CHARLIE SPIERING: I just wanted to mention, I think what upsets a lot of our readers is when you hear people like -- when you hear the media being so willing to exonerate [former U.S. National Security Advisor] Susan Rice, as [CNN senior White House correspondent] Jim [Acosta] just did, and they take a completely hostile tone towards the president. But when it comes to people like Susan Rice, they're not taking the same tone of hostility, and a lot of the news that they publish on that, I think a lot of our readers see that as sort of coming from one side. This is why our readers are so comfortable with the president describing the media as “the opposition party.” They're getting most of their talking points, a good portion of their sources, from their Democratic friends. They didn't vote for the president. They don't know too many of the president's supporters, and I think that there is a difference in tone coming from the mainstream media versus Breitbart.
JIM ACOSTA: But, Charlie, do you think -- when you say I just let Susan Rice off, look, I didn't let Susan Rice off the hook. You can go back and watch an interview I did with Susan Rice a couple years ago where I didn't let her off the hook. But let me ask you this: When the president originally tweeted that “Barack Obama wiretapped me at Trump Tower. It's like McCarthy. It's like Watergate,” do you think in the back of his mind he was thinking, “Oh yeah, Susan Rice, she unmasked some people, and that's what I really meant when I tweeted that?”
It just seems to me, over the last few weeks, the White House has been sort of bumbling around in the dark in search for a justification for these tweets that were just totally erroneous, and my question has always been, why doesn't the president just withdraw the tweet, retract the accusation? We just have not gotten to that point yet, and my question is, why can't the folks on the conservative side of the news media just see the facts as they are? Don't you agree, Charlie, that those tweets on their face are just wrong? The president was not wiretapped at Trump Tower by Barack Obama.
SPIERING: Well, I think that there's a certain element of truth that comes from his tweets, and then he was basing his tweets on why existing reporting --
ACOSTA: We're not talking about an “element of truth.” How about just the truth? Why can't we just have the truth? That's my question. And as much people want to beat up on CNN, and go after CNN, and “CNN sucks,” and that sort of thing, what your readers do and your side of the aisle does. I was with Steve Bannon the other day where he referred to us as “the opposition party” once again. We are not the opposition party. We are just trying to get at the truth, and when you have a side of the news media that just insists time and again that CNN is out to get the president or out to get certain people in this country, I think it just does a tremendous disservice to all Americans. I don’t think it is American to go after a segment of the news media.
