CNN’s Acosta: Trump Knows All About Mobs, He ‘Encourages Them’

Monday on CNN’s “Newsroom,” network chief White House correspondent Jim Acosta said President Donald Trump knew “what mob rule and mob tactics look like because he encourages them.”

Acosta said, “It’s pretty remarkable what he’s saying, Brooke. We should point out, a few minutes before you came on the air, he was making additional comments at this law enforcement speech that he’s giving down in Orlando, Florida. He was talking about the battle over Brett Kavanaugh and some of the allegations that were brought forward. And he said, quote, ‘It was a disgraceful situation brought about by people who are evil.’ So the president is putting this in some very stark — I mean just the most pointed terms possible. It is unclear, Brooke, whether or not the President is lumping in the accuser in that Brett Kavanaugh saga, Christine Blasey Ford, into that comment when he says that this was brought forward by people who are evil. If you talk to people inside the White House, inside the Republican party, obviously in the Democratic side, they all believe Christine Blasey Ford, to the point where she says she was sexually assaulted. Where there seems to be a huge divide is that people like Susan Collins and so on say while they believe Christine Blasey Ford, was assaulted, they don’t believe that Brett Kavanaugh committed that act.”

He continued, “But it is rather striking, Brooke, to hear the president continue this battle, almost as if he wants it to continue. And we’ll see some of that later on this evening when the president hosts an event over here at the White House in the East Room, where Brett Kavanaugh will be brought out in front of the cameras and announced as the next Supreme Court justice. This is the victory lap that they’re looking for over here at the White House. The way this is being framed in the most stark political terms possible, it does raise the question whether or not the president is trying to go too far with some of this rhetoric, you know? His talk of mob rule and so on, I mean, Brooke, have you been to a Trump rally?”

He added, “You do hear rhetoric at those rallies that would conjure up images of a mob. Go back to the 2016 campaign when the president said as a candidate that he would like to punch protesters in the face and so on. So perhaps the president knows what mob rule and mob tactics look like because he encourages them himself.”

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