We've never met before, so it's very nice to meet you.
It's great to meet you.
I have to say, I have known of you since the late 1980s.
I was a big fan of a little show called Open House.
Ah, yes.
Open House is one of my first shows ever.
Your first big break.
And I--
Yes.
--would also like to go on and confess
that I had a rather large crush on you at the time.
Oh.
So this is a little--
Wow.
--odd for me.
Oh.
Sorry.
Sorry to disappoint.
I made my peace with it some time ago.
OK.
Yes.
There's another friend of mine-- we've become friends,
but he also thought he was going to have some kind
of relationship with me.
And everyone kept trying to tell him, no, you're not.
And he was like, oh, no, I will.
And then they had to explain to him that he never would.
I don't think I would have ever gone that far in terms
of my-- it was just-- it was from afa--
you know what it was like though?
When you became huge, I kind of resented it
a little bit because I thought, no, I mean, I knew about her.
Oh.
Do you know what I mean?
When you know somebody fam--
before they become really big, and you knew them first, and--
Well--
--like I had a little--
this is going to sound patriarchal--
but I felt like I had a little ownership just as a fan.
Right.
I apologize for saying that.
But what really it says about you is how smart you are
and the good taste that you have that
you spotted me before anybody else.
So it actually says--
Exactly right.
Yeah.
Exactly right.
[CHEERING AND APPLAUSE]
Yeah.
So thank you.
All right.
So let's talk about the world.
So you've been doing this 20 years, right?
Yeah.
20 full-time.
And yeah.
Yeah.
So-- and then what part-time?
I was a freelance reporter before I broke into it.
OK.
So what's happening?
I mean, have you ever seen anything like what
is happening right now?
No, it's crazy.
Yes, and scary.
It can be scary.
I do have a lot of faith in American institutions
and checks and balances.
And the fact is, you know, the free press still thrives.
And we're still able to say what we want to say.
And there is the judicial branch and the legislative branch.
But yeah, it's very odd.
We've never had a president talk and act this way.
We've never had a direct line from the id of a president's
brain out to the world, as we do through the Twitter
machine and President Trump.
One imagines what it would have been
like if Nixon had such a thing.
I guess we're lucky that we didn't have it at the time.
Right.
And the fact that he's attacking the free press, which
is a very dangerous thing.
And he attacks CNN.
Does that bother you, that he attacks CNN all the time,
calling it fake news?
It doesn't bother me.
I mean, it bothers me when he attacks the media
over and over and over again.
And he seems to use the term fake news almost exclusively
to mean, news that is true, but I don't like.
Right.
But it's strange that he uses it the way he does.
Yeah, I mean, I think it should bother every American.
But it bothers me more when he goes after the disabled
or makes fun of somebody who has a drug and alcohol problem,
as he did a few days ago.
That's really where I just, like,
think it crosses a line into indecent.
Right.
Well, I think it's crossed lines--
it's so many lines.
You think, well, this can't be OK.
Somebody at some point--
And then there's another line and another line.
And it seems like, he doesn't like you.
I mean, obviously.
I think that's probably right.
Yeah.
But then also Obama didn't like you as well.
I think that's also correct.
Now--
Now the difference was that Obama would just stare.
He would come out into the press room.
And I'd be there asking an impertinent, wise ass question.
And he would just give me a mean look.
The president gets on the Twitter machine--
now you could argue, as you almost seem to be,
that it's more transparent.
We actually have more of an idea of what he's actually thinking,
whereas Obama would just do the disappointed glower.
Right, but it's because--
did you like Obama?
It's not my job to like him or not like him, really.
I mean, he seemed pleasant.
Yeah, he is.
I like him.
But I mean, it's because you really don't gi--
you keep pushing, and you ask tough questions,
and you don't stop.
Is that something that you've always done?
Yeah, I will say that the attribute that is--
that I find something that's uncomfortable
in a conversation, run right to it,
and then just relentlessly ask questions about it--
works much, much better behind a desk at CNN
than it did, for instance, at a sorority mixer in college when
that wasn't a particularly good quality.
Right, right.
I was going to say, he doesn't really personally go
after you because you don't have a nickname yet,
because when you have a nickname is
when you're really the target.
I'll be honest.
President Trump has a lot of skills,
and I used to think his branding skill was amazing--
Little Marco or Lyin' Ted, Low Energy Jeb, Crooked Hillary.
He's kind of lost his mojo on the nickname front.
He tried to do it with Comey.
And he's been trying out all these different nicknames.
He had Lyin' Comey.
That didn't seem to work.
Liar and a Leaker Comey, Slippery Comey, Slime Ball--
first Slime Ball, two different words,
then Slimeball, one word.
He is clearly trying new material, as one does,
and it hasn't really caught on.
I don't know if he's just so ensconced in the White
House he's lost his ability to do it,
but no, he has not come up with a good nickname for me yet.
Right.
Flunky.
I think he called me a flunky once.
Oh, really?
Yeah.
And that's it?
No.
Yeah, that's--
It was disappointing.
Yeah, sure.
Come on.
You ne--
Show up.
Yeah.
I mean, I like the Tap Man, but that's not an insult.
That's a good one.
I know.
You called yourself the Tap Man.