Jump to content

Type keyword(s) to search

United States Of Scandal With Jake Tapper


Recommended Posts

In Season 1, Jake covered the following scandals:

Ep 1: Rob Blagojevich - former Governor of Illinois who had a corruption scandal trying to sell former President Obama’s Senate seat. Jake interviews Blagojevich

Ep 2: Mark Sanford - former South Carolina governor who disappeared for a bit to go see his mistress in Argentina I think and the cover story was he was just hiking the Appalachian Trail. Jake interviews Sanford

Ep 3: John Edwards - former Democratic candidate for president who cheated on his wife with Rielle Hunter and they had a baby. Jake interviews Hunter

Ep 4: Eliot Spitzer - former NY Governor who was revealed to be a client of sex workers after a sting operation. Jake interviews Spitzer’s former mentor and closest friend

Ep 5: Jim McGreevey - former New Jersey Governor who came out of the closet and resigned after a corruption scandal including hiring a boyfriend to work for him. Jake interviews McGreevey

Ep 6: Valerie Plame - former  overt CIA agent outed by the George W. Bush administration after her husband criticized the administration’s rationale for going to war in Iraq. Jake interviews Plame

I haven’t seen the last episode yet, but overall it was an interesting season, with Jake even rethinking how he felt about some of the scandals he covered

The press release for the ordering of the second season doesn’t indicate specific scandals to be covered, but I’ll post it to be complete https://cnnpressroom.blogs.cnn.com/2024/05/15/cnn-orders-a-second-season-of-cnn-original-series-united-states-of-scandal-with-jake-tapper/

  • Like 2
5 hours ago, DanaK said:

I did find Rielle Hunter to be a pretty interesting interview in Episode 3. I was disappointed Jake didn't interview John Edwards for that episode, or Spitzer in Episode 4

Yeah, agreed. It would have been interesting to hear their thoughts about their scandals after all these years have passed and if they would have handled things differently.

Season 2 premieres Sunday March 9, probably at 9pm ET. Jake Tapper reveals in the below article the scandals and subjects that will be covered for the 6 episode second season and they sound interesting

https://variety.com/2025/tv/news/cnns-jake-tapper-united-states-of-scandal-sesaon-2-1236298776/

 

Quote

The six-episode second season of “Scandal” will include interviews between Tapper and Anita Hill, to scrutinize the Supreme Court nomination process of Clarence Thomas; former Ohio congressman Bob Ney regarding corrupt lobbyist Jack Abramoff; Anna Delvey, the scam artist; Floyd Landis, about the downfall of biker Lance Armstrong; former Senator Larry Pressler about ABSCAM; and Sherron Watkins, who raised alarms about corporate fraud at Enron.

 

  • Useful 1
2 hours ago, CAM said:

Looking forward to the new season, just wish media would stop giving Anna Delvey the time of day. 

This question is coming from a place of pure curiosity and nothing else: Is there a story you would rather see them cover instead of Anna Delvy? 

It seems like the parameters are an American news story/scandal from the 21st century that most CNN viewers would have a vague awareness of. (As in, you say the name and people say "I sort of remember that" as opposed to "Who or what was that?")

21 hours ago, Sarah 103 said:

This question is coming from a place of pure curiosity and nothing else: Is there a story you would rather see them cover instead of Anna Delvy? 

Honestly no idea who would have been better, but just feels like her case is a different level compared to the other scandals that this show covers; at least based on what I've seen/know.

From the ABSCAM episode: I realize this a totally small random thing but I loved the FBI not having the budget to order Plaza room service and only being able to afford deli, which lead to the team trying to come up with a plausible reason why the emissary of a sheik was ordering bagels and cream cheese.  

Also, I'm too young to remember ABSCAM so I appreciated the historical background and explanation for why a wealthy sheik was the character/persona used in the scam.  

Finally watched the episode via On Demand. It was definitely interesting. I’m torn on whether this was entrapment. I suppose it could be if the politicians were randomly chosen and weren’t already suspected. The FBI has tightened its rules on undercover ops. And the Supreme Court has watered down being able to prosecute bribery. But at least Senator Menendez recently got convicted

Ah Enron. What utter sleazebags, especially when they manipulated California’s energy and purposely caused at least some (all?) of the state’s blackouts at the time just to make money. I had forgotten some of the details over the years so this was an interesting episode to catch up on that stuff. I worked for the Federal government for 32 years so I never had an opportunity to put all my 401k into my company’s stock. But I’m a cautious person by nature and have felt I wouldn’t do that. Sadly many Enron employees did invest much of their 401ks in Enron stock and lost everything while the guys on top made millions. And as Jake said at the end, we have not really learned our lesson on avoiding scandals and preventing new ones

  • Like 1

Poor Prof. Hill having to go through that Judiciary Cmte testimony. It seemed clear then as I watched the testimonies and it was repeated here that the Senators rushed through the process and just wanted to get Clarence Thomas’ nomination done. And as pointed out, a similar thing happened with Justice Kavanaugh’s nomination and the accusation(s) against him. At least the treatment of Hill spurred a lot of women to seek office afterwards. As for Justice Thomas, I don’t believe he’s been accused of any other harassment after he was on the Supreme Court, but he certainly has had recent episodes of apparent corruption and some very backward ideas of undoing several SC decisions that pushed social progress forwards. 

Next week Jake looks at the downfall of Lance Armstrong

Interesting episode on Lance Armstrong, but I’m not sure it added much of anything new. Except maybe Jake’s comment at the end on how a sponsor for the next big scandal of someone they sponsor will react, whether to ignore it or not until they have to take action. Too many of Armstrong’s sponsors ignored the growing scandal until they couldn’t anymore. It probably seems more obvious after the fact that the sheer number of Armstrong’s sponsors insulated him from the rumors of doping for far longer than they might otherwise

Edited by DanaK

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Restore formatting

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...