CNN’s chief Washington correspondent Jake Tapper swung by “The Tonight Show” with Jimmy Fallon on Wednesday — ostensibly to discuss Super Tuesday and Thursday’s State of the Union address.
But the conversation instead kicked off with a lively walk down memory lane to a time when Fallon, Tapper and the journalist’s daughter Alice shared their obsession with Taylor Swift.
“I’m very lucky that I got to hang out with you a little bit this summer. We went to this fishing thing in Idaho, and your daughter was there, Alice,” Fallon began.
Tapper then excitedly revealed that Alice was in the audience at the Wednesday taping. “I let her play hooky. Don’t tell any other night guys, but she insisted on coming to this one,” he teased.
“Oh she did? I won’t tell any of the other late night guys,” Fallon assured. “We bonded over Taylor Swift.”
At the mention of the superstar singer-songwriter, the “Tonight Show” audience erupted in applause.
“That’s an easy way to get an applause,” Tapper joked, adding that Fallon and Alice “had, like, a 40-minute conversation about Taylor Swift. It was incredible to behold.”
“I think she was on her way to her second Taylor Swift concert. Is that possible?” Fallon remembered. “I was like, ‘How lucky are you, you’re going to see her twice.’ That’s so rad.”
Turns out, joining Tapper and Fallon on that fishing trip last summer was fellow late night host Jimmy Kimmel. Fallon had the photo to prove it.
“This is a picture of me, Jimmy and Jimmy — Jimmy Fallon and Jimmy Kimmel — about to go fishing,” Tapper told the audience as Fallon held up the image. Then addressing Fallon, he said, “You are laughing because everything you have on is fishing gear that, some of it, you didn’t even know existed, like the neck wrap.”
“No, I bought everything out of the gift shop, and I was like, ‘Yeah, I’m ready to fish,’” Fallon said, self-deprecatingly. “Clearly, I’ve never been fishing before. Kimmel was like, ‘Why am I hanging out with this guy? He’s unbelievable.’”
From there, the conversation jumped to Tapper’s teenage aspirations of being a cartoonist — “It did not work out, and I ended up OK” — and a first-time reveal of the CNN host’s new collaboration with The Dave Matthews Band. Tapper’s cartoonist dreams were somewhat realized in the new project, which saw him designing a T-shirt for the jam band and drawing them as The Davengers. Proceeds for the tees go to wounded veterans, he noted.
Watch the full segment — which did eventually see Tapper talking about Joe Biden and Donald Trump — in the video above.
