Now that the midterms are over we can stop focusing on the craziness of Hawley's "political ladder" and McCaskill's "money machine" and start to inevitably go back to the craziness of the white house, and boy were they prepared for the attention. As democrats across the nation look for validation of what they're still trying to convince themselves is a win, despite major victories, Trump isn't leaving an inch of attention to what they achieved.
As of Wednesday, Trump has fired Attorney General Jeff Sessions. The main take on that story is in how it relates to the Russia/Muller probe; however, as we've already covered the Russia probe at points and as there will surely be much more to come on the story, we're going to cover an event that happened just briefly after.
In a White House press conference, reporter Jim Acosta of CNN got into a fairly fiery back and forth with President Trump, and soon thereafter had his credentials revoked. The incident has caused an uproar amongst journalists and has proven controversial.
In today's post I'll use information from CNN, BBC, and FOX from the following articles...
...to cover the following points:
Jim Acosta has had his hard pass revoked following events in the press conference on Wednesday morning.
During the press conference, Trump and Acosta had a heated quabble.
Press secretary Sanders released a statement regarding Acosta's actions, specifically contact with a White House intern during the incident.
Another journalist in the room stuck his neck out for Acosta only to find himself under fire as well.
First let's get to the basis of the story in the first point. On Wednesday night, Acosta had his hard pass that allows him easy access to the White House removed by a Secret Service agent on the order of Press Secretary Sanders on the basis of events that had happened earlier that morning.
The 3 outlets hardly differ in their telling of the basic facts of the matter. It really begins to get interesting when we see the 3 outlets different takes on the treatment of Acosta and the intern.
Next we look at part of the incident itself. The issue started with some aggressive questions from Acosta which were followed by from a clearly upset Trump. He, obviously not a fan of Acosta and his "fake news", called him a "terrible person".
As you can tell from the video above, the verbal exchange between the two was not the only aspect of the incident. Sanders later put out a statement explaining that Acosta "putting hands" on the White House intern was "unacceptable" despite Acosta saying that what she stated was a lie.
The specification of "pro-Trump" media on CNN's part begins to make this a polarizing issue, but that is not where it stops.
As I said before, the incident has sparked an uproar amongst journalists, most stating that the White House crossed a line.
FOX, however, speaks only of the journalist that spoke out in support of him in the room. They go on to say that more journalists seem to be speaking out against Acosta, quoting one of their own.
"Other journalists, however, reacted differently, including Fox News' Chris Wallace, who called Acosta's behavior "shameful."'-FOX
Another point of contention regarding the incident, is the video that Sarah Sanders put on Twitter along with her formal statement in relation to the events. Claims have come about that the video was slightly altered to look worse for Acosta. She has yet to address such claims. CNN and FOX have not covered it but BBC mentioned it in the following statement at the end of their article.
"The press secretary later shared a zoomed in clip of the incident, which observers say is a doctored video originally posted by right-wing conspiracy theorist Paul Joseph Watson."' -BBC
Regardless of who you think is in the wrong, this story is certainly one that draws light to the strained relations between the White House and the Press Corps and will be interesting to follow and see the impacts of.
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