CNN’s cantankerous anti-Donald Trump anchor Jim Acosta is FINALLY leaving the network. He formally announced his departure on Tuesday’s show.
President Donald Trump took to Truth Social to kick him on the way out.
As is customary at NewsBusters we like to send off these leftist journalists with a reminder of their obnoxiousness over the years. We just did one for CBS’s Norah O’Donnell (They’re dropping like flies out here!)
The MRC archive is full of Acosta’s disgusting attacks on conservatives during the Donald Trump era. The following are just a few of them.
For a quick bite, please click this brief montage from NewsBusters Media Editor Bill D’Agostino:
Acosta’s Alarmist Opening to Show
“Donald Trump’s radical, ultranationalist agenda beginning to take shape this morning — mass deportations, tariffs, tax cuts for the wealthy and a new missile defense shield with the help of former NFL player Herschel Walker. We’ll have the details in a moment.”
— Host Jim Acosta’s opening tease on CNN Newsroom, November 8, 2024.
“Older Folks” Just Don’t Get Kamala
“A new poll shows [Kamala] Harris pretty much just vastly outperforming Biden right now with young voters by 16 percentage points….What is stirring this excitement?...I remember at the time when she made that comment about the ‘context in which we all live.’...People were, you know, criticizing that as being a bit of a word salad. But, you know, I’ve heard from a lot of younger folks over the last several days who just love that comment. So, I mean, is it just like the older folks not getting with the younger folks are thinking these days?”
— Host Jim Acosta on CNN Newsroom, July 26, 2024.
America Not in “Stellar Company”
“According to the Center for Reproductive Rights, the U.S. joins only three countries: El Salvador, Nicaragua, Poland, that have chosen to roll back abortion rights since 1994. That isn’t exactly stellar company.”
— Host Jim Acosta on CNN Newsroom, June 25, 2022.
GOP Governor Ushering in a “Soviet-Style Police State”
“In-office less than two weeks and [Virginia Republican] Governor Glenn Youngkin has already set up an email tip line for parents to report teachers for teaching divisive subjects….I seem to remember Glenn Youngkin campaigning in a fleece vest in Virginia. He was running as a different kind of Republican. I was told there was going to be a vest, not a Soviet-style police state across the Potomac from Washington.”
— Host Jim Acosta on CNN’s Democracy In Peril, January 25, 2022.
Supreme Court Poised to “Turn Back the Clock to the 1970s”
“Conservatives have a 6-to-3 majority on the Court, and it will stay that way even after [Justice Stephen] Breyer is replaced, which is a remarkable turn of events considering this: Democrats have won the popular vote in seven out of the last eight presidential elections….Now, a hard-right Supreme Court appears poised to turn back the clock to the 1970s. It’s like Americans voted for The West Wing and instead got That ’70s Show.”
— Host Jim Acosta on CNN’s Democracy In Peril, January 27, 2022.
Youngkin “Carpet-Bombed” Virginia with “Disinformation” on Critical Race Theory
“The Republican Party is caught in a riptide of disinformation. It’s carrying the rest of the country out to sea….If you look at what happened in Virginia, he [Glenn Youngkin] was carpet bombing the commonwealth with disinformation. He was saying that Critical Race Theory was coming into Virginia schools. No it’s not.”
— Correspondent Jim Acosta on CNN’s The Situation Room, November 3, 2021.
Who Will Protect “Afghan Refugees” from the “American Taliban”
“What will we tell the Afghan refugees who just fled those schools for girls back in their home country?...Unfortunately, what we will tell them is that some members of the far right in this country have apparently decided they will resort to intimidation, and in some cases, even violence to get what they want. And they could sweep into power faster than the experts thought possible. Sound familiar? Sort of like an American Taliban. It is starting to look like a combination of theocracy and thugocracy.”
— Host Jim Acosta on CNN Newsroom, September 4, 2021.
Belittling “Wannabe Dictator” Trump
Correspondent Jim Acosta: “All we ended up with was the President of the United States looking like a wannabe dictator so he could walk over to a church and pretend to be concerned about the church. It’s just a sad and unbelievable thing.”
Host Anderson Cooper: “It’s like in some small country that’s taken over by some low-level lieutenant — you know, low-level colonel who gets on the airwaves and declares himself the law and order President.”
— Discussion about President Donald Trump walking across the street from White House to a fire-damaged St. John’s Episcopal Church, as aired on CNN’s AC360, June 1, 2020.
Hating Trump’s Honoring of Rush Limbaugh
“Yes the President had some heartwarming moments during this speech but he was also engaging in some deeply divisive rhetoric aimed at immigrants, aimed at Latinos. And while, yes, he was trying to make appeal to the African-American community it can’t be forgotten he was awarding the Medal of Freedom to Rush Limbaugh, who has a history of making derogatory comments about African-Americans.”
— Correspondent Jim Acosta on CNN’s post-State of the Union coverage, February 4, 2020.
Acosta Reveals How He Really Feels About Trump
“He’s been tweeting this evening, talking about how he’s won this state and that state. We have to pay attention to those tweets now, Anderson, because he’s the president. After January 20th, he just goes back to being another crackpot on the Internet.”
— Correspondent Jim Acosta on CNN’s Anderson Cooper360, November 13, 2020.
Trump Has Founding Fathers Rolling In Their Graves
Host Jake Tapper: “We all were hoping that the President would not go there and lie and falsely and prematurely declare victory….It is shocking.”...
Correspondent Jim Acosta: “I think our Founding Fathers are probably rolling in their graves right now. They did not envision a President of the United States delegitimizing an American election. And that is what the President just did a few moments ago. It’s historic and it’s historically awful. ”
— CNN’s live election coverage, November 4, 2020.
Jeering Trump’s “Out of Control” Briefings
Correspondent John King: “The briefing was breathtaking from beginning to when we dropped out, and at times bordered on dangerous. The President began with a propaganda video.”...
Correspondent Jim Acosta: “That is the biggest meltdown I have ever seen from a President of the United States in my career. I don’t think a reasonable person could watch what we just saw over the last hour and conclude that the President is in control. He sounds like he is out of control. And he was ranting and raving for the better part of the last hour....He became the chaos president, but what the American people want right now, and they’re not getting, is a coronavirus president. And a chaos president just isn’t fitting the bill.”
— CNN’s Erin Burnett Outfront, April 13, 2020.
Trump’s “Baghdad Bob” Briefings
“What we saw yesterday during the briefing, that Monday meltdown, when he played that propaganda video in the White House briefing room, these briefings all together are coming across like something out of Baghdad Bob — Baghdad Bob being the Iraqi military official who was claiming during the Iraq War that the United States was not making their way into the Iraqi capital. The President is sounding like very Baghdad Bob-like in the way that he’s assigning blame to everybody but himself. He is not taking any responsibility for this.”
— White House correspondent Jim Acosta on CNN’s The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer, April 14, 2020.
How Dare Trump Call a Covid a “Foreign Virus!”
“At one point during the address the President referred to the coronavirus as a quote, ‘foreign virus.’ That I think was interesting....Why the President would go as far as to describe it as a foreign virus?.... It should be pointed out that Stephen Miller, who is an immigration hardliner who advises the President....was a driving force in writing this speech....It’s going to come across to a lot of Americans as smacking of xenophobia to use that kind of term in this speech.”
— White House correspondent Jim Acosta on CNN’s Cuomo Prime Time, March 11, 2020.
It’s Now Acceptable to Throw “Neutrality” Out the Window
“Purists in the field of journalism and academics opining from the safety of the classroom can lament the downfall of neutrality. But neutrality for the sake of neutrality doesn’t really serve us in the age of Trump.”|
— Excerpt from CNN White House correspondent Jim Acosta’s June 11, 2019 published book “The Enemy of the People: A Dangerous Time to Tell the Truth in America.”
New Zealand Shooter Used Same Language as Trump
“The killer [New Zealand shooting] was using terms like ‘invaders’ and ‘invasion’ when talking about immigration and the immigration issue, almost the same kind of language that the President was using earlier today when he was vetoing that legislation up on Capitol Hill, rebuking his use of a national emergency declaration to build his wall on the border. So, the White House can’t whitewash the white nationalism every time, Anderson.”
— White House correspondent Jim Acosta on CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360, March 1, 2019.
Trump’s Address Should Have Come With a “Surgeon General’s Warning”
“I think that address probably should have come with a surgeon general’s warning. It was hazardous to the truth. There were a number of claims that President made in that speech that are just not going to stand up to the facts.”
— White House correspondent Jim Acosta post-Trump speech on CNN’s Cuomo Prime Time, January 8, 2019.
Depressed By Donald’s Rallies
“If you want to ask me what makes me the most depressed about my job it’s covering the [Donald Trump] rallies....In many ways the danger is not what Trump is doing to America, the danger is how America is changing under Trump.”
— CNN correspondent Jim Acosta at Citizen By CNN forum in New York City, October 22, 2018.
Trump Criticizes Media, “Felt Like We Weren’t In America Anymore”
“Honestly, it felt like we weren’t in America anymore. I don’t know how to put it any more plainly than that. Americans should not be treating their fellow Americans in this way....When the President, during the campaign, referred to us as ‘dishonest media,’ ‘the disgusting media,’ ‘liars,’ ‘scum,’ ‘thieves’ and so on and then he rolled that right into the Oval Office and started calling us ‘fake news’ and the ‘enemy of the people.’ He is whipping these crowds up into a frenzy to the point where they really want to come after us. We have these bike rack-like barriers around the press cage, as we call it, to protect us essentially from people who might take things too far.”
— CNN White House correspondent Jim Acosta describing supporters at Donald Trump rally in Tampa, as aired on HLN’s S.E. Cupp Unfiltered, August 1, 2018.
Acosta Was Just as Tough on Obama as Trump? Riiiight.
“Listen, when I covered Barack Obama, I was just as tough on him. People might not believe that.”
— CNN correspondent Jim Acosta on ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel Live, May 16, 2018.
VS.
“You know, I feel like I should pinch myself right now. I can’t believe I have this vantage point of history in the making.”
— Acosta during CNN’s live coverage of Barack Obama’s second Inauguration, January 21, 2013.
Trump “Doing Real Damage” to The First Amendment
“I was out on the campaign trail time and again when he [Donald Trump] referred to the news media as the dishonest news media, the disgusting news media. He called us liars and crooks and thieves and I can’t think of all of the other names that he called us....I think that the President has to understand that he is doing real damage to what we do. He is doing real damage to the First Amendment in this country when he refers to the news media as the enemies of the people.”
— CNN correspondent Jim Acosta at April 12, 2017 Newseum event “Trump and the Press.”
Acosta Lectures About White House’s “Unhealthy Fixation”
“Well, Wolf, I think, at times, this White House has an unhealthy fixation on what I call the three M’s, the Mexicans, the Muslims, and the media. Their politics tend to be crafted around bashing one of those three groups, and we just see it time and time again. And today on immigration, what the White House is essentially saying with a wink and a dog whistle to these battle states that they won is that immigrants coming in from Latin American are taking your jobs. Wolf, immigration is not the reason why the factory closed in Pittsburgh or the coal mine was shut down in West Virginia....It was just a poor argument and whenever they’re bashing the media, Wolf, my sense always is — is that they’re always losing the argument and I think you saw that today.”
— Reporter Jim Acosta on CNN’s Situation Room, August 2, 2017.
GOP’s “Hard-Hearted” Budget
“You were talking about the steel worker in Ohio and the coal miner in Pennsylvania and so on. But those workers may have an elderly mother who depends on the Meals on Wheels program, who may have kids in Head Start and yesterday or the day before you, described this as a hard power budget but is it also a hard-hearted budget?”
— CNN reporter Jim Acosta to OMB Director Mick Mulvaney during March 16, 2017 press conference.
