CNN’s Jim Acosta published an unsubstantiated, anonymously sourced story about Sarah Huckabee Sanders to help an angry Trump campaign official settle a score.
That’s according to a preview of a Breitbart exclusive report on a new book released Monday by former White House aide Cliff Sims, Team of Vipers: My Extraordinary 500 Days in the Trump White House.
According to the report, a former Trump campaign worker with an ax to grind leaked unproven, misleading information about Sanders, and Acosta ran it as part of his network’s crusade against the Trump administration.
Fake News
The Trump White House is a notoriously leaky ship, and the president has fumed against the disloyal staffers who have provided the mainstream media with a steady stream of anti-Trump innuendo in the past. Sims’ new book reportedly paints a picture of the petty intrigues and score-settling between White House staffers that has supposedly gone on behind closed doors.
According to Sims, Trump even once met with him privately and asked for his help in making two lists: one of staffers he could trust, and another of the leakers and liars. The White House has denied that Sims was in Trump’s inner circle.
Still, leakers have been a major headache for Trump, and it looks like his anger is justified. According to Sims, an anonymous aide leaked unverified rumors that Trump was “upset” with Sanders to CNN to settle a score with her, and CNN uncritically published his story while shielding his identity.
Sims said he received an alarming message in March 2018 from another staffer, Steven Cheung, about an incoming hit piece on the press secretary. Sims wrote in his book:
“We need to pay attention to CNN, because I think something bad might be about to happen,” [Cheung] said. I joked that such a statement could apply to almost any moment. But in this particular instance, Cheung explained that one of our former campaign colleagues was mad at Sarah Sanders—he wasn’t entirely clear why—and was sending Cheung cryptic texts that he “had something coming for her on CNN.” Sure enough, an article popped up on CNN’s website shortly thereafter with the headline “Trump Upset with Sanders.”
The article’s byline names Acosta and Veronica Stracqualursi, and notes contributions from Kevin Liptak and Jeff Zeleny. Citing one anonymous source “close to the White House,” the report claims that Trump was “upset” with Sanders’ response at a press briefing to the Stormy Daniels controversy. The source is cited as saying that “POTUS is very unhappy” and that “Sarah gave the Stormy Daniels storyline steroids yesterday.”
Sanders had said that a non-disclosure agreement between Trump and Daniels was won “in Trump’s favor,” and the article insinuates that Trump was angry about this “admission that the nondisclosure agreement exists, and that it directly involves the [p]resident.” CNN also noted that two White House officials came to Sanders’ defense, but curiously doesn’t quote them and falls back on the predictable anti-Trump angle that Trump is isolated and unable to rely on his own staffers.
Leaking ship
It seems like every non-entity who spent a few months in the Trump White House has written some ephemeral “insider account” trashing the president to make a buck off of the anti-Trump media machine, and Sims may well fall within that category himself. Trump is reportedly unhappy with the book and has denied being close to Sims, who he has dismissively referred to as “the videographer” — but that’s according to yet more anonymous White House officials.
Former and current White House officials from “warring factions” have also condemned Sims, who himself was suspected of leaking insider information, according to Politico.
But it’s difficult to tell who in this White House court drama is telling the truth when all the sources are anonymous. Sims’ description of treachery by a leaker would seem to be a boon to Trump, but Sims also paints a chaotic picture of the White House that is familiar from the steady stream of gossip books, and he has begun hitting the networks to promote his tell-all.
Sims told ABC that he was part of a “team of vipers” and that he regrets some decisions he made at the White House. All the same, that doesn’t on its face discredit what Sims said about CNN, which sounds hardly out of line with the behavior of White House leakers and the complicit media who report their claims.
“All of this, of course, was based on a single anonymous source. But unlike the public, we knew this source went around town convincing people—journalists and clients alike—that he maintained a close relationship with the President,” Sims writes. “In reality, Trump couldn’t have picked him out of a lineup. He had completely made up the story about the President being mad at Sarah. Acosta had run the single-sourced story, apparently unconcerned about whether it was true or not. And that’s how your CNN news was programmed for the day.”
Acosta promoted on TV
According to Sims, Acosta then did what he does best: “[He] went out on TV and dramatically described the deteriorating relationship between the President and his once-beloved Press Secretary.”
Of course, it takes two to make a leak successful: the leakers and the sycophantic press that breathlessly prints their every whisper, as long as it makes Trump look bad. While CNN helped the anonymous source settle a score, leakers and the media are simpatico when it comes to undermining Trump, and there’s no doubt that Acosta has his own scores to settle with the commander-in-chief.
Acosta has feuded with Trump in spectacularly dramatic and childish fashion in the past, including a spat with Sanders in an infamous press briefing in November that led the White House to revoke his press pass before a federal judge ordered the White House to restore it. Acosta is also writing a book of his own, since making himself the center of the news cycle with histrionic stunts apparently wasn’t enough.
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