'Chilling': CNN's Jake Tapper rips GOP over White House's latest antics

President Donald Trump’s retaliation against The Associated Press for its refusal to adopt his order renaming the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America is a step into dangerous territory that could come back to haunt Republicans, CNN's Jake Tapper warned.

The message from Tapper came Wednesday during his long-running show “The Lead with Jake Tapper,” when the host launched a five-minute-long monologue in the middle of his program to rail against the Trump administration’s recent move.

“The end result of all this is a chilling effect,” Tapper told viewers. “It's not really about whatever the AP wants to call the gulf. It's about whether a president should punish reporters because they're not doing what he wants and not calling things what he wants.”

Tapper added that “this can swing both ways.” He used as a hypothetical example Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (R-NY) becoming a future president and banning news outlets from the Oval Office “because they don't use her terminology for whatever issue – trans-Americans, farmers, the border crisis – whatever.”

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The CNN host went on to break down what he saw as the bigger picture in Trump’s restrictions on the AP’s White House coverage. He said the political standard being set in place could lead to a future Democratic president deciding that “she’s going to do the same thing.”

“She’s just unilaterally going to not recognize and dismantle ICE – I mean, what if that happens? These standards, they get eroded,” Tapper warned.

He added that “anybody who's lived in Washington” understands that when standards are eroded, “they never come back. They just don't.”

“So, enjoy presidents deciding access based on compliance with the words that they like,” Tapper said. “It is a horrible new standard, and everyone applauding it is going to hate it soon enough.”

Watch the clip below or at this link: