The Enemy of the People

by Jim Acosta

  Spicer refused to call on me during that briefing. So, as he exited the room, I shouted out my question to him.

  “Where are the tapes?” I asked him. He didn’t respond, but the cameras were still rolling, and the briefing was still being carried live on CNN. The viewer had heard it.

  To make sure Sean got the message that I didn’t appreciate CNN being iced out of the briefings, I vented my frustrations on Twitter. Hey, if they can do it, my thought was, why can’t we? For a few weeks, anytime I posted a tweet about Comey, I finished it off with the hashtag #wherearethetapes. I suppose there are some folks out there who would call this #grandstanding, but social media sites were now a part of the terrain for reporters covering the presidency. And I considered #wherearethetapes a catchy way to keep the story alive that Trump had blatantly lied to the public about the existence of Comey tapes, and the White House had zero chance of making the whole thing go away.

  Trump and his team, it should be pointed out, held out for nearly a month before backing down and admitting that there had never been any Comey tapes. But until then, our confrontations would continue. During one news conference, on June 9, 2017, the White House press shop retaliated against us for our news coverage by moving our seat to the back of the Rose Garden, instead of putting us in the front row with the rest of the TV networks. This was clearly designed to punish us. There was no way we would be able to ask a question. To register my disgust with their pettiness, I decided to fire off a tweet.

  @Acosta

  CNN was placed away from the other TV networks in the equivalent of Siberia (no pun intended) at today’s news conference.

  3:26 PM-Jun 9, 2017

  This went on for several more days. Spicer kept up his side of the battle by continuing to ignore us during the briefings. So, I escalated things on my end. My sense of it was the press secretary should not be able to get away with shutting out an entire news network for an extended time. I continued to take aim at Spicer’s belligerence with some of my own.

  @Acosta

  As he often does, @PressSec avoided taking questions from CNN today. #courage

  1:20 PM—Jun 12, 2017

  Admittedly, this confrontational approach created even more tension in the Briefing Room. A few reporters were starting to adopt the same practice of shouting out questions and turning to Twitter to take the press secretary to task. Of course, colleagues from other outlets, I’m fully aware, were rolling their eyes, annoyed by some of these tactics.

  There were plenty of reporters out there who felt we needed to continue to play by the old rules, even as this administration took extraordinary steps to destroy the rule book. Trumpworld had shown time and time again that, when it came to dealing with the press corps, it would not respect the norms and boundaries, implicit or otherwise. And as reporters, we found ourselves confronting hostility unlike any we’d ever faced. Some journalists argued that the best way to move forward was to focus on the news and stay in our lane. To me, it all boiled down to a question faced by each and every journalist covering the Trump White House: what would you do?

  What often got lost in all the chaos and the scrutiny of my reporting was the fact that journalists like me—people who both had followed the campaign and were now covering Trump in the White House—had been exposed to the worst elements of Trump’s rise to power. The campaign reporters had covered rallies where thousands of people screamed, “CNN sucks” and “Fuck the media,” and hurled other insults at us. Other reporters in the White House press corps had not. They had stayed in DC. So, we were all coming into this new administration with a different set of experiences.

  Perhaps nothing embodied these differences quite like the response from the White House Correspondents’ Association (WHCA). The WHCA had only very rarely registered complaints with the Trump team over its behavior up until the election. I suppose part of the reason for this reluctance to criticize the then–GOP nominee was the attitude that Trump was going to be Trump. He was going to demonize the press because it energized his base. Truth be told, I still don’t understand why there weren’t more complaints coming out of the WHCA or other press organizations about Trump’s treatment of the media. As a reporter at the rallies, it truly felt like it was every journalist for himself.

  This cutthroat atmosphere from the campaign shaped much of my approach once Trump was in office. As a result, my view became that the abuse would not stop unless we stood up for ourselves. A different kind of president required a different playbook for reporters. A former member of the WHCA board once said to me, “We can’t always take the bait,” and I kept arguing back to her and my other colleagues that we couldn’t just take it on the chin, either. This is not to say that I had many disagreements with my colleagues on the WHCA board. I really didn’t. Indeed, former WHCA president and Reuters reporter Jeff Mason, who delivered an impassioned speech at the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner in 2017, an event Trump skipped to thumb his nose at the press, wisely retooled the event into a night to celebrate the First Amendment.

  As for Spicer, he was certainly growing impatient with the occasional rebellions in the Briefing Room. Weary of the sparring, he was racking up episode after episode of embarrassing moments, all happening with Trump (quite often, we are told), watching from behind the scenes.

  Then Spicer upped the ante. In June 2017, in the middle of the Comey tapes controversy, Spicer decided to suspend the practice of allowing television coverage of the briefings. Instead, the news conferences would be audio only, and could not be aired live. Keep in mind that the Briefing Room would still be wired for TV, with cameras, microphones, and lighting equipment everywhere. But the people who operated that equipment, Spicer mandated, would not be able to hit the On switch. Unfortunately—and this gets to the pack mentality of news organizations—the networks and other news outlets made the decision to go along with Sean’s new crackdown on our coverage, as they felt it was still important to have access to the press secretary for information, even though Spicer could hardly be deemed a reliable source of information. In another concession to Trump team tactics, we all abided by the restrictions.

  Personally, I thought this was a mistake. Given Trump’s toxic attitude toward the press, there was the strong possibility that this would become permanent and that the daily White House briefing, something news outlets across the world relied on every day, would go dark for good. I reported as much on the air at the time. Cue the accusations of grandstanding, but, as I’ve said repeatedly, call me all the names you want. This was important. This was about standing up for our ability to cover the White House. There is no more important place to have access.

  Now, Spicer had already dabbled in tactics aimed at punishing individual reporters. Back in February 2017, rather than hold an on-camera briefing, he opted for an off-camera gaggle (a short, less formal briefing) with a group of invited reporters. To send a message, he notably excluded Politico, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and CNN. Among those getting an invite were such Trump-friendly outlets as Breitbart, the Washington Times, and the One America News Network. My CNN colleague Sara Murray, who was supposed to represent our outlet during that gaggle, instead went on the air to report on how the White House had once again retaliated against the press.

  “When we went to enter, I was blocked by a White House staffer, who said we were not on the list for this gaggle today,” Murray reported on CNN. There was no fallout for Spicer after this blatant attempt to intimidate our news outlet. This was all about sending a message: if we messed with the White House, we would be left out in the cold. Let’s face it, this was pure divide-and-conquer stuff. Sean and the White House folks knew how journalists work. Reporters aren’t typically going to turn down a briefing just because other reporters haven’t been invited. That’s not how it works in Washington. For some reporters, access is more important than solidarity. In the media jungle of Trumpworld, those reporters who stand with the White House instead of with their fellow me
mbers of the press are often rewarded with scoops. Sad but true.

  Getting back to Spicer’s draconian decision to ban cameras, this was not targeted retaliation, aimed at one particular news outlet. This was a blanket restriction on the entire White House press corps. As it turned out, it was a foolish move for Spicer and company. For starters, technology is not on the side of restricting access, as reporters all have mobile phones that can stream the briefings live anyway. But let’s put that aside: it’s the principle of the matter that’s far more critical here.

  Sean wasn’t the first press secretary to become frustrated with televised interactions with reporters. The briefings, for the most part, had been open to cameras since the Clinton administration, and press secretaries, from time to time, had questioned whether they were worth all the hassle. In fact, one of Clinton’s former press secretaries, Mike McCurry, would go on to argue that these events had descended into showboating exercises for network correspondents long before I got my White House press pass. One of McCurry’s successors, George W. Bush’s press secretary Ari Fleischer, arrived at the same conclusion. Were McCurry and Fleischer correct? Granted, you had press secretaries from both parties who said the briefings had gotten out of hand. Some of their frustration, I believe, could be chalked up to PBSD, post-briefing stress disorder. If you spent years taking questions from a bunch of demanding reporters, you’d probably hate this stuff, too. In the end, some of it comes down to press secretary strategy, and Spicer’s strategy was to keep upping the ante.

  So, on June 19, at one of those off-camera briefings, I decided once again to register my frustration on social media. Now, we’d been told we weren’t allowed to turn on our cameras and put Sean’s friendly face on TV. But there were no rules, as far as I knew, that said we couldn’t take pictures in the room. So, to note the absurdity of what was about to unfold, I turned my phone toward the Briefing Room floor and snapped a picture. As the off-camera briefing was about to begin, I tweeted this:

  @Acosta

  The Spicer off-camera/no audio gaggle has begun. I can’t show you a pic of Sean. So here is a look at some new socks I bought over the wknd

  It was a bit irreverent, I admit. And, truth be told, not everybody at CNN was on board with the sock tweet. But one lesson I learned from Trump is that posts on social media—in particular, pointed tweets—do grab people’s attention. The sock tweet went viral. (I mean, they were cool socks.) After the briefing was over, I walked out to the live-shot position on the North Lawn of the White House and let Sean have it.

  “The White House press secretary is getting to a point where he’s just kind of useless,” I told CNN’s Brooke Baldwin. “It just feels like we’re sort of slowly but surely being dragged into what is a new normal in this country, where the president of the United States is allowed to insulate himself from answering hard questions.”

  I’ll admit it. Calling Sean “useless” was probably too harsh. But keep in mind that the off-camera aspect of the briefing had been only part of the madness we dealt with that day. Spicer stonewalled in another sense, by refusing to answer some critical questions during the briefing, dodging questions on whether Trump believed human activity contributed to climate change. Sean was routinely telling reporters he didn’t know because he hadn’t talked to the president. It was a ridiculous response. How could the press secretary not know the answer to that question? Sean was stonewalling us, of course; he did know the answer. Trump was (and still is) a full-blown climate change denier; he had repeatedly described global warming as a “hoax.” The problem for Spicer was that admitting the truth about Trump’s actual feelings on the climate change issue was just too embarrassing.

  So, yes, if the briefings were going to be both off-camera and substance free, then Sean, as press secretary, was, basically, “useless.” That didn’t mean we shouldn’t cover his briefings. Indeed, covering these briefings, especially if they were going to be presented in this fashion, would only help reveal the absurdity of what these government officials were doing with our tax dollars.

  Don’t forget that. These are taxpayer-funded officials in the press office. Their job is to help inform the public, not misinform.

  CNN, I should note, showed tremendous support for the stance I was taking in the Briefing Room. Our bureau chief in Washington, Sam Feist, understood the nuttiness of the off-camera spectacle. On June 23, during yet another off-camera gaggle, Sam sent a sketch artist over to draw pictures of Spicer answering questions from the podium. If Sean wouldn’t let us turn on the cameras, we thought, we had to show the viewers something. Why not a sketch, like something out of a courtroom during a high-profile trial? Sam later gave a copy of the sketch to Sean, who seemed amused by it. It was one of many peace offerings from CNN to the White House that, as you might expect, led to only more abuse from the administration. Oh, we tried to turn down the temperature.

  On June 26, I turned up the heat as Spicer scheduled another off-camera briefing. Once again, he was not calling on CNN. So, I interrupted him.

  “There’s no camera on, Jim,” Spicer said.

  “Maybe we should turn the cameras on, Sean. Why don’t we turn the cameras on? Why not turn the cameras on? They’re in the room, the lights are on,” I responded.

  After the briefing was over, I again vented my frustrations with CNN’s Brooke Baldwin. Who the hell wants to hear my frustrations? Fair point. But it was important, I thought, to clearly explain the situation to the public in real time.

  “I think that we just need to recognize what’s happening here,” I said on the air. “What we are typically accustomed to in this town, in terms of covering the White House, covering the United States government, that is being eroded away right in front of our eyes.”

  Three days later, Spicer’s deputy, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, held the first on-camera briefing in a couple of weeks. The whispers coming out of Trumpworld were that Trump wanted to give Sarah a shot at doing the briefings. But her arrival on the scene only added to the Spicy-watch melodrama: when would Sean finally leave the administration?

  Either way, Spicer seemed to take much of the public response to his policies personally. Case in point, a piece for the Washington Post, written by Paul Farhi, questioned whether I had crossed a line as a reporter with all my efforts to hold the White House accountable. In it, Spicer took the opportunity to unload on me.

  “If Jim Acosta reported on Jim Acosta the way he reports on us, he’d say he hasn’t been very honest,” Spicer told the Post. “I think he’s gone well beyond the role of reporter and steered into the role of advocate. He’s the prime example of a [reporter in a] competitive, YouTube, click-driven industry,” he added. “He’s recognized that if you make a spectacle on the air then you’ll get more airtime and more clicks. . . . If I were a mainstream, veteran reporter, I’d be advocating for him to knock it off. It’s hurting the profession.”

  Farhi asked me for a response to Spicer’s lengthy rant. I gave him my reaction: “I will let my reporting speak for itself just as I will let Sean’s performance as press secretary speak for him.” Farhi, perhaps hoping I would return fire, didn’t include the quote in his story.

  One other takeaway from the Post story was that Sean lied about my reporting. At one point during my conversations with Farhi, he asked why I hadn’t ever visited Spicer’s office. Sean was lying and said that I hadn’t. In fact, I had posted a photo on Instagram—ah, the value of social media—of me standing outside Sean’s office with a dozen other reporters. And the night he was screaming at me about the chyron on CNN? I was standing inside Sean’s office.

  Sean also claimed to Farhi that I had skipped briefings that included the veterans’ affairs secretary. This, too, was a lie. CNN furnished to the Post pictures of me sitting in the Briefing Room listening to the VA secretary taking questions from reporters. Fortunately, Farhi did not put those accusations from Sean in his story, but they were an early signal of just how far the White House would go to disparage my reporti
ng. If they were willing to lie to a media journalist for one of the most important newspapers in the world, what else were they willing to do? We would later find out.

  By then, it didn’t really matter. Rumors were swirling that Spicer was on his way out. Also, stories were surfacing that Trump was searching for a new communications director to replace Mike Dubke, who had already quit. On July 21, 2017, the West Wing exploded in chaos. Trump selected a new communications director from his days on the campaign trail, a sharp-tongued hedge fund manager named Anthony Scaramucci, who had served as one of the GOP contender’s surrogates during the 2016 cycle. Spicer had opposed Scaramucci’s hiring, as had Reince Priebus. Both Priebus and Spicer saw Scaramucci, who was aligned with the RNC haters in the campaign, as a threat to their influence in the West Wing. And he was. My sources told me that they had tried to keep him out of the White House for as long as possible.

  But the dam broke: Scaramucci was hired, Spicer quit in protest, and Sarah Sanders became press secretary. Priebus left the following week, replaced by retired general and homeland security secretary John Kelly. Kelly then fired Scaramucci after just ten days—Scaramucci disputes this and says eleven—prompted in part by a damaging story in The New Yorker, written by Ryan Lizza, who reported on a profanity-laced conversation he had had with the man known as “the Mooch.”

  I’m kind of glad I was on vacation when Spicer stepped down as press secretary. After all our battles, I didn’t want to be seen as piling on. CNN asked me to call in with my take. Spicer, in my view, had so damaged his credibility in his first appearance in the Briefing Room, after Inauguration Day, that he was never going to recover. Why would we believe Sean’s comments on Syria, climate change, or voter fraud when he had lied so blatantly on January 21 and said that the president had had the biggest inauguration crowd in the history of the United States? After that, we all knew that he was speaking, or in some cases misleading, on the president’s behalf, and in the end, Spicer, like so many of the president’s aides, was useful until disposable. That, I must say to this day, has made him something of a sympathetic character for me.