CNN anchor Jim Costa announced Tuesday he is leaving the network after 18 years.
“You may have seen some reports about me and this show and after giving all of this some careful consideration, and weighing an alternative timeslot CNN offered me, I have decided to move on,” Acosta told viewers on Tuesday morning. Acosta was reportedly asked to accept a demotion from his morning show to a midnight time slot.
But Acosta, who distinguished himself as the face of the anti-Trump resistance at CNN during the president’s first term, couldn’t sign off without one last parting shot at his foil, which he encouraged viewers to record and share on social media.
“I have always believed it’s the job of the press to hold power to account. I have always tried to do that here at CNN,” he continued. “I plan on doing all of that in the future. One final message – don’t give into the lies. Don’t give into the fear. Hold onto the truth, and to hope. Even if you have to get out your phone, record that message. I will not give into the lies. I will not give into the fear. Post it on your social media, so people can hear from you, too.”
Acosta became famous during the first Trump administration for his regular combative “grandstanding” during press briefings, as the Washington Post’s media reporter, Paul Farhi, described it at the time.
“Acosta’s remarks aren’t just blunt; they’re unusual. Reporters are supposed to report, not opine,” wrote Farhi. “Yet Acosta’s disdain has flowed openly, raising a question about how far a reporter — supposedly a neutral arbiter of facts, not a commenter on them — can and should go.”
Acosta constantly did what reporters are told not to do: he made himself the story time and time again.
He crusaded for on-camera press briefings from Sean Spicer and posted photos of his socks on social media during non-televised briefings, writing things like: “I can’t show you a picture of Sean. So here is a look at some new socks I bought over the wknd.”
He also changed his Twitter bio at the time to “I believe in #realnews.”
So Trump-obsessed was Acosta that he spied on Trump, then the president-elect, during a dinner with Reince Priebus and Mitt Romney at the Michelin-starred Jean Georges restaurant to offer hard-hitting reporting on Twitter about Trump crossing his arms during the meeting.
As Kyle Smith wrote for NR in 2020, “Acosta obviously relishes the combative spirit of the age and has taken to pulling more stunts than Evel Knievel in order to increase his public profile, not to provide any useful info to the public.”
He pointed to a 2018 incident in which Acosta sparred with White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders over Trump calling the press the “enemy of the people.”
Acosta said he thought it would be a “good thing” if Trump would disavow the comment because “I think we deserve that” before the CNN correspondent got up and left the room in what he later claimed was an act of protest.
He then reported live from the White House and proposed a public protest.
“I think maybe we should make some bumper stickers,” he said. “Make some buttons, you know, maybe we should go out on Pennsylvania Avenue like these kids who chant ‘CNN sucks’ and ‘fake news,’ maybe we should go out, all journalists should go out on Pennsylvania Avenue and chant, ‘We’re not the enemy of the people,’ because I’m tired of this,” he said.
But perhaps his most infamous moment came during a 2018 press conference when he was embroiled in a back-and-forth with Trump and, while refusing to give up the microphone, he pushed aside the arm of a female aide, leading the White House to revoke his press pass. However, a court soon restored his credentials in response to a lawsuit from CNN.
The network claimed Acosta had been suspended as “retaliation for his challenging questions.”
His charades earned him a deal to write an anti-Trump memoir, The Enemy of the People: A Dangerous Time to Tell the Truth in America.
Trump celebrated Acosta’s departure from the network on Tuesday.
“Wow, really good news! Jim Acosta, one of the worst and most dishonest reporters in journalistic history, a major sleazebag, has been relegated by CNN Fake News to the Midnight hour,” Trump wrote.
“Word is that he wants to QUIT, and that would be even better,” he added. “Jim is a major loser who will fail no matter where he ends up. Good luck Jim!”
Aside from his antics, Acosta also has a history of inaccurate reporting.
He wrongly claimed that Trump did not meet with Representative Steve Scalise following the shooting at Alexandria and one time perpetuated the New York Times’ erroneous assertion that 17 intelligence agencies have claimed that Russia meddled in the 2016 elections (in fact, it was four).
And in 2021, without Trump to antagonize, Acosta set his sights on a new target: Florida governor Ron DeSantis.
He singled out DeSantis as being responsible for the increase of Delta-variant COVID cases in the country, proclaiming that “people should not have to die so some politicians can own the libs. They’re not owning anybody, but they may end up owning the pandemic, because they’re prolonging it.”
He responded to an executive order signed by DeSantis to keep mask mandates out of public schools in the Sunshine State by suggesting “Instead of the Delta variant, why not call it the DeSantis variant?” (This from the reporter who decried Trump for calling Covid-19 the “Chinese virus,” though the virus undoubtedly emerged in the country.)
It wasn’t immediately clear what Acosta planned to do next, now that he is leaving the network after nearly two decades.
“I’ll have more to say about my plans in the coming days,” he told viewers. “But until then, I want to thank all of you for tuning in. It has been an honor to be welcomed into your homes, for all these years.”