McCain On Amanpour: Anyone Else Miss Jake Tapper?

Sen. John McCain (R-AZ)
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Sunday marked the first day that Christiane Amanpour hosted ABC’s This Week, after Jake Tapper’s extended, but temporary run. Amanpour hardly broke new ground in her debut, but she interviewed House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Defense Secretary Robert Gates, two of Washington’s biggest newsmakers.

But conservatives were outraged by her broadcast, and the latest swipe at her comes from Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) via Twitter.

“Anyone else miss @jaketapper yesterday?” McCain asked.

McCain’s staff was not immediately available to explain the tweet, but it comes as conservatives are piling on to Amanpour for a segment titled “In Memoriam” in which she said “We remember all of those who died in war this week, and the Pentagon released the names of 11 U.S. servicemembers killed in Afghanistan.”

Her loudest critic, the Washington Post‘s Tom Shales, pounced, writing “Perhaps in keeping with the newly globalized program, the commendable “In Memoriam” segment ended with a tribute not to American men and women who died in combat during the preceding week but rather, said Amanpour in her narration, in remembrance of “all of those who died in war” in that period. Did she mean to suggest that our mourning extend to members of the Taliban?”

His line was echoed by the conservative site Newsbusters: “Shales even wondered if Amanpour thought we should mourn the Taliban fighters.”

The UN reports (PDF) that, since it started keeping track in 2007, more than 6,000 civilians have been killed in Afghanistan

McCain — one of the most regular guests on the Sunday news shows — seems to be throwing in his lot with them.

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