Jim Acosta, the acerbic CNN anchor who rose to prominence by sparring with President Donald Trump during his first administration, is reportedly planning to leave the network after he was offered a midnight slot in the cable news giant’s lineup.
In a Monday edition of his newsletter Status, former CNN media correspondent Oliver Darcy reports that the anchor has “signaled” in private conversations with associates that he plans to leave CNN after mulling over chief executive Mark Thompson’s scheduling offer.
Darcy was the first to report last week that Acosta had been offered a proposal by Thompson as part of CNN’s new programming makeover to helm a midnight Eastern time newscast, instead of his current 10 a.m. show. The proposal was later confirmed by the Los Angeles Times, which cited two sources familiar with the discussions.
After ruminating over the offer, however, Acosta opted out of the deal. It remains unclear when his departure will be publicly announced.
US President Donald Trump (R) gets into a heated exchange with CNN chief White House correspondent Jim Acosta (C) as NBC correspondent Peter Alexander (L) looks on during a post-election press conference in the East Room of the White House in Washington, DC on November 7, 2018. / MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images
The news anchor did not respond to Darcy’s request for comment Monday. A representative for CNN did not immediately respond to the Daily Beast’s request for comment.
Acosta’s 10 a.m. slot is slated to be replaced with The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer and Pamela Brown, as CNN undergoes a company-wide overhaul.
Alongside pivots in television programming, over 100 CNN staffers were laid off last Thursday. Thompson clarified in a memo that the network would be shifting its focus to digital news.
As Darcy put it, the news of Acosta’s departure is “sure [to] please Trump,” who briefly revoked Acosta’s White House press pass during his first term after the two repeatedly butted heads.
“CNN should be ashamed of itself having you working for them,” Trump once told Acosta during a 2018 squabble. “You are a rude, terrible person. You shouldn’t be working for CNN.”
The pair went at it again two years later at a news conference in New Delhi where Trump told Acosta that his “record is so bad” he “ought to be ashamed” of himself.
“I’m not ashamed of anything, and our organization’s not ashamed,” Acosta retorted, but not before Trump got the last word in and said, “You probably have the worst record in the history of broadcasting.”
Thompson, for his part, insists that the offer for Acosta’s new shift had nothing to do with politics or pressure from the new Trump administration—arguing that it was simply a result of Blitzer and Brown’s new show, according to Darcy.
