Why Jake Tapper made a new series about pre-Trump political scandals

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There’s a funny, interesting and very sad new series on CNN featuring Jake Tapper.

“United States of Scandal,” which premieres Sunday at 9 p.m. ET, profiles a number of politicians behaving badly during the pre-Trump political era.

Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s bombastic defense of himself. The slow-burn implosion of North Carolina Sen. John Edwards during and after the 2008 presidential campaign. A New Jersey governor coming out of the closet just happens to distract everyone from what might have been the actual scandal. A South Carolina governor disappears and is not on the Appalachian Trail. There’s more where that came from.

If you lived through these scandals, as I did, it is almost unbelievable to relive them. If you are encountering them for the first time, it will be an education in what Tapper calls his “Jar Jar Binks” theory. More on that below.

I talked to Tapper about some of these scandals, how they translate at a time where former President Donald Trump has redefined the whole idea of scandal, and why he wanted to do the series now.

Our conversation, conducted by email, is below:

WOLF: Why did you want to do this series? Why now?

TAPPER: I’ve covered American politics now for the better part of three decades and I’ve always questioned why politicians are willing to risk careers they’d worked on for decades for what seem like trifling or at least ephemeral pursuits.

Considering our current political climate and the complex web of scandals surrounding our former president – not to mention allegations against Hunter Biden, Matt Gaetz, George Santos, and on and on – it felt…