Multiple journalists in a panel discussion on MSNBC’s Morning Joe expressed their embarrassment with CNN’s Jim Acosta after his latest outburst in the White House, where he was soundly whipped by 31-year-old immigration expert and top Trump advisor, Stephen Miller.
“It was a very spirited debate between two very spirited ideologues on the issue of immigration, and one of those very spirited ideologues happened to be a supposedly-objective news reporter for CNN – Jim Acosta,” said Tim Carney, an editor at the Washington Examiner. “This is why people hate the press.”
“Acosta going in there and saying that because of Emma Lazarus’s poem, it’s ‘un-American to require immigrants to speak English?'”
“The fact is that Acosta is putting out an argument that very few people hold, and he’s putting out, sort of, obnoxiously,” Carney continued. “Let me put it this way: Stephen Miller could have done better – Acosta could not have done worse.”
Co-host Joe Scarborough then handed the football to John Podhoretz, editor of Commentary magazine, who expressed agreement with Acosta’s opinions, but was also mortified by his behavior, which Podhoretz expressed on social media at the time.
“This line of questioning by Acosta is so blitheringly stupid I can’t believe I agree with him mostly,” Podhoretz tweeted. “Like I say, I mostly agree with Acosta’s point of view but if he opens his idiot mouth on immigration one more time I’m calling for his deportation.”
This line of questioning by @acosta is so blitheringly stupid I can't believe I agree with him mostly https://t.co/1uUnPTgPbR
— John Podhoretz (@jpodhoretz) August 2, 2017
Like I say, I mostly agree with @acosta's point but if he opens his idiot mouth on immigration one more time I'm calling for his deportation
— John Podhoretz (@jpodhoretz) August 2, 2017
After invoking a straw man argument against the tightening of immigration policy by citing his own grandparents’ escape from the Nazis to the United States during World War II, Podhoretz laid into Acosta’s inappropriate grandstanding.
“Having a reporter yammer at a White House official by quoting Emma Lazarus’ poem at the base of the Statue of Liberty as though that’s the basis for policy – something written in 1883 and we’re living in 2017, and keeping going… it was so obnoxious,” asserted Podhoretz. “The moment Acosta went into terrible territory, was [when] he was lecturing Miller, quoting a poem that he doesn’t know – he was reading it from his notebook – as though this were a debate between him and a public official, as opposed to being a journalist who is trying to tease out the difficulties and problems with the proposal.”
Co-host Mika Brzezinski – a staunch opponent of President Trump – came to the defense of Acosta, but not before confirming that Acosta had further damaged the reputation of the mainstream media.
“Jim Acosta did [the Trump administration] a huge favor because that’s not only feeding into the narrative about the policy – it feeds into the narrative about the press,” she began before claiming that the Trump presidency and his administration’s relationship with the #FakeNews media is “one of the most disturbing moments in history.”
Watch the full exchange between Miller and Acosta below.
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