'A propagandist for profit, peddling lies every night': CNN correspondent Jim Acosta goes in on Fox News host Sean Hannity

AP Photo/Alex Brandon

CNN White House correspondent Jim Acosta

• CNN White House correspondent Jim Acosta scolded Fox News' Sean Hannity on Wednesday night, calling the opinion-show host a "propagandist for profit, peddling lies every night," and said Hannity is "injecting poison into the political bloodstream" with his diatribes against the press.
• Acosta's comments follow the hostile reception he encountered while covering a Tampa, Florida, rally featuring President Donald Trump a day earlier. A crowd of Trump supporters surrounded Acosta chanting "CNN sucks" while taunting the veteran journalist.
• Hannity responded, calling Acosta "liberal partisan hack" on his cable program. Fellow Fox News commentator Lou Dobbs derisively called Acosta "delicate."

Jim Acosta, CNN's chief White House correspondent and a frequent target of President Donald Trump and his supporters, criticized Fox News host Sean Hannity on Wednesday night.

"Hannity is a propagandist for profit, peddling lies every night. He says he's just a talk show host, not a journalist. But he's injecting poison into the nation's political bloodstream warping public attitudes about the press," Acosta wrote on Twitter.

"I'm confident in the long run the truth will prevail," he said.

Hannity is one of Trump's close confidantes and a vocal supporter of the president. The opinion-show host responded to Acosta's criticism with a few broadsides of his own, accusing the veteran journalist of being a "liberal partisan hack."

He took another swipe at Acosta on Twitter. Hannity frequently rails against objective news coverage about Trump from the pulpit of his primetime cable program. He has called such reporting "unfair" and accused news outlets of harboring biases against the president.

Joe Concha, a reporter for The Hill, attempted to draw comparisons between Acosta and Hannity. Concha called them both "advocates and opinionators" - Hannity, as a Trump supporter and Acosta for the "Trump resistance," according to Concha. That comparison did not go over well with Acosta's CNN colleague, reporter Andrew Kaczynski.

In a reply to Concha, Kaczynski said: "Jim deals in facts and sources. Hannity is [a] liar who tormented the family of a murdered DNC staffer by spreading a conspiracy about their son stealing hacked emails ... Great comparison dude," he wrote.

Earlier Wednesday, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders offered only a tepid rebuke for the behavior seen at the Trump rally in Tampa, but quickly turned some of the blame on reporters and news outlets, calling the give and take between the president and the free press a "two-way street."

Huckabee's assertion, however, is at odds with the White House and Trump's demonstrated hostility toward the journalists who cover the president.