No one more fully embodied the mainstream media’s smug self-righteousness and sneering disdain for everyday Americans
It’s official. Jim Acosta, the obnoxious TV journalist best known for fighting a young female staffer who tried to take away his microphone at the White House, has quit his job at CNN after refusing to accept a humiliating demotion to the graveyard shift from midnight to 2 a.m. He’s really leaving.
“You may have seen some reports about me and the show, and after giving all of this some careful consideration and weighing an alternative time slot CNN offered me, I have decided to move on,” Acosta said at the end of his final show on Tuesday. “I have always believed it’s the job of the press to hold power to account. I’ve always tried to do that here at CNN, and I plan on … doing all of that in the future. One final message: Don’t give in to the lies. Don’t give in to the fear. Hold on to the truth, and to hope.” (Fact check: When Joe Biden held power, at least on paper, Acosta and his fellow mainstream journalists routinely accused the people trying to hold him accountable of spreading misinformation.)
Al Franken, the disgraced former U.S. senator, accused CNN of “caving” to the White House because Acosta was such a “pain in Trump’s side during his first term.” Lincoln Project cofounder Steve Schmidt praised Acosta for refusing to “get in line” and called it “a resplendent day” for “integrity and journalism.” Indeed, Acosta remains a figure of middling renown among #Resistance grifters, dementia grannies, and childless cat ladies. “The Best of the Best,” wrote X user The Resistor Sister upon hearing the news. “With Jim’s departure, CNN becomes devoid of ANY shred of journalist integrity. Walter Cronkite is undoubtedly saying, ‘And that’s the way it is. Well done Jim.'”
Meanwhile, most normal Americans would probably consider Acosta to be the most annoying embodiment of the mainstream media’s smug self-righteousness and sneering disdain for everyday Americans. No one really cares what he does next. On Tuesday, Acosta invited his followers to join him on Substack Live to “talk about the day’s news” and insisted that “this is just the beginning.” He’ll probably end up taking a huge pay cut to work at MSNBC, assuming they even want him. He might write a few op-eds for the Contrarian, the new “pro-democracy” website founded by former Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin. He could even start his own podcast called Bullshit Assassin, or give some paid speeches to nursing-home bingo clubs. He’s not really qualified to do anything else.
In an effort to gain some insight into Acosta’s thinking during the time of courageous transition, the Washington Free Beacon exclusively and semi-legally obtained a copy of the resignation letter he sent to CNN chairman Mark Thompson, which we have reprinted below for your immediate enjoyment:
DATE: January 28, 2025
TO: Mark Thompson, Chairman and CEO of CNN Worldwide
SUBJECT: Emancipation
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for a great and humble man to dissolve the employment bands which have connected him to others, and to assert his independence as a stalwart guardian of Democracy against the encroachments of Tyranny, a decent respect to the obligations of corporate contracts requires that he should notify his superiors to facilitate the separation.
I hold these truths to be self-evident, that journalists are not the enemy of the people, that they are defenders of the people, anointed by the Constitution as civilian soldiers, armed only with Facts, whose toil and courage, though oft unseen, sustain the very lifeblood of Liberty; who upon their mighty shoulders bear the burden of Trust, standing fast athwart the walls of misinformation yelling “Lies!” with vigor unrepressed; whose teleprompter diatribes assail the machinations of Authority unchecked; whose fearless words ignite the darkness that pollutes the minds of uncredentialed Men.
Accordingly, all experience hath shown that a journalist is more disposed to suffer, while midnight time slots and other evils are sufferable, than to purify himself by abandoning the exorbitant salary to which he is accustomed. But when these familiar bonds conspire to reduce him under absolute Despotism, to castrate him under the guise of reorganization, gagged and flailing, to condemn him and his loyal audience to the indignity of Pacific Time, where the trauma and mental anguish of the January 6 insurrection are more lightly suffered on account of the distance, if these bonds endeavor to appease the Adolf Hitler of our century, and to wrench the pen of Justice from our noble journalist’s calloused fist, it is his right, it is his duty, to throw off such Employment, and to take his considerable talents elsewhere.
I, therefore, the veteran of countless defensive battles in the war on Truth, survivor of implied violence and malicious posts, victim of unholy evil, bellower of accountability in the halls of Power, articulator of insightful televised monologues, wielder of sardonic wordplay, bane of bullshit, purveyor of fact-checked riposte, bloodied on the barbs of fascism, nourished in the bosom of Liberty, chastened by the heat of Her effluvium, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world, the virile ghost of Walter Leland Cronkite Jr., for rectitude of my intentions, do solemnly publish and declare, That this distinguished journalist is, and of Right ought to be, Free and Independent for a period of time while my agent can assess the interest at MSNBC.
Yours in sacred Honor, thrusting ever outward,
This article was originally published at freebeacon.com
