The CNN correspondent who has made a career of harassing Trump, won his lawsuit to regain his “hard pass” to the White House press room.
A federal judge ordered the Trump administration on Friday to immediately return the White House press credentials of CNN reporter Jim Acosta, though a lawsuit over the credentials’ revocation is continuing.
U.S. District Court Judge Timothy Kelly, an appointee of President Donald Trump, announced his decision at a hearing Friday morning. The judge said Acosta’s credentials must be reactivated to allow him access to the White House complex for press briefings and other events.
Acosta, CNN’s chief White House correspondent, was back in the afternoon. The White House said it would be developing new rules for orderly press conferences.
It may not be the last word as this is a preliminary injunction.
While the judge didn’t rule on the underlying case, he ordered Acosta’s pass returned for now in part because he said CNN was likely to prevail on its Fifth Amendment claim — that Acosta hadn’t received sufficient notice or explanation before his credentials were revoked or been given sufficient opportunity to respond before they were.
The judge said the government could not say who initially decided to revoke Acosta’s hard pass and how that decision was reached.
“In response to the court, we will temporarily reinstate the reporter’s hard pass,” White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in a statement. “We will also further develop rules and processes to ensure fair and orderly press conferences in the future.”
Acosta has made himself obnoxious. I watched the video of his encounter that resulted in the “ban.” The media lied about it being “doctored” but in fact the “doctoring” was only conversion to a gif for use on Twitter.
What to do now? Acosta is preening in his confidence that he was won the exchange. I expect he will be just as obnoxious next time.
There have been suggestions of what to do about him.
Does Acosta have “a right to keep talking ?”
Maybe the press conferences will have to be restructured since the press hostility has become a problem. I remember Sam Donaldson shouting questions at Reagan, but I do not recall this sort of behavior from him.
An interesting sidelight to this is the absence of any outrage over Acosta’s treatment of the female intern who tried to take the microphone.
We live in an era in which interactions between men and women in the workplace have been under heightened scrutiny. Business leaders like Sheryl Sandberg have focused attention on the many ways men undermine the authority or equality of women at work. A prominent male media figure forcibly asserting himself because he wanted to keep talking would appear to fit perfectly into this narrative.
Indeed, in announcing its revocation of Acosta’s pass, the White House specifically cited gender power dynamics, noting that it would “never tolerate a reporter placing his hands on a young woman just trying to do her job as a White House intern.”
In contrast, the news media almost unilaterally dismissed that aspect of the incident. The New York Times called it “brief, benign contact,” the Wall Street Journal termed it “incidental contact with the intern briefly” and Salon offered that “Acosta didn’t do anything wrong.” Late-night comedians even joked about the incident.
The Times lied about the contact but, because this involved Trump, no interest in the treatment of the young female intern.
Tags: Trump