Crayton Webb

Welcome to Reputation Matters. Thanks for joining us today. We have a special guest today, Jim Acosta, who’s been a local broadcast news reporter for many years, went on to the big leagues and was an anchor for CNN, and then was Chief White House correspondent for CNN. He’s written a book about his experience covering the White House, and now he has his own podcast as an independent journalist. Jim, thanks for joining us, for Reputation Matters, and great to see you.

Jim Acosta

Great to be with you. Great to be with you. Good to see you again.

Crayton Webb

Full disclosure, Jim and I worked together 20 years ago at CBS 11 here in Dallas-Fort Worth, and was in my wedding. But I will, I will try to not be too unfair.

Jim Acosta

No, that’s okay. You’re gonna get your revenge now.

Crayton Webb

We also, it’s also a special occasion, because we have an audience with us today. Usually we record the podcast in a room, so it’s kind of fun to have a group who is joining us for this particular conversation.

Jim Acosta

This beats my dining room with my little dog around. You know that’s, that’s how I do my podcast now.

Crayton Webb

And we’re going to talk about that. What I’d like to start with first – you’ve been in journalism for 30 years or there about. Tough question but, what has changed the most in the job of being a reporter, from when you started in the 90s to now?

Jim Acosta

Wow, I guess I would have to say the internet was probably the biggest change. I mean, just to start there, I remember before I came to Dallas as a local reporter with channel 11, I worked in Knoxville, Tennessee. That was my first TV market, and worked for the NBC station there. They were great, number one station, had all the bells and whistles that a local station should have. Had a photographer who would shoot my stories for me versus what you see now with the- a lot of the young reporters, they shoot their own stuff, they have to edit it, put it out there, do their own live shots, and so on. I was lucky that I didn’t have to do all of that, so that was a plus. But I remember the day that they put the internet in the newsroom, we had one computer where you can log on to AOL. You remember the little sound, the little re, re, you know, and the little CDs that you would put in your computer, and we would use them as beer coasters back in those days, because they would send you so many in the mail. But I remember we would get on and use search engines. I think it back then it was what Alta Vista, or one of those, you know, wasn’t Google, I don’t think in the beginning, right?And so that really revolutionized things. I remember getting this clunky old laptop that I basically used to write my stories in the car, because I thought I was, you know, like, I’m going to be a pioneer here, and that kind of a thing. But I would say that’s the biggest thing that, that really changed things for us. And then, of course, over time, you know, you saw the advent of social media and bloggers and so on, and that really changed the industry. And right around the 2008 campaign, the 2012 campaign, is when Twitter, Instagram, all of these other social media apps came on board. And I remember covering the Mitt Romney campaign in 2012 and Instagram got started, and I had a pretty small account, maybe a few hundred, thousand followers, or whatever. And then, for some reason, my account and a bunch of the other campaign reporters got profiled on some news story somewhere. My account took off, and it kind of, I think, started to dawn on a lot of us that, oh, well, you can develop followings and, you know, social media fans and that sort of thing. So I would say that the internet and social media really changed things from when I got into local news to where we are now.

Crayton Webb

How about the profile of a reporter? You know? I mean, we used to talk about even 20 years ago. Gosh, it seems like so many people are getting into the broadcast news business because they want to be famous. So it doesn’t necessarily take, with all respect now, to be a national broadcast anchor in the days of Sam Donaldson or Walter Cronkite, how has the profile of being a journalist, a reporter, changed?

Jim Acosta

I, you know, I would say that it’s changed, but maybe not as much as we would think. I mean, I grew up idolizing people like Sam Donaldson and Dan Rather, and Walter Cronkite, and Tom Brokaw and stuff like that, and that’s what I wanted to do, that’s, that’s who I wanted to be growing up. When I was a little kid – it’s a strange but true story that I went to go see the hostages come back from Iran when I was, I think, in the first grade. And for whatever reason, the Washington Post sent a reporter with my class to go see the hostages come back from Iran, and they quoted me in the newspaper,along with some of my classmates. And my quote was, “Wow, I’m famous. I was on ABC once and NBC twice,” or something along those lines. And so I guess I got the news bug all the way back then. And, you know, I just looked up to those guys, and I think over the years, I mean, yes, I think to some extent you could say, you know, people in our business, they got into it to try to be famous, rather than to do journalism, to do the news and stuff like that. But I think a little bit of that is a caricature, because most of the journalists I’ve gotten to know over the years, they really are into it because they like to tell stories. They like to hold elected leaders accountable. They like to do the news. They, they see themselves as part of the community, and they care about the community. And you know, we can get into how a lot of that changed when, you know, certain person got into the White House. I mean that really fundamentally changed our profession. But by and large, I think most people get into it for the news, and they do well and become notable and gain some notoriety and so on as a result of their work and so on. But I don’t, I don’t know if it’s changed all that much from that perspective.

Crayton Webb

You’ve been able to cover international leaders as well as you’ve traveled with presidents. You’ve been to Cuba, you’ve been to North Korea. You know, we often as consumers of news, even as citizens, take for granted the freedom of the press and the, and that’s not an invitation yet necessarily, to talk about what you’re doing now, but it is a request to share a little bit more about what you experienced in those countries and how it’s different than it is here, and how perhaps we take that for granted.

Jim Acosta

Yeah. I mean, I, you know, I look at this from the perspective, like a lot of journalists, they look at it. Steve, the way he grew up, he brings that perspective to what he does. And I would say, I do the same thing with what I do. My dad is a Cuban refugee. He came over in 1962 right before the Cuban Missile Crisis. And so I’ve always taken an interest in what’s happening in Cuba. And back in 2016, I had a chance to go to Cuba and cover Obama’s visit to the island. He was going to meet with Raul Castro, Fidel Castro’s brother, who was the dictator at that time, and they were gonna go to a baseball game and have a press conference. And we found out that they were gonna have this press conference, and so we went down there, and one of the members of the White House Press Corps came up to me and they said, there’s a rumor going around that you might get a question from Obama, that you might get to ask him a question, and maybe even ask Raul Castro a question, so you might want to think about what you’re going to do. And I thought to myself, well, s—. My dad is a Cuban refugee. He escaped communism. I said, I better think of something good. It can’t be like, oh, how’s the mojitos? Or, you know-

Crayton Webb

Do you think that’s why they asked you?

Jim Acosta

I think, yes, I think that they, you know, they wanted to give Raul Castro a little taste of American democracy. And so I thought, you know what? How can I not ask about the human rights situation there? And so I asked Raul Castro a question about, why do you have political prisoners, and why don’t you just let them out, let them go? And I asked that question in English and my broken Spanish, which is not very good, and he took the translator headphones off of his ears, and he was looking around like, I can’t believe somebody just asked me this question. He looked at Obama, and Obama was like, answer the question, man. And he said, “Dame una lista. Dame una lista,” which means, “show me the list, show me the list,” and he knew damn well that there are plenty of lists of political prisoners, and his own people have lists of who they are keeping in their jails and so on. But when I came back, my dad was, he couldn’t have been happier that I had done that and he had saved all the clips and everything. And it just gives you, that gave me a sense of the power of what we can do, not to pump my own reputation up or anything like that, but it demonstrates that, you know, we do have this ability in this country to hold elected leaders accountable.

Crayton Webb

You were on the campaign trail with numerous presidential candidates. You talk about the Romney campaign in 2012.From a reputation perspective, can you think of an example where a candidate did something just brilliant, either to get themselves out of a pickle, to protect their reputation, enhance it, it took them to the next level, and then, of course, on the other side, where a candidate just really missed the boat.

Yeah, I mean, I would say Mitt Romney probably fits the second category. I mean, I think that, you know, he had we, I would call it the gift for the gaff back in those days, you know, he would just say these unfortunate things out on the campaign trail, and just could not get out of those situations, and sort of got tagged with being this sort of out of touch businessman. You know, he would say things like, “I like to be able to fire people.” You guys might remember some of this stuff, and it got him in a lot of trouble, and he just could not recover from it. I think there was another moment where he was caught on camera saying something about the 47% of Americans who don’t pay taxes, and all we do is take care of them and all this stuff. And, you know, an old Republican strategist said to me, the only thing that’s worse when the voters don’t like you, is when you don’t like the voters. And that was sort of his observation of Mitt Romney, that he was just a little too elitist, a little too looking down his nose at the, at the voting public. And he never really, you know, could recover from that. I will say, if we’re going to start to talk about the current president, when he was running for president back in 2016, I will tell you I thought he was, when the Access Hollywood thing came out. I was on CNN, and I said, he is finished. That is it. He’s done. He’s toast. And that is the most remarkable political comeback I’ve ever seen in my lifetime. You can talk about Bill Clinton and when he ran, and how he came back and they called him to come back, kid and everything. Nothing tops being caught on camera saying what he said in the Access Hollywood tape. As a matter of fact, just the other day, I apparently I might be interviewing Billy Bush soon, that just came to my attention. But, you know, I don’t know why I’m thinking of this but, but I would have to say there’s, there’s just no other comparison, from my standpoint of that kind of a political comeback, unless you want to, you know, again, hand it to him for coming back and winning the White House after what he did in 2020. I mean, he, he botched the response to COVID, and he tried to overturn a free and fair election, and yet he was still elected back to the White House. I would, I would not be telling it straight if I were to say, oh, it was some other person who pulled off a bigger comeback. No, he pulled off the biggest comeback ever.

Crayton Webb

So notwithstanding, your feelings about President Trump, what is it about-

Jim Acosta

What are my feelings about? I’m in a room full of Texans. Can I? Where’s the fire escape?

Crayton Webb

We do have, we do have security. Notwithstanding him. What is it that’s changed in your opinion about the electorate, about our citizens, our discourse, that wasn’t him that caused us to forgive him or not worry about it. The electorate made that decision. Why?

Jim Acosta

Gosh, how much time do we have? I’m not going to make my flight. No, I think that. Listen, I’ve thought long and hard about this stuff, and I will say he is a very skilled politician. There’s no question about it. I will say that the Democrats have a knack for being their own worst enemy. I think running Hillary Clinton in 2016 was a colossal mistake. I mean, the Clintons had their shot. They weren’t terribly popular. After they left office, she was able to get elected as a senator in New York, but if you’re a Democrat that you know, and you got a big name, that’s not that difficult. So I think that was a huge mistake. And then I think Joe Biden, of course, running again in 2024 was a terrible mistake. He told the American people, he promised the American people that he was going to be a bridge to a new generation of Democrats, and then he didn’t do that. So, I mean, I think that, you know, there were a lot of good things that Joe Biden did, and he’ll have a legacy where there are some legislative accomplishments, but there’s no doubt that that was one of the biggest political blunders of our of our lifetime, to run again in 2024, and I think Trump has benefited from, you know, Democrats who just who can’t get their act together, and they’re sort of in the same boat right now. They can’t get their act together, and they don’t know how to come together with a compelling message, or compelling messengers to counter what he’s been doing. I think that’s a huge part of how he’s been able to pull this off. But in terms of the electorate, I mean, that’s such a complicated question. I think we are so deeply polarized right now. I think that we are in an environment with a fractured news media where people can just go to different outlets or different social media accounts, or they can build their own feeds to just ingest whatever information they want to ingest, and it’s just got everybody off in their separate corners and kind of at each other’s throats, and to the point where people think, you know, if I’m giving Trump a hard time, it’s because you hate him, and you should be glad Trump made you famous. This is the kind of stuff that people say to me, like he’s, he’s the president the United States. You have to be able to ask the President of the United States hard questions, or else, what are we doing here in this country and being tough on a president? I mean, he acts as though he’s the first person who has ever had people say mean things about him. This is a country where politics has gotten very mean and nasty and violent. We have a, I mean, we not to get too, you know, deep and slightly dark here, but we do have a history of political assassinations in this country. We have had, from time to time, moments in our history where we just can’t get it together. You know, we’re just deeply torn apart. But I think I’ve also witnessed, and Steve and others in the room, who are journalists, have witnessed moments where we really did come together. I mean, one of the things that I’m most proud of, and this was when I was a very young, wet behind the years reporter, slightly after I was here in Dallas, I got to cover the aftermath of 911 in New York, and it’s, I feel so awful that there are young people to this day, thank goodness they didn’t live through it like we did as adults, but they also didn’t get to experience this country really coming together and being so unified in that moment. I mean, it was a moment of tremendous national unity, and it’s we’re at a point right now where our young people all they know- I had a young podcaster on my podcast the other day, this guy, Aaron Parnas, who’s very famous and has a lot of followers. And he told me, he’s like 26 years old, he says the only real memory of a president that he has is Donald Trump. He missed Reagan and the Bushes, Barack Obama. I tell people all the time, you know, speaking of Hillary Clinton, I was out on the campaign trail in 2008 and they were like, Jim, go cover Obama. He’s not going to win, but go cover him. I was okay, and I was out on the campaign trail. I go to these gymnasiums in Indiana and places I’m like watching these people in the way they respond to him, and I’m thinking to myself, I don’t know why people are telling me that Hillary Clinton is going to win this in a walk, because, I mean, this is unreal. What I’m seeing out here, folks and and, oh no, no, no, there’s no way. And Candy Crowley, who was our chief political correspondent, is like, it’s Hillary, Jim. What are you talking about? And I will tell you that this country is capable of surprising people. And I still think that that’s the case. I still think that we could have a very compelling figure on the on the left, from the Democratic Party emerge, who could potentially maybe put some of these pieces back together again, or maybe from the center, or possibly from the Republican Party. Who knows? But I don’t, I’m not of the mindset that like, okay, it’s finished. We’re done for. I definitely think when getting back to your idea of the electorate, your question about the electorate. I always tell people, do not count out the American people. They will surprise you in ways that you just you can’t imagine.

Crayton Webb

Let’s back up for a second. There are few Americans that will go to Washington, DC, fewer that will step foot in the White House, and even fewer that will go into the Oval Office, let alone the press briefing room. Yeah. Well, tell us what it was like that first time, because even having known you for so long, that was always apparent to me, you wanted to go back to Washington. You wanted to cover the White House, yeah. What was that first time like? And were you in any way intimidated?

Jim Acosta

Oh, sure, yeah. I mean, it was pretty nerve wracking in the beginning, I covered the second Obama administration and the first Trump administration, and when I went there for the second Obama administration, I remember just being totally nervous and but they were, they were, you know, really long time veteran correspondents there from print and television who were, don’t worry, Jim, you’ll be fine. It’s no big deal. And I remember back in the day when Jay Carney was the press secretary, he was kind of, I don’t know how to put it. He was kind of a jerk from time to time, and was sort of dressed me down and needle me over my questions and that sort of thing. And I said to I called him one day, I was like, let’s go get a drink. So we got a drink. And he’s like, Oh, I just do that with everybody. He’s like, that’s just what I do, you know, I just, I have to put you on the defense.

Crayton Webb

You kind of called him out. You’re like, what’s the deal?

Jim Acosta

Yeah, and, and this is, this is before Trump. And, you know, I do remember there was another time when I think it was Jay, might have been Josh Earnest, called- this is when the Obama, the Obamacare website crashed. We were doing stories and live shots day after day about the Obamacare website. They, you know, Obama said it’s going to be like orbits. You’re going to be able to go on and just buy your insurance. And the website didn’t work. And I remember being in my booth in the White House, they have a little press area where, you know, each of the networks have a booth,

Crayton Webb

Booth, like, as in a-

Jim Acosta

Almost like, almost like a phone booth. It was a workstation, but we called it the booth, and all our little computers are crammed in there and everything, and they’re like notebooks from 1985 up on the file cabinet and so on. But I got a call, and I think it might have been Jay- no it was Josh Earnest, and he was saying, you and Wolf are ridiculous. All you’re doing all day long is giving us a hard time about the Obamacare website and that it doesn’t work. I said, I didn’t build the damn thing, you guys did! And so it just goes to show you, you know, both sides of the aisle, they’re going to work the press, they’re going to work the refs, as it said in the business, and you have some understanding that that’s going to be the case. What started to take place during the 2016 campaign was Donald Trump took that to a new level. I mean, before he came up with fake news and the enemy of the people, I would be out on the campaign trail with him, and he would say, there they are, the dishonest news media, the disgusting news media, they’re liars, they’re scums. And he would whip these crowds up into a frenzy, 10s of 1000s of people sometimes, to the point they would come down to what we call, you know, the press cage, the area, because they had to put bike racks around us to keep us safe. And-

Crayton Webb

Bike racks. That’ll do it.

Jim Acosta

Yeah, yeah. Well, it was enough to keep them away from our tables that they would set up in front of the risers and Frank might remember some of these. He probably covered these back in the day, but, you know, people would come up and “You’re a traitor,” you’re, you’re, you know, “you’re terrible,” and all this stuff. And we would have to, it got to the point where we would have to have security guards walk us out to our cars in the parking lot. And so something changed from working the refs to, or working the press, to demonizing the press, and he is the first candidate I’ve ever covered, and first president I’ve ever covered who demonized the press to the point where it became dangerous to do the job. It necessitated additional security. It necessitated security teams at my company at the time, CNN, where they would have to, you know, look at death threats that would come in and say, where did this come from? Or Jim, we need to have you get on the phone with the FBI. And I would have to be on the phone with the FBI because of death threats and so on. I mean, this is stuff that happened because he whipped things up into a frenzy so much that people absorb that information and then directed, or disinformation, as maybe the case, and directed that volatility back at us. And that’s why I wrote the book. I mean, I wrote the book, and under “Enemy of the People,” which is what he called us and what he called me, I wrote, “It’s a dangerous time to tell the truth in America”. I don’t think that’s overstating things. Our discourse has gotten to a point now where we saw with Charlie Kirk the other day, it’s gotten way past the breaking point, and now we’re in a, I think we’re in another dangerous moment where if we don’t take care of one another, if we don’t stop, pull back, listen to one another in a peaceful, diplomatic, civil kind of way, you know, people are going to just start tearing each other apart. And we’ve seen, anybody who understands world history understands that societies, you know, people could take for granted that, oh, this will never happen here, you know, this is a sophisticated, intelligent, educated society. Those things, those can go under too, if you let things get out of hand.

Crayton Webb

Just for the sake of playing devil’s advocate and for being provocative – what role does the media play now in this divisiveness? So I remember years ago, watching Lou Dobbs and being just maddened by the fact that he has a purported news show and at the end, would then make editorial comments about his personal opinion and thinking to myself, how can you do this? I know it’s not like you can just flip a switch, and first you’re a journalist covering both sides, and now you get to offer your opinion. We know that Fox News takes a side. We know MSNBC clearly made a decision. You were in the newsroom and part of CNN, when it seems that there was fair, unfair, you clarify, it seems like there was a business decision made or an editorial decision made, where the top brass at CNN said we are going to be an anti-Trump news outlet. That’s the way we’re going to go. Is that fair, unfair? True, untrue. And from your perspective and what you saw.

Jim Acosta

It’s not true. And I know Jeff Zucker well. He’s a friend of mine, and he was the president of CNN at the time when this was going on. Look, I mean, I’ll take you back to January 2017, this was nine days before he was inaugurated the first time. We had a story that came out that said that the intelligence community had gone to Trump and told him the Russians may have compromising information on you. And it was, he was gonna have a press conference that day, and it was my job to go in there and try to ask him about that. And I thought, okay, I need to ask him about this. It’s not gonna be pleasant, but I need to do it. That was the day that he called- we went back and forth. You can watch the clips. That was the day that he called me fake news. And he said, “you are fake news. I’m not going to take a question from you. You’re fake news.” And that sort of gave birth to this moment where, you know Trump and the Republican Party – pretty big portion of the Republican Party made the determination that if they don’t like the story, they’re just going to call it fake news. Now that is, in and of itself, a lie. Bad coverage is not fake news, and Trump gave away the game. He did an interview with Leslie Stahl where he said it. Leslie asked him, “why do you go after the press? Why do you why do you say these things? Why do you go after them?” He says, “I just don’t want them to believe I don’t want the public to believe what the press is saying about me. That’s why I attacked the press.” He admitted it right there on camera. It was a month and a half after he called me fake news. It was the middle of February that he first put out the tweet that the American media is the enemy of the people. And at that point, it was sort of like, game on. And we, as I tell people all the time, you know, you look at that press conference in 2017 in January Trump Tower. You know, when he was yelling at me and belated me, I had the choice. I could have just sat there and taken it, but I decided to engage and to interrupt him and tell them that he could not call me fake news, and that was not appropriate, and keep trying to ask the question, and it was a little bit of a hot mess to look at on TV. There’s no question about it. But in that moment, I don’t know if it was the sleep deprivation or what it was, I just decided I was going to go for it, and I wasn’t going to take this s—t. And I thought, as a reporter, as a journalist, we shouldn’t have to be punching bags for a politician and get called fake news because they- because of the story that he doesn’t like. It was a true story that now he’s calling fake news.

Crayton Webb

Just to time out. Were you? Is your heart racing? Are you like, I cannot believe I’m in this back and forth, this army with the president of the United States.

Jim Acosta

I was just maybe more pissed than anything else that I was a little shocked, little dumbfounded that, you know, here is the incoming President calling a news organization fake news for asking questions about something that happened. And the question I was trying to ask was, did you or your associates have contacts with the Russians during the campaign? And he would not let me get that question out. And then he finally answered a similar question from Cecilia Vega, who’s now on 60 minutes, and he said no. And what turned out to be the case? His son, his son in law, and his chairman of the campaign at the time, Paul Manafort, had met with a Russian attorney at Trump Tower during the campaign, and it was during that meeting where Don Jr apparently said, I’m loving it. I’m loving this, especially if it comes out in October, whatever dirt you’re trying to give us on Hillary Clinton. And so you know, as we used to say, back in those days, just because you were pro truth does not mean you were anti Trump. And you know, you’re in a moment where you have two choices. You’re either just going to take it on the chin, you’re going to absorb these body blows, or you’re going to stand up for yourself, stand up for your profession, stand up for your colleagues, and continue to try to ask the hard questions. Not everybody’s a big fan of that. Some people are, you know, you’re making it about yourself. You just want to be famous. You’re just trying to get clicks and so on. We’re trying to get an answer to the damn question. Answer the question.

Crayton Webb

You, I believe, have the distinction of perhaps being the only reporter to have their white house press credentials taken away from you without a criminal charge involved.

Jim Acosta

That may be coming. You never know.

Crayton Webb

What was that experience like? Did CNN have your back or at any point, did they say, Jim, this is the president. There’s tradition, there’s a protocol here. No, I mean, they immediately and again, this was when Jeff was the head of the company, and AT&T was our parent company here in Dallas. And AT&T made a very brave decision to stand behind us in that moment. And this is all ancient history now that, you know, Trump was trying to work things behind the scenes, just like as they are now, with Jimmy Fallon and so on, where they were trying to, you know, work this, work the back rooms and the phone lines to AT&T and say, hey, can you get rid of Jeff Zucker? Can you get rid of Jim? Can you, you know, I mean, they were constantly doing that. They do that to all the networks. And we made the decision. And there was a pretty reputable First Amendment attorney at that time, Floyd Abrams, who advised us, you know, you should sue to get your press pass back and you will win. And that’s what we did. We sued, and we said, not only is it a violation of our First Amendment rights, we said it was a violation of our fifth amendment due process rights, because they just threw, threw me out and took away my press pass. And I remember that night when they took away my press pass, I thought, You know what? I better document this. And I got my phone out and you know it’s like what people say now about these ICE raids. You get your phone out and document it. I got my phone out and I recorded the whole thing. The Secret Service guy taking my press pass away and everything. Because I thought to myself, if I don’t, they will, they could lie and say that I was being a giant a-hole or whatever, and I wanted to be captured, that I was being very nice and gentlemanly. “Yes, sir, thank you, sir. Okay, I know you’re just doing your job. Thank you very much.” And then go about my business. But during the, then that night, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who was the press secretary at that time, now, the governor of Arkansas, she put out a tweet on the official White House press secretary @pressec account that accused me of karate chopping the intern, and they used a sped up, doctored video of the exchange between me and the intern who’s trying to take my microphone away, and that became part of the evidence of the case when we sued to get my press pass back, and the federal judge who was Trump appointed, basically tore into the Trump administration and said, how can you use a doctored video to try to justify taking away Jim’s press credentials, and we won on the grounds of Fifth Amendment due process, because they did not lay out exactly what the criteria were for taking away a press pass. But you know, to this day, it’s still held up as a case where, you know, this is this is how it’s supposed to work. You can’t just take press passes away from the American press corps.

Crayton Webb

So the data is clear, the American public trusts in the news media continues to go down, down, down. I mean, it would appear that local news still seems to be, when we’re talking about traditional media, a place where people go trust newspapers. Outlets like the Texas Tribune seem to have higher ratings, but the trust in media continues to go people, especially those 30 and under, are turning to social media for their information. Let’s go back to this topic. Why do you think the media in some cases, let’s take CNN out of it. MSNBC, Fox, why did they decide to take sides?

Jim Acosta

Well, I mean, I, I’m not much of a media historian, but I think that when Fox came on the air, I think Roger Ailes and people at Fox, you know, put out this idea that, you know, we need to start our own conservative network, fair and balanced, because you can’t get a fair shake from the major networks. I mean, at that point, I think that’s when the fracturing really began in news media in this country, because, I mean, first of all, Fox came out and said, we’re fair and balanced, but they weren’t that. Was that sort of, I mean, in and of itself, a lie. And then over the years, I think they just made this determination. You go back and look at the way they covered the Obamas, all the horrible things that they used to say about Michelle Obama. I mean, it’s just absolutely ridiculous. And I think they sort of injected this idea of having opinionated news into the bloodstream to the point where, now, you know, then you had MSNBC come on board and, you know, you get back to CNN being, you know, anti-Trump and so on. We were caught in the middle of all this, and saw our ratings suffer as a result of Americans wanting to go to Fox News if they were conservative or MSNBC if they were liberal, to the detriment of CNN, and it still exists to this day, where Fox has the most total viewers, MSNBC has the second most total viewers, and that’s, it’s way down here. And I think that’s an unfortunate side effect of of what has taken place now. I mean, if you look at public faith in the media and so on these days. I mean, next to the Texas Tribune, we were looking at some numbers last night at the event we were at. I think number two was National Public Radio. And look at what the Trump administration is trying to do. Look what he’s trying to do right now to Public Broadcasting. He’s taking a meat ax to their funding to the point where now you’re having local NPR stations in all of these small towns threaten to shut down, or say that they have no choice but to shut down all around the country. What is that doing to how we receive information in this country? I mean, just yesterday, he said we might start taking broadcast licenses away from TV networks and TV stations if we don’t like the coverage. Folks, I don’t know, not to sound like your old government teacher in the 12th grade, but that’s not how it works in America. It’s not- the government is not supposed to be able to use the power of the executive branch to suppress information in this country or try to affect the news and how it’s reported in this country, you’re supposed to have first amendment rights, freedom of the press. It’s not some quaint, antiquated notion hanging up in the National Archives. It’s supposed to mean something. It’s supposed to be the law, and they’re flouting it at this point. I mean, it was, it was just reported that Brendan Carr, the chairman of the FCC, he was on a podcast with some guy, Benny Johnson, who is one of the most ridiculous right-wing podcasters out there, saying to ABC, we can do this the easy way or the hard way. You can go back and look at the clip. He used those words, we can do this the easy way or the hard way. And he singled out the broadcast groups, the TV station groups that have the most stations in the ABC Family. And he was basically saying, “Get this guy off the air or else.” And you know, the way I describe it, it’s sort of like the mafia. It’s a nice network you got here. It would be a shame if something happened to it. I mean, those are basically the threats that are being made right now by the President and his people, that’s totally outrageous. That’s way, way past of what is acceptable in this country in my view.

Crayton Webb

What responsibility- you mentioned Charlie Kirk, of course, not alone. Just in the last year, the assassination attempt on President Trump, the arson attempt on Governor Shapiro in Pennsylvania, and, of course, the murder of Minnesota Speaker of the House, Melissa Hortman, in addition to Kirk. What, what responsibility, though, does the media have in turning down the heat. Any?

Jim Acosta

I mean, I think, you know, I think we were having this discussion last night with respect to the idea of a civil discourse. I tell people now civil discourse is great. What we need in this country right now is civil determination. It’s hard to be, have a civil discourse on one side when the other side is not interested in having civil discourse. And we have to keep things civil, there’s no question about it. But when you have the president of the United States calling people the enemy from within. I mean, and then he gets back into the White House, I mean, I think that, you know, I think, as I’ve said, and I’ll say it again here, I do think he is a threat to American democracy. I don’t think that that’s overstating things. He’s already tried to overturn one election. He’s already worried about what’s going to happen in these upcoming midterms, and what’s happening as a result of that, they’re trying to redraw the congressional maps in this state right now. He has proposed the idea of taking away mail-in balloting. He’s, he’s done mail in balloting himself, and he wants to take it away from the rest of us.

Crayton Webb

Meaning he’s participated as a voter.

Jim Acosta

He has mailed in his own ballots in the past. And so you know, my sense of it is, is that he went out with a bang the last time around. He’s probably going to go out with a bang this time around. And the question is, how much of a mess does he make, if and when he goes. And in that climate, in that environment, a civil discourse is great. We should definitely have a civil discourse. But people need to understand that when our democracy is on the line, you know, we might need to have a little bit more than a civil discourse. We might have to have some civil determination too. And you know, listen, you know, they throw Jimmy Kimmel off the air for saying what he said about Charlie Kirk. Go back and look at what he said. What he said was, is that there are people in MAGA who are trying to capitalize on his death to score political points. That’s not wrong. That’s exactly what has taken place. And he went out of his way to say that he felt very sorry for Kirk and his family. I do too. I put that on social media that day. I don’t agree with just about anything that he said, but I think he had a right to say it. And Charlie Kirk himself said a year ago on Twitter that there’s no such thing as hate speech from a legal standpoint in this country. All speech, for the most part, is protected in this country, you could say outrageous things, and it’s protected speech. So how is it that Jimmy Kimmel gets thrown off the air? But what was it last week, Brian Kilmeade on Fox says that you can lethally inject homeless people involuntarily and he doesn’t lose his job. I think we’re playing in a sort of asymmetrical environment right now where folks on the right face little to no accountability for what they say, and folks in the center and to the left, journalists, comedians, they get tossed overboard because of the pressure that’s being brought to bear on American society. And that is not right, and that has to be pushed back against, you know, and you might have to, you have to, might have to get a little animated, and you might have to interrupt, and you might have to ask hard questions, and you might have to shout over the guy who’s shouting over you. It’s a little messy, but it might need to be done.

Jim Acosta

So I think your point about civil determination is interesting. And your point of, of course, you you mastered the you got the shout down, right? Yeah, if Sam Donaldson was your hero, right, you picked up the mantle.

Crayton Webb

And Sam, you know, Sam came into this event that we had. CNN, Jeff got all these people together at this conference in Atlanta this one time. This is back in 2017 and he invited Sam Donaldson to come, and he and I’ve become friends since then. And Sam sat down and he said, “I know that some of you are nervous about Jim and what they’re doing over the White House.” And he goes, “They’re doing it exactly right. They’re doing it exactly the way it should be done.” And he said, “They used to get mad at us all the time when I was covering the White House, but I didn’t have to deal with being called the ‘enemy of the people’ and ‘fake news’ and stuff like that.” And I’m not saying that everything I’ve done is perfect. That’s not what I’m saying. But you know, when Sam Donaldson is like, yeah, you know, for the most part, he’s okay. I think Dan Rather, once said, give him a vacation and give him a raise. You know, I think the folks who have done this for a long time understand that, you know, this is a unique environment that we’re in right now, and it’s going to be a little bit messy, and it’s not going to be perfect, it’s not going to be pristine, and you’re not going to hang some of my moments in the Louvre or anything like that, but some of it is necessary.

Crayton Webb

You’re in a different position now. But how did journalists with mainstream media do what you’ve just described and still maintain the integrity of at least what many of us think the media is meant to do, is supposed to do, which is, hey, sorry, you’re taking it on the chin. That’s the job. We present both sides of the story. Our opinion doesn’t matter, and we’re going to fair and balanced. Means, here’s this perspective, here’s this perspective, smart Americans-

Jim Acosta

Except on Fox. That’s not what it means. But anyway.

Crayton Webb

Right, yeah, here’s both sides of the story. Smart Americans, you decide. Are you saying that that needs to change, has changed or must change?

Jim Acosta

I mean, I wish I would love to go back to the days of Walter Cronkite. I mean, I idolized him growing up, and some of the folks here who my age or slightly older, might remember Walter Cronkite, and he was the most trusted man in America. But I will tell people that one of the most famous stories about Walter Cronkite is when he, in the 19, late 1960s went to Vietnam. I wasn’t around for this, but I know this because it happened. Went to Vietnam because, you know, he wanted to see it for himself, saw what was happening on the ground there, came back, got on the CBS Evening News and said that the war in Vietnam could not be won. And at that point, Lyndon Johnson saw that, turned to his aides and said, “If I’ve lost Walter Cronkite, I’ve lost Middle America.” And sometimes, you know, the truth hurts. Sometimes the truth sounds like an opinion, because you don’t want to hear it. But we’re not in this. I tell people all the time, if you want to be liked, you want to be liked, go be a veterinarian. Don’t become a journalist. People will not like you. A lot of people will not like you, but you have to go out and you have to tell the truth. You have to tell people what’s going on now that gets into the category of what is truth, then what about your truth and my truth, perspective and opinion and so on. And there was a nice lady last night who was asking me a question at the event you and I were at: “How could you say that Donald Trump is a threat to American democracy? That’s your opinion. That’s not a fact.” I said, well, actually, if you look at the record, I think there’s there are some things that back that up. He tried to overturn a free and fair election where he lost by 7 million votes. He had lost by a decisive margin in the popular in the Electoral College as well. And he was calling the Secretary of State of Georgia and saying, Can you get me 11,700 some odd votes, just slightly more than what we need to overturn the results in Georgia? I’m sorry. And then he goes out on the ellipse down the mall and says, You need to go fight like hell. If you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore. That sounds like a threat to democracy to me, and ever since then, he has behaved in the exact same manner. Now he got elected. Joe Biden wasn’t down on the [inaudible] saying, “Let’s go storm the Capitol!” but he did, and he got back in there, and yes, you know, you have to accept that. I mean, that’s the way it goes. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, but I do think the pattern shows, the record show, the facts show that is what he is, and if he is right now threatening broadcast licenses because he doesn’t like the coverage, that too is a threat to- the First Amendment is a part of our Constitution. It is a part of American democracy that, by definition, means he is threatening American democracy. So I, I will say that and say that’s a fact.

Crayton Webb

Okay, we’re going to lower the heat. I want to get back-

Jim Acosta

Everybody awake now?

Crayton Webb

I want to go back to CNN and get in your head and how, as a journalist, you would think or prepare yourself. I mean, obviously it takes a lot of chutzpah to be the one to yell out questions at President Castro or President Trump or President Obama. I teased you once, I think, after your first appearance on Jimmy Kimmel, and you had made this comment. You said, I cover Trump, just like I do Obama. And I texted you, I was like, Jim, come on, seriously, you weren’t yelling at Obama. And you took what the same way you do with Trump. You took great umbrage in a very kind, friendly way. Now, like, the hell if I didn’t, I sure did. Here are some examples. So like-

Jim Acosta

Yeah, I mean Obama, there was a press conference that I covered with him back gosh, it was 2015 and ISIS was running rampant. And there was a press conference in Turkey at a g20 Summit. And I thought, well, if I get a question, I’m gonna ask him about ISIS. And I thought, well, I’m going to ask this in a spicy way, to get their attention and to let them know that people are really pissed off about, you know, Americans getting their head cut off and stuff like that. And I said to him, I said, “You have the whole world behind you. You have the strongest military in the world. Why can’t you take out these b——-?” And I said b——-, and you would have thought that I had, like, set off, like an explosive or something like, they were so pissed off at me. And the folks at The Daily Caller, who usually say terrible things about me, now, at the time, was like, wow, Jim, look at the way he lit up Obama. Absolutely nobody remembers that now. Nobody gives me credit for it. And the Obama people were so pissed off that for the rest of that administration, there was an aide who worked for Obama, this guy, Eric Schultz, who is a friend of mine, and he would send little clips every time they killed an ISIS person, he would send me an email that said, we got one of the b——-, here’s one of the b——-. And the Atlantic did a story where they were behind the scenes right after that press conference with the Obama people and Ben Rhodes and the national security advisors and stuff like that, got on the plane and they were talking to Jeffrey Goldberg with the Atlantic, and they were like, they were like, “Can you believe that Acosta guy? How could he use that language in front of President of the United States and getting the b——-” and all this stuff. And Jeffrey Goldberg put this in his article. He said, well, yeah, why can’t you get the b——-? And so later on, this guy, Ben Rhodes, who works for Obama, worked for Obama. He and I had dinner in Hawaii, was like one of the Obama trips to Hawaii. And he said, “You know, Jim, as a matter of fact, that question got our attention, and it made us think about the policy that we had, and whether or not we fully understood the way the American people like, the way they were reacting to how we weren’t really getting the job done, or we weren’t really promoting the fact that we were taking people out” and stuff like that. And we decided to do a much more like, sort of out front, you know, public relations policy when it comes to publicizing when they would take out members of ISIS. And he said that did actually have a positive effect.

Crayton Webb

Yeah, in all fairness, you’ve told stories about covering Biden’s age and fit for Office. Yeah, you did stories when Kamala Harris kind of disappeared for three weeks after announcing her. You probably don’t get the credit for being-

Jim Acosta

No because, I mean, we live in an environment now where, and this goes back to civil discourse, and I’m trying to remember I’m in Dallas with a lot of polite, nice Texas people. So I try not to use my salty DC language that I use. No, no, and there are too many ladies in the room. So I’m not going to say what I want to say.

Crayton Webb

We’re huge in Belgium right now.

Jim Acosta

But people on the left can be such wussies, is what I will say, when it comes to the way they kind of get cowed into silence and cowed into taking it on the chin when it comes to pushing back on the far right fringe in this country. And I’m going to tell you, it may piss you off, or it may make you think Jim’s got Trump derangement syndrome or whatever, but you have to have, you know, a little bit of a backbone these days, or else you’re just going to get knocked off the stage. You’re just going to get knocked off of the arena. You know, you’re, you’re not going to be, I think you’re just not going to be heard, unless you are pushing back with all your might. I really think this time around, he’s playing for keeps, and I don’t think it’s a stretch to question what’s going to happen in the upcoming midterms. He could make it such a mess in these upcoming midterms where you have this state over here redrawing their congressional maps over here, and this state over here, and it gets all tied up in knots and has to go to the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court has time to sort out this mess in Texas, but not this mess in California. All of this got started because he’s freaking out over the Epstein files. And he’s freaking out because his legislative agenda is about as a shit sandwich these days, and so he wants to, he wants to redraw congressional maps, and he wants to take a meat ax to our democracy, and it may get so tied up in knots that we don’t know what the hell happened during our upcoming midterms. What the hell is that and, and, and why does he go out there and talk about a third term in office. I really would love to know from my Republican friends, the ones that I still have left. Why is this acceptable to you? I was talking to some last night who were like, Yeah, you know, I worked for Bush 43 and you know, we didn’t like it when he went after John McCain. One of the things that still surprises, shocks me to this day, is the way Trump would go after the Bush family and on the campaign trail. My God, why can’t the Republicans stand up for their own party?

Crayton Webb

So as we, as we wrap up, yeah, you’ve, you’ve, you’ve pivoted. No, no, no, no, you have everybody’s attention. We’re clear, but so you have you left CNN, you started your own podcast on Substack. You have a platform. Do you ever feel like though you’re just in an echo chamber, because part of the problem that seems to me with America right now is we really don’t diversify our media appetite, listen, read and watch people that we agree with. We get angrier and angrier and angrier, and we don’t listen to other points of view, other perspectives. We don’t find common ground or shared values. So do you think you’re attracting people to listen to you who don’t already agree with where you’re coming from.

Jim Acosta

I do, to some extent. I mean, I think so. There was a nice lady that I met last night, and I hope I’m not screwing up your podcast by referring to something that happened the night before. But who said to me, you know, my dad’s a lifelong Republican, and he voted for Republicans his whole life. He now listens to your podcast, and he’s had it up to here with Trump, and he says, no more, and now he’s a paid subscriber to your podcast. That’s great. This is terrific. This is what I want to hear. The other thing I will say to that is, every once in a while, they’ll put one of my clips on Fox. And they’ll say, can you believe what Jim said? He said this. He said that. You know, my response is always, thank you, Fox, thanks for the free PR. Where do I send the check? I think you have to grab people by the shirt collar these days, and you can do it in a civil way. And I mean that in a metaphorical way, but you have to do it in a determined way, because the stakes are too high right now. We can’t let this country go down the tubes. I tell people- I mean, I was came back from our event last night. I turned on, I was flipping around. I was trying to watch the local stations, and I flipped on “Saving Private Ryan”,and I thought to myself, you know, you see this the other day, where Trump said he’s going to go after Antifa wants to designate them as a terrorist group. There’s so much that comes at us on a daily basis. It’s like, I ask people all the time, did you see this? Did you see that? Just to make sure, because there’s so much. The original anti-fascists were the ones that stormed the beaches of Normandy. Those are the OG anti fascists. And the hell if I’m going to let- if I’m going to be a part of this country going down the tubes because I didn’t raise my voice and say what needs to be said. And if people say, “Ah, you have Trump derangement syndrome!” I tell people all the time, I’m less worried about that than I am worried about Trump depression syndrome, where people get so down in the dumps, and they get so frustrated and they get so depressed that they think, Well, I guess it’s over. I guess we’re done. That’s it. We have guys who are storming the beach. I’ve been to Normandy twice. I saw Obama speak there and I saw Trump speak there. It’s impossible. I don’t know if you guys have been there. If you ever get the chance to go, please go. It’s impossible to walk away from that experience not deeply moved by what our grandfathers and our great grandfathers and in some cases, fathers, did for this country, and to think that we’re all just going to let it go away because a failed casino, retired reality TV show two-term president decided to take it all down with him. To hell with that.

Crayton Webb

So Jim, are you a journalist now? Or are you an advocate now?

Jim Acosta

Well, there are opinion sections of your daily newspaper. Those opinions are written by journalists. I think journalists come in all shapes and sizes and colors and persuasions these days. I think, listen, I used to have a job where I would sit on an anchor desk and I would say this side said this, and this side said that.

Crayton Webb

You said it just like that too. You sounded just like that.

Jim Acosta

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And now I’m giving my side. That’s what I’m doing.

Crayton Webb

Jim, agree or disagree, you’re a dear friend, and I love how you share your point of view, and thank you for sharing it with us. We would always say in the newsroom back in Dallas, Fort Worth CBS, 11, KTVT, if anybody was going to the big leagues, it was Jim Acosta.

Jim Acosta

Oh man, stop. But that’s very nice.

Crayton Webb

So thank you for joining us today, and thank you all for joining us for Reputation Matters. Be sure to check out this episode and others at sunwestpr.com or on your favorite platform for podcasts, and we’ll see you next time. Thanks so much.