Jim Acosta Attacks Trump FCC Chief in Over-the-Top Press Freedom Rant

Independent journalist Jim Acosta told SiriusXM radio host Dean Obeidallah that Trump FCC Chairman Brendan Carr’s children should be ashamed of their “scumbag” father in an over-the-top rant accusing Carr of attacking press freedom.

Carr took a victory lap at CPAC this week over President Donald Trump’s assault on what he called the “fake news media”:

BRENDAN CARR: President Trump took on the fake news media, and President Trump is winning.

Look at the results so far. PBS — defunded. NPR — defunded. Joy Reid — gone from MSNBC. Sleepy-eyed Chuck Todd — gone. Jim Acosta — gone. John Dickerson — gone. Colbert is leaving. CBS is under new ownership, and soon enough, CNN is gonna have new ownership as well.

Acosta was a guest on Thursday’s edition of The Dean Obeidallah Show, during which Obeidallah asked him about those comments. Acosta responded with a direct message to Carr denigrating him and challenging him to a fistfight for doing “real damage to the freedom of the press in this country”:

DEAN OBEIDALLAH: What’s your reaction when you hear this garbage?

JIM ACOSTA: I mean, I think Brendan Carr is a scumbag, and I have the God-given American right under the First Amendment to tell him that.

Brendan Carr, if you’re watching this, if this clip makes the rounds, you are a scumbag! What you’re doing to the American people, what you’re going to the free press in this country is disgraceful, and you are disgraceful human being!

And I suspect years from now, your children will be ashamed of you, if you have any. And you should be ashamed of yourself and you will be ashamed of yourself because what you are doing is you are just, uh, you know, doing the bidding of a mad king, a mad wannabe king.

And you know, to go out there at CPAC, I mean, how is he, how is he supposed to be viewed as any kind of reliable, independent head of the FCC?

He’s obviously just a hack and a shameful one at that. And he just should be ashamed of himselves and his family, his extended family to the seventh and eighth cousin level. They should all be tremendously ashamed of what a scumbag he is.

Because what he’s done is do real damage to the freedom of the press in this country.

And it seems to me the only way we’re going to get this back is if the FCC… Uh, is made independent again, made an independent agency again.

And so you, you need do a new administration to come in. You need a new Congress to come. And probably some laws put in place that can firewall the FCC.

Because I mean, they should not be able to, well, Jimmy Kimmel, he hurt Donald Trump’s feelings. We got to get him off the air.

And, you know, the other thing Dean that we haven’t been talking about enough, uh, as a country about all of this is that the networks. They explained all of these moves, having these anchors go here and there and leaving their jobs, as programming decisions.

And what I would like to know, and this is a sincere question, is are there documents, are there emails, are there texts that could establish whether or not Donald Trump or people close to him reached out to these networks and forced the removal of these individual anchors and hosts?

And I, you know, to me, it’s sort of an untold story there. Somebody should get to the bottom of this.

You know, I would love to see the paper trail involved in any of that, because it seems to me what has happened here is that a, you know, a political, um, attack was unleashed on major hosts and anchors and whatnot, journalists at these various networks, you know.

And, and for them to, for Brendan Carr swan around like, Hey, look at me, I’m this big, bad, tough guy. You know, if I, you know, put us in the ring together, put us, put this in the ring together. I’ll put on some boxing gloves.

Watch above via SiriusXM’s The Dean Obeidallah Show.

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