During yesterday’s 90 minute, freewheeling press conference with President Trump, CNN White House correspondent Jim Acosta did what he always does: grandstand in the hopes of achieving a viral moment. The man is known for this, and certainly not for acquiring or reporting any useful information. And now he’s done it again with his claim that the White House is silencing him.
It’s a tired routine, but it’s also not one getting too heated about. Everyone knows that Acosta does this – it’s more annoying than anything else.
But now the White House and some on the Right are dialing up the outrage to 11, and idiotically spinning his rude behavior and refusal to hand over his microphone to a White House intern as literal assault. Not only is this line of critique wildly dishonest, but it’s also dangerous and unhelpful to the cause of combating real journalistic malpractice by certain members of the press.
To be clear, the notion that Acosta physically assaulted a female White House staffer by attempting to hold onto the microphone is baseless. If you look at the clip of the exchange in detail, you can see him hold onto his right hand and use his left to try and push the intern’s crook of her elbow to get her hand off of the microphone. It’s sophomoric and entitled, and if the most powerful person in the free world feels so irked by Acosta’s theatrics, it’s well within his rights to request that CNN start sending over another reporter. But to frame this narrative as Acosta assaulting a woman is insane, malicious, and bound to backfire.
Already, the usual suspects have taken a story that would have rightly shown Acosta for the grandstander he is and instead made it about a lie.
“You might be confused why the left is defending hitting women,” wrote OAN’s Jack Posobiec of the exchange on Twitter. “Remember their mantra: Its OK When We Do It.”
In an era where the DNC actually supported Keith Ellison after he was credibly accused of domestic violence, this flagrantly dishonest framing of Acosta’s posturing is deeply irresponsible and makes a mockery of actual victims of assault.
The spin coming from Trump cheerleaders is so egregious that Tommy Vietor of Pod Save America, who infamously hates Ben Shapiro to the point of nicknaming him “Baby Steve Bannon” (Bannon and Shapiro worked together years ago at Breitbart and needless to say, it did not end well) retweeted Shapiro’s criticism of Sarah Sanders’ dishonest framing that the White House will “never tolerate a reporter placing his hands on a young woman just trying to do her job as a White House intern …”
Rather than simply revoking Acosta’s White House credentials and allowing his reputation stand on its own, the White House has doubled down on this lie that Acosta assaulted a woman when he clearly did not. They even evidently shared an Infowars video editing Acosta’s exchange to make the woman’s arm look redder and Acosta’s rebuff look violent. Ignoring the fact that the White House has no business dealing with the conspiracy theorists at Infowars, that Sanders is using a malicious lie to revoke Acosta’s press pass rather than the simple truth is pathetic.
It’s fine to criticize the media, especially when journalists behave as badly as Acosta. He does his colleagues no favors by constantly acting out, hogging the limelight, and making himself the story. His desire for attention is palpable, perhaps even pathological.
But to smear him with a lie about assault is as offensive. This nonexistent assault instantly corrupts and taints the criticism of his journalistic ethics that he actually deserves. In other words, stop making a martyr of this idiot.
