CNN’s senior White House correspondent Jim Acosta does not think President Donald Trump and his administrative team are “on the same planet.”
In an interview with anchor Anderson Cooper Monday evening, Acosta referred to White House press secretary Sean Spicer’s off-camera, no-audio press briefing earlier in the day as “the upside down world we’re living in right now.” He also questioned Trump’s ability to communicate with the people who represent him.
After Cooper played a clip of counselor to the President Kellyanne Conway on “Fox and Friends” Monday morning claiming Trump was being ironic when he tweeted a statement that appeared to confirm he was under investigation, he brought on Acosta to attempt to “clear up any irony there may be.”
“I honestly don’t know what that means. I do not know what that means,” Cooper said. “Jim, this seems to be yet another example of the President and those who represent him, simply, I don’t know, not being on the same page. … Is that what it is?”
“I’m not sure they’re on the same planet,” Acosta said. “Not only have we heard the White House say, ‘Well, the President’s tweets speak for themselves,’ we’ve also heard the President say he likes to use social media because it goes over the filter of the main stream news media.”
“So that would come with the suggestion that you should believe his tweets as they’re written, as they’re posted,” Acosta added.
He said Trump attorney Jay Sekulow’s attempts to “try to explain this away” are a contradiction to “the simple truth, and that is when the President tweets something, the White House believes that is the gospel around here.”
