Last week, CNN and their Chief White House Correspondent Jim Acosta filed a lawsuit against President Donald Trump. However, they’ve since been hit with quite the painful reminder, courtesy of CBS reporter Major Garrett.
Last week, CNN and the network’s Chief White House Correspondent Jim Acosta filed a lawsuit against President Donald Trump, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the president’s chief of staff John Kelly, the Secret Service, and several aides over the suspension of Acosta’s hard press pass.
“This severe and unprecedented punishment is the culmination of years of hostility by President Trump against CNN and Acosta based on the contents of their reporting — an unabashed attempt to censor the press and exclude reporters from the White House who challenge and dispute the President’s point of view,” CNN’s lawyers wrote in the complaint that was filed in D.C. District Court.
The president “lacks the authority to quash” the First Amendment, the lawyers wrote, and access to the White House cannot be denied arbitrarily.
According to the lawsuit, CNN and Acosta aim to “enforce this constitutional commitment, restore Acosta’s well-deserved press credentials, and ensure that the press remains free to question the government and to report the business of the nation to the American people.” [Source: ABC News]
The decision to suspend Acosta’s press pass was made after the reporter sparred with President Trump during a briefing at the White House:
CNN’s Chief White House Correspondent Jim Acosta’s press pass to access the White House was suspended “until further notice” Wednesday, hours after he engaged in a contentious back-and-forth with President Trump. “I’ve just been denied entrance to the WH,” Acosta tweeted Wednesday night. “Secret Service just informed me I cannot enter the WH grounds for my 8pm hit.”
White House press secretary Sarah Sanders confirmed Acosta’s tweet in a statement, claiming the suspension of his press credentials stemmed from his “placing his hands on a young woman just trying to do her job as a White House intern.” She called the behavior “absolutely unacceptable.”
The CNN reporter, during a news conference at the White House earlier Wednesday, got into a heated debate with Trump after he asked the president about the migrant caravan. Trump told Acosta to let him do his job. “Honestly, I think you should let me run the country and you run CNN,” the president said. [Source: Fox News]
This move, however, could not have been more hypocritical, according to CBS’ Chief White House correspondent Major Garrett, who previously worked for Fox News. Garrett revealed roughly how often he saw former President Barack Obama’s administration attempting to attack FNC.
“The White House would always pull me aside and say, ‘Well, really, Major, we’re not at war with you,’ and I said, ‘Stop talking to me like that because when you’re at war with my network you by definition are questioning and assailing my journalistic credibility and the work I do here every day,'” said Garrett.
“They had this sort of arms-length relationship to Fox and tried to demonize it on a daily basis,” Garrett added while appearing on The Hill TV’s “Rising.”
It’s getting really hard to ignore the glaring double-standard within the media. CNN wants every privilege in the world, up to and including the opportunity for their Chief White House Correspondent to turn the press room into a circus, and meanwhile, the network balks every time it is criticized by the president. What do they expect?
When Barack Obama was in the Oval Office, his administration made Fox News out to be lunatic conspiracy theorists and outright liars. Yet, never were Fox’s reporters disrespectful or out of line.
