CNN’s Jim Acosta blatantly lied while appearing on CNN’s “Anderson Cooper 360°” with host Anderson Cooper on Wednesday night, where he falsely claimed that he never touched the White House aide that tried to take the mic away from him.
CNN selectively edited the footage from the incident and did not show the moment that Acosta touched the aide, and when Acosta lied, Cooper offered no pushback.
“I don’t really know who she is, and attempted to take the microphone away from me,” Acosta said. “All I can say at that point is that I was trying to hang onto the microphone so I could continue to ask the president questions.”
“Obviously, you know, I didn’t put my hands on her or touch her as they’re alleging,” Acosta falsely claimed. “And it’s just unfortunate that the White House is saying this. You know, we all try to be professionals over there.”
The video below shows what Acosta said to Cooper, then it cuts to the video tweeted out by White House press secretary Sarah Sanders, and then it cuts back again, replaying Acosta’s lie.
WATCH:
Acosta continued to make misleading statements following his lie on Cooper’s show, tweeting this morning: “Don’t believe the lies coming from the WH. Believe in our freedoms. Thank you all for your support. We won’t back down.”
CNN media reporters Brian Stelter and Oliver Darcy sought to change the narrative from Acosta clearly touching the female aide to falsely suggesting that the video tweeted out by Sanders was “misleading” and “distorted.”
Darcy and Stelter’s false suggestions came in response to Sanders tweeting a video, writing: “We stand by our decision to revoke this individual’s hard pass. We will not tolerate the inappropriate behavior clearly documented in this video.”
The Washington Examiner tweeted out a side-by-side comparison video showing the raw footage from the White House press pool compared to the video tweeted out by Sanders.
BuzzFeed News concluded: “There’s no evidence that the video was deliberately sped up — but the change in format, from a high quality video to a low quality gif, turns the question of whether it was ‘doctored’ into a semantic debate.”