Imus Teaches Jake Tapper A Thing Or Two

Imus is pulling for Jake Tapper to be the next host of ABC's Sunday morning show "This Week." In fact, he's already got a great name picked out: "On Tap with Tapper.

Unless the bigwigs at ABC go in a different direction, and "drag that old commie out of moth balls — Ted Koppel — and put him in there." Imus added, "Don't you agree, Jake?"

It was the first of several instances this morning where Tapper, ABC News's White House, smartly declined to comment. But he was willing to dish about another network's decision-making tactics, namely Fox, which recently hired Sarah Palin as a contributor.

"It's a marketing coup," said Tapper. "It's a brilliant move."

It's also the way things work at Fox, Imus explained, as opposed to, say, at NBC, where "that irritating little schmuck Jeff Zucker has single-handedly destroyed that network."

Palin appeared on Glenn Beck's show last night, and the two laughed at spoofs of them done by the cast of Saturday Night Live. They even offered to co-host SNL together, which Tapper thinks would hasten the coming of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

Though he hasn't been offered the job (yet), Tapper will host this Sunday's edition of "This Week," where much of the coverage will focus on the devastating 7.3 magnitude earthquake that rocked impoverished Haiti earlier this week.

The United States is sending supplies to the region as quickly as possible, and last night President Obama asked former Presidents Clinton and Bush 43 to team up on relief efforts. Presently, the destruction in Haiti remains immeasurable.

"The President of Haiti and the Prime Minister of Haiti have said it could be hundreds of thousands [dead], but they admit they have no way of knowing," said Tapper.

As for whether Port-au-Prince, the capital and hardest hit region of Haiti, can even be rebuilt at all, Tapper had no real answer.

"This is already a land so beset by poverty, and strife, and squalor, and gang violence," said Tapper. "It's a country that has just never gotten a break."

Haiti lacks adequate hospitals, roads, and emergency response services; basically, they lack even the most basic infrastructure required to come back from such horrific damage.

Touching briefly on the revelations in the new book "Game Change," Tapper said he had interviewed author Mark Halperin yesterday and had focused specifically on the method by which he and co-author John Heilemann had cited and obtained quotes.

"It could be a deal like Bob Woodward, where they just made it up," Imus suggested, to Tapper's surprise. "You knew that, didn't you?"

"I come here to learn," Tapper said. He'd be the only one.

-Julie Kanfer