With Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign manager Paul Manafort currently under federal investigation for everything from money laundering to witness tampering, the fame-hungry narcissist whose primary concern is his own personal success needed to find someone new – albeit terrible – to run his 2020 campaign.
Enter Brad Parscale, the perfect gleeful suck-up to replace Manafort for Trump’s next bid to win The Apprentice: America Edition the American presidency.
Early in the morning on June 12th, Parscale tossed the following tweet out into the ether, amplifying Trump and Sarah Huckabee’s Sanders’ continued attacks on free press and the First Amendment:
Jim @Acosta should immediately have his press credentials suspended. He is an absolute disgrace! @realDonaldTrump https://t.co/EY18ZeIq2h
— Brad Parscale (@parscale) June 12, 2018
“Jim @Acosta should immediately have his press credentials suspended. He is an absolute disgrace!” Parscale commented on his retweet of a Daily Wire article about Acosta interrupting a “historic” signing ceremony – otherwise known as “doing his job as a reporter.”
Acosta responded hours later, echoing the Fox News “dictator” gaff from late last week:
Dear Brad.. dictatorships take away press credentials. Not democracies. https://t.co/TqgCHOW0t6
— Jim Acosta (@Acosta) June 13, 2018
“Dear Brad… dictatorships take away press credentials. Not democracies,” Acosta reminded him in his own quote tweet.
Acosta has been in the hot-seat of the far-right for most of 2018 so far for this same crime of doing his job. As the Mueller investigation coils more and more tightly around Trump’s neck, the “liberal” news outlets – those that partake in fact-checking – received increasingly less favor in the White House press pool.
Acosta continued to push to get answers, which often times he could only do by shouting out his questions as he lost several ring sizes holding his ignored hand in the air.
But sometimes it takes a legend to silence stupidity. On Wednesday morning, Dan Rather caught wind of the Twitter exchange and used his status as a journalism icon to stand up for Acosta and the First Amendment with one quick tweet:
Jim Acosta is a pro. Anyone seeking to silence him will find that he will only dig deeper and be more determined to uncover the truths the administration wants to remain hidden. https://t.co/wPdmYerIYx
— Dan Rather (@DanRather) June 13, 2018
“Jim Acosta is a pro,” he began by pointing out the obvious. “Anyone seeking to silence him will find that he will only dig deeper and be more determined to uncover the truths the administration wants to remain hidden.”
With that, Rather hits the nail on the head – Acosta is simply doing his job. Any attempts to hinder his ability to seek and spread the truth will only make a good journalist like him work harder to do exactly that.
If Trump and his co-conspirators have nothing to hide, then a person like Acosta should be of little to no concern of them. Their repeated attacks against him and his contemporaries only suggest one thing – Trump is lying, and he’s afraid that a journalist like Acosta will succeed in exposing that.
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