Not having President Donald Trump to kick around anymore, CNN struggles to come up with a new boogieman to scare people enough to tune in to the network.
The best they can do at this point is criticize rival Fox News, which regularly buries the network in the ratings game. More specifically, CNN personalities love to go at Tucker Carlson, the host of the network’s top-rated program.
CNN’s Jim Acosta went after both in an interview this week, slamming Fox News as a “bullsh*t factory” and calling Carlson “a race-baiting tyrant.” How’s that for rich?
Acosta made his name via a biased four-year effort to undermine a sitting president and was rewarded for that effort with a weekend gig as a show anchor — desperate to create headlines and draw attention, Acosta goes further and further out on a limb with his rhetoric — even regurgitating the “bullsh*t factory” line he used last month.
“What they’ve decided to do since [the election] is double down on being what I call the bullsh*t factory,” Acosta said. “They churn out segments that gin up outrage that they know is going to piss off their viewers and so on — even if it’s cockamamy made up nonsense. And they do it for the simple reason of attracting viewers, and ginning up the ratings.”
If ever there was a case study in projecting, that would be it.
As for whether it’s “fair game” for him to cover a rival network that beats CNN on a regular basis, Acosta essentially declared that it’s his duty to fact-check Fox News.
“I’ve thought long and hard about this,” he said. “And my attitude is that we have to talk about it, we have to cover it. Do we need to do it every hour of every day? No, we don’t. But if Trump or his lackeys go on Fox, and they spew this nonsense about the election, and they’re not fact-checked in real-time, then they’re operating as propagandists. And they’re doing a bad thing for this country.”
Seven months in the rearview mirror, the 2020 election is still fresh on the mind of Acosta, who did his part to help ensure President Joe Biden’s election.
Billing himself as a reluctant hero who only doing the bidding of the adoring masses who hang on his every word, Acosta claimed this exclusive group includes Fox News employees.
“There were people at Fox who were pinging me during the Trump presidency saying, ‘Way to go, Jim. Keep going,’ and so on,” Acosta said. “I know there are folks out there who want to do the right thing. But to some, to some extent, they’ve decided to become something like the tobacco industry where they’ve decided, ‘OK, we know we make a product that harms people, but we’re just going to have to double down and do it because it’s just making a sh*t-ton of money.’”
Drilling down to a personal level, likely thinking this is sure to draw a buzz, Acosta blasted Fox News host Tucker Carlson.
“He has these moments where he just sounds like a race-baiting tyrant,” Acosta said. “And it’s like, what is he doing? What is that? It’s ginning up anger, and rage, and frustration in a certain segment of the American public. And I do think it does just a great deal of harm to this country.”
“A certain part…” Acosta said, sounding very much like a certain former president — at least Barack Obama has the temerity to name white people as the target of his ire.
Carlson often calls MSNBC’s Joy Reid the “angry race lady” because she often comes across as angry while pushing a racially divisive agenda. It’s not clear if Acosta felt a need to push back here in espousing personal opinion as if it was factual — this being the go-t0 tactic on the left these days.
Early on in the interview, while talking about being a White House reporter, Acosta exposed just how much of a drama queen he is while talking about the need to have his phone with him at all times on the beat.
“Sometimes, in the middle of the night you’re waking up and looking at your phone. For example, when Trump had the coronavirus I would wake myself up in the middle of the night, at 3-4 a.m., just to see if he died because we were concerned that he may die.”
Trump was never close to dying, and recovered in a matter of a few days.
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The longest-tenured writer at BizPac Review, Tom grew up in Maryland before moving to Central Florida as a young teen. It is in the Sunshine State that he honed both his passion for politics and his writing skills.
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