for some time as a freelance writer, he was hired as a reporter by the Washington City Paper. Tapper was the Washington correspondent for Salon from 1999 to 2002, where his reports about Enron were nominated for a 2002 Columbia University School of Journalism online award. In 2001, Tapper was the co-host of the CNN news talk show Take Five. He was also a columnist for TALK Magazine, and has written for The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, The Weekly Standard, and other publications. Tapper was a frequent contributor to National Public Radio’s All Things Considered and his work was included in The Best American Political Writing 2002. Tapper was the correspondent for a series of VH1 news specials in 2002.