‘What Is His Job?’ Jim Acosta Lashes Out at Trump and Musk in First Show Since Leaving CNN

Former CNN anchor-turned-Substack host Jim Acosta tore into President Donald Trump and Elon Musk in his first show since leaving CNN, wondering aloud what Musk’s job is, and whether Trump will “take responsibility” for what he does?

Acosta left CNN last week with a surprise announcement in which he took a hard shot at Trump, telling viewers “It is never a good time to bow down to a tyrant.”

Since then, Acosta has quickly amassed a following of about 180,000 and counting to his Substack and launched The Jim Acosta Show, an interactive Substack Live netcast shot in no-frills style at his Washington, D.C. home.

On Tuesday’s first episode of the show, Acosta introduced viewers to the format, which consists of Acosta ticking through the news of the day, offering commentary and analysis, interacting with viewers, and shouting out his dog, Duke Acosta.

A good chunk of the show was devoted to Musk’s actions to deep-six federal employees and gain access to the U.S. Treasury payment system.

Acosta pointed out that Musk has not been elected or confirmed by anyone, and put a question directly to Trump: “Will you take responsibility” if something goes wrong?”:

Remember what we were covering during the 2024 campaign. Project 2025. We covered it time and again throughout the 2024 campaign. And what did Donald Trump say out on the campaign trail?

With respect to Project 2025, he said, “I have no idea what that is. I have nothing to do with Project 2025.”.

And yet time and again, we were pointing out that, yes, he knew exactly what Project 2025 was. There were people who worked in the first Trump administration who drafted Project 2025 for the Heritage Foundation.

And now what we’re seeing being implemented by Elon Musk, by DOGE, this the so-called shock and Awe campaign that you’re seeing right now is you are seeing essentially Project 2025 in action.

If you go and look at Project 2025, it states very clearly that one of the goals is to wreak havoc in the federal workforce, to clear out the federal workforce of people that they see as deep state operatives, people who are not beholden to Donald Trump and replace many of those federal employees with political loyalists.

Of course. If you do that, you’re going to end up– and I’ve already heard this anecdotally from from folks here in Washington who work at various agencies. You’re going to you’re going to end up with a brain drain. You’re going to end up with a lot of people say, for example, at the FBI, where they’re already hearing about a campaign of retribution at the FBI, inside the Justice Department.

You’re already hearing about a campaign of retribution at the Justice Department. You’re starting to see what’s taking place at USAID over at OPM, inside the Treasury Department.

What you hear from people inside the federal government here in Washington is that you may end up seeing lots of good, well-intentioned, solid, professional people who work for the federal government, leaving the government because they just don’t want to deal with this anymore. They don’t want to be a part of this chaotic circus that Trump has unleashed here in Washington.

And they certainly don’t want to work for somebody like Elon Musk, who, as we were saying earlier, has has no–.

What is his job? Who voted for him? He hasn’t been confirmed by the Cabinet or by the Senate to be a part of the cabinet. And yet he’s been given all of this latitude.

And so I think some key questions have been asked as to what is going to take place moving forward with what Elon Musk is doing inside the Trump administration.

And I think a lot of those questions have to be aimed squarely at President Trump. I think the question has to be asked of President Trump, “Are you willing to take responsibility for what Elon Musk does in these respective agencies if somehow there’s a data leak?”.

Because people at DOGE were given access to this very sensitive information? Will you take responsibility for that, Mr. President?

Watch above via The Jim Acosta Show.