The Enemy of the People: A Dangerous Time to Tell the Truth in America
Written by Jim Acosta
Narrated by Jim Acosta
4/5
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About this audiobook
From CNN’s veteran Chief White House Correspondent Jim Acosta, an explosive, first-hand account of the dangers he faces reporting on the current White House while fighting on the front lines in President Trump’s war on truth.
In Mr. Trump’s campaign against what he calls “Fake News,” CNN Chief White House Correspondent, Jim Acosta, is public enemy number one. From the moment Mr. Trump announced his candidacy in 2015, he has attacked the media, calling journalists “the enemy of the people.”
Acosta presents a damning examination of bureaucratic dysfunction, deception, and the unprecedented threat the rhetoric Mr. Trump is directing has on our democracy. When the leader of the free world incites hate and violence, Acosta doesn’t back down, and he urges his fellow citizens to do the same.
At Mr. Trump’s most hated network, CNN, Acosta offers a never-before-reported account of what it’s like to be the President’s most hated correspondent. Acosta goes head-to-head with the White House, even after Trump supporters have threatened his life with words as well as physical violence.
From the hazy denials and accusations meant to discredit the Mueller investigation, to the president’s scurrilous tweets, Jim Acosta is in the eye of the storm while reporting live to millions of people across the world. After spending hundreds of hours with the revolving door of White House personnel, Acosta paints portraits of the personalities of Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Stephen Miller, Steve Bannon, Sean Spicer, Hope Hicks, Jared Kushner and more. Acosta is tenacious and unyielding in his public battle to preserve the First Amendment and #RealNews.
Jim Acosta
Jim Acosta is CNN's chief White House correspondent, currently covering the Trump administration. He previously reported on the Obama administration from the White House and around the world. He regularly covers presidential press conferences, visits by heads of state, and issues impacting the executive branch of the federal government.
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Reviews for The Enemy of the People
131 ratings22 reviews
- Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5Jim Acosta's writing is akin to Fidel Castro's ideology that inspired him to overthrow the Cuban government in the late 1950s. Like Fidel, his ideology would have the United States become a banana republic a la Cuba. Cuba was known as the Pearl of the Caribean, boasting the highest income per capita in Latin America and home to many of Americas shining corporations, including textile, pharmaceutical, agricultural, and research that fueled a vibrant economy and a prosperous life for the Cuban people, however Castro saw this progress as evil and decided he would overthrow the government and make it better, 61 years later Castros Cuba is one of the poorest countries in Latin America. And now Jim "Fidelito" Acosta wants the same thing to happen here, just like Castro he is a Socialist hell bent on destroying the American way of life, I say hell no to Jim Acosta.
11 people found this helpful
- Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5Gag me bad political pablum by the lefts # 1 correspondent. What one sided ,myopic drivel!
10 people found this helpful
- Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5Jim is nothing more than a crybaby who honestly needs to be removed from being a reporter due to the lies he spreads.
8 people found this helpful
- Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5Fake news is so dull. Trump is not very clever, Trump has only the truth, so this fight is tough. But evil cannot win.
7 people found this helpful
- Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5Garbage Lefty drivel useless onesided boohoo crybaby winer awful book
7 people found this helpful
- Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5I wish he would've spent this much time on building a legitimate media career. Huge wasted talent of the frozen meat packing industry was wasted at CNN. Wish you better, Jim.
3 people found this helpful
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I’m a Newsy so I enjoyed this book Was frightened however by the threat of democracy and shamed coming from a military family. How Did This Evil Man Come To Power? For the first time I had relatives down South( the Good Old Boys) vote for the first time in their adult lives. Yes crawled down from the deer stand and voted against the “ ordained “ candidate and instead voted for this Evil person. I pray this racist will wear handcuffs someday. Let us not forget what he did to tarnish ALL of Us!
3 people found this helpful
- Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5Fake news. What do you expect coming from a reporter.
2 people found this helpful
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I loved every minute of it. History will indeed remember the good work done by journalists during the time of trump in the white house.
1 person found this helpful
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5For the sake of democracy and our country I just wish that left and right would read it with an open mind. GREAT BOOK!
1 person found this helpful
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Greg Miller’s “The Apprentice” (what a great title!) is a well-done telling of the Trump-Russia investigation through August 2018; Miller is a national security reporter for the Washington Post. It covers everything in its 394 pages including Comey’s firing, the Wikileaks, Mueller investigation, Trump-Putin meetings, Sessions recusal, Russians at the White House, and concludes with Helsinki. And that’s it’s biggest problem. Most of the readers who are interested enough in these topics have probably followed along quite closely with the events as they unfolded and will find too little that is new here. There are no bombshells. Perhaps a sprinkling of interesting insights and asides, but that’s it. In Woodward’s “Fear”, I found the author’s comments about Rob Porter to be very interesting, and a bit of new news. Consequently, my opinion of his professional contributions to the President and to the country turned 180 degrees. There were similar revelations for me in “The Apprentice” of two officials that were almost as surprising for this reader. Miller mentions in passing the number of key investigations in which disgraced FBI agent Peter Strzok played a key role – the Richard Reid shoe bombing attempt, the Snowden defection, the Steele Dossier, 9/11; clearly and sadly this was an important guy, a lead investigator for the most critical cases – and the FBI lost a key asset with his termination. The other is Rod Rosenstein. Again, nothing new here, but as Miller summarizes some high points (creation of the Special Counsel for the Russia investigation) and low points (documenting reasons for Comey’s firing) one is left with an unclear picture of who RR really is and what he stands for, especially with the recent events surrounding RR’s comments about Presidential incompetency and the 25th amendment. There are interesting passages where Miller steps back and looks at the big picture. My favorite is at pages 361-65 where he first builds a case about the volume of Russian placed messages in social networks. The numbers are staggering. A data journalism professor estimated that the number of times content from all Russian pages showed up in people’s feeds could reach into the billions. Miller acknowledges that that there were other critical factors as well including Comey’s handling of the email investigation and Clinton’s candidate failings. But he goes on to conclude “……Russia’s pro-Trump propaganda flooded into the Facebook and Twitter feeds of tens of millions of voters in an election decided by fewer than 80,000 ballots across just three states. To believe that Russian interference was immaterial required a willful ignorance of the power of such pervasive messaging – or an aversion to an uncomfortable truth”. So, “The Apprentice” does have some moments, but the conclusion is not one of them. The Helsinki meeting between Trump and Putin seems placed to build up to something but again there is nothing new here; it felt skimpy. The conclusion is a bit of a yawner and given far too little space and analysis. Miller lays out the most likely ‘theories of the case’ including Putin must have something on Trump, or there must be still undiscovered financial entanglements, and then finally the most likely - a scenario that has “always been hiding right in front of us” (page 393)…… Not recommended.
1 person found this helpful
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5This book, written by a Washington Post reporter, is about everything the Russians did in the 2016 election, Although much of the information in the book has been reported in the newspaper, the book puts everything in context, and provides analysis and more detail. Seeing everything laid out so clearly is bone-chilling, all the more so when it is set forth so logically and clearly, rather than in the snippets and bits and pieces of the daily news reports. If you read this book and are not convinced that the country is in deep trouble, you are being willfully blind.This is one of the best books I've read on this subject, connecting all the fragments, as we teeter from one crisis to the other (forgetting prior crises as new ones arise). The book confronts us with just how unprecedented and horrific these past few years have been.
1 person found this helpful
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Know Jim Acosta from CNN and some other channels in where sometimes I listen to him. I believe is one of the most dedicated journalists I ever saw. I believe that is the empowerment of that journalism that is tough but fair. I like even better that is not afraid of the bullies, who ever they are. Societies without this kind of journalists are doom to fail and free and democratic societies. We need people like Jim Acosta. Listen to the audiobook in a heartbeat. Love the style and the way it presents the events.
1 person found this helpful
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Jim Acosta telling the truth over Donald Trumps lies
Truth never fails1 person found this helpful
- Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5I know it was just a typo, as he meant to use the word “lie” instead of “truth”. What an incompetent, selfish, vile human being this man is. He and his insecure, narcissistic buddies at CNN, managed to single handedly destroy our once, mostly “free” press. What they have done, is so egregious, so damaging, has had such tremendous ripple effects, we will likely never recover. And for what? They are like junkies. Living for the next hit of attention. They are THAT insecure. That despicable. The mainstream media has become nothing more than a propaganda arm for a deeply corrupt political party. But there is so much more, deeper, darker, disgusting lies people like Jim
Acosta cover for. Abuse and trafficking of children, in the worst way, is the darkest of these truths. This man belongs in a jail cell. - Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5What an amazing story. So well written. I was the edge of my seat the entire time. Pity Acosta didn’t write this book after 2020 to hear what really happened during the Covid blunders
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Absolutely loved it. It keeps you engaged, once I started I couldn’t stop.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I knew that Trump’s war on the press was poisoning a certain population (read Trumpers, racists, Q believers, all those that rioted Jan 6th) but didn’t realize how deep it went and the number of those affected. Although it became more apparent in Cheeto’s last year of reign. I’m so glad that Jim Acosta told this story and that he and CNN stood up for journalists everywhere. To cut through all the bullsh*t spewed by the press office at the WH and the press secretaries that toted Trump’s load of crap and, who got increasingly worse with each new secretary, Jim proved himself to be a man of great character and resilience. It was also a special treat to have Mr. Acosta narrate his work. It gave credence and emotion to the narrative. I found a number of passages prophetic keeping in mind that the book was released prior to some of that President’s most egregious behaviour along with that of his cronies. The turn that the GOP has taken in the last four years should be a death knell for the party but, unfortunately, it seems to have been empowering them for the most part. It’s a sad day for the party that once was a formidable organization. Now they are pathetic and dangerous. 13July2021 Just an update. I love seeing Mr. Acosta in his new venue as anchor on CNN weekends. After what he endured these past four years, the rest is well deserved.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Great book it gave good insight into the Trump White House .
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5“I'm a reporter, but I'm an American first.” But Jim Acosta is very much a reporter, a journalist, and has been slapped down for it, belittled, and received more than a few vicious and graphic death threats. Is this any way to treat a White House reporter for CNN? Apparently it is if you are reporting on a president who considers any reporter who questions the president's actions and behavior to be an Enemy of the People. Our democracy is built on the concept, among others, of freedom of the press, and it's an incredibly dangerous precedent to want to muzzle them. Of course, there is no such problem if you are one of the sycophantic news organizations who toady up to everything the president says and does, even when it's obvious he is lying and obvious he contradicts himself.Mr. Acosta had his White House press pass revoked when it was claimed he acosta'd an intern, despite that the original video show that was absolutely not true, even the doctored video released fails to confirm this. (Apologies for the bad pun.) And the revocation had to be challenged in court, with a Trump-appointed jurist in charge.Apparently, Mr. Acosta has been criticized for grandstanding, for being abrasive. I don't find his reporting to be that, I just find a hard-hitting journalist who wants to get answers to his legitimate questions and is repeatedly rebuked for it.To have a president who calls a mainstream journalist “the enemy of the people” is extraordinarily dangerous. If we lose freedom of the press, we are on the fast track to lose our democracy. Crying wolf? I don't think so.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I am a Jim Acosta fan, having watched him report from around the world over the years on CNN. I have found his reporting to be complete, concise and based on facts - none of those things that the current White House can be accused of. In this book he points out the critical role the press plays in our nation, from educating the public to what is really happening in our government to speaking truth to power. He points out that reporters have a job that they do because they love what they do and truly care about the people they report to. He reminds us of the real costs that come to them when they are attacked, both verbally and physically, by those who disagree with things they might report on. He shows us how the Trump White House lets personal feelings affect their actions and reaction to coverage, especially when they do no like it. I found this book an insightful and important look at what the press does, how vital it is to a functioning democracy and what the First Amendment really means. "Keep charging" Acosta!
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This book could be titled American Horror Story, subtitled with an update to the 2004 Daily Mirror headline: How Can 62,984,828 People Be So Dumb? But Mr. Acosta calls it like the journalist he is: the hate-filled, physically threatening, dangerous to the remaining shreds of a faux democracy spew from the mind-boggling swamp we have descended into since that amended headline. From the ichor of the campaign trail and the surreal hate mongering rallies to the peat bog of covering the White House and having to deal with the ilk of Spicer and Sanders, and the childish tantrums of their boss, enduring public attacks and death threats, Acosta has seen much, reported on much, seen such blatant lies, called out such blatant lies, and been the target of petulance unheard of from an office that has changed the face of public interaction forever...and in case my description leaves any ambiguity, not in a good way. Acosta's detractors and enemies will cry much fault here, and he does lapse his professionalism a bit - admitting so when he does - because the high road is so far out of the intellectual range of the wrong wingers as to be invisible and silent, so he descends closer to their level to throw a few punches back at the mindless bullies.Okay. That'll draw some comments. This book covers a period from the time of a candidacy announcement through a successful restoration of WH credentials that had been childishly revoked under contrived accusations (somebody doesn't like to be confronted, and really doesn't like to be confronted by someone smarter). Acosta "dangerously" calls out the truth:Beyond the slash-and-burn tactics employed by his campaign against his rivals, [T] has often twisted the truth, lied, and attacked those who would call out his falsehoods— most notably the national press corps. The Washington Post fact-checkers have catalogued nearly ten thousand false or misleading statements in the first two years of his presidency. He paid a price and still does.I have seen my life turned upside down covering Trump. His attacks on me and my colleagues, dedicated and talented journalists, have real-life consequences. My family and friends worry about my safety. I hope at the end of the day the sacrifice will be worth it. No. I know it will be.Acosta was not new to the WH beat. And he, like many of us, saw a problem looming. As a reporter who’d covered previous administrations as well as much of [T]’s campaign, I suspected the office would not transform the man. [T] struck me as potentially unprepared for the White House. "potentially"?? say rather, "wholly". Acosta drew a line earlyBut there was a more pressing emergency that day [January 11, 2017]: [T]'s disregard for the truth. The incoming president was questioning the validity of a perfectly legitimate news story. [...] One thing I tried to make clear at that news conference is that the truth is worth defending.And his credentials (the real ones, not the paper ones issued and revoked) gives him access to some placed anonymous sources... As a very senior White House official would later tell me, this was all by design. “He rules by instability. He wins by making everything around him unstable,” the official told me. That way, the official said, [T] controls the chaos. Acosta discusses the immigration imperative ("It appeared he’d come to the White House to weaponize his biases, and the travel ban was his first order of business ") that he rightly ties directly to a tragically/comically deranged evil in the form of Stephen Miller ("Miller wasn’t drinking the immigration Kool-Aid. He was making it.") and the beginnings of the concentrated attacks on the press, quoting transcripts (and honestly admitting when the transcript did not reflect his recall because microphones were turned off or pulled away) like when T answers another reporter "... the leaks are absolutely real. The news is fake because so much of the news is fake."The leaks are real, but the news is fake. Did you get that? Let that wash over you for a second. It’s a bit of a mind-bender. This was when, listening to [T], I would feel my eyes glaze over. My thought at that moment was, What the hell is he talking about? Curiously, neither T nor his sheep ever seem to have registered that crying "leak" admits guilt. (Yes, someone can leak fake information, but seriously, look at the many, many contexts where the leaks were not of fake information.) When T says to Acosta for all to hear "Well, that’s— well, you know, we do have other people. You do have other people and your ratings aren’t as good as some of the other people that are waiting.", does he hear himself? Another anonymous official: “[T]watches you guys nonstop,” the official said of the president’s secret preference for watching CNN. “He watches Fox to make himself feel better,” he added.Head shake. Just wow. In the Spicer "era", Acosta tells a sad truth:Part of the problem we have run up against as reporters in the age of [T] is that we have to serve as fact-checkers in real time. Because [T] sometimes begins the day with untrue or unfounded claims on Twitter, journalists must spend much of their time setting the record straight.There's that chaos. And it sadly works...the sheep swallow the manure with shallow minds blank...the rest of us can't sift fast enough. Spicer, Acosta observes, was sorely unqualified, and would scream inanities, even calling Acosta at homeThere I was, standing next to my young son, who had come into the room, listening to Sean screaming at the top of his lungs, “You’re a f***ing weasel!” When I hung up, I looked down at my son. With a look of astonishment on his face, he asked, “Who was that?”“Son,” I said, “that was the White House.” Acosta doesn't, nor should he, censor the interchange. His replacement...though not a screamer, was worse (or better at lying.) On one of the quite rare occasions where Stephen Miller was at the press briefing, Miller's stealth leaked:One interesting moment in our exchange came when Miller, after being challenged on these points, lobbed what appeared to be a fresh line of attack. According to him, I was revealing my “cosmopolitan bias.” What in the world is a “cosmopolitan bias,” you ask? It is as bizarre to me now as it was then, but it is not an unfamiliar term. As it turns out, the term cosmopolitan was used by Joseph Stalin to purge anti-Soviet critics in the USSR.Surprised? Acosta said Miller was too smart to be drawn in by obvious questions ("Isn't this a racist policy?"), so he had to throw him off with the unexpected - the poem from the base of the Statue of Liberty - to maybe get a candid remark. Acosta says For the record, I would debate Miller anytime anywhere on the subject of immigration— not because I have a passion for flooding America with immigrants from south of the border, as the xenophobes would have you believe. (Miller accused me at that briefing of being in favor of “open borders,” a tactic used by anti-immigration zealots.Immodest? Why not?The chapter on Charlottesville is a dark one in our history, and a revealing one of the true T. "It is still stunning to read the president’s remarks from that day. As of this writing , remarkably, they remain on the official White House website. " Of the Helsinki embarrassment:“Every time he [Putin] sees me, he says, ‘I didn’t do that,’ and I really believe that, when he tells me that, he means it,” [T] said to reporters on Air Force One. “I think he is very insulted by it, which is not a good thing for our country.” Jaw drop. Who the eff cares if Putin is insulted??? Putin maybe, his people on his behalf, ... and T (oh...yeah...) This book was published before the latest flipflop love affair with Kim Jong Un...T was bragging to the Puerto Rico governor about being able to use his nuclear football on Kim, and now he's besties? When T was crowing over the body slamming of a journalist by a future congress, um, man, Acosta saysIt was a perfect example of why my concerns are not just about the president’s behavior. They’re about his effect on the rest of the country.And that effect was intensely personal, after his revoked credentials were forced to be restored:There I was, standing in the street tossing a football with my son (as we often do), and about fifty feet away from us stood a man with a gun on his belt: a security guard assigned to my family and me in response to the death threats that had been pouring in as part of the backlash to the judge’s ruling in CNN’s favor.Damn. Acosta closes with something I hold dear and repeat out loud, almost as a mantra:There must be a common understanding that words matter. They have meaning. Words have power. I believe the term “the enemy of the people” will come to help define this era, when one group of people was pitted against another in ways that I had not seen in my lifetime.This. Really this. And finally:Some of us, not I, have sacrificed everything for this profession, from war zones to, unfortunately, newsrooms. Journalists have done this out of a deep devotion to the people. It is a devotion born out of a love for all people. That is a truth worth defending, as journalists are people too.Yes. They are.