by Jim Acosta
ACOSTA: Okay. Thank you, Mr. President. I wanted to challenge you on one of the statements that you made in the tail end of the campaign in the midterms, that this—
TRUMP: Here we go.
ACOSTA: Well, if you don’t mind, Mr. President—
TRUMP: Let’s go. Let’s go. Come on.
ACOSTA: That this caravan was an “invasion.” As you know, Mr. President—
TRUMP: I consider it to be an invasion.
ACOSTA: As you know, Mr. President, the caravan was not an invasion. It’s a group of migrants moving up from Central America towards the border with the U.S.
TRUMP: Thank you for telling me that. I appreciate it.
ACOSTA: Why did you characterize it as such? And—
TRUMP: Because I consider it an invasion. You and I have a difference of opinion.
ACOSTA: But do you think that you demonized immigrants in this election—
TRUMP: Not at all. No, not at all.
ACOSTA: —to try to keep—
TRUMP: I want them—I want them to come into the country, but they have to come in legally. You know, they have to come in, Jim, through a process. I want it to be a process. And I want people to come in. And we need the people.
ACOSTA: Right. But your campaign had—your campaign—
TRUMP: Wait. Wait. Wait. You know why we need the people, don’t you? Because we have hundreds of companies moving in. We need the people.
ACOSTA: Right. But your campaign had an ad showing migrants climbing over walls and so on.
TRUMP: Well, that’s true. They weren’t actors. They weren’t actors.
As he and I continued to spar, I tried to make the point that the caravan was hundreds of miles away, which meant it was far from the imminent invasion he had been portraying it as. I mean, if it’s an invasion, shouldn’t the migrants be carrying weapons instead of diapers? Trump wasn’t having it, and he tried to put a stop to it, but not before getting a jab at my network’s expense.
TRUMP: I think you should—honestly, I think you should let me run the country, you run CNN—
ACOSTA: All right.
TRUMP: —and if you did it well, your ratings would be much better.
ACOSTA: But let me ask, if I—if I may ask one other question—
TRUMP: Okay, that’s enough.
ACOSTA: Mr. President, if I may—if I may ask one other question.
TRUMP: Okay, Peter [Alexander], go ahead.
ACOSTA: Are you worried—
TRUMP: That’s enough. That’s enough. That’s enough.
ACOSTA: Mr. President, I didn’t—well, I was going to ask one other. The other folks that had—
TRUMP: That’s enough. That’s enough.
ACOSTA: Pardon me, ma’am, I’m—Mr. President—
This was the moment when a White House intern attempted to grab the microphone from me. I have been in this business for more than twenty years. Nobody has ever tried to rip a microphone out of my hands. As you can see in the video, I recoiled from the intern to hang on to that microphone. That’s why I said, “Pardon me, ma’am.” At that moment, her arm brushed past mine, making contact with me for a brief moment. After I held on to the mic, she backed away. I pressed on as Trump unloaded on me.
Trump again tried to call on NBC’s Peter Alexander, but I wanted to make my point. First, I wanted to make it clear that a president should not be able to shut down a reporter at a news conference in this fashion. The Trump people had just tried to take away my microphone. Trump was trying to shout me down with insults. I felt it was critical, at this moment, to stand my ground.
TRUMP: Excuse me, that’s enough.
ACOSTA: Mr. President, I had one other question if—
TRUMP: Peter. Let’s go.
ACOSTA: If I may ask on the Russia investigation. Are you concerned that you may have indictments—
TRUMP: I’m not concerned about anything with the Russia investigation because it’s a hoax.
ACOSTA: —that you may indictments coming down? Are you—
TRUMP: That’s enough. Put down the mic.
ACOSTA: Mr. President, are you worried about indictments coming down in this investigation?
TRUMP: I’ll tell you what: CNN should be ashamed of itself having you working for them. You are a rude, terrible person. You shouldn’t be working for CNN. Go ahead [to Peter Alexander].
ACOSTA: I think that’s unfair.
TRUMP: You’re a very rude person. The way you treat Sarah Huckabee is horrible. And the way you treat other people are horrible. You shouldn’t treat people that way. Go ahead. Go ahead, Peter. Go ahead.
At this point, Peter jumped in. I had turned over my microphone, and Peter had the floor. But suffice it to say, I was not ready to sit down as Trump kept attacking. The transcript is not really helpful anymore at this point, as I’m no longer holding the microphone, but you can still hear me in the video, off mic, reminding the president that we at CNN had just been sent pipe bombs in the mail. Trump was furious. This is when he called me, and my colleagues at CNN, “the enemy of the people”—but not before Peter Alexander weighed in.
Peter was the real hero of that news conference, in my view, because he did something at that point that we should see a lot more of in Washington. He stood up for a fellow member of the press, me. Folks, a lot of other reporters would have sat silently as the president berated another journalist. In fact, that had happened many times before. What makes this moment so important is that Peter did not do that. He did not let the bully win the day.
ALEXANDER: In Jim’s defense, I’ve traveled with him and watched him. He’s a diligent reporter who busts his butt like the rest of us.
TRUMP: Well, I’m not a big fan of yours either. So, you know. (Laughter.)
ALEXANDER: I understand.
TRUMP: To be honest with you.
ALEXANDER: So let me—so let me ask you a question if I can—
TRUMP: You aren’t—you aren’t the best.
This is when I tried to jump back in. The transcript is incomplete. Again, I no longer had the microphone. I was making it clear that he had crossed a line. Trump might be the president, but he has no right to attack us, particularly just days after one of his supporters tried to blow up my news network. It was time to stand up to the bully.
TRUMP: Well, when you report fake news—
ACOSTA: (inaudible)
TRUMP: No. When you report fake news, which CNN does a lot, you are the enemy of the people. Go ahead.
There it was. Even after the pipe bombs, the president of the United States was still calling us “the enemy of the people.”
By this point, the press conference had gone off the rails. Thinking back on that day, I can’t help but recall the time Hope Hicks told me that Trump said, “Jim gets it,” as in I get that his behavior is all an act—only, this was no act, for any of us, including Trump. In pressing my case, I had been determined to cut through the lies and the fantasy that immigrants were invading our country. And Trump hated me for it. He was red in the face, pacing behind the lectern as this was going down. After it was all over, a few colleagues said to me, “I thought he was going to come down and take a swing at you.”
Trump was visibly angry throughout the rest of the news conference. I had never really seen him this testy before in front of reporters. Later on, Yamiche Alcindor, a reporter for PBS, attempted to ask him about his decision to label himself a nationalist in the final days of the campaign. This label was widely viewed by many of his critics as a dog whistle to his base, and that what he really meant was that he was a white nationalist. Yamiche asked whether Trump was emboldening white nationalists with that language.
“That’s such a racist question,” Trump replied. He called her question racist three times. It was an appalling moment in a conflict that would only get worse.
Over the course of the next couple of days, Trump would attack two other black female journalists, April Ryan of American Urban Radio Network and my C
NN colleague Abby Phillip. Trump told Phillip that her question was “stupid” when she asked about Matt Whitaker, the man whom Trump had just tapped to replace Sessions as acting attorney general. He called Ryan, who had covered the White House since the days of Bill Clinton, “a loser.” Add it up and you have three attacks on three black female journalists. This was not a coincidence. And all their questions were perfectly legitimate.
In the moments following that post-midterms news conference, it was obvious that my confrontation with Trump was making waves. As soon as the president left the East Room, my mission was to get on the air, so I raced outside to the North Lawn for a live shot. On my way out, I spotted Peter Alexander. We had a brief exchange and a rather awkward “bro hug.” But I wanted to thank him for expressing his support in such a charged setting. There had been so many attacks on the White House press corps for having turned the other cheek when a reporter was abused by Trump. This was the first time, that I could recall, in which one network reporter had stood up for another.
During my live shot a few minutes later, Wolf Blitzer and Jake Tapper asked me what it was like being in the middle of that situation with Trump. I don’t remember much of what I said, but I closed with my own version of Michelle Obama’s line from the 2016 campaign, “When they go low, we go high.”
“When they go low, we keep doing our jobs,” I told Wolf and Jake.
CNN released a statement following the president’s attack on the press at the news conference: “This President’s ongoing attacks on the press have gone too far. They are not only dangerous, they are disturbingly un-American. While President Trump has made it clear he does not respect a free press, he has a sworn obligation to protect it. A free press is vital to democracy, and we stand behind Jim Acosta and his fellow journalists everywhere,” it read.
It was another full-throated show of support for the press from CNN. I was very grateful. The company had issued statements on behalf of several of us before, so I thought the day would proceed rather normally. We would get back to business, put together our stories, and then do our live shots on the day’s events in the evening. I did my hits on The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer, per usual, and then left the White House grounds for dinner.
That was when everything in my life began to spiral out of control.
* * *
BEHIND THE SCENES, TRUMP AND HIS AIDES WERE FUMING. THE president obviously hated the way I had confronted him at the press conference. You don’t get dubbed “the enemy of the people” every day in this city. But Trump’s attacks on the media, which we typically brush off as bluster, were about to be taken to a new level. One of my sources told me that White House communications director Bill Shine, the former Fox News executive, was the driving force behind what was about to happen next. But officials at the White House have thus far refused to specify exactly who was behind it. Perhaps it was all of them.
As I was returning from dinner that evening for my next live shot with Anderson Cooper, a notification flashed on my phone. Sarah Sanders had announced that my “hard pass” had been suspended. An essential press credential, the hard pass allows a reporter to move through the Secret Service checkpoint for journalists without a huge hassle every day. As a White House reporter, you can technically function without a hard pass, but it’s extremely difficult. A reporter could still obtain a “day pass,” but that would grant me access to the White House grounds only one day at a time. The hard pass is a rather coveted credential for any reporter in Washington, as it means you can enter 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue at just about any time during normal business hours. There is no hassle in going through the White House press office and the Secret Service. With a hard pass, you simply go through the security booth, and you’re in. Losing that kind of access to the White House is a pretty big blow if you’re covering that beat. Without that hard pass, you could miss—no, you will miss—actual news inside the White House, as events can happen at any moment. If you have to rely on obtaining a day pass, you could be waiting out at the Secret Service booth to be granted access to the grounds while your competitors are inside attending a briefing or news conference.
As for the revocation of my press pass, Sanders hadn’t even given me a heads-up that it was coming. For a moment, I was stunned. And then I read the press secretary’s statement.
The statement was a disgusting smear, carried out by the U.S. government and paid for with American tax dollars. Sanders had accused me of putting my hands on the intern, when, in fact, the opposite had occurred. The intern had approached me, had come into my personal space, and attempted to pull the microphone away from me. As any layman can clearly see in the video of the encounter, the intern put her hands on me as she went for the mic. And to be clear, I don’t blame the intern for what happened. She thought she was doing her job.
Sanders justified the action taken against me with a despicable tweet, posted from an official government account announcing the White House decision. It remains on Twitter for all the world to see:
@PressSec
President Trump believes in a free press and expects and welcomes tough questions of him and his Administration. We will, however, never tolerate a reporter placing his hands on a young woman just trying to do her job as a White House intern . . .
“[A] reporter placing his hands on a young woman just trying to do her job” is how Sanders described it. I had been attacked before for my work. I had been called a grandstander and a showboater and so on. I had never, ever been accused of assault. That’s what Sanders did here.
* * *
I WAS ABSORBING THESE WORDS WHILE STANDING ABOUT TWENTY yards from the White House compound. My eyes glazed over, as it was all a bit surreal. Within a few minutes, I reached the Secret Service booth. Immediately, an officer looked out the window and saw me. Seconds later, another officer exited the booth from a side door and moved in my direction.
At that moment, the officers informed me I had been denied access to the White House, a place I had gone to work just about every day for more than five years. Remembering my plan for just this moment, I pulled out my phone to record the exchange.
“You can take it up with the press office,” one of the officers told me.
“But I’m not allowed to come in right now,” I said.
“You’ll just have to take it up with the press office,” that officer said again.
As we had this exchange, the other officer blocked the door into the complex. I experienced such a bizarre feeling. Is this guy guarding the door so I can’t come in? Like I’m some kind of criminal?
At that point, I began to head back to Pennsylvania Avenue with the realization that I was going to miss my 8:00 p.m. live shot. As I was about to call the desk at CNN and give them the news, the officer who had blocked the door approached me again. Once again, I pulled out my phone. At this point, I did not know what was going to happen. Am I going to be arrested? Am I going to jail? I wanted everything on camera.
He asked me to turn over my hard pass, so I started narrating the moment, as if it were a live shot, thinking, Don’t stop. Keep rolling. It occurred to me that this was possibly unprecedented and probably worthy of documentation for any future legal action on my part.
“This is Jim Acosta. I am in front of the White House. This Secret Service officer is asking for my hard pass. Obviously no hard feelings to the officer. But I am now giving my hard pass to the Secret Service,” I said into my phone.
I handed my lanyard to the officer, who set about removing the hard pass from its clear plastic case.
“It’s been here for a while now,” the officer said, struggling to remove the pass.
“Thank you for your service,” I told the officer. And with that, my pass was gone.
My head was spinning. It dawned on me that this, theoretically, could be the end of my career covering the White House. Then I thought, Wait a minute. They can’t do this. This is bullshit. They don’t get to pick and choose who covers the president.
/> Then other thoughts occurred to me: What will CNN want to do about this? Will they want to fight? What will my colleagues in the press think? Will they join me? These were not easy questions. Some of this, I thought, went back to that day at Trump Tower when Trump called me “fake news.” As I learned during that experience, some journalists (Peter Alexander, for example) will speak up and support a fellow reporter; others will support a fellow reporter but be too afraid to stand behind him; and still others won’t care or will even see a potential benefit to siding with the president. As crass as it sounds, standing on the sidelines in a battle between another journalist or news outlet and the White House has its upside: The White House will see you as somebody with whom they can do business. They can give you scoops, interviews, and access—things I couldn’t give them.
For now, though, I had to push all of that to the side. First, the revocation of my hard pass needed to be made public immediately. Sarah had put out her statement; now I needed to respond.
I did so with a tweet of my own, retweeting Sarah’s tweet falsely accusing me of having assaulted an intern with a simple message. It’s still up on Twitter.
@Acosta
This is a lie.
https://twitter.com/PressSec/status/1060333176252448768
But I needed to do more than just tweet. After missing my live shot at the top of the hour for Anderson Cooper, I raced over to CNN’s Washington bureau to speak with Anderson in person on set. As I told him, I hadn’t placed my hands on anybody. During a brief segment at the end of his show, I defended myself.
Before I went on the air, I spoke by phone with CNN president Jeff Zucker, who counseled me to remain calm, stick to the facts, and simply tell the viewers what had happened. Anderson quoted reporters from other outlets who were at the news conference that day and who stated that I had not done anything to the intern in question.