CNN's
Jake Tapper on Monday continued his criticism of the White House for failing to send a representative to Sunday's Paris unity rally, which was attended by 44 other world leaders, noting that former French President Jacques Chirac was the first to visit the United States after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
Tapper, reporting from France, told
CNN's Wolf Blitzer that while the attacks on the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and a kosher market that left a total of 17 dead were far smaller in scale, they are being referred to in the country as France's 9/11.
"You have to look at the fact of, who was the first world leader to come to the United States after that awful trauma, who was it? Well, it was the president of France, it was Jacques Chirac," Tapper said.
"We have a special relationship with this country," Tapper said. "It's obviously not shaken by the fact that President [Barack] Obama wasn't there or Joe Biden wasn't there or Mitch McConnell or John Boehner or any other American leader. But it would have reaffirmed it in the minds of not just the French people but the American people."
Tapper first noted on Sunday while covering the unity rally that he was disappointed that a high-ranking U.S. official wasn't present when world leaders locked arms to lead a march through the streets of Paris.
The White House on Monday
acknowledged that it made a mistake in not sending someone.
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