The Media Research Center bid a snotty farewell to Jim Acosta when he left CNN last.year. But it seems that the MRC is still possessed by a case of Acosta Derangement Syndrome. Alex Christy complained about Acosta in a June 2025 post:
Even by his own standards, former CNN anchor turned Substack podcaster Jim Acosta displayed a stunning amount of hypocrisy on Tuesday when it comes to conspiracy theories about the 2020 and 2024 presidential elections. On 2020, Acosta let former CNN colleague Michael Fanone go on a profanity-laden rant against Speaker Mike Johnson and fellow Republicans while he labeled actress Rosie O’Donnell an “international treasure” immediately after she spread conspiracy theories about 2024.
Acosta, recording the show from the Lincoln Theater in Washington, put the ball on the tee for Fanone, “There is a plaque honoring January 6 police officers that’s still in a frigging broom closet in the basement of the Capitol. It’s insane. And you thought about this the other, I don’t know, for folks who missed this.”
Christy didn’t dispute anything anyone said, except to counterintuitively rage: “The truth is neither the 2020 nor the 2024 election was stolen. If the media covered 2020 fairly, maybe the voters would have acted differently, but there was nothing fishy about the actual vote counts in either case, just as there was nothing suspect about 2000 or 2004.” Christy might want to tell hsi MRC colleagues — who love to push conspiracy theories about the 2020 election — about that revelation.
Later that month, Christy groused the Acosta called President Trump’s military parade a “Kim Jong-un birthday parade.” The next day, intern Lucas Escala melted down over Acosta:
Even by Jim Acosta standards, the former CNN correspondent’s tirade on The Contrarian podcast Monday was pretty terrible. Following the weekend’s No Kings protests, it should come as no surprise that Acosta had a lot of smoke to blow on the immigration issues in contention. Chatting with hosts Jen Rubin and April Ryan, Acosta was full of praise for the “peaceful, nonviolent protests” against President Trump’s “regime.”
Christy whined again in a July 2 post:
Former CNN anchor Jim Acosta’s Substack podcast motto is “Don’t give into the lies. Don’t give into fear. Hold on to the truth. And hope.” During a Tuesday interview with former Clinton strategist James Carville, Acosta was neither truthful nor hopeful, but he was very much afraid as he declared, “This is scary shit,” as he suggested President Trump may tamper with the 2026 midterm results, and Carville suggested he might cancel the midterms altogether.
[…]If there is one thing Jim Acosta’s podcast has proved, it is that his disgust at election-related conspiracy theories only goes one way.
Christy made no effort to disprove Acosta’s claims. He groused again about Acosta in a July 12 post:
Former CNN host turned podcaster Jim Acosta appeared to suggest on Thursday that, because the president lives at the White House, he is in charge of its plumbing, as he blamed President Trump for the poor working conditions that he worked in when he was a White House correspondent during Trump’s first term.
During a discussion with former aide to VP Mike Pence-turned Never Trumper Olivia Troye, Acosta lamented Republican budget priorities, “They give tax cuts to the very wealthy in this country, who, if you were to raise taxes on them just a little bit, just a teeny-weeny little bit, it would help pay down the deficit and the debt in this country, and we wouldn’t saddle future generations with, you know, the potential for, you know, financial catastrophe. I mean, that’s what’s building in this country if we keep running up the nation’s credit cards in this fashion.”
Nicholas Fondacaro served up his own fit of whining in an Aug. 5 post:
Setting up camp in the uncanny valley, disgraced former CNN “journalist” Jim Acosta made headlines Monday night after he announced he had interviewed the A.I. facsimile of Joaquin “Guac” Oliver, a student killed in the Parkland School Shooting, on his eponymous podcast. If that wasn’t disturbing enough, a follow up interview with Manuel Oliver, Joaquin’s dad, revealed that his wife would “spend hours” talking with the A.I. cadaver of her son because loved to hear it say “I love you mommy.”
“But first, today is August the 4th. That happens to be the birthday of my first guest, Joaquin Oliver died in the Parkland school shooting in Florida back in 2018, but his parents Manuel and Patricia have created an AI version of their son to deliver a powerful message on gun violence,” Acosta boasted near the top of the show.
Acosta wasted no time in using the A.I. zombie of Joaquin for precisely what his father built it for, to use his son’s digital corpse to push for anti-gun rights legislation. The A.I. morbidly responded with robotic speech patterns as it swapped between vastly different voices:
Fondacaro concluded by huffing: ‘Aside from the Olivers using and abusing their son’s memory for political gain, it was not a healthy option for grieving families. It would only serve to harm those going through the grieving process and hamper any attempt to cope with the grief and trauma.” Apparently, Fondacaro wants only right-wingers like him to exploit dead victims — like his employer did last year to exploit a woman’s death to demonize scary brown people.