When reporters stick together – as a mob
When reporters stick together – as a mob

When reporters stick together – as a mob

Too bad. But this is one time that I will have to disagree with the editorialists at the New York Post…as I appear to be disagreeing with everyone else as well.

They’re saying that revoking Jim Acosta’s press pass was a mistake, so that Acosta ought to be reinstated.

He was only doing his job covering the White House, perhaps a touch overly-aggressive even for CNN, but that is the nature of journalism. So they say.

The nature of CNN has always been to go ugly on the United States and Israel; formerly through Hanan Ashrawi and today through her terrorist replacement, Linda Sarsour. Count on more bias on a day, this day, when Israel mourns a fallen IDF officer who was killed during an operation against the Hamas savages in Gaza.

The reporting will be slanted against Israel. Bet on it because that is how CNN operates. News you cannot trust, filed by reporters who travel with a chip on their shoulders.

The same churlish approach we saw back here in the United States, going back to Wednesday’s press briefing with, or rather against, President Trump.

It’s where reporters became a mob and a news briefing turned into a brawl, scenes of which we cover across the United States and Israel in this and this newsroom thriller.

On journalism and journalists, we know the score. Been there in Israel, done that in the United States, and reported it in those two books.

Acosta wasn’t there to ask questions. He was there to lecture and make accusations, as were they all. But Acosta’s disrespect and contemptuousness is special…especially obnoxious.

He is a hothead and, knowing his act, why he gets a front row seat at these briefings would be my first question. He is no reporter, but rather a Resist Trump community organizer.

On Wednesday’s briefing, I found him to be armed and dangerous…the microphone serving as his weapon.

He refused to give it up, as we all saw, which led to a tussle with the female intern, whose job it was to pass the mic around.

It was a match between a 235-pound brute of a man against a petite-sized woman. The reporters in the room, all Democrats, took it as normal behavior then, and even now.
It wasn’t much of a fight. It never is… in a match between a 235-pound brute of a man against a petite-sized woman. The reporters in the room, all Democrats, took it as normal behavior then, and even now. Chivalry, you expected? Among Liberals? No big deal. No harm done, people say – even some Conservatives.

Really? Entire careers have been ruined for accidentally backing up against a woman in an elevator. All she has to say is that she felt “uncomfortable.” How about the intern whom Acosta bullied with a shove that sent her reeling back to her corner? Whether he physically touched her or not, she was plainly UNCOMFORTABLE.  

So was I…and so was anybody who cares about the dignity and the safety of the Office…and wondered if Acosta, in his madness, was preparing to take a lunge at the President.

Why would I think so? Why not?

I was thinking Robert De Niro speaking like this – “I want to punch Donald Trump in the face.”

Acosta was close enough and heated enough, if you caught the maniacal gleam in his eyes. Only the high price of following through stopped him.   

No doubt about it, that they would all, all the “reporters” in that room, just love one free shot to “punch Donald Trump in the face.”

They do it anyway, symbolically, by styling their accusations as questions. Their attitude is this: “Shut up. Mr. President. We’re talking” – an attitude that goes double for Acosta.

He runs the place. Anybody gets in his way, goes splat. He is the Mike Tyson of the White House press corps, except that girls are his game. Liberals call it an even contest.

I was expecting the Secret Service to take some action. Wasn’t there a bouncer in the house?

I have already said that Acosta should have been removed, even arrested, on the spot because he presented a physical danger to the President.

I could say that about the entire White House press corps and the press in general for endangering us by keeping us in the dark through the reportage of deception.

A microphone would be useful to get my views across, but then I’d have to fight Jim Acosta for it while he’s busy wrestling it from the hands of a young woman.

New York-based bestselling American novelist Jack Engelhard writes regularly for Arutz Sheva.

He is the author of the international book-to-movie bestseller “Indecent Proposal” and most recently the classic noir novel “Slot Attendant,” plus the two inside journalism thrillers “The Bathsheba Deadline” and “News Anchor Sweetheart, Hollywood Edition.” Engelhard is the recipient of the Ben Hecht Award for Literary Excellence. Website: www.jackengelhard.com