Jim Accosta, Warrior Hack
Accosta appears to be channeling Dan Rather (who's still alive, but whose career is dead) during his days as a member of the Nixon White House press corp.
At least Accosta has enough wit to actually throw some pointed darts. It's always astounded me that Rather actually gained fame and celebrity status from an inane response he made to a question posed by President Nixon.
When given the nod to ask a question at a Presidential press conference, Rather responded "Thank you, Mr. President. Dan Rather, of CBS News."
The room erupted with both cheers and jeers which prompted Nixon to ask Rather, "Are you running for something?' The
lightning quick retort from Rather was "No, sir, Mr. President. Are you?"
Over time, Rather has been able to shape conventional wisdom concerning his response to suggest that he meant to jab Nixon with an allusion to his Watergate troubles. A clever, after the fact explanation of a response that otherwise sounds childish, but of course for that to have been the case, Nixon would have had to have asked him
"Are you running from something?" Instead Rather's reply was far more like the juvenile
"I know you are but what am I?" than the piercing retort some have credited him with.
Even in his early days Rather, like Accosta, was a practitioner of Fake News. He claimed he was one of the first people to view the Zapruder film that captured the JFK assassination, but when he described the footage on TV he had the president's head moving forward after being hit, when, of course, the film shows it being thrown backward. This bit of phony reporting is widely featured in JFK assassination conspiracy theories as proof that the film was later doctored. Fitting for the man who attempted to concoct his own phony conspiracy theory about George W Bush.
As a native son of Texas, Rather might have been expected to be a bit kind to his home state, or at least not contribute to the usual bashing flowing from the Coasts, but he lost any chance being a
hometown favorite in Texas when he falsely reported that Dallas school children cheered upon learning of the president's death. There are a lot of Texans, especially in Dallas, who will never forgive him for that.
Trump would be better served by ignoring Accosta and not help to build his celebrity, and Accosta would do well to choose a journalist other than Dan Rather as his role model.
