Most people don’t burn their bridges until after they’ve crossed them, but Jim Acosta seems to have no trouble doing that while he’s still going across.
At least, that’s the way it seemed when CNN’s chief White House correspondent got into a heated exchange with President Trump during the press conference on Wednesday regarding the approaching immigrant caravan.
Soon after the clash ended, Chris Wallace, anchor of Fox News Sunday, hammered the correspondent’s behavior as “shameful” and asserted that Acosta “embarrassed himself today” by hammering the President with question after question after question.
While the Fox News Channel aired a live video of Trump leaving the press room, Harris Faulkner -- host of the FNC weekday program Outnumbered Overtime -- described the news conference as “nearly 90 minutes of first remarks from the President” after Tuesday’s midterm election.
She then stated that Trump had been “talking about, just seconds ago, how much better the tone in the country can get. He says it starts with the media.”
However, Faulkner noted: “There were definitely some tense moments, one of which is going viral right now that involved a reporter at a different network (Acosta) and a woman who was just simply passing the microphone around for questioning as part of her job” even though Acosta refused to give it up.
The FNC anchor then turned to Wallace and stated: “Chris, first of all, people who criticize this President for not a lot of access must not watch much because every time he gets on anything that can fly or he wants to hold a news conference, it hits Twitter and then he pops up and takes questions.”
He replied:
Well, this was an extraordinary performance, but it was classic Trump, and you saw all the notes that he can play.
He was combative at times; he got into a fight with Jim Acosta of CNN. I have to say I thought Acosta’s behavior was shameful.
“Have you seen the video with that woman?” Faulkner asked. She was referring to the White House staffer who unsuccessfully tried to take the microphone away from the CNN correspondent after he had asked more than his share of questions. “It’s tough to watch.”
“Well, yeah,” Wallace responded. “I was watching it live when it happened, and he just refused to sit down and stop [asking] questions.”
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” he noted, even though he'd “covered the White House with Ronald Reagan for six years.”
“Most of the people there were serious reporters asking serious questions, but Jim Acosta, I thought, embarrassed himself today.”
As NewsBusters reported earlier on Wednesday, the CNN correspondent clashed with the President over Trump’s description of the approaching immigrant caravan as “an invasion.”
The President replied: “I consider it to be an invasion.”
“The caravan was not an invasion,” Acosta asserted. “It was a group of migrants moving up from Central America towards the border with the U.S.” who are “hundreds and hundreds of miles away” and is therefore “not an invasion.”
Trump responded:
Honestly, I think you should let me run the country.
You run CNN, and if you did it well, your ratings would be much higher.
Acosta then refused to surrender the microphone because he wanted to "ask one more question." Trump stated that “CNN should be ashamed of itself having you working for them. You are a rude, terrible person. You shouldn't be working for CNN.”
“The way you treat [White House Press Secretary] Sarah Huckabee is horrible,” the President added, “and the way you treat other people is horrible. You shouldn't treat people that way.”
NewsBusters has regularly documented Acosta’s antics, including his attempt in early August to blame “conservative outlets” and “websites" for producing a “false portrayal” of him.
Then in October, the CNN correspondent had a vulgar response to the people at a Trump rally who played music that was so loud it prevented him from making live reports.
There are a lot of Americans who would like to see Jim Acosta assigned to Alaska Bureau Chief.
