WATCH: CNN’s Jim Acosta ROASTS Paul Ryan, Fox News, and ‘Brain’-Free Matt Gaetz/Marjorie Taylor Greene Fans — With Relish
CNN anchor and Chief Domestic Correspondent Jim Acosta provided unsparing and vivid commentary on the rise of would-be Trump successors Matt Gaetz and Marjorie Taylor Greene, and the role of Fox News board member Paul Ryan in enabling the movement he now decries.
On Friday morning’s edition of New Day, Acosta joined anchors John Berman and Brianna Keilar in reacting to a clip package that intercut Ryan’s tardy stand against extremism in the GOP with examples of said extremism from Greene, Gaetz, and others, as well as Donie O’Sullivan’s jaw-dropping interview with an “America First” rallygoer in Georgia.
Acosta then tore into Ryan, Fox News, and the Republican Party with obvious relish.
“You’d almost feel bad for Paul Ryan if he weren’t sitting on the board at Fox News,” Acosta said, and added that as speaker of the House, Ryan “had a chance to head this off at the pass, he saw these kinds of extreme movements building inside the Republican Party, he saw the rise of Donald Trump, and I think it can be said pretty convincingly that he didn’t do enough to stop the rise of Donald Trump.”
Acosta then referred to the Gaetz-Greene movement as the “zombie Republican Party.”
“Matt Gaetz and Marjorie Taylor Greene are roaming the countryside looking for brains to consume, and evidently there weren’t a whole, there wasn’t exactly a buffet of high-minded people there available down in Georgia last night,” Acosta said.
He then excoriated Greene’s constant stream of “Nazi talk,” which O’Sullivan’s interview subject mimicked by comparing the coronavirus vaccine to the atrocities of Josef Mengele.
“I’m literally sick to my stomach from hearing that woman bring up Joseph Mengele and suggest in any way it’s applicable to the battle against coronavirus,” Berman told Acosta. “Made my stomach turn. But you can see how she is affected by Marjorie Taylor Greene, and if you’re asking for Marjorie Taylor Greene’s motivation, well when people say things that are anti-Semitic, it gives you a sense of what is motivating them, Jim.”
Berman also ripped Ryan for promoting his speech “like it was some dramatic wine in the sand. I mean I’m sorry, it’s done! It’s done. Inside the Republican Party, where’s the battle?”
“Too late. exactly. He’s too late,” Acosta said, “and by the way, if you want to stop extremism or do something about extremism in America, he sits on the board at Fox News. He can do something about it right now.”
“Because I’ve described it as a bullshit factory over at Fox News, it has become, it’s becoming a dangerous haven for extremist ideas, and the fact that they continue to paper over and whitewash what Donald Trump did on January 6th,” Acosta said, then pointed out how many of the clips in the earlier package were from Fox News.
“Did those anchors step in and say something? Say something to Ron Johnson like ‘You know, you’re lying about what happened on January 6th?’ No,” Acosta said. “It’s because of what they do over that that station that is just demolishing what was left of a civil discourse in this country. So Paul Ryan wants to do something about it, enough with the speeches at the Reagan Library, give a speech over on the Avenue of the Americas over in midtown Manhattan, because that’s where he could do some good right now.”
Watch above via CNN.
