Making Himself the Story Pays Off For CNN’s Acosta

You can loathe him all you want, but CNN White House reporter Jim Acosta has proven that a lack of professionalism can pave the way for a lucrative payday. With his buffoonish antics at presidential press conferences, Acosta succeeded in making himself the focus of the news. A clear animus toward the subject he professes to be impartially "reporting" on, President Trump, has made him a partisan hero of the Left. And now, thanks to Hillary Clinton's longtime personal lawyer, he is cashing in on his notoriety with a cozy new book deal.

Read All About Him

"Acosta, the most visible member of the media branded an 'enemy of the people' by President Trump, exposes the tumultuous and dangerous realities of the current White House and its war on truth and the first amendment," reads the announcement by publishing powerhouse HarperCollins. Heck, why report the news when you can be the news yourself?

“This sobering, bewildering, and sometimes frightening experience has made it absolutely clear that this is a dangerous time to tell the truth in America," Acosta is quoted in the press release. It may or not be a dangerous time for Acosta to spin his biased "truths" but it certainly is a profitable time.

There was no word on just how much Acosta will be raking in on his advance for the book deal, but the fact that he was represented by legendary D.C. lawyer Bob Barnett indicates that his take will be substantial. Barnett has struck deals for the cream of the Swamp establishment for decades now, cutting across fictitious red-blue lines. Among his clients are Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, George W. Bush, and Dick Cheney.

Barnett represented Barack and Michelle Obama as they netted a nonfiction-record $60 million deal in February 2017. Politico reported the stunning pact "seemed to cement [Barnett's] status as a superlawyer without peer."

He is a longtime Democrat who has actively worked on the party's presidential campaigns going as far back as 1976. He has served as Hillary Clinton's personal lawyer, was intimately involved in her 2016 race against Trump, and even was said to expect a position in a Hillary administration if she had won the election.

The Daily Caller notes that Barnett was forced to step down as Clinton's lawyer in 1993 when media outlets wondered how journalists represented by him could report impartially on the White House. "How exactly does a real reporter, I found myself wondering, cover the President and then sleep with his lawyer every night?” Wall Street Journal media critic Marvin Kitman wrote at the time.

No Character, No Conflict

Well, we don't have real reporters anymore, so there are no worries on that score. For nobody worries about conflicts of interest when it comes to CNN "reporters." We already know where their interests stand, and there is no point even trying to pretend they are above the fray.

He is being rewarded for laboring on behalf of an entrenched Establishment that despises this president and his supporters.  

Acosta is not being rewarded for carrying water for Democrats. He is being rewarded for laboring on behalf of an entrenched Establishment that despises this president and his supporters. You don't get a D.C. "superlawyer" like Bob Barnett to represent you on your cushy book deal unless you have made all the right people happy in a dirty industry town.

Acosta "details never-before-revealed stories of this White House’s rejection of truth, while laying out the stakes for how Trump’s hostility toward facts poses an unprecedented threat to our democracy," the HarperCollins release luridly states. Here's what it doesn't say, and can never say: "Acosta diligently reports the news coming out of the White House in a calm, rational, honest and evenhanded manner."

But Jim Acosta learned some time ago that in our poisonous media environment today it is theater and distortion, and not personal integrity, which pay the big bucks.