On Tuesday, CNN’s Jim Acosta complained after President Donald Trump called on a reporter from conservative media instead of him.
Speaking with CNN’s Brooke Baldwin following a presser with Trump and populist Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, Acosta criticized The Daily Caller’s Saagar Enjeti’s “softball question.”
“And then [the president] was asked that question by a reporter with The Daily Caller right at the very end. The question was asked in a way that really teed it up like a game of tee ball, here in the Rose Garden. The president was just sort of served up a softball there, when he was asked whether or not the Democrats were advancing a lot of socialist ideas,” complained Acosta.
White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders responded to Acosta’s complaint via Twitter with just five loaded words: “Dear Diary … #BestWeekEver.”
Now here’s what that means: Sanders was captioning a video of the “hard-hitting” CNN reporter asking then-President Barack Obama about his “best week ever” back in 2016.
“I wanted to ask you about what some people are calling your best week ever, last week. You had two Supreme Court decisions supportive of the Affordable Care Act and of gay rights. You also delivered a speech down in Charleston that was pretty warmly received. It seems that you’ve built up some political capital for the remaining months of your presidency. I’m curious how you wanna use it. What hard things do you wanna tackle at this point?” asked Acosta.
The video was posted by The Blaze’s Jason Howerton. “Jim Acosta today criticizing [Saagar Enjeti] vs. Jim Acosta when Obama was president,” he captioned the post.
As for the “Dear Diary” portion of Sanders’ tweet, the White House press secretary was referencing a troll of Acosta sparked in June. Twitter politicos began captioning Acosta’s tweets about Trump with the phrase “Dear diary,” poking fun at his various Twitter soliloquies lamenting how mean Trump is. Here are just a few examples of “diary”posts highlighted by The Daily Wire’s Ryan Saavedra:
Acosta has made himself the center of the news on more than one occasion. In early November, for example, the reporter refused to hand over his mic to a White House aide so that other reporters could ask questions. Acosta made physical contact with the young woman as she attempted to grab the mic from him resulting in the White House temporarily suspending his press credentials.
“I’ve just been denied entrance to the WH. Secret Service just informed me I cannot enter the WH grounds for my 8pm hit,” Acosta posted to Twitter on November 8.
Others in the media reportedly are “embarrassed” by Acosta turning press briefings into “the Jim F***ing Acosta Show.”
“A few CNN reporters told me that they’re embarrassed by Acosta & CNN,” claimed Republican strategist Arthur Schwartz in mid-November. “A [White House] correspondent from a major network (not Fox) told me ‘This isn’t the Jim F*ing Acosta Show. We all hate him. He’s an a**hole and he actually is disrespectful to the president.”