CNN anchor Jake Tapper urged people to “stop being awful, stop rewarding awfulness, and stop promoting awfulness with your algorithms” in a Saturday social media post after a video of people hurling abuse at Minnesota Governor Tim Walz was shared online.
The video, posted on Friday, shows a man standing outside Walz’s home shouting “ret—” as a pair of people shout encouragement from a nearby stationary car, with the driver repeatedly honking the horn.
Tapper reposted the video with a message to his followers: “Everyone really needs to take a breath and stop being awful, stop rewarding awfulness, and stop promoting awfulness with your algorithms. Happy & fulfilled & confident people don’t spend time doing any of this.”
Everyone really needs to take a breath and stop being awful, stop rewarding awfulness, and stop promoting awfulness with your algorithms.
Happy & fulfilled & confident people don’t spend time doing any of this. https://t.co/Gv9yvOMxb8— Jake Tapper 🦅 (@jaketapper) December 27, 2025
Walz has been on the receiving end of significant abuse all month since President Donald Trump called him the r-slur in a lengthy rant posted to Truth Social on Thanksgiving Day.
After briefly wishing Americans a happy Thanksgiving, the president immediately launched into a tirade about immigration, specifically mentioning Somali migrants in Minnesota.
“Somalian gangs are roving the streets looking for ‘prey’ as our wonderful people stay locked in their apartments and houses hoping against hope that they will be left alone,” Trump wrote. “The seriously ret—ed Governor of Minnesota, Tim Walz, does nothing, either through fear, incompetence, or both.”
In a press conference held earlier this month, Walz revealed that people have been driving by his home and shouting the same slur that was used by the president, and condemned Republicans for failing to denounce Trump’s rhetoric.
“Are you OK with the president calling our neighbors garbage? Are you OK with him referring to Minnesota as a ‘hellhole,’ factually untrue? This creates danger,” Walz said.
”And I’ll tell you what, in my time on this, I’ve never seen this before: people driving by my house and using the r-word in front of people. This is shameful, and I have yet to see a Republican elected official say, ‘You’re right, that’s shameful. He should not say it.‘”
Walz’s daughter Hope also addressed the impact of Trump’s post on her family. In a since-deleted TikTok video, the 24-year-old, whose brother Gus has a non-verbal learning disability, said, “The president calling my dad what he did has unleashed a f—ing s–tstorm, regarding like, offensive language towards me, and my family, and specifically my brother.”
“How is it OK that the president of the United States can call somebody—anybody, doesn’t matter who they are—that? And then all of his frickin’ cult members come and attack those people,” she said in the video posted earlier this month.
“You people are f—ing disgraceful,” she added. “Shame on you, all of you.”
The post CNN Host Begs People to ‘Stop Being Awful’ appeared first on The Daily Beast.
