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CNN White House Correspondent: Spicer Is 'Kind of Useless'

June 19, 2017

CNN's senior White House correspondent, Jim Acosta, criticized the Trump administration for having an off-camera media gaggle on Monday, saying that press secretary Sean Spicer is "kind of useless."

Acosta expressed dissatisfaction with Spicer's method of answering questions with a promise to find out answers but not providing them later.

"The question was asked during this briefing today: 'Have you gone back and asked the president that?' Sean Spicer did not have an answer to that question—whether the president believes in climate change—on a matter that happened a couple weeks ago," Acosta said to CNN host Brooke Baldwin

"So the White House press secretary is getting to a point, Brooke, where he is kind of useless," Acosta added.

Acosta turned around to point at the White House and express his frustration with the White House communications team.

"That's the White House, behind me," he said gesturing to the building. "The White House. And it's just bizarre. I don't know what world we are living in right now, Brooke."

"They bring us into the briefing room here in the White House, and they won't answer these questions on camera or let us record the audio," he said. "I don't know why everybody is going along with this."

"It just feels like we are sort of slowly but surely being dragged into what is a new normal in this country, where the president of the United States is allowed to insulate himself from answering hard questions," Acosta said.

He also complained about President Donald Trump doing small press conferences and answering questions from conservative outlets.

"Maybe he'll take a question from a conservative news media reporter and then somebody from the mainstream media," he said. "This is not how we do things in this country, but for whatever reasons we are all going along with it."

"I don't understand why we covered that gaggle today, quite honestly," he added. "If they can't give us answers to the questions on camera or where we can record the audio, they're basically pointless."

Acosta was the reporter who Trump refused to answer in a January press conference by saying, "You are fake news."