Trump explains how he'll handle Jim Acosta now that his press pass is back
- President Donald Trump explained how he'll deal with Jim Acosta, the CNN's correspondent he barred from the White House after numerous confrontations, saying he has a simple solution.
- The White House will come up with a code of conduct for reporters, and if Acosta breaks the rules, they'll boot him out.
- CNN won a lawsuit and a federal judge restored Acosta's press pass after the White House removed it following a testy exchange where Acosta refused to give up the microphone.
- CNN's Brian Stelter believes the White House will try to boot Acosta again by the end of the month.
President Donald Trump explained how he'll deal with Jim Acosta, CNN correspondent he barred from the White House after numerous confrontations, saying he has a simple solution.
A federal judge on Friday granted CNN's request for a temporary restraining order to restore the White House correspondent Jim Acosta's press pass.
"It's fine, I mean, it's not a big deal," said Trump, reacting to Acosta's press pass being reinstated by the courts in an interview with Fox News' Chris Wallace.
The White House responded that it would come up with a code of conduct for the press at briefings, which hadn't existed before.
"What they said though was that we have to create rules and regulations for conduct, et cetera, et cetera," said Trump. "We're doing that. We're going to write them up right now, it's not a big deal."
"And if he misbehaves, we'll throw him out, or we'll stop the news conference," said Trump.
Trump then explained that he had a number of ideas for dealing with Acosta's brand of questioning, which has often lead to combative encounters at press conferences.
"[W]e'll have rules of decorum," said Trump. "You know, you can't keep asking questions. You have - we had a lot of reporters in that room, many, many reporters in that room and they were unable to ask questions because this guy gets up and starts doing what he's supposed to be doing for him and for CNN, and, you know, just shouting out questions."
Acosta challenged Trump with repeated questions on immigration and the Russia probe, which led to Trump calling him a "rude, terrible person" as Acosta held on to the microphone and kept talking while a White House intern tried to take it back.
CNN argued in their lawsuit that revoking Acosta's press pass violated the First Amendment right of freedom of the press, as well as CNN's and Acosta's Fifth Amendment right to due process.
Code of conduct
Trump was vague on the code of conduct the White House was drafting, and it's unclear whether it would pertain only to behavior within the press briefings or if they would apply to a journalist's outside behavior too.
Trump also didn't mention if the White House would publish a code of conduct for its own staff. Over the weekend, Trump misspelled Democrat Adam Schiff's last name as a homophone for the swear word for excrement.
Some of the specifics missing from Trump's discussion of standards of decorum were likely discussed in a letter that Sanders sent to CNN, which laid out "what we think were some of the missteps that their reporter made at the press conference on November 7," Sanders told Fox.
"From the looks of the letter, the W.H. is trying to establish a paper trail that will empower the administration to boot Acosta again at the end of the month," CNN's Brian Stelter wrote in his Reliable Sources newsletter.
Asked by Fox News' Wallace why he even calls on Acosta if he believes him so rude, Trump said he asked Sanders the same thing, without providing an actual reason why.
Instead, Trump described another plan to step on CNN's airtime.
"I think one of the things we'll do is maybe turn the camera off that faces them because then they don't have any air time, although I'll probably be sued for that and maybe win or lose it, who knows?" said Trump. "I mean, with this stuff, you never know what's going to happen."