Frequent Trump critic Jim Acosta faced backlash after he blasted Karoline Leavitt – comparing the youngest-ever White House press secretary to a “kid” who is “telling you a tall tale.”
On Wednesday, during an interview with left-leaning podcast Meidas Touch, the former CNN anchor torched the newest press secretary.
“She [Leavitt] might just get on Trump’s all-star team of liars,” Acosta said. “She might be on the bench right now, but if she keeps working hard, she does her homework, she just might make it onto the team.”
“It’s sort of like…when your kid is telling you a tall tale, and you’re just looking at them like, ‘Okay Johnny, sure, yeah, I believe you,” he continued, “and you just walk away saying, ‘What the hell. That kid’s not telling me the truth.’”
Leavitt delivered her first briefing from the White House as press secretary late last month.
At 27, she is the youngest to ever serve in the role.
Before Leavitt, the youngest White House press secretary was 29-year-old Ronald Ziegler during the Nixon administration.
Trump supporters were quick to denounce Acosta’s attack on Leavitt on social media, accusing the journalist of hypocrisy.
“You have less than zero credibility at this point,” one critic wrote in a post on X.
“Jim’s just jealous & hurt that young woman are so much smarter & far more relevant than his washed up old lying ass!” another user wrote on X.
Some users accused Acosta of lying throughout his own career, with one posting: “Jim Acosta calling someone a LIAR… now that’s rich.”
Other critics took jabs at Acosta after CNN reportedly tried to exile him to a graveyard shift, pushing him to quit last month.
“Unemployed former quasi-journalist says what?” one user on X said.
Another wrote: “Jim looks lonely sitting in his room with no job.”
Acosta implied that Leavitt was worse than Trump’s first-term press secretaries.
“It’s hard to see somebody out-Spicer Sean Spicer, or out-Huckabee Sarah Huckabee Sanders, but Karoline Leavitt, she’s making a run for it,” Acosta said.
The former CNN host then nodded to Melissa McCarthy’s Sean Spicer character on “Saturday Night Live.”
“I would have to think that something like that is in the works because the skit writes itself,” he said, about a possible Leavitt impersonator on the comedy sketch show. “They’re such bad liars.”
Acosta slammed President Trump, accusing him of being “addicted” to seeing himself on television and forcing his staffers to lie to the press.
It’s “a sad and sorry state of affairs,” Acosta said. “I feel very sorry for the fact-checkers out there because once again, they’re working in overdrive.”
