By Douglas Ernst - The Washington Times - Friday, June 14, 2019

The bad blood between network rivals Jim Acosta of CNN and Sean Hannity of Fox News continued this week with the former making accusations of ’Fauxmacho man bulls—’ from the latter.

The author of “The Enemy of the People: A Dangerous Time to Tell the Truth in America” told Twitter followers that Mr. Hannity’s insults stop the moment he’s face-to-face with industry critics.

Mr. Acosta’s comments came via excerpts of his book that he shared with fans in response to Mr. Hannity’s coverage. 

“Hearing Sean Hannity is taking some shots at me over my book,” CNN’s chief White House correspondent wrote Friday. “Two things Sean… #1 I offered to come on your show and talk about the book and you guys declined. Sad! #2 you’re in the book. It was that time you had a chance to say something to my face but didn’t. Enjoy!”

A portion of his book included with the tweet read as follows:

“Before long, we boarded the press buses for the main event, the Trump-Putin joint news conference. As I set foot on the bus, I immediately spotted two of my biggest critics: Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity, Trump’s chief propagandists at Fox, were seated on the bus, too. And you know what? After all their attacks on me during their prime-time “state TV” programs, they didn’t say a word to me. You’d think they would have had something to say to my face, but their fauxmacho man bullshit, as it turns out, seems to stop at the doors at the Fox News headquarters.”

Mr. Hannity responded with a dose of mockery.

“It’s true Fake News Acosta’s reps have BEEN BEGGING to be on the #1 show on Cable News & 618 Of the top Talk Radio stations,” the Fox host tweeted. “Sorry, I won’t subject my audience to conspiracy theory fake news. Go hawk that garbage on the lowest rated cable channel u work for.”

Mr. Acosta recently told colleague Anderson Cooper that he wrote “The Enemy of the People” as a way of giving people “the big picture” as it pertains to the media landscape.

“[President Trump] called us fake news and more recently the enemy of the people,” Mr. Acosta said June 11. “And what I wanted to say with this book, Anderson, is I’ve got kids and I don’t want my kids growing up in a country where the press is called the enemy of the people. … I’m worried that we’re going to have a day where a journalist is going to get hurt or possibly killed, and at that point, you know, we’ve crossed the line. This country has become a part of a group of nations around the world where the press is not safe to do its job.”

• Douglas Ernst can be reached at dernst@washingtontimes.com.

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