CNN’s Acosta Rejects ‘Neutrality for the Sake of Neutrality’ During Trump Era in New Book

CNN White House correspondent Jim Acosta argued that “neutrality” in reporting is not effective in the age of President Donald Trump, as he lays out the current administration’s unique attacks on the press in his upcoming book, Enemy of the People: A Dangerous Time to Tell the Truth in America.

According to a book excerpts published by The Guardian, Acosta writes that he “opts for the bait” during his countless viral confrontations with the president, which he admitted can constitute “showboating” or “grandstanding” from time to time and “bothers some people.”

However, he argued that his style of aggressive questioning is necessary with Trump: “Neutrality for the sake of neutrality doesn’t really serve us in the age of Trump.”

The book also recounts the time Trump had then-White House aide Hope Hicks called him in February 2017 to commend him for being “very professional today,” adding that the president said “Jim gets it” of Acosta despite recently calling the reporter “very fake news” after he brought up Kremlin medaling during a presser.

“When he called us ‘fake news’ it was, in his mind, an act,” Acosta writes.

Acosta and Trump’s relationship, though, went significantly downhill from that moment. In late 2018, the Trump administration revoked Acosta’s White House press pass after he and the president had an intense verbal altercation over the migrant caravan issue. After that incident, during which Trump referred to Acosta as a “rude and terrible person,” the CNN correspondent wrote that “everything in my life began to spiral out of control” over the “disgusting smear” from the White House. (They justified the temporary ban by claiming he physically accosted a young woman staffer while attempting to retain the microphone during the exchange with Trump.)

Acosta’s Enemy of the People is set to be released on June 11.

[featured image via Getty Images/AFP]

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