The Daily Beast Podcast - Aug. 9 Member Bonus: Jim Acosta: CNN Wanted Me to Have Bodyguards at Trump Rally

Episode Date: October 15, 2020

This members-only episode was originally published on August 9, 2020 and moved to this feed for full member access. The job of a White House reporter is no easy feat, especially under an administration that constantly refers to the press as “the enemy of the people.” But CNN Chief WH Correspondent Jim Acosta knew early on he would not back back down. “When he started to call us fake news and Sean Spicer was calling us fake news and Mike Pence was calling us fake news at that infamous news conference, I just thought, you know what, that's it I've had enough,” Acosta told Rick Wilson and Molly Jong-Fast on this bonus episode of The New Abnormal. That may explain why CNN assigned FOUR bodyguards to him at a Trump Rally (“You have journalists in this country who were being threatened on a regular basis.”) He also answered some burning questions on the forefront of all our minds, including whether Trump writes some of his own daily briefing questions for right-wing pundits and the real end-game for press secretary Number 3405: Kayleigh McEnany. “I'm old enough to remember when the White House press secretary’s job was to serve the American people, to serve the presidency, not just the person who is the current occupant of the Oval Office,” he says. Plus! The trio discuss who may be leaking to the public these days and the White House’s reaction to Trump’s interview with Axios’ Jonathan Swan: “They were trying to do ‘Clean up on aisle 6.’” Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

So, Jim Acosta, thank you so much for being with us today on the new abnormal. You have been a person who has been willing from the beginning of this administration to stand up in the press briefings and other contexts and push him a little harder than almost anybody else. And I know that a lot of our listeners appreciate that approach. And I just wanted to get your perspective on what's the difference in feel right now from the beginning of this whole shenanigan to the moment we're in today in terms of how he handles the press and how the White House handled. Well, you know, I think it's a great question. And I will just take you back to, you know, January 11th, 2017, when CNN had the story that, you know, the intelligence community went to Trump and said, listen, the Russians may have compromising information on you. You need to know this. And, you know, I try to ask the president about that, president-elect about that during that infamous news conference where he first called me fake news. And honestly, you know, it was one of those things that it was building up to that moment. I was out on the campaign trail with him back. in 2016 when he would call us the disgusting news media, the dishonest news media, liar, scum, crooks, thieves, all of the names you can think of. And you'd have tens of thousands of people screaming at us in these rallies. And I just, when he started to call us fake news and Sean Spicer

was calling us fake news at that infamous news conference, I just thought, you know what, that's it. I've had enough. And I just thought, I'm just going to interrupt him. He's not going to take my question. I'm going to interrupt him and try to get a question to him. You know, did you or your associates have contacts with the Russians during the campaign? He did not answer that question. He went on to tell another reporter, I think, outside an elevator, no, I did not. And that was not exactly accurate. As we all know now, there were lots of Trump associates and family members who had contacts with Russians during that campaign.

Putting all that to the side, I just thought at that point, in the days that followed when Spicer went into the briefing room and had his infamous largest inauguration crowd on the world moment, we had just like gone across this threshold where the old playbook needed to go. out the window. And it seemed to me a new president, new kind of president required a new kind of playbook. And I certainly got pushback on that. There were people like, whoa, you're out of control. You shouldn't be doing this. But if a new administration is going to come in and set fire to the notion of common truths and going after the tradition of attacking news organizations in the way that they were, I thought that that needed some pushback. We just crossed a threshold here that can't be crossed. And I thought it needed some pushback. And as we all saw in those briefings with

Spicer, where he, as I like to put it, Melissa McCarthy did not become Sean Spicer. Sean Spicer became Melissa McCarthy. We're big boys and girls in the White House press corps. We are not going to allow a White House or spokespeople for the president to come in and just trash news organizations and trash the institution of a free press without some pushback. And I still feel very strongly about that. And to this day, we've seen the same thing. You know, just yesterday, the president, called me fake news for a story that we did. And it's just, it's something that comes with the territory. And it's unfortunate that he feels this need to do this. You know, you can dissect why that is. But it's not going to stop us from what we're doing at all. No way.

Is Kaylee different? There have been three press secretaries, right? Oh, no, there have been four, right? The one who never held any briefings. Right. Stephanie Grisham never held one. Exactly. Yeah. Is there a seismic shift between them? And can you talk a little bit about that? Well, I think that Kaylee McEnany is continuing the tradition of not really being a press secretary, but really being an attack dog for the president. And she's performing for an audience of one, the way that Sean Spicer was and the way Sarah Sanders was. And it's, you know, she has a big, a briefing book full of falsehoods, half truths and attacks on the press. And, you know, she'll be at the podium flipping through these pages and then she'll like get on the page where she attacks us. And it's like, give me a break.

is not what the traditional role of a White House press secretary is. I'm old enough to remember when the White House Press Secretary's job is to serve the American people, to serve the presidency, not just a person who is the current occupant of the Oval Office. We used to rely on the press secretary to tell us when what's going on with natural disasters and if there are national security threats to the country and walk us through economic policy shifts and health care policy shifts and that sort of thing. That's what those briefing books were supposed to be used for. You know, in previous administrations. And it's just unfortunate. She is essentially picking up where Sarah Sanders left off. And I'll remind folks, Sarah Sanders, the White House press secretary, the second one for

President Trump, will go down in history as having, you know, appeared in the Mueller report, admitting to federal law enforcement agents that she passed on false information to the press and to the American people. I had this back and forth with Sarah where she refused to say that we weren't the enemy of the people. These kinds of attacks on us and on this notion of the truth, That should not be the role of a White House press secretary. And unfortunately, Kaylee is picking up where they left off. You know, Jim, I think that's one of the things about Kaylee that, I don't know if you agree with this. She seems to embody the Trump political culture and the sort of post-truth, the dedication to sort of a post-truth environment.

It almost feels like she's just playing for the Fox O-A-N cameras when she's up there. I think that's right. Now, I do think to some extent they have professionalized the press office just a tad. So we do get some help from some of the folks behind the scenes from time to time in ways that I haven't experienced in a little while. So that is something that I think Mark Meadows brought in when he became chief of staff. I will give them some credit for that. But all of that is sort of swept aside when the White House press secretary comes into the room and wants to just go after the press or put up videos that are basically like propaganda videos. One of the things that is really disturbing about what we've seen with this White House is the use of,

I, you know, people might say, oh, yeah, that's going too far, Jim, you shouldn't say that. But let's just call it like it is. I mean, I've traveled all over the world, been to countries that are not democratic republics like ours, where it's a totalitarian state and so on, where they use propaganda. And there is very little difference between what you see in those countries and some of the videos that they're putting up in the White House briefing room, which are just political videos, campaign-like videos. And they may say, well, you know, Donald Trump came into Washington to smash the traditions of the swamp. so on. I guess they can say that. But to us in the briefing room, and I think to a lot of Americans, when they put up videos of, you know, protests and the streets and so on, it's almost as if Kaylee wants to have her own show on Fox. And then she's auditioning for a show, you know. Maybe the five will become the six. I don't know, you know. It's unfortunate because it's not what that room

is supposed to be about. It's the James Brady briefing room named after the press secretary to Ronald Reagan, who literally took a bullet for the president of the United States. And and was very serious and passionate about his job. I met the Brady's just before he passed away. And I can't tell you just how committed to being a professional press secretary he was and how that has always just been the tradition of the White House press office. And you know, Rick, being a longtime Republican operative, there are people like Tony Snow and so on. You know, there are folks who have come in who are, you know, Jay Carney for the Democratic side.

There are people who come in, obviously, may have, you know, a bent one way or the other. Obviously, they're working for a Democratic Republican administration. But there was sort of a commitment to professionalism and a respect for the free press that is just completely absent now. And I think it's unfortunate. Referencing all the way back to Brady, that is something that press secretaries of both parties would stand up to their president and say, sir, I'm not going to lie. Right. I can't go out there and lie. And if I do, I lose all credibility. And therefore, the White House loses credibility. And that hurts the nation. But in this situation, they're scored on whether or not they're willing to be as mendacious as possible. Yeah.

Does Trump write the OANN questions? I don't know. There have been moments from time to time where we have wondered whether there is some coordination going on between the press office and, you know, certain reporters in the briefing room. And I can't say, I can't say one way or the other whether that is happening. But I do think it's unfortunate. The White House Correspondents Association came up with the system during this pandemic where you only have a certain. number of people in the briefing room. And the representative for O-A-N, well, I will tell you, outside of the briefing room seems like a very nice person. I don't know her very well at all, but seems very nice.

But when she flouts the pandemic, you know, restrictions that we put in place so people can stay safe and stands in the back of the room without a mask on and asks questions that seem to just tee up what the administration wants to talk about, I just, I think that that's just sad. And I will say that I think there have been some questions about this. And I believe it will. was revealed at one point that, you know, she was there as a guest of the White House, which is why this is all being allowed as opposed to being a part of the Correspondents Association. So again, it's just one of those traditions and norms that have just been completely shattered, you know, sort of a respect for other people's health and well-being in the workspace of the White House press areas.

You know, that's, we all go in there with masks every day and try to abide by these restrictions that we put in place because there's a deadly pandemic going on. There was a photographer who was just diagnosed with the coronavirus this week. We're all working in close quarters. You know, as you guys know, the White House, it looks big on TV. It looks big on the West Wing. It's not. It's not.

It's very tight in terms of the workspace. And that's one of the reasons why we have these restrictions. So, Jim, what's the mood in the White House right now? Because all White House is, there are two rules. A rule I learned back when I was working for Bush 41 was that, that good administrations leak on purpose and bad administrations leak because they're bad administrations. What's the sort of sense right now among White House folks who whisper in the background? Well, I would tell you, this was part of the reporting I had this week where there was a source close to the task force, you know, who understood what was going on in that Oval Office meeting who said Trump is not in a happy place right now.

He's not his usual self. He is well aware that he is in a very tough position heading into this fall, nitty-gritty part of the reelection campaign. And my sense from talking to my sources is that they recognize that they're in trouble, that they are upside down in terms of the numbers on how the public perceives his handling of the coronavirus pandemic. And the numbers weren't that great on Black Lives Matter protests either, even though they've tried to exploit that to some extent to his benefit. The leaking that goes on and the reason why we have sources and people talk to us is because there are people who are from time to time highly alarmed by what is going on inside this administration. and the sources that I've been speaking, sources I've been speaking with on the task force are alarmed by the president essentially being in a state of denial when it comes to this deadly pandemic. In the words of this source this week, he just doesn't get it. He still doesn't get it.

And you know, you can dissect that and try to psychoanalyze it at 10 different ways. But the fact of the matter is he's going out into the briefing room and going into these interviews with Fox News and saying over and over again that the virus is going to disappear. it's just going to go away, things go away. That is just not the reality of the situation. And when you have people like Dr. Fauci and Dr. Debra Birx and Brett Jarrah and some of these other people on the task force, you know, people have criticized them to varying degrees as to whether or not they're being too much of a team player and so on, they are going road. They are going out and doing interviews and just telling people the truth.

Brett Characar over the weekend was saying hydroxychloric, it doesn't work for the coronavirus. And Dr. Fauci is saying, you know, we haven't done a good job with testing. and Deborah Brooks is saying that this virus is extremely extraordinarily widespread in this country. They are singing a different tune than they did earlier this year when they were trying to temper what they were saying a bit to not run into the crosshairs of the president. Dr. Fauci, I would set aside as he has been almost a truth teller from the entire beginning of all of this. Deborah Brooks, you know, she sounded like more of a team player in the beginning. She is definitely not reading off of the same song sheet, singing from the same song sheet as the

president and his folks inside the White House, I think that's very telling. Is Trump going to kill us all? Molly, one of the things that is frustrating to folks from time to time when I talk to people about my job at the White House, I can be an annoying optimist. I am an optimist about this country, and it sounds corny, and everybody's like, oh, please don't, you know, please give me a break. I am an optimist, and I think that, you know, as Winston Churchill used to say, you know, Americans do the right thing after exhausting all other options. You know, I do think that at the end of the day, we're going to get our act together on this virus.

It may take a new administration. You could foresee a situation where Joe Biden gets into the Oval Office. Dr. Fauci goes into the Oval Office and says, Mr. President, we have got to do X, Y, and Z to really slam the brakes on this virus. And then that may be when we see a real shift in the way that the federal government is attacking this pandemic. Because up until now, you get the sense that, you know, they go to the president, they tell him he has to do X, Y, and Z. And he resists because he is clinging to this idea that if he can rush the country into a reopening, that that will brighten the economy just enough to get him reelected. What I've been told by people inside the administration, his campaign advisors, and sources close to the task force, is that he misses this connection. He misses the connection that if you get the virus under control, the economy recovers more quickly.

and that actually helps you politically. He doesn't get my understanding from talking to sources. He does not get that connection and will not get that connection. I'm also curious about how the White House press court feels when they bring in the Star Wars Cantina people like the Jim Hoftsohn bloggers and those folks into the White House. Are they still doing that? I know they did it for a while, like the social media summit types.

I have not seen that as much lately, and I wonder if that is part of the Mark Meadows effect. Mick Mulvaney was much more like Lettrow. Trump be Trump. He was not of the same mindset as John Kelly. John Kelly really wanted to restrict things and try to keep some of that under control, although some of that occurred under John Kelly's reign as well as the chief of staff. That's a very good question. I will say that if they're not coming into the White House, the president is still talking to them. He's still talking to the second answer, the apologists and what I call propagandists. People will say, oh, why, how can you say propagandists?

Come on now, let's be real. That is what is going on. And I talked to a campaign advisor this week who said, oh, I thought the Jonathan Swan interview was great. That's the Trump we love. There are people around him who will watch that Jonathan Swan interview and say they love it. And part of the reason why they love it is because it didn't play very much on Fox. It didn't play very much on OAN. And they see us dissecting it on CNN and MSNBC and so on. And they think, well, our people aren't really watching those outlets. And so we don't need to worry about that. But look what happened after he went on with Jonathan Swan. President immediately went out and talked to Fox and Friends, and he was talking to other, you know, folks who are much more

like-minded. You got the sense that they were trying to, you know, do cleanup on aisle six after that one. But, yeah, I mean, I've seen Seb Gorka in the White House briefing room. Does he work in the White House now again? Oh, that is a good question. I know that there were some talk of him going over to Voice of America. And I have reported on that, the guy that took over government media, which runs Voice of America, There was some talk of just a full cleaning of house over there, and I believe that they're going through those motions right now. But there was one day when I was in the White House briefing room,

and this was about a year ago or so, and Seb Gwurka is in the White House briefing room, and I walked up to Seb, and I said, Seb, this room is for real journalists only. I'm sorry. Did he say, sir, place your head in a bucket of eel? It was something like that. He likes to tease me on social media

because my first name is actually Abilio, my father's first name. He's my dad's a Cuban immigrant. My middle name is James, so I go by Jim. Not the first person who goes by his middle name, but anyway. And he yelled out, Abilio, you dickhead. That is basically what he said to be. Pardon the course language there. I know. Do you know me? We celebrate course language here. I know. I've seen the memes, Rick. Are Jared and Ivanka still leaking with the same zeal that they once were? I do think that you still have the factions in the White House that are leaking against one another. It is not as serious as it was in the early days of the administration. In the early days of the administration, it was unbelievable

the leaking that was going on. You had the campaign people, the originals, as we call them, the people who were with Trump from the beginning, versus the RNC people. And so you would have people leaking against Sean Spicer and Reince Priebus and likewise leaking against people like Kelly Ann Conway and Steve Bannon. And it was just like a total demolition derby. There's not quite as much of that these days. I said to Anderson Cooper recently. We're down to Kool-Aid drinkers and Next-O-Kin. Yeah, that was a great one.

To some extent, we have gotten down to a bare-bones unit of folks who are really yes people for the president. They brought back Hope Hicks. They brought back this guy, Johnny McEntee, who runs personnel operations. Isn't he like 12? He's a young. He's very young. He's very young. Meadows is very like-minded when it comes to.

almost all these issues, came from the Freedom Caucus up on Capitol Hill. The president doesn't seem to have a John Kelly type, a Jim Mattis type, an HR McMaster type, who will say, you know, Ms. President, you can't do this. You know, you can't do that. And Ty Cobb, to some extent, when he was the president's lawyer during the Russian investigation, was one of those folks who would say to the, you can't do this, you can't do that. A lot of that is gone. And I think that is part of the reason why you're seeing the president make so many mistakes during the pandemic, because they don't have anybody who will just say you can't do this. And I think that's been to his detriment. God. We're so screwed. That's literally all I can think of.

You know, Molly, it's only 89 more days. Let's hope. Not going to go. Yeah, let's see. So one more lightning round question, Jim, I know you've got to go. Who's more powerful in the White House? Kaylee McEnany, McInney, or Dan Scavino? Ooh, deep cut. That's a really good one. I would say Dan Scavino is one of the more influential people in this. administration that we don't talk about enough. He is the guy who is running a lot of the president's social media gets the president a lot of trouble on social media from time to time. But really, I think feeds into what he wants to do, which is to lash out and troll and so on. And I think that's been to the president's detriment. I can't tell you how many Republicans I've talked to, how many

staff members up on Capitol Hill from the Republican side, who will just say, I wish he would stop tweeting. I wish he would get off of the Twitter and so on. I've heard the same thing. of a hundred times. You've heard it too, Rick, a hundred times. But he can't do it. He just can't quit it. And I think that is going to be one of those facets of this administration that are just going to be long study after this is all over. To some extent, he, you have to give President Trump some credit. He has harnessed a technology in ways that other presidents have to be effective in political communication, just to like be very nerdy and wonkish and boil it down to that kind of element, not getting into how crass and offensive and destructive it can be. But like, you know, FDR used fireside chats and JFK used television, I think Trump is going to be remembered as somebody who harnessed social media to his advantage. But as we've also seen and also, you know, in just very highly destructive ways, you know, the way he's gone after the press, people of color, immigrants, and so on. It has been very damaging to the country and damaging to the political environment in this city.

And one of the things that I always try to say to folks, and I'll say it here, you guys can cut it out if you want to, is it's easy to kind of medicate ourselves by making light of things and laughing about things and so on. But I do think we are at a point in time in our country's history where our politics has gotten so out of control. We're at each other's throat so much that we have an extremely toxic political environment. And I just ask, I ask people from time to time, how does it get worse than this? Where do we go from here? We have a president of the United States referring to the press as the enemy of the people. We have Dr. Anthony Fauci going on CNN yesterday and saying that he's getting death threats

and that his family is being threatened? And I just think that is this the kind of country we want to hand off to the next generation? Do you get a lot of death threats? I do get death threats. I talk about it in my book. No, it's one of the reasons why I wanted to write my book, Molly, is... You can plug your book if you want. The enemy of the people, a dangerous time to tell the truth in America, his name of the book.

Don't worry about it. I don't need to plug it all that much. But one of the reasons why I wanted to write about it is I wanted to write about it is I wanted people to know. Like, you have journalists in this country who are being threatened on a regular basis, not just me, but lots of my colleagues, in ways that would just shock you. And it is a part of our culture now that I just think is unacceptable. You know, towards the end of the 2018 midterm cycle, after that self-described Trump supporter sent the pipe bombs to CNN, he had been sending death threats to me, we found out. And so CNN decided I needed to have four bodyguards to go to Trump rallies towards

It's the end of that campaign cycle. That is just lunacy. Campaign reporters should not need bodyguards to go to political rallies. But that's the environment we're in right now, and that people need to think deeply about this. How does it get worse than this? Do you want a Democratic administration to come in, and then the Democratic administration to treat conservative members of the press

or members of the press they don't like in this fashion? We just have to stop it. It's got to stop for everybody's sake, in my view. On that note, we'll wrap up this episode of the new abnormal from The Daily Beast. In future episodes, we'll be talking with smart folks from The Daily Beast and beyond from media, culture, politics, and science who will help us understand what's happening to our country and the world. We hope you'll subscribe to us on your favorite podcast app and share the show on social media. We're just getting started and don't want you to miss an episode. If you'd like to follow us on Twitter, I'm Molly Jongfest, and he's the Rick Wilson.

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