Jim Acosta, CNN's chief White House correspondent, explained to Salon how he and his CNN colleagues plan to cover President Trump's 2020 campaign differently than they did in 2016.
"You're going to see fewer rallies covered end to end, and I think ...
Jim Acosta, CNN's chief White House correspondent, explained to Salon how he and his CNN colleagues plan to cover President Trump's 2020 campaign differently than they did in 2016.
"You're going to see fewer rallies covered end to end, and I think you're going to see more coverage after the rallies are over, with fact checkers," Acosta told Salon's executive editor Andrew O'Hehir.
"You have a president who's been in office for two years and he's been found to have uttered approximately 10,000 false or misleading statements," Acosta said, adding that consistently airing full rallies is not a reliable way to get truthful information to voters.
When asked if CNN and other networks are partially responsible for the rise in popularity of Trump and the downfall of Hillary Clinton in 2016, Acosta explained what he observed while following Trump on the campaign trail.
"Donald Trump was the front-runner through most of the GOP primary process. Are we not supposed to cover the Republican front-runner, during the campaigns?" he said. "The folks in the press did not tell Hillary Clinton not to campaign in Wisconsin. Donald Trump was campaigning around the clock for the presidency towards the end of that campaign, and that's how I remember it."
Acosta's new book "The Enemy of the People: A Dangerous Time to Tell the Truth in America," covers how Trump targets news media organizations and uses rhetoric to demonize and devalue them with his base.
Check out the full episode to hear Acosta tell his side of the tense one-on-one encounter he had with President Trump and how it put him in the middle of the president's war on journalism.