White House Revokes Jim Acosta’s Credentials After Press Conference
Last weekend, the wife and I watched The Post, where at the end of the movie, President Nixon is heard on the telephone banning The Washington Post from The White House. And today, history repeated itself, as we saw Jim Acosta of CNN having his press credentials revoked by the Secret Service for challenging President Trump on current issues, while allegedly touching a White House staffer inappropriately.
Jim Acosta challenged President Trump on his assertion that the caravan of immigrants coming to the US as an invasion, when in fact, the so-called caravan of immigrants are coming to the US border to apply for asylum, which is a legal process, under US law. All the while, the president continued to talk over and deride Acosta, while the CNN reporter tried to ask his questions, instead of showing Acosta the common courtesy of listening to the question before giving a considered answer to Acosta’s legitimate question.
Near the end of this interaction, a female White House intern, tried to snatch the microphone away from Acosta, making several attempts to go over and under Acosta’s arm, making contact on four occasions, to which, WH press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders tweeted “…We will, however, never tolerate a reporter placing his hands on a young woman just trying to do her job as a White House intern…”
The video of the incident clearly shows that Acosta is innocent, in fact, at one point, Acosta says “excuse me, ma’am”. RAWStory posted a slowed down video of the contact between Acosta and the Intern, clearly showing, it was the unnamed female intern that touched Acosta without permission, not vice-versa.
After Acosta relinquished the microphone, Trump got in a final dig at the CNN reporter, saying “You are a rude, terrible person, you shouldn’t be working for CNN”, continuing on, to say “When you report fake news like CNN does a lot, you are the enemy of the people”. Again reinforcing his bullshit talking points of fake news and the press is the enemy of the people, seriously, how can he be allowed to continue to use this rhetoric, we’ve already seen too many physical attacks on the press, including attempted bombings.
While this was happening, Jeff Sessions was fired as Attorney General, ‘temporarily’ being replaced with Trump loyalist, Matthew Whitaker, who has been openly critical of Robert Mueller and his investigation into Russian collusion in the 2016 election. That said, Trump has placed Whitaker in charge of the Mueller investigation, see the issue here… a clear constitutional violation and obstruction of justice.
According to Fox News’ legal analyst, Andrew Napolitano, Trump is likely breaking the law, by appointing Whitaker, even as temporary Attorney General, prior to being confirmed by the US Senate. Which, without being a legal expert, I would guess that asst Attorney General, Rod Rosenstein would become acting AG, until a replacement is confirmed, which is a foregone conclusion with a clear GOP majority.
But, with Trump being sponsored by Teflon, nothing sticks, so when Mueller is inevitably fired by Whitaker, on behalf of Trump, Congress will take no action, with the Senate being even more stacked with Republicans after the midterm elections. Trump already admitted on camera, that he fired, then FBI director, James Comey because of the Russia investigation, with absolutely no repercussions.
Back to Acosta, while attempting to reenter White House grounds to do a press ‘hit’, a secret service agent asked for Acosta’s ‘hard-pass’, which gives the press access to The White House and grounds. This is a clear violation of the first amendment and the freedom of the press clause therein. And more importantly for Trump, sending a message to the press, bow your head or lose access to The White House.
We are heading for a constitutional crisis, with press members having their press credentials revoked and the highly likely firing of Robert Mueller and the closing down of the Russian collusion investigation. Donald J. Trump is trying to turn America into an authoritarian regime, like his buddy’s Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong-un, and Rodrigo Duterte, who our commander and chief, #PresidentSnowflake holds in high regard.
The sad thing is that as long as Trump is doing what their corporate paymasters want, Congress, not just on the Republican side, but also the Democrat side, won’t do a damn thing about it, allowing the United States to go to shit, as long as they line their pockets and the pockets of their rich corporate paymasters.
Finally, what I hope the press will do is band together and boycott The White House and Donald Trump. This would deny President Trump the exposure he craves, to get his message out to his racist, misogynistic base. Stop giving him free airtime, even if it means a drop in ratings, there’s plenty of other news going on, we don’t need Trump’s likeness and voice on national TV every five minutes.
Update [Nov, 8 2018, 21:43]: Trump’s Administration likes to throw around the term ‘Fake News’, then, on the very same day, White House press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders tweeted a doctored video of Jim Acosta ‘placing his hands on a young woman’, which was later retweeted by the White House twitter account, to justify the revocation of Acosta’s press credentials. In this story by the Associated Press, video producer Abba Shapiro shows how the video was doctored to make Acosta’s arm movements look more aggressive. The levels this administration will go to push their agenda is truly despicable.
What is more concerning is the number of likes and retweets of Sanders tweet, and the rabid defense from right-wingers. It just shows how many Americans have been brainwashed into believing Trump’s fake news narrative, like Hitler in the 1930’s/1940’s, Trump just parrots the same sound bites over and over, until people start to believe it, pushing the fear narrative, such as the invasion of the caravan of immigrants, to control the masses. It’s almost like subliminal messaging, the human brain gets accustomed to such consistent phrasing and it becomes the truth to them, regardless of actual facts.