Weekday morning CNN Newsroom host and former White House Briefing Room provocateur Jim Acosta displayed quite the gall Monday by reacting to the second Trump assassination with disgust for the “super-heated” political “rhetoric in this country”, blasting the right for “saying people on the left” wished the shooter got a chance to follow through on his plot, and arguing someone’s a patriot if they “bring us together as a country”.
Seriously. This is the guy who wants to lecture the country about how we shouldn’t see each other as enemies.
The pomposity was thick from the first comment to CNN Republican commentator Shermichael Singleton: “[T]he rhetoric in this country right now...[i]t’s so ramped up right now. It’s so super-heated that you just worry what might happen between now and Election Day.”
Singleton’s answers were perfectly fine and spoke to simpler time in politics, but nonetheless worth hearing. That said, they made no sense when the man sitting across from him was perhaps the most divisive and self-aggrandizing journalist during the Trump presidency.
To Acosta’s first lament, Singleton pointed out that “a lot of people, Jim, are discontent” with feelings of “political disillusionment” and even “purposelessness” having set in and coupled with the belief that the other party is “a threat to my existence or way of life”
Acosta continued to ignore the proverbial warning signs he was registering tsunami warning levels of irony as he observed a Trump campaign e-mail shortly after the incident went public had “no amping up of the rhetoric”.
A few minutes later, Acosta went to the predictable spot of poo-pooing “some of these reactions” by “folks on the right saying people on the left — saying Democrats wanted” Trump to be assassinated.
Instead of wondering why they’ve been saying that or, dare we say, look in the mirror at himself and his network, Acosta huffed: “Nobody wants this to happen. Nobody wants this to happen. No one!”
Singleton didn’t make the deeper point about why that sentiment exists and instead harkened back to his first answer about how dangerous it is for both sides to view the other as an “existential threat to their existence and when you view individuals through that lens, it does not surprise me that we find ourselves in this particular moment in time.”
Acosta’s final comment was his definition of “patriotism”:
[P]atriotism to me is all about wanting us as Americans to come together, right? Not going after one another. To me, that’s — that’s pat — that’s patriotism. That’s — that’s making America great — is — is somebody who wants to bring us together as a country. Political forces that want to bring us together as a country.
This led into Singleton stating the fact that America “will be no more or no less than what we make it” before arguing we’ve “become a bit arrogant what negatively can happen in our country that we have seen in other countries” as said things have and warned that we’ll need unity to avoid “dictatorships and totalitarian states and fascism, etc.
Singleton concluded by wondering about foreign interference and, while it’s a real issue, it obviously piqued Acosta’s interest (since he spent years shouting about Russia being around every possible corner) (click “expand”):
SINGLETON: What comes next to the future of this country and think about this Jim, our adversaries are looking at this moment of internal chaos —
ACOSTA: That’s right. That’s a very good point.
SINGLETON: — within the country, and they’re trying to figure out how can we push the needle a bit forward?
ACOSTA: How can we exploit this?
SINGLETON: Absolutely.
ACOSTA: And you have to think that there are forces out there who want to continue to gin up —
SINGLETON: It’s in their interest.
ACOSTA: — this division and hatred because it works to their benefit.
SINGLETON: China, Russia, Iran, who knows whoever else is out there attempting this.
ACOSTA: Excellent point. That’s why we always enjoy having you on, Shermichael.
To see the relevant CNN transcript from September 16, click here.
