CNN’s Jim Acosta, perhaps President Trump’s favorite media whipping boy, tore into the President this afternoon when deputy White House Communications Director Bill Shine told CNN reporter Kaitlan Collins that she was banned from the press conference following the meeting between Trump and the President of the EU Commission Jean-Claude Juncker.
Statement regarding CNN press access at today’s White House event. We demand better. pic.twitter.com/s4lSTcHVak
— CNN Communications (@CNNPR) July 25, 2018
Acosta declared the incident to be a “new low” for the President and demanded that he, his fellow journalists, and the American people be treated better by our increasingly volatile President, whose inability to deal with criticism and “tough questions” seems to grow worse with each passing day.
A new low for the White House. My colleague @kaitlancollins deserves better than this. All journalists covering the WH deserve better than this. As do the American people. https://t.co/gf57HGUsC0
— Jim Acosta (@Acosta) July 25, 2018
Acosta and the President have clashed on multiple occasions in the past, to the point that the president now regularly calls him out on Twitter by name as part of his obsessive feud with CNN, which he despises for sending reporters to ask him “tough” questions and for blanketing the airwaves with coverage of his mistakes, his ethics violations, his extramarital affair scandals, his constant lies to the American people and his appalling policy decisions.
Even Crazy Jim Acosta of Fake News CNN agrees: “Trump World and WH sources dancing in end zone: Trump wins again…Schumer and Dems caved…gambled and lost.” Thank you for your honesty Jim!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 23, 2018
Acosta is absolutely right in his assessment of the stunt that the White House decided to pull today. To ban a reporter from a press conference because she asked questions the President didn’t like is a clear attack on our nation’s free press and cannot be allowed to go unchallenged.