Jim Acosta Absolutely Brutalized by His CNN Co-Workers: ‘Insufferable, an Egomaniac’

If you needed yet another object lesson in how Donald Trump 2.0 is going to be markedly different than his first go-around at the presidency, you need only look at the sorry case of Jim Acosta.

Those fond of watching White House press briefings when there were adversarial questions (and a president willing to take them) will remember CNN’s Acosta from his tendentious sparring matches with Trump during his first term.

After Joe Biden got elected, Acosta was shifted from White House correspondent to … well, somewhere. I’m sure you can find him on the network’s schedule if you look real hard.

Alas, you’re going to have to look even harder now.

Despite the fact that the 45th president is also the 47th president, CNN’s political Rottweiler isn’t getting his old Pennsylvania Ave. assignment back. In fact, Acosta and his preternaturally Brylcreemed hair will be even harder to find this time around, considering that he’s being offered a midnight shift on the network he’s called home for almost two decades.

Not only that, his co-workers are telling the media that this couldn’t have happened to a better guy.

A Thursday report from the U.K. Daily Mail revealed that Jim is one of the “least-liked” members of the team at CNN, with many of his colleagues describing him as an egomaniac willing to insert himself into any story, no matter how tangential he is to it.

The report came after the Los Angeles Times reported that Acosta was threatening to quit over a network shakeup that would see him take over a graveyard slot.

“Acosta, a fixture on the Warner Bros. Discovery-owned network since 2007, is mulling a proposal from CNN Chairman and Chief Executive Mark Thompson to give up his daytime shift and move to Los Angeles to helm a two-hour nightly newscast that starts at midnight Eastern time,” the Times reported.

The New York Post reported that he was “threatening to quit CNN rather than accept a reassigned time slot that would see him move from late mornings to the graveyard shift.”

Judging by the Daily Mail’s report, he should be thankful he’s being given a chance at all.

“Jim is one of the least-liked and most eye-rolled of all the talent at CNN. And this has been a longstanding status,” one inside source said.

“He’s insufferable, an egomaniac. If he can make himself part of the story, he will.”

Another took aim at his hair as well as his ego — both easy targets for those unfamiliar with the guy.

“His jealousy is even visibly thicker than his makeup and hardened hair gel,” the source said.

It’s not just that Acosta is unbearably smug and annoying; he’s 53 years old and, speaking as an outsider who’s had to suffer through media briefings where he made himself the star and snippets of his anchor duty when I’ve been stuck in airport lounges, he didn’t come by this trait recently.

However, back in the halcyon days of Jeff Zucker and #TheResistance, this could be overlooked because Acosta’s pugnacious style was bankable.

It made for memorable moments, like the time Trump called him “a rude, terrible, nasty person,” or when he said that “CNN should be ashamed of itself having you working for them,” or when the White House tried (not wrongly, in my humble opinion) to revoke his press credentials.

After the Trump administration came to an end, so did Acosta’s usefulness.

In January of 2021, just before Joe Biden took office, Jim was given an assignment as a “chief domestic correspondent along with a weekend anchor role,” according to a CNN release — which is roughly one step away from being made host of “Jimmy the Clown’s Fun-Time Hour” on CNN Kidz, if only such a thing existed.

But The Donald is back! So why isn’t Jim, especially since CNN’s ratings are basically on par with roller derby reruns since the election?

Simple: Without Christopher Steele, Alexander Vindman, Robert Mueller, James Comey, or any of the other grifters that painted Trump’s first term as a fluke engineered by Muscovite interference and Bulgarian fake-news troll farms, news networks have come to the stunning realization that voters actually like Trump and that there’s no money in pretending he is some kind of illegitimate president and Threat to Democracy™.

Oh, also, there’s stuff like this:

CNN’s Jim Acosta insists journalists are ‘not the enemy of the people’ ahead of Trump’s return to office https://t.co/SOdHA3AJJa pic.twitter.com/HSQtD1BiO7

— New York Post (@nypost) January 17, 2025

I wish that were a joke, but that’s how Acosta thought he’d mark the return of Trump to Washington. A picture is worth a thousand words, and roughly half of them would be asterisked out.

“Everyone knows he’s the guy who constantly sparred with Trump and I imagine that’s not the look that the network is going for right now,” another source who was previously at CNN told the Daily Mail.

“I think it’s really that simple. Never have I encountered a news boss who gave a f*** about a male reporter and his ego.”

And boy, did he have an ego — at least according to the staffers the Daily Mail talked to.

“He would seethe — positively roil — when male colleagues like Jake Tapper or Jim Sciutto would ‘scoop’ him on anything White House or presidential-related,” one insider said, adding he’d try to keep his colleagues from getting exclusives.

“Sometimes he would even drive all the way back to the White House in a hurry and try to weasel himself on air if he found out that something interesting was happening on short notice,” a source said.

Furthermore, when his credentials were briefly revoked, he allegedly reveled in the idea that he was some kind of #Resistance icon.

“He was famous now. He was glowing, visibly thrilled and smiling. People knew who he was. He was part of the headlines,” a source said, noting that prior to Trump’s presidency, “Jim was a run-of-the mill on-air talent.”

“And so, he began to make this his entire personality. The guy was insufferable before, but now it’s times-ten. He clearly felt that he was seen as some kind of hero.”

It got bad enough that Acosta began taking a “frantic” interest in whether his CNN colleagues were getting better plane seats and hotel rooms than him, ending up in a fit of jealousy if they did.

“Crews would laugh about this behind his back, saying his jealousy is even visibly thicker than his makeup and hardened hair gel,” the source added.

Well, cheer up, Jim. There are plenty of great hotels in Los Angeles — and you’ll probably need one to crash in after a midnight shift, especially after all that marching for Jim Acosta and a free press.

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