In the endless brain fart cyclone that is the Trump era, CNN White House Correspondent Jim Acosta has made a name for himself posing as a martyr of the free press. While US mass media have made a theatrical WWE performance of Trump’s occasional mean words toward Acosta under the banner of defending press freedoms, it has been pathetically sympathetic to this administration’s attempt to actually prosecute an actual journalist, Julian Assange, under the Espionage Act.
It is about time, then, that someone highlighted the irony and hypocrisy of this ridiculous melodrama by confronting Acosta on these contradictions directly. Thanks to independent video journalist Matt Orfalea, we now have footage of one such necessary confrontation taking place.
At a publicity interview for Acosta’s new book (titled “The Enemy of the People: A Dangerous Time to Tell the Truth in America” in the author’s trademark self-righteous and histrionic fashion), Orfalea asked Acosta what he thought about the Trump administration’s charging Assange under the Espionage Act.
Acosta word-saladed for a while, mentioned apropos of nothing that Orfalea is probably a WikiLeaks supporter, and then, as you could probably predict, began babbling about Russia.
“My understanding about the Julian Assange situation is that you know he is being charged not just for trying to speak truth to power and trying to reveal things,” Acosta said. “He’s in trouble for other things. And you know what we’ve seen during the 2016 campaign where there were contacts between WikiLeaks and Russian operatives. That I think takes Wikileaks and Julian Assange into sort of a different category than is a straight news organization — straight publisher of news around the world.”
As you probably already know, and as Jim Acosta most certainly knows, Julian Assange is not charged with anything related to the entirely unproven Russia allegations about his publications in 2016. The mountain of charges which have been heaped against him, most of which involve the Espionage Act and all of which seek to criminalize standard journalistic practices, all pertain to his 2010 publications of the Chelsea Manning leaks. Nothing whatsoever to do with Russia or 2016.
“I do understand what Julian Assange and WikiLeaks — what the spirit of what they’re trying to do — but I can’t sit here and endorse everything that they’ve done and the tactics that they used to go about presenting the information that they gather to the world,” Acosta concluded after a vapid gibberish fountain which contained nothing of substance apart from a tacit endorsement of the Trump administration’s prosecution of a journalist under the Espionage Act.
Acosta’s non-answer was a power-serving, question-avoiding obfuscation that would make Donald Trump blush, and his false claim that Assange’s imprisonment and pending extradition has anything whatsoever to do with Russia constitutes a defense of Assange’s treatment at the hands of the Trump administration. In a single four-minute interaction, Acosta (A) invalidated his posture as a defender of the free press, (B) invalidated his posture as oppositional toward Trump, and (C) illustrated everything that is unwholesome about western mass media.
In the Trump era, @Acosta has made huge sums by reinventing himself as an anti-Trump maverick reporter. But when challenged by @0rf, he refused to condemn the Trump administration’s most flagrant attack of press freedom. A pathetic, obsequious display. https://t.co/YnhoKCHGwA
— Dan Cohen (@dancohen3000) July 19, 2019
“[Assange] is not currently charged with anything related to the 2016 election, but that did not stop Acosta from trying to make a case for why he wants to see him punished for the 2010 release as payback for the completely unrelated publication of the Democratic National Committee emails,” journalist Cassandra Fairbanks wrote of the exchange.
“In the Trump era, Acosta has made huge sums by reinventing himself as an anti-Trump maverick reporter,” tweeted journalist Dan Cohen regarding the interaction. “But when challenged by [Orfalea], he refused to condemn the Trump administration’s most flagrant attack of press freedom. A pathetic, obsequious display.”
Indeed, the precedent which would be set by the US government prosecuting a foreign journalist for publishing newsworthy facts about US war crimes is the single greatest threat to press freedoms in modern times, bar none. But the man whom the ruling establishment has anointed as Mister Press Freedom Himself has nothing but sympathetic things to say about it.
These comments from one of CNN’s most prominent figures come to light days after CNN published an astonishingly deceitful smear piece on Assange packed to the gills with demonstrable lies. This is the same CNN that told its viewers that it’s against the law to read WikiLeaks, with Democratic Party prince Chris Cuomo lying “Remember, it’s illegal to possess these stolen documents; it’s different for the media, so everything you learn about this you’re learning from us.” The same CNN that falsely reported that Assange is a pedophile not once, but twice. The same CNN that has been caught blatantly lying in its Russiagate coverage, which has had to fire journalists for misreporting Russiagate in a media environment where that almost never happens with Russia stories, which has deleted evidence of its journalistic malpractice regarding Russiagate from the internet without retraction or apology.
Jim Acosta does not support press freedom, Jim Acosta supports power. Julian Assange supports press freedom, and he’s being ferociously persecuted for it. With the help of sycophantic bootlickers like Jim Acosta.
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18 responses to “‘Anti-Trump’ CNN Presstitute Defends Trump’s Persecution Of Assange”
Speaking of presstitutes…
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https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-mueller-watch/as-mueller-testimony-approaches-trump-cant-look-away-idUSKCN1UH2C0?il=0
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The Russiagate propaganda has known no bounds. We have all read the relentless McCarthyist bs for the last two plus years. But the above article just really takes the cake. Perhaps it is simply my own personal mood but read it yourself and tell me if it doesn’t deserve special dishonorable mention.
Nominees for Presstitute of the Year go to …
Julian Assange’s persecution is indeed a threat to press freedom. But that it not a threat to 98% of MSM sycophants because they a paid propagandists, not journalists revealing truth. Real journalism is a threat to possibly steal their audience and their paychecks if their charade ever is fully revealed. It is no mystery why their is no support among them.
the entire news media have ignored the “Not Backing Down” event at UMass Amherst in May, because the event supported the BDS movement. anyone wonder about the connection between the mainstream media and Israel???????
I wonder about it all the time. Just more proof that the mainstream media are just craven presstitutes for the Empire. Its only a matter of time before they are screeching how the BDS movement are all card carrying anti semitic nazi’s.
The protests in America are continuing. They are in Puerto Rico. Crowds of a 100,000 or more demanding that the Governor and his corrupt elites get gone. Police attacking to hold them back. Rep. Tulsi Gabbord is now in Puerto Rico, supporting the protesters, and issuing a challenge to all other Democratic contenders to come to Puerto Rico and support the American people there who have been shafted for so long.
Although there are a great many very decent people living within these United Sates of America; our government and its practices are nothing to be proud of. Mr. Julian Assange is just an example of just how sick our government really is:
https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2019/07/20/us-police-state-now-undeniable-assange-case/
CAITLIN, THANKS AGAIN AN EXCELLENT COMMENTARY. WHAT A VERY SAD STATE AMERICA HAS BECOME WHEN THE TRUTH IS TREATED AS THOUGH YOU ARE A CRIMINAL, AND DEMONIZED IN THE ZIONIST MEDIA. AND, THOSE THAT PERPETUATE THE LIE ARE GIVEN POSITIONS OF POWER AND FAT BANK ACCOUNTS. MORAL AN ETHICAL INTEGRITY IS NO LONGER A COMPONENT OF A RESUME.
a willingness to provide pathetic, obsequious displays on demand is a sine qua non of his job.
It has long been evident that CNN in particular is not at all concerned with being a commercially viable business with regards to increasing or even maintaining viewership numbers as would outwardly be deemed necessary to attract and serve sponsors. To put it mildly, their viewership numbers totally suck to the point of being irrelevant yet at the same time the network appears to remain in the forefront of public discourse as once again shown hereby. Draw your own conclusions about where CNN gets its support but I’d have to suspect it has much more to do with the business of social engineering than “news”.
CNN abd NPR are the worst of all presstitutes.
CNN is controlled by corporate oligarchs. It is a mouthpiece for their puppet US government propaganda. Just lies and distractions, nothing more. Watching CNN is only useful as a lesson in modern mind control methods.
There is no longer a western mainstream media. Instead there is a Ministry Of Truth. And those who work in that environment, allegedly as journalists, are in fact nothing more than sniveling sycophantic stenographers and pathetic power serving presstitutes. Your last paragraph summed it up very nicely. As I’ve said 4386 times now (approx) just a full boycott of these organisations; no TV news, no newspapers, no current affairs shows like Four Corners, Panorama, or 60 Minutes, no mainstream radio news, Nothing. Read a book, paint, sketch, bake a cake, play solitaire, make some homebrew…. Just ignore creatures like Acosta and his ilk.
The only way I know what the creature Acosta says is through reports like this one. Seriously. Its worth it to support the effort to educate what liars they are, but it does point out that at some future time we, the good people, should just ignore them and not repeat them. But we ain’t there yet.
Even back when I paid for TV, I used the parental obscenity controls to block all the American ‘news’ channels. That avoid me from seeing them even by just flipping through the channels. The result has always been that I am both better informed and I get less angry at the news which is better for my heart. The way security on my computer is arranged, I have to spend 5 minutes disabling various anti-script and anti-tracker guards to make CNN’s website be more than a blank page. And I’ve never found it to be worth the effort to first turn off my security then to reactivate it after I leave to see that junk that is there.—— The good news is that every person who ignores them costs them money. That’s true for all of them. CNN gets part of its money from fees to cable and satellite systems “per customer”. You pay that to them until you completely cut the cord. But on top of that they are paid by their advertisers “per eyeball” that they can prove they draw based on ratings and website hits. That you can deny them. And it is wise to do so.
Cheers Giskard…. You made me laugh out loud at your comment about blocking the news channels with the parental obscenity control…. Coz end of the day, the garbage they continuously spew out is obscene. Cheers G
You have to understand, I know that I am repeating myself, that most of the people in the mainstream medias are not of good faith. They are of bad faith.
Why are they of bad faith. I think mainly to protect their social status, their income, their position etc…
Good faith is not good to protect all that because… almost everybody in our days is of bad faith.
If there were more people of good faith, it would give the courage to others to be of good faith.
Sadly, we are in the return of the days of Noah; in those days everybody was of bad faith except Noah. I pray the Rosary to hasten the return of Jesus which return, according to many prophecies, is very near. I have really really seen enough.
“during the 2016 campaign where there were contacts between WikiLeaks and Russian operatives.”
I am quite certain that there would have been many “contacts” between CNN and “Russian operatives” during the time of the 2016 campaign. I’d imagine that CNN has a “Moscow bureau” precisely for “contacts” with “Russian operatives”, and they likely have “contacted” people at Russian embassies, and probably a lot more “contacts” than that.
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Just pointing out how incredibly slippery the language really is. I came into this theater in the aftermath of McCarthy, when everyone regretted the loose charges and guilt by association. Now I get to see its return.
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I think old William had a time machine and caught a glimpse of Acosta and was inspired to write: “…but a walking shadow, a poor player That struts and frets his hour upon the stage And then is heard no more: it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.
Thank you very much, Caitlin, for your honesty and integrity in seeking the truth. I do hope, that before my days are done, that I will witness the collective strength of all who are needed to stand down the deceitful, manipulative oppressors of those values we all hold dear in our hearts. An uprising, civilly, is way past due. Truth on…
Thank you for your kind & cutting to the truth words Caitlin , south pawed Jim