Former Fox News host Megyn Kelly was blown away on Thursday (May 7) when she learned of Jake Tapper‘s connection to the international restaurant chain Hooters.
The topic came up in a discussion with fellow former Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson on the latest edition of SiriusXM’s The Megyn Kelly Show. The pair talked about President Donald Trump‘s war on Iran, which both have been critical of, and how CNN’s Tapper interviewed pro-Iran war politicians, Reps. Mike Lawler (R-NY) and Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ), on Wedneday’s (May 6) episode of The Lead.
Kelly aired a clip from The Lead, in which Lawler accused Carlson of “promoting anti-Semitic hate speech.”
When Kelly asked for Carlson’s thoughts on that, he replied, “It’s just amazing to see Jake Tapper abetting something like this. I remember when he was a lobbyist for Hooters, thinking about becoming a journalist.”
Kelly looked confused as Carlson continued, “He was literally a lobbyist for Hooters. I knew him well.”
“What?!” Kelly said before laughing.
“Oh yeah, oh absolutely,” Carlson added.
“I did not know that,” Kelly replied as she continued to laugh.
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Carlson continued, “He was traveling around America with the Hooters girls, promoting Hooters!”
It’s true that Tapper previously worked on behalf of Hooters, though he wasn’t exactly a lobbyist. As the CNN anchor explained on the Dedicated podcast last year, he worked as a spokesperson for the public relations firm Power Tate, which represented Hooters.
“It was a bipartisan firm,” Tapper said, per Mediaite. “And we worked for whatever clients we got. And Hooters, in the Clinton years, was being threatened with a lawsuit from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission for not hiring men as Hooters girls. And yeah, I worked on the Hooters case.”
Tapper noted he was “24, 25, and working for a PR firm to pay the rent while I figured out what I wanted to do.”
He was also quoted in a 1995 Baltimore Sun article about the case, saying, “Hooters girls are the attraction of the restaurant. It might not be for everybody, but it’s honest work, the girls keep their clothes on.”
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