Acosta Blasted for Hypocrisy After Criticizing Trump for Coronavirus 'Xenophobia'

Acosta Exposed for Hypocrisy After Attacking Trump for 'Xenophobia'

Volume 90%

By Joe Saunders

Published March 12, 2020 at 10:08am

Hypocrisy is rarely so blatant – even on CNN.

In the moments immediately following President Donald Trump’s address from the Oval Office about the coronavirus outbreak on Wednesday, CNN trotted out its chief White House correspondent to claim Trump’s words were “smacking of xenophobia” when he described the virus as stemming from a foreign source.

But it was only two months ago that Acosta himself used the phrase “Wuhan virus” in a tweet describing the impact of the virus on China’s plans to celebrate the lunar new year – and social media users didn’t let him forget it.

The issue arose late Wednesday after an on-air conversation between Acosta and CNN anchor Chris Cuomo.

From a major speech by an American president about a virus the World Health Organization has now classified as a pandemic, Acosta decided one of the major takeaways was a minor word choice.

Check it out here.

“The president referred to the coronavirus as a ‘foreign virus,’” Acosta told Cuomo. “That I think was interesting because, I was talking to sources earlier this evening, one of the points that the president wanted to make tonight, wanted to get across to Americans, is that this virus did not start here, but that they’re dealing it.’

“Now, why the president would go as far to describe it as a foreign virus, that is something we’ll also be asking questions about.”

Let’s save CNN the trouble of asking the question. The president went so far “to describe it as a foreign virus” because Trump is the president of the United States of America who was talking to Americans about a virus that originated in China. And because Americans are Americans, China is by definition “foreign.”

For the record, the paragraph where Trump used the word wasn’t even close to inflammatory.

From CNN’s annotated transcript, it read:

“This is the most aggressive and comprehensive effort to confront a foreign virus in modern history. I am confident that by counting and continuing to take these tough measures, we will significantly reduce the threat to our citizens, and we will ultimately and expeditiously defeat this virus. “

For CNN talking heads, whose jobs might depend on finding any angle of attack on any story, Acosta’s biased brand of hyperventilation might seem normal — puzzling as it might be to sane individuals.

But the particular irony here is an Acosta tweet from Jan. 23, where he used a much more specific branding for the virus — not some general “foreign” adjective, but a word that described the virus by its geographical point of origin: The very Chinese city of Wuhan, capital of China’s Hubei Province.

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Poster Comment:

Sometimes you just have to eat some cheese.