CNN’s Jim Acosta Slams Fox For Parroting Claims About ‘Jacked Up’ Biden, Compares It to Birtherism

CNN’s Jim Acosta drew a stark parallel between one of former President Donald Trump’s latest baseless claims about President Joe Biden with an old baseless claim he made about former President Barack Obama.

While covering the increasing frequency of Trump’s evidence-free claim that Biden will be on drugs for their first presidential debate, Acosta played a montage of several Trump surrogates on Fox News repeating the claim, also without evidence. He asked Democratic strategist Chuck Rocha and Republican strategist Scott Jennings about what effect these claims might be having on some voters, comparing it to “the birther lie” he made for years about Obama.

Acosta started the conversation by saying, “it almost sounds like he’s road testing a new birther lie with this ‘jacked up’ business,” noting: “Nobody’s ever made this kind of allegation about Joe Biden his entire political career, even though he’s been in Washington, you know, 50-plus years.” After playing the montage of Trump surrogate pushing the “jacked up” talking point — including KellyAnne Conway, Vivek Ramaswamy, and Rep. Ronny Jackson (R-TX) — he turned to Rocha and Jennings:

Acosta: Scott’s laughing, but I find this to be a lot like the birther lie. And it just was done over and over again, and for a while there, the Obama folks would laugh it off or not take it seriously. But I mean, it is they’re kind of doing it with a straight face over there on Fox.

Rocha: I’ve said this on this program before. There’s an old saying in East Texas: If you lie long enough about having a horse, eventually somebody will buy you a saddle.

Jennings tried to defend the strategy:

Jennings: Look, the last time we saw [Biden] on a big stage was the State of the Union. He came out swinging at the State of the Union. He came out in an aggressive stance. My assumption is–

Acosta: Wasn’t such a smart idea that for weeks and weeks to talk about how Biden’s stumbling around and drifting off, and all this other stuff.

Jennings: I mean, I sort of dispute that it’s the Trump campaign or the Republicans that are setting low expectations. It’s Biden’s own appearance that’s setting low expectations.

Acosta: Right, but why would you don’t have to go out and say he’s jacked up over and over and have all these surrogates saying, I mean, obviously they’re getting the talking points, saying this sort of thing.

Watch the video above via CNN.