In recent months, CNN’s Jim Acosta – a partisan political commentator masquerading as a reporter – has become the face of the open warfare between President Trump and the “fake news” mill. Last week, it seemed to come to a head when Acosta was heckled on air while reporting from a huge GOP rally in Tampa, Florida, for President Trump and gubernatorial candidate Rep. Ron DeSantis.
In an on-air colloquy with his CNN colleague, Wolf Blitzer, Acosta complained that he was being shouted down by “a chorus of boos and other chants in this Trump crowd here in Tampa, Florida.” Indeed, several camera sweeps of the raucous crowd bore him out. He told Blitzer that he would not be intimidated and would continue reporting on the rally despite the efforts to intimidate him.
We have no doubt that Acosta felt put upon, but it is important to see this sort of thing in context. We hear only perfunctory reporting from CNN and others in what is called the “mainstream media” on the growing phenomenon on the left of legitimizing physical confrontation with one’s political opponents.
The depredations of the Antifa movement, for example, continue to grow. It will also be recalled that last year a number of Republican participants in a softball game were targeted by a Bernie Sanders supporter, which resulted in the serious wounding of a congressman.
Trump administration officials have been accosted at restaurants by anti-Trumpers, egged on by the inflammatory rhetoric of the likes of Congresswoman Maxine Waters (that paradigmatic sufferer pf Trump Derangement Disorder). And an enraged Massachusetts woman is alleged to have recently rammed into a car because, according to police, it bore a Trump bumper sticker.
Acosta and his ilk still don’t get it. In 2016 they – and almost all the pollsters – missed the many signs of anger among a huge swath of the American public, fed up with the leftward lurch of their government and a biased media that seeks to persuade rather than inform.
The media may harrumph about its sacred mission and claim it is owed deference. But most of us really do get it.