Fox Business host Trish Regan defended CNN’s Jim Acosta on Tuesday, calling verbal attacks on the reporter at a Trump rally are “not only bad manners, it’s bad form,” while calling out both sides for a total lack of civility.
The commentary from the former Bloomberg and CNBC host comes one day after Acosta was singled out by Trump supporters ahead of a rally the president held in South Carolina, with chants of “CNN sucks” and “Go home, Jim” echoing throughout the venue.
“You heard the crowd chanting, ‘Go home, Jim,” Regan said. “Not right. Not right.”
{mosads}”They may disagree with some of Acosta’s reporting. You know, Jim Acosta is just doing his job. He’s out there reporting on the rally,” she continued. “And not only is it bad manners, it’s bad form to attack him.”
“I say this because I’m very concerned about the state in which we now live. where there is a complete and total lack of civility,” Regan added.
She shared an interview clip with former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee (R), the father of White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, from her radio program earlier in the day.
In the interview, Huckabee retold the story, which broke over the weekend, of Sanders being asked to leave the Red Hen restaurant in Lexington, Va., over her support for President Trump’s policies. Sanders and her husband, Huckabee said, deciding to go home, while other family members decided to go to another establishment across the street.
Huckabee said those family members were followed across the street by the owner of the Red Hen, who led a group “yelling and screaming at them from outside the restaurant.”
“Again, this is not right,” Regan said. “Jim Acosta shouldn’t be heckled. Sarah Huckabee Sanders should not be heckled. We’re better than that. At least I hope we are.”
The “Intelligence Report” host when on to cite other recent examples of incivility, including a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) employee who found a burned animal carcass on their doorstep, DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen being driven out of a Washington, D.C., restaurant by a mob of protesters, and a congressional intern who yelled “F— you” at President Trump at the Capitol last week.
“She [the intern] gets to keep her job there with [Sen.] Maggie Hassan (D) from my home state of New Hampshire,” Regan noted. “I would have fired her, because that kind of language is never appropriate, it’s never right.
“What has happened to us? Who are we right now? I mean, this is not the America I know and love, we have always had a certain kind of respect for the other sides’ opinion,” she concluded. “That does not exist right now, and that’s very dangerous.”
Regan’s defense of Acosta is noteworthy given that Fox and CNN regularly trade verbal blows, with MSNBC largely ignored despite being in second place in the cable news ratings race.