CNN host Don Lemon said that the interaction the White House intern had with CNN White House correspondent Jim Acosta last week was “staged.”
“I’ve been in enough crowds where there are hecklers — you want to control somebody, you turn the microphone off,” guest Burt Neuborne said on CNN Tuesday night. “You don’t send some poor intern into a crowd to take the microphone away; there are plenty of ways to control it.”
“I think that was staged,” Lemon said, in response to the New York University law professor and civil liberties attorney. “I think they played that.”
[Also read: Bob Woodward trashes CNN’s lawsuit: We’re taking Trump’s ‘bait’]
Last Wednesday during a press conference following the midterm elections, Trump made it clear he no longer wanted to take questions from Acosta. An intern attempted to take the microphone away from Acosta and hand it to the next person, but the reporter put down his arm to block her from taking it.
The White House suspended Acosta’s press pass, and CNN launched a lawsuit against the Trump administration.
A member of the press can have their press pass revoked if they are deemed a threat to the president.
White House press secretary Sarah Sanders tweeted a video of the incident, which many claim was a version of the video doctored by conspiracy theory site Infowars that manipulated the interaction.
“We stand by our decision to revoke this individual’s hard pass,” Sanders tweeted about Acosta. “We will not tolerate the inappropriate behavior clearly documented in this video.”
We stand by our decision to revoke this individual’s hard pass. We will not tolerate the inappropriate behavior clearly documented in this video. pic.twitter.com/T8X1Ng912y
— Sarah Sanders (@PressSec) November 8, 2018
