Our first guest is one of the most popular anchors on CNN.
He's also a best-selling author.
His new book is called The Devil May Dance.
Please welcome Jake Tapper.
Hi, Ellen.
Hi, Jake.
Since you were here last a lot has happened,
but I thought I would start with some good news.
COVID numbers are down across the country.
So do you think we're finally at the end of this?
What are your thoughts?
I think we're getting there.
I think it's really important that people get vaccinated.
In the states where they have a very high rate of vaccination,
sickness is going down, death is going down significantly,
it's working.
There are lots of parts of the country where people are still
not getting vaccinated.
Some of it is people not having access to the health care
system, or maybe they don't speak fluent English,
or they're not online, or on TV, they don't watch TV, et cetera.
But some of it is hesitancy, and I just
think it's important for people to understand--
these vaccines work.
The data shows it works.
I have been vaccinated.
I know you're vaccinated.
It actually works.
It's saving lives, and people, I get whatever hesitancy they
might have, but there are some wild rumors out there
about-- this is Bill Gates trying to implant you
with a microchip.
I mean, newsflash--
Bill Gates knows where you are already
if he wants to because your phone is right next to you.
He doesn't need to put a microchip in you.
Right.
You're carrying around a tracking device already.
Yeah, yeah.
So, there's a certain amount of common sense
that people are not using when they
talk about these conspiracy theories.
Yeah, yeah, no I know, there's some crazy ones out there.
But now that things have calmed down a little bit,
has Andy stopped texting you?
He probably was texting you just now.
He's texting during the show.
He's-- how often does he text you?
He was texting me about Tig for some reason, I don't know.
No, he has stopped frantically worrying
about the state of our democracy--
with the same intensity.
Although I will say, I was out with my daughter, Alice
this weekend, and he called--
because he had seen--
I had shown a picture on Twitter of Alice getting vaccinated.
I guess he was taking one of his kids to be vaccinated,
so he wanted to make sure that his kid could
hear my daughter talking about how everything
was OK with the vaccine.
So I think this tradition of Lassner's pestering Tappers
is one that he wants to pin down to future generations, which
is OK.
It's time for the next generation to pick it up.
Yeah.
Wait.
Why were you just getting one of your kids vaccinated, Andy?
No, it was the twins.
OK.
It was.
OK.
It was both of them.
I thought you favor one over to the other,
and you just vaccinated--
I tested it on one twin, and then we'll see.
I see.
So there's a lot of stories in the news about UFOs.
All of a sudden, like it's crazy what's going on.
I watched a documentary recently on UFOs,
and it was all this stuff.
I mean, it exposed all this stuff a while ago, and now--
it's crazy.
Is this something that you're surprised by, that it's so
out there now?
Well, first of all can I just say
how bizarre it is that this all came out in 2020
and like half the news shows never even touch it.
I don't think I ever even covered this.
And this is actually a story I'm fascinated by,
but there was so much news last year, and so much of it
was horrible.
We didn't have time to get to the confirmation
of unidentified flying objects, but I will say,
as I constantly remind my brother and my wife--
both of whom are huge UFO aficionados--
the fact that they're confirming unidentified flying objects
does not mean that they are confirming ET is landing.
It is different.
They're saying we don't know what
this enormous blue tic-tac-shaped object that
transfers through space and time at rapid rates
that humans are not capable of-- we don't know what that is.
That's as far as they're willing to go.
Yeah, well, something.
Unless it's like a drone from another planet like, you know,
universes away, chances are somebody or something
is in there.
Right.
I mean the question is it--
to use a superhero metaphor--
is it Tony Stark with his brilliant mind in his Iron Man
factory doing unbelievable things,
or is it Thor coming from another dimension?
And the odds are probably that it's Tony Stark.
Not Thor.
You can tell what being at home for a year and a half
has done to my brain that this is how we operate.
So here's my question to you.
You're doing the news--
I think about this.
Anyone who's reporting the news, because a lot of it
is bad or scary or whatever.
And you're doing news two hours a day, which is a lot of stuff
that you're having to think about, talk about.
When you get home, what do you do to just take
all of that off of your plate?
Well, I don't watch news.
I've been watching "Mayor From East Town" on HBO Max.
I don't know if you know that show.
I'm just about to start it.
I hear great things.
Yeah, Kate Winslet stars, and I'm from Philly--
and the show takes place right outside Philly,
in Delaware County, and they all worked really hard
on their working class white Philadelphia accents.
So they talk about hoagies , and they talk about overdoses,
and for Philadelphians, it's nice to bask in that
and hearing the beautiful--
I assume that sounds beautiful to you--
the mellifluous Delaware County accent.
Yes, it's so beautiful.
So very beautiful and soothing.
Hey, Jake, we have to take a break.
Hey, that rhymed.
We'll be back after this.
Let's talk about your new novel, The Devil May Dance
which, by the way, just debuted on the New York Times Best
Seller List.
Congratulations.
Thank you.
Yeah, I know.
That's quite an honor.
The people on that list are-- it's a bunch of powerhouses,
including your previous guest the other day,
Stacey Abrams and David Baldacci and just a number of just
huge hitters, so it's nice to be on that list.
Yeah, that's very cool that you're on that list.
Tell everybody what this is about.
So it's based on a true story, but it's
my fictitious characters go to investigate something that
actually happened, which is after Sinatra and the Rat Pack
worked their hearts out to get John F. Kennedy elected,
Sinatra thought that Kennedy was going to come stay with him,
and he had his Rancho Mirage compound built up--
helipad, extra rooms, phone lines.
But then Attorney General Kennedy, Robert Kennedy,
who was investigating organized crime,
thought to himself I don't know if I could have my brother stay
there because I'm investigating mobsters
and Sinatra is actually friends with mobsters.
So that really happened.
And then I just had my characters
Charlie and Margaret from the previous book
go out there and investigate Sinatra to find out
if he's really mobbed up, and they encounter
all these stars from the time, and the Church of Scientology,
and a bunch of mobsters.
You know, there's a real adventure in Hollywood.
And you did a ton of research for this,
so what's something you learned that surprised you?
I was really surprised to find out
that Sinatra, who I was familiar with in his later days
and of course a fan of his music, but I kind of always
thought of kind of a pig with women at least.
But he really was on a very early civil rights crusader
really fighting for not just publicly but privately
to make sure that Blacks in his band or Sammy Davis Jr.
were treated equally, that he tried
to integrate a number of hotels and arenas
in Las Vegas and elsewhere.
And I was really surprised by that
because I knew the later incarnation where
he was more conservative, but he really
put a lot on the line in the '40s,
'50s, and '60s to fight for civil rights.
He was much more progressive than the Kennedys
were at that time.
Wow, that's amazing.
So the book is getting great reviews.
And is that something that--
you just said, you were honored to be on that list,
but do you do you pay attention to reviews?
Yeah, I do.
Early on, on Amazon, you can't really
read the Amazon reviews too much,
although they've been generally nice too
but the very first Amazon review gave me one star out of five,
I'm like, oh boy, here we go, what is this?
And it was somebody complaining about their Amazon service,
the delivery didn't come on time.
Which I thought, that's not fair.
I reached out to a friend of mine works at Amazon,
I'm like--
this one star, this isn't a one star for me,
this is a one star for you.
This is Amazon's one star.
I'll take it if it's about my book, but for you-- anyway.
Yeah.
But I was OK.
I survived.
Hey listen, it's always great talking to you Jake
and you look good.
You look healthy and rested and different than last time.
You were you were not sleeping, and you
were-- it was a lot going on.
But it's great to talk to you.
Well it's great to talk to you.
Next time, in person and don't think
I don't know about your news too but I'll
address that with you next time I see you,
because I'm sad about that.
We'll talk about that another time.
Well, thank you for being sad about it.
I love you, and yes, you'll be here for sure in person.
I want to say goodbye to everybody in person next year.
So The Devil May Dance is available everywhere books
are sold and today you're all going home
with-- oh, you're home, but you're getting a copy.