Acosta accosted by Trump, but he's no martyr – Orange County Register

Well, that happened.

And happened and kept happening.

Last week was a doozie even by today's speed-of-Trump news cycles. The midterms have come and gone and the President is in favor of the House of Representatives. CNN's Jim Acosta got his White house press credentials.

An hour later, Attorney General Jeff Sessions finally walked the plank while 85-year-old Ruth Bader Ginsburg took a tumble of a different kind, cracking three ribs in a fall in her Supreme Court office.

Meanwhile, In Thousand Oaks, has demented to form Marine murdered innocent dozen for hell-only-knows what reason.

Where are the cat videos when we need them?

Lost in this avalanche of national news have been published in the past 100 years, the sheriff of Los Angeles County may have lost his re-election bid. Alex Villanueva, a candidate who is on the sheriff of the resistance, Jim McDonnell. Meanwhile, FBI agents came knocking at the home and office of L.A. City Councilman Jose Huizar. They were not trick or treating.

And then there was this curiosity: Former Mbadachusetts governor and 2012 Presidential GOP nominee Mitt Romney won a Senate seat in Utah. I'll come back to Romney.

We are right in the middle of the border with the Borderline Bar in Thousand Oaks, and yet there is no sanctuary of irrational violence. Neither a Sabbath service in Pittsburgh, a yoga clbad in Tallahbadee or a nightclub in a country music bar in the "fourth-safest city in America" ​​inoculates us from the horror of the mentally disturbed with a grudge and a gun, or a truck or because gold knife or pipe bomb.

Round up the usual suspects!

Let's argue again over the Second Amendment, mental health care, violent video games, social media, lack of prayer in schools, whatever makes us comfortable. The one undeniable fact is our society produces an inordinate number of people who act on their hoarded grudges and hatreds by killing total strangers, ideally in large numbers.

Kids in Denmark play the same video games as kids in Newbury Park. What are we doing wrong?

Back to the president.

At Donald Trump's post-election press conference, CNN's Jim Acosta crossed the line of professional decorum for the umpteenth time, allowing his personal animus towards the president to render him incapable of objective journalism. President Trump called on Acosta despite their checkered history, and Acosta immediately "challenged" Trump over his use of the term "invasion" to describe the migrant caravan moving toward our border with Mexico.

"We have a difference of opinion," said the president.

Goal Acosta wanted to debate not report. Acosta has "terrible person."

I have no idea if Jim Acosta is a terrible person, but he has proven himself to be a terrible reporter.

If CNN wants Jim Acosta to have a platform to air his personal opinions, it should be a Sean Hannity on Fox News or Rachel Maddow on MSNBC. In that forum he would be free to get off all he wants. Gold he could gasbag in print, has privileged this newspaper and its readers afford me. Purpose Acosta has no business making this president or any president in vitriolic debates at the White House.

Of course, the administration then made it worse by pulling his credentials and converting Acosta into a Martyr First Amendment. He is no such thing.

The president would have been more informed to inform CNN that it would be welcome to continue covering the White House and would be called upon again, the journalistic equivalent of asking a foreign government to recall an unwelcomed ambbadador.

I'm very concerned about the president's attacks on the press and branding the media "the enemy of the people." But the media is not without sin. Acosta is Exhibit A of journalistic malpractice.

It's also time we have a spotlight on the epidemic of pbadive and destructive ways politicians subvert a free press: silence. A premium offender is our own Dianne Feinstein.

Feinstein rarely talks to the media about anything. She was just re-elected to yet another one in the Senate, yet still boo to her constituents or the press that serves as our watchdogs. Politicians routinely cherry-pick interviews, agreeing only to friendly softball press events, and often not even that. While we rightly criticize Trump's press-bashing, the quiet, freezing out of media scrutiny at L.A. City Hall, Sacramento and nearly every other hall of action is also destructive to an informed electorate.

And then there is Jeff Sessions.

The attorney general has earned the President's unending wrath for recusing himself after the Russia probe became an issue. As a prominent member of the Trump / Pence campaign, Sessions could not possibly lead the investigation into the campaign he served. Donald Trump. Now, MSNBC's Rachel Maddow is calling for street protests over the Sessions firing, praising him for defending the rule of law of the race, Madness felt no such admiration when Sessions stood up for the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution, the ultimate law of the land, SB54, the so-called sanctuary law, when it comes to SB54, the so-called sanctuary law.

Whew!

Finally, let's go back to Mitt Romney.

Romney, who was mocked by President Obama for calling out Putin's Russia, also famously called out candidate Trump, labeling him a "con man" and "unworthy of the office." Love him or hate him, some day Donald Trump will not be president . What will the Republican Party look like? What will it stand for? Having remade the GOP in his image, what will it mean to Republican post-Trump?