CNN anchor Jim Acosta, a longtime thorn in the side of President-elect Donald Trump, just got some bad news.
In his latest move to shake up the ratings-deprived network, CNN chief Mark Thompson is reportedly considering moving Acosta out of his relatively successful morning slot and burying him to host a show running from midnight until 2 am ET.
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The news comes via Oliver Darcy, writing for his Status newsletter. Darcy, himself a former CNN journalist, with his influential “Reliable Sources” newsletter, indicates that his own reliable sources have told him Thompson floated the idea in a phone call that shocked Acosta.
“The move would effectively exile Acosta to the Siberia of television news. He’d be manning down a shift when much of the country is fast asleep and viewership is at its lowest,” he writes.
While Thompson could effectively defend such a move as he shuffles lineups in an attempt to revive the dying network, it’s impossible to avoid the obvious — it would make Trump happy.
“They want to get rid of Acosta to throw a bone to Trump,” one source explained to Darcy. “Midnight is not a serious offer when his ratings are among the best on the network.”
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News of Acosta’s potential exile comes less than 24 hours after an attention-grabbing stunt in which he claimed the media was in danger with Trump’s looming return to the Oval Office.
“[President Biden] warned the free press is crumbling in this country, I would add that’s only if we, the people, let that happen,” the melodramatic anchor said.
“Journalists exist to seek the truth, to tell people stories, to lift up voices that may not be heard otherwise. To shine a light on injustice and hold the powerful accountable, we are not the enemy of the people we are the defender of the people.”
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He even held up a placard allegedly given to him by a woman which reads, “I march for Jim Acosta and a free press.”
Some final thoughts on today’s show… on the free press in America. The free press is only “crumbling” if we the people allow that to happen. Watch: pic.twitter.com/m6AAgGyTGU
— Jim Acosta (@Acosta) January 16, 2025
Honestly, I’m impressed Acosta had time to paint that placard. And his use of pink, recalling those hats of a particular color during the first resistance shows a decent level of artistry. Famed painter Hunter Biden would be jealous.
As RedState’s Bob Hoge pointed out in his coverage of the stunt, Acosta may have been “sensing a chance to return to his former glory,” a return to the resistance. A return to those marches.
Now, it seems, he’ll be marching his a** to the midnight timeslot.
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Make no mistake, this probably won’t crush his ego. Acosta will likely continue to be overly dramatic and make the story all about his own personal struggles to fight Trump. He is a warrior, after all … in his own mind.
Following the 2020 election, Acosta claimed that covering Trump’s first term warranted “hazard pay” and suggested his time doing so was a “non-stop national emergency.”
His own book, titled “The Enemy of the People: A Dangerous Time to Tell the Truth in America,” describes Acosta as “public enemy number one” as the media was “fighting on the front lines in President Trump’s war on truth.”
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What a soldier he is. Perhaps that book will one day be made into a movie titled, “Saving Private Acosta.”
Others don’t quite view him the same way.
Steve Krakauer, a one-time senior digital producer for CNN, lambasted Acosta for an incident in 2018 where he repeatedly shouted a question asking President Trump if he would stop calling media members like himself the “enemy of the people.”
Krakauer replied by blasting Acosta as “self-serving” and “truly an embarrassment, on multiple levels,” complaining that he “give(s) all good journalists a bad name.”
Oh, and he’s also the enemy of the people. So there’s that.
“Mr. President, will you stop calling the press the enemy of the people,” CNN Journalist Jim Acosta shouted at the end of Trump’s speech pic.twitter.com/FqWT5afwUV
— POLITICO (@politico) June 29, 2018
It’d be a lengthy endeavor trying to track down all of Acosta’s embarrassing moments during his first tenure covering the Trump administration. But I will note he once walked out of a press briefing practically teary-eyed when then-White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders refused to say he wasn’t the enemy.
Then, of course, there was the famous incident where Trump told him to stop asking questions, and Acosta refused to turn over his microphone to a young female White House aide.
BREAKING: White House aide grabs and tries to physically remove a microphone from CNN Correspondent Jim Acosta during a contentious exchange with President Trump at a news conference. pic.twitter.com/fFm7wclFw2
— NBC News (@NBCNews) November 7, 2018
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Is there any chance of Thompson reviving viewership at CNN? A recent report by Deadline indicates that the network “saw big post-election drop-offs as politics-weary viewers tuned out after Trump’s victory and Vice President Kamala Harris’ loss.”
CNN has been down 49 percent since the period leading up to Election Day.
Exiling Acosta to Siberia, figuratively or literally, is a decent start.
