Jake Tapper

There are news sources that are just out-and-out lies coming from Europe, coming from other parts of the world.

My mom is a nurse; my dad is a pediatrician. They were born in the 1940s, and they were both inspired to fight against injustice, whether it was the injustices of the Vietnam War or Watergate or children in poverty or oppression of African Americans in Philadelphia where I was growing up.

It's tough for me to draw myself - usually way too self-critical.

I have very vivid memories of my parents talking about Nixon, my mom watching Watergate on the black-and-white set in the living room. The mayor at the time in Philadelphia was a guy named Frank Rizzo - a Democrat, a real bully, a racist.

Equating brutality and despotism with leadership is not an American value.

My job, in general, is nonfiction, so writing fiction was liberating. If you can't find the answer to something, you just make it up!

It's the exact opposite of my job to take what the government says at face value and say, 'This is the truth because the government says it, and the government never lies.'

My job is to not take for granted when somebody says, 'Oh, this is all just a made-up, phony scandal,' or, 'What this person did put the U.S. government at risk.'

My job is to be skeptical: skeptical of people like Edward Snowden and skeptical of the U.S. government.

I choose to make it my job to not automatically believe what the U.S. government says.

I think that I'm doing my job, and it's nice to be recognized, but I also know that a lot of the people who are happy with me now are not going to be happy with me in four to eight years and that I'm just going to keep doing what I'm doing.

My job is not to be liked. My job is to tell the truth.