After nearly 18 years with CNN, Jim Acosta officially signed off from the network with a message directed at viewers and a certain audience of one: “It is never a good time to bow down to a tyrant.”
Acosta, who announced his departure at the close of his Tuesday morning show, had been expected to leave the network within weeks, according to CNN’s chief media analyst Brian Stelter.
Instead, the anchor cut the cord sooner.
“People often ask me if the highlight of my career at CNN was at the White House covering Donald Trump,” Acosta observed in his final remarks. “Actually, no. That moment came . . . when I covered former President Barack Obama's trip to Cuba in 2016 and had the chance to question the dictator there, Raul Castro, about the island's political prisoners.
“As the son of a Cuban refugee. I took home this lesson: It is never a good time to bow down to a tyrant. 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.”
Acosta advised his audience, “Don‘t give in to the lies. Don‘t give in to the fear. Hold on to the truth and to hope. Even if you have to get out your phone, record that message. ‘I will not give in to the lies. I will not give in to the fear.’”
Acosta’s decampment confirms his former colleague Oliver Darcy’s Monday report in Status News that the journalist declined to go along with CNN chief executive Mark Thompson’s determination to move him from daytime to midnight.
This drastic shift was pitched as part of a broader reconfiguration of CNN's lineup, which also bumps “The Situation Room” host Wolf Blitzer out of his long-held evening berth into Acosta’s former slot where he's set to co-anchor with Pamela Brown starting in March.
As Darcy observed in an earlier Status scoop, insiders view Thompson’s move as an appeasement offering to the returning president. Acosta regularly aggravated Trump during his first administration when he served as CNN's chief White House correspondent.
In a statement provided to Salon, a CNN spokesperson hailed Acosta’s “track record of standing up to authority, for the First Amendment and for our journalistic freedoms.
“We want to thank him for the dedication and commitment he’s brought to his reporting and wish him the very best in the future,” the statement added.
In November 2018, Acosta questioned the president’s description of a migrant caravan moving toward the Mexico-U.S. border as an "invasion." After Acosta refused to let a White House intern take away the microphone while he asked a follow-up question, the White House revoked his press pass. A judge ordered the administration to reinstate Acosta's pass after CNN filed a lawsuit joined by other news organizations, and his access was restored less than two weeks later.
On Tuesday Trump posted this response to the news on Truth Social: “Jim is a major loser who will fail no matter where he ends up.”
Acosta spared no time in establishing his next act, unveiling “The Jim Acosta Show” on Substack. He is the latest cable news personality to embrace a digital platform following a high profile exit, following in the wake of his former CNN colleague Don Lemon, former MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan and former Fox News host Tucker Carlson.
Per a CNN spokesperson, Brown will assume Acosta’s 10 a.m. timeslot, expanding her anchor duties to two hours on weekdays until CNN’s new lineup launches this spring.
