CNN’s Jim Acosta is writing a book about Trump’s war with the media
CNN’s chief White House correspondent Jim Acosta is authoring a book about the Trump administration and its battles with the news media.
The Harper imprint of HarperCollins Publishers announced the book on Thursday morning. Harper says Acosta will share “never-before-revealed stories of this White House’s rejection of truth, while laying out the stakes for how Trump’s hostility toward facts poses an unprecedented threat to our democracy.”
The book’s title is “The Enemy of the People: A Dangerous Time to Tell the Truth in America.”
The first part, of course, comes from the president’s own rhetoric against the press corps. The subtitle comes from a speech Acosta gave at San Jose State University last year.
“This is a dangerous time to tell the truth in America, but the truth is bigger than a bully,” he said.
Acosta’s book will come out on June 11. The book deal was first reported by The Associated Press.
Acosta started to gather material for a possible book during the 2016 presidential campaign, and he signed the book deal with Harper last fall, before the 2018 midterm elections.
That means that the book was in the works well before Trump singled out Acosta and banned him from the White House grounds the day after the midterms. CNN and Acosta challenged the administration’s action and won a temporary restraining order from a federal judge. The White House then reinstated Acosta’s press pass.
“Simply put, I am writing this book to share what I’ve experienced covering President Trump during his first two years in office,” Acosta said in a statement on Thursday. “This sobering, bewildering, and sometimes frightening experience has made it absolutely clear that this is a dangerous time to tell the truth in America.”
In his statement, he alluded to the press pass incident: “The president and his team, not to mention some of his supporters, have attempted to silence the press in ways we have never seen before. As just about everybody has seen, I have witnessed this first hand. As difficult as that challenge may be for the free press in America, we must continue to do our jobs and report the news. The truth is worth the fight.”
Acosta was represented by lawyer and literary agent Bob Barnett, who strikes deals for many media and political figures in Washington.
