It’s certainly no surprise that CNN's Jim Acosta would go to virtually any length to criticize President Trump and anyone in his administration.
The most recent example of this behavior comes in an excerpt from a new book written by former Trump administration official Cliff Sims, who wrote that Acosta and his channel “peddled slime” with “unsubstantiated misinformation from a disgruntled ex-Trump campaign aide.”
Entitled Team of Vipers: My Extraordinary 500 Days in the Trump White House and released on Monday, Breitbart published on Sunday produced an exclusive excerpt stating that a story based on a single anonymous source claimed that the President had been “upset with” Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders.
Boyle noted that the CNN article was “part of the network’s effort to push the Stormy Daniels scandal” while providing their single source with anonymity,”apparently unconcerned” about whether the information “was true or not.”
“And that’s how your CNN news was programmed for the day,” Sims noted.
Boyle stated this about the Sims book:
Sims also detailed how Trump summoned him to a secret meeting with just the two of them in which he assisted the President in the creation of two lists of aides written in sharpie on official card stock.
One list [was] those he could trust and another of so-called “sleeper cells,” or people suspected of leaking or undermining his administration.
“All of this, of course, was based on a single anonymous source,” the Team of Vipers author added. “But unlike the public, we knew this source went around town convincing people -- journalists and clients alike -- that he maintained a close relationship with the President.“
“In reality, Trump couldn’t have picked him out of a lineup,” Sims noted. “He had completely made up the story about the president being mad at Sarah.”
“In March 2018, I got a text from my comms team colleague Steven Cheung,” the author stated.
“We need to pay attention to CNN because I think something bad might be about to happen,” Cheung said. “I joked that such a statement could apply to almost any moment.”
“But in this particular instance,” Sims noted, “Cheung explained that one of our former campaign colleagues was mad at Sarah Sanders -- he wasn’t entirely clear why -- and was sending Cheung cryptic texts that he ‘had something coming for her on CNN.’”
Sure enough, an article popped up on CNN’s website shortly thereafter.
“Trump upset with Sanders over Stormy Daniels response,” read the headline on CNN.
The accusation was not just posted online on CNN’s website, but on television as well, Boyle noted.
“Acosta then went out on TV and dramatically described the deteriorating relationship between the President and his once-beloved press secretary,” Sims wrote.
“While Sims does not name the former campaign official who spoke with CNN on this -- CNN does not even mention in its story it was a former campaign official -- he knows who it was and knows that this person has no idea what the president is actually thinking,” Boyle noted.
As NewsBusters previously reported, Acosta has announced he is writing his own book, which will be released on June 11 under the title of The Enemy of the People: A Dangerous Time to Tell the Truth in America.
