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The Jim Acosta Show
Acosta slams White House announcement that it will decide who is in the press pool.
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But something really important has happened, and I want to get into it, and it deals with the White House and press coverage. And I just think, you know, just as I've been doing lately, I want to call this out. The White House press secretary, Caroline Levitt, you know, who's been doing her thing to try to outspice her, Sean Spicer and so on. Anyway, she's put out a statement today saying that they're going to redo, they're going to change the way that the White House press pool operates. And, you know, just to give you a little bit of a sense as to what is going on, the White House press pool. I mean, I know this from covering the White House back in the day during the second Obama administration, the first Trump administration. The White House press pool is essentially the pool of reporters that travels with the President, goes on Air Force One, occasionally, goes into the Oval Office on a daily basis. And the people in that pool rotate from day to day, with some exceptions. Traditionally, the Associated Press, Reuters, the New York Times, newspapers, that sort of thing, they would be in the press pool just about every day. The TV network would change every day. So one day would be abc, the next day would be cbs, NBC, and so on. And you know, that setup is necessary so when the President says something, these remarks can be covered, they can be recorded, they can be videotaped, and so on, and then sent out to all of the major networks and all the major news outlets that subscribe to the White House pool reports. Well, today, the White House press team, led by Caroline Levitt, said this. Caroline Levitt said this. I'm proud to announce that we're going to give the power back to the people who read your papers, who watch television shows, and who listen to your radio stations, who, moving forward, the White House press pool will be determined by the White House press team. Now, up until this moment, it was the individual news outlets that decided who would go in and cover these press pool events. And it was largely handled as a rotation that was sort of governed by the White House Correspondence Association. Well, no more. The White House press team. These officials in the White House press office who, by the way, are, are. Have salaries that are paid for with taxpayer dollars. They're paid for with your tax dollars. They're saying they get to pick and choose who will be in the White House press pool. This is a totally un American concept. It's totally contrary to what's been going on in this country for. For decades now. Anyway, Caroline goes on to say legacy outlets who have participated in the press pool for decades will still be allowed to join. Fear not. But we will also be offering the privilege to, well, deserving outlets who have never been allowed to share in this awesome responsibility. Just like we added a new media seat in the briefing room, legacy media outlets who have been here for years will still participate in the pool, but new voices are going to be welcomed in as well. So, of course, what this means is they're not saying, hey, Jim, you know, you're, you're doing new media now, you're with substack. Why don't you come into the press? But we'd just love to have Jim in the press pool. Wouldn't that be great? No, they're talking about inviting the sycophants, the propagandists, people who are in new media who aren't going to do critical coverage. Of course, they may surprise me. They may call me tomorrow and say, jim, you know, we want you to do this, but I'm not holding my breath. Anyway, they go on to say, as part of these changes, we will continue the rotation amongst the five major television networks to ensure the president's remarks are heard far and wide around the world. So what they're saying is they want the TV networks to go along with this. And, you know, listen, my, and I've said this, I've been saying this for a couple of weeks now when it came to the ape, the White House going after the AP over Gulf of America, which is the stupidest thing. The press is going to have to make a decision here. And the decision that I think needs to be made is for the press to band together to unite in opposition to this kind of garbage. I mean, this is this. I mean, I see somebody chiming in now. Dictators work to control the media. That is what Donald Trump is trying to do here. He is trying to act like a dictator and say, these are the people that I want covering me on a daily basis. This is not North Korea. What's next? What's next, Caroline Levitt? What's next, President Trump? Are we going to have, remember, have you seen the little, the videos that the North Koreans put out? And there's the little lady that sits behind the desk in North Korea and she reads the propaganda that comes out from Kim Jong Un every day. Is that what they're going to start doing over at the White House? Caroline Levitt is going to sit behind a little desk and they're going to read the little talking points that Donald Trump puts out every day. Is that what this is going to become. Is this going to be like North Korea and they'll put like a nice little mountain scene behind her? I mean, we might as well just. What's next? It sounds like that's what they want to do anyway. The White House Correspondence association, led by Eugene Daniels, who is a fine reporter, he put out a statement, pretty blistering statement on this. And I can read it to you. It read a part of this to you. It says, this moves or this move tears at the independence of a free press in the United States. It suggests that the government will choose the journalists who cover the president. In a free country, leaders must not be able to choose their own press corps. Now, good statement from Eugene Daniels. I support that 100%, absolutely. But they've tried this before. The Trump team has tried this before. In my press pass case, when they took away my White House press pass, one of the arguments that the Justice Department lawyers made on behalf of the administration was that they would like to pick and choose. They think the White House should be able, this is what they said back in 2018, that the White House should be able to pick and choose. Rich, which reporters cover the White House? This is very similar in that they want to pick and choose who is in the White House pool on a daily basis. Now, of course, if, if you leave it up to Donald Trump and, and, and Caroline Levitt to pick and choose who's in the press pool on a daily basis, gee, I wonder what they're going to do. Are they really going to pick the, the reporters who are going to hold his feet to the fire? Of course not. Of course they're not going to do this. That's ridiculous. There should be no expectation of this. And keep in mind, there are other folks besides Eugene Daniels slamming this. Jackie Heinrich, who is a senior White House correspondent at Fox News, I've worked alongside her in the past. She put this remark out there on social media saying, this move does not give the power back to the people, it gives power to the White House. Jackie's absolutely right there. There's a reporter from Fox News saying that this is, this is no good. And so, you know, what you have here, folks, is a couple of things. One is obviously, unless the press decides to band together on this, they're going to continue to do this. They're going to try to continue to chip away at the free press in this country, our constitutional rights to a First Amendment in a free press and free speech in this country. And that affects you, by the way, if they can get away with Going after the press, guess what, Guess what happens next. They can get away with, or they're going to try to get away with, going after the free speech rights of, of just ordinary citizens, regular citizens, folks who care passionately about what's happening in this country, who try to exercise their rights of free speech. When does it end? When does it end? The other thing that's happening here is the courts are going to have to intervene. The courts are going to have to do something here and make this right. And if the courts put a stop to it, then kudos to them. But if they give Donald Trump the green light to continue to do this, go after the Associated Press, go after the White House press pool, we're going to be in a world of hurt folks, because this is starting to sound like what they have in Russia, what they have in Hungary. It just doesn't work. And the third thing that I think this speaks to is, and I do think this needs to be explored and that is, why is it that Donald Trump just can't answer basic questions when he's in the Oval Office, when he's taking questions from reporters? Why can't he answer basic questions without drifting into his lie filled talking points, his conspiracy theories and other bs? He cannot take these questions from reporters without doing that kind of bs, without drifting into his usual BS remarks that he puts out there. And I do think that third item there is worth exploring. Come on, President Trump, come on, Donald Trump, why can't you just answer the questions? Are they too complicated? Is it that you know yourself that what Elon Musk and Doge are doing probably isn't going to make it through the courts and you don't want to admit that. I mean, what, what is it? Why can't you answer these basic questions? And so I, you know, I didn't want to take up too much of everybody's time, but when I saw this, I just thought it required a response. When I was at the White House, I would occasionally be in the pool and listen, you know, again, to paint you a picture of how this can work from time to time. When I was in the press pool, from time to time, they would bring us back into the Oval Office. Donald Trump would be having some kind of dog and pony show with whatever he's doing that day. And after he's done talking and after everybody else is done talking in the Oval Office, we'll start asking questions. And if he doesn't want to answer questions, he doesn't have to take questions. You don't have to take questions. So again, what is going on here? Why is he doing this? And I think part of it is, I don't know, is he tired? Is he not capable of doing the job? If you can't take questions from reporters on a regular basis, you can't really do the job of president. You're not cut out for being president. That's what it says to me. And so I think that this is a very important moment for the White House and the press, but it has major implications for everybody else. It's not just about the free press and journalists and their access and so on. It's about the First Amendment and this constant hostility and chipping away at the First Amendment that Donald Trump and his team engage in. And if it doesn't stop, your First Amendment rights will be next. Your rights to free speech will be next. They'll start to say, well, what can we do about stopping political protests? What can we do about stopping people from exercising their right to free speech? I think that that's a big problem. I think that's a major problem. And so listen, I saw this as everybody who's been watching my, my show on Substack knows this business with the White House going after the Associated Press, which is a just really very valuable institution in the United States of America. They're in all 50 states, they're in about 100 countries, about 3 to 4 billion people see their reporting on a regular basis and the White House going after them. As I said, I said this a couple of weeks ago and there were folks who poo pooed this and thought, oh, Jim, you're overreacting. And there were stories about this and so on. I said, this is just the beginning. I said this is just the beginning. And that unless the press unites and says enough of this, and if it means, if it gets to a point where take the cameras away. I mean, if you look at this statement from Caroline Levitt, if you look at this statement from Caroline Levitt, what does it say at the very end of her statement? As part of these changes, we will continue the rotation amongst the five major television networks to ensure the President's remarks are heard far and wide around this world. So what they're saying there is they just want the networks to come in there with their cameras and show what he's saying without any pushback, without anybody asking questions. And it's nonsense. If you want the cameras, you got to take the questions. That's the deal. That's the way it's always worked. Stop trying to be a dictator. Stop trying to turn this into North Korean state television. Again, I asked for the folks who are just tuning in now. I asked the question at the beginning of this a few moments ago. You know, when you see the state TV on in North Korea and they show the, the little ladies behind the desk with their little papers and she reads Kim Jong Un's talking points with the mountains behind her. And so is that, what, is that what they're going to do at the White House? Is Caroline Levitt going to be the new North Korean state TV anchor, but do it from Washington with the mountains, maybe put the Potomac behind her, the, the Washington Monument, something like that? Again, when you are the commander in chief, you have to be in command of the facts. You have to be in command of what the truth is. You have to be in command of reality. And when you're in command of all those things, when you're capable of taking questions, when you have the wherewithal to take the questions, you're the president. You're the president. Donald Trump, when he does this sort of thing and goes after the press, it just makes me wonder who the hell, who, who is the president. You ought to be able to sit behind the Resolute desk and take the questions. Harry Truman famously said, the buck stops here. The buck stops with you, Mr. President. And that means you have to be able to take the questions. All of these predecessors to Donald Trump did it. And again, remember what Caroline Levitt said at the beginning of this new administration? Wasn't she out there saying, we're going to be the most transparent administration? We're going to be so open and transparent. Again, another lie. They lie and they lie and they lie. And so again, I just, I asked Caroline Levitt, I, you know, she's the new White House press secretary, and apparently she doesn't like to be criticized. I was critical of her the other day, and then she went out in cpac and she obviously was very sensitive about it because she made a comment about me. And, you know, she's well within her rights to do that, and that's okay. But I asked the question, if you're the White House press secretary paid for with our tax dollars, you ought to be spending your time doing things other than trying to take away the right to free speech in this country. Caroline, think about what your legacy is going to be as the White House press secretary. Is your legacy really going to be trying to chip away at the First Amendment in this country, chip away at free speech, chip away at freedom of the press think about, you're a young person. And the other day they got mad at me on the right and some of these places for saying, she's a young person, she's a young person. I mean, that's not a terrible thing. That could be a good thing. But your career, if you stay in politics, will take some time to work itself out. Do you really want your legacy to be the way people remember you? To be that you're chipping away at free speech? And I guess some of this is. I'm just going to take a guess here. This is out of her control. If you saw the lawsuit from the Associated Press against Caroline Levitt and a couple other people in the White House, the AP states in their lawsuit that it was Trump who directed Caroline Levitt to go after the ap. So Trump is trying to be the press secretary. Trump is trying to be the press secretary. And you know, that is. That is also disturbing. Why does he care? Go be president. There's a lot of stuff going on. Who cares? When they come into the Oval Office and start asking you questions, just. You've done this before. You used to do this. When I would come to the Oval Office. You used to not like taking questions from me. People remember that. And he would just sit there and he would nod and thank you, everybody. Thank you, thank you. That's all you have to do when that person in the pool that you don't like is in there, just do that until they're gone and then the next day. I mean, I guess I shouldn't be giving advice here and telling them how to do it, but this is obvious stuff. This is easy stuff. So anyway, I wanted to make sure that I chimed in here. I've been traveling. I didn't want to weigh in today. I was going to take a day off. And. And I. I think Steve Schmidt's going to be with me tomorrow. I've got a interview with the congressman coming up on Thursday. Good stuff. Coming up later on this week. But I saw this, and it just made me think, is this. Are we becoming North Korean state TV again? Caroline Levitt, you're the press secretary. Are you going to be that? The little North Korean lady behind the desk reading the talking point? Is that what you're going to become? Think about that. That's what you want your legacy to be? We don't want to be. I just saw somebody say, we don't want to be on the path to state media in this country. That's right. That's right. It's not something that folks think about on a daily basis, how important the press is and reporters and journalism and so on. I get that. And sometimes we see ourselves as too important. But this is important. This is important. You can't have a situation where the White House determines who is in the press pool and says, well, we, we, we like Jennifer over here, but we don't like Johnny over there. And so we'll let Jennifer in and not John. Come on, give me a break. What is this? High school, this is high school stuff. And, and we don't want to. I've seen a lot of people make this comment in the, in the chat here. We don't want state media in this country. And that's, that's where this is all heading. That's the direction that this is heading if this continues like this. So we need the press to band together. We need the courts to weigh in, or else our free speech rights, our freedom of the press rights, they're going to continue to be chipped away. And I think we're, we're seeing the beginning stages of this. They're only a month in and they're throwing out the AP and they're trying to determine who's in the press pool. That's, that ain't good, folks. One month into this new administration. So anyway, those are my thoughts, and I hope the White House gives this some deep thought, which they won't. They're not, they don't, they don't seem to be capable of that. But I hope my friends in the press are giving this some deep thought, because it's time, I think, for some collective action to take a united approach to this presenting united front. Where this is going to get worse, folks. It's going to get worse before it gets better. All right, talk to you later. Still reporting. I'm Jim Acosta. Hope to see you tomorrow. Take care.