CNN White House reporter Jim Acosta and host Don Lemon said the network is not an anti-President Trump outlet, they are simply “holding their feet to the fire” because they will ask the hard questions to anyone who is in power.
“I think what the president fails to understand is that we’re not here to do a commercial for him. We’re not part of the Trump Organization. We’re here to do the news for the American people and just like the folks who work at that White House need to keep in mind they work on behalf of the American people … and I see journalists and you and I, Don, in the same regard,” Acosta told Lemon.
Lemon said he had seen CNN’s congressional reporter Manu Raju press Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., on questions she did not want to answer, but he continued to do so anyway.
“Regardless of who it is, if you hold a position of power, we the journalists at CNN are going to question you about it whether you like it or not,” Lemon said on Wednesday while Acosta was promoting his new book, The Enemy of the People: A Dangerous Time to Tell the Truth in America.
“That’s right. We’re here to hold their feet to the fire. And just because we’re pro-truth doesn’t mean that we are anti-Trump and … we’re not the enemy of the people, we are defenders to the people,” Acosta said.
While promoting his book on Monday, Acosta also issued a warning to “our friends in conservative media.”
“It is no guarantee that you get to stay in power forever,” he said. “And so, another administration could come in and do the very same thing to them and say, ‘Well, Donald Trump did it. Guess what, we’re going to do it to you, too.'”
