At Monday’s White House Easter Egg Roll, CNN reporter Jim Acosta asked President Donald Trump a question about his decision to end negotiations about protections for hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants brought to the United States as children. Perhaps forgetting its founders’ mantra, the conservative Daily Caller was outraged.
Since Trump has not held a press conference in more than a year — 409 days, according to the Washington Post — Acosta asked it during Trump’s appearance at Monday’s event.
An exchange between @Acosta and President Trump on DACA
(via White House pool report) pic.twitter.com/kr29PCcWUy
— Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur) April 2, 2018
The Daily Caller’s Benny Johnson, who lost his job at BuzzFeed in 2014 over plagiarism allegations, blasted Acosta in a Monday afternoon column: “Jim Acosta Yelled At Trump While He Was Coloring With Children At White House Easter Egg Roll.”
Here’s Jim Acosta yelling at Trump about DACA while the president colors with Barron, Melania & children gathered at the White House pic.twitter.com/JCPsaREe8A
— Benny (@bennyjohnson) April 2, 2018
Beyond the irony of Johnson serving as an arbiter of media ethics, the Daily Caller’s own history flies in the face of this criticism. In 2012, then-Daily Caller reporter Neil Munro received national attention when he repeatedly interrupted President Barack Obama during his Rose Garden remarks (coincidentally, he was announcing the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals policy at the time).
Watch the video.
Daily Caller co-founder Tucker Carlson, then the site’s editor-in-chief, defended Munro’s actions. “I don’t remember Diane Sawyer scolding her colleague Sam Donaldson for heckling President Reagan. And she shouldn’t have. A reporter’s job is to ask questions and get answers. Our job is to find out what the federal government is up to. Politicians often don’t want to tell us. A good reporter gets the story. We’re proud of Neil Munro.”
Co-founder and publisher Neil Patel also defended Munro. “The President today announced a very controversial policy and does not want to answer tough questions about it. Neil Munro is a veteran Washington reporter who today tried his best to time his question to be first as the President was wrapping up his remarks.”
Carlson told Huffington Post at the time that asking questions “is what reporters are supposed to do.”