Judge Napolitano Schools Fox Business Host on Jim Acosta Lawsuit: CNN Has a ‘Very Good Case’ – By Matt Wilstein (thedailybeast.com) / Nov 13 2018
‘Obviously, Acosta may have been an irritant to the president, but he was hardly a danger to him!’
Fox News legal analyst Judge Andrew Napolitano has a way of bursting his Trump-defending colleagues’ bubbles.
On Tuesday, during an appearance on Fox Business Network, Napolitano surprised host Stuart Varney by arguing that CNN has a “very good case” against the Trump administration when it comes to the company’s lawsuit over Jim Acosta’s White House access.
“The only grounds for revoking the pass are, ‘Is the person a danger to the physical security of the president or his family?’ And obviously, Acosta may have been an irritant to the president, but he was hardly a danger to him!” Napolitano said emphatically. “So I think CNN’s got a very good case. I think this will be resolved quickly.”
The analyst predicted that the case will likely be settled before it ever makes it to a jury trial. As Napolitano praised the language in the lawsuit about the value of a free press to help Americans “make free choices in the electoral process,” Varney shot back, “Yeah, but not the freedom to make a circus out of something.”
“Apart from taking his credentials away, couldn’t they have just said, ‘You, out, you’re not coming in’?” Varney asked later, taking the administration’s side in the fight against press freedom.
Instead, Napolitano suggested that Trump and his team take a page out of President George W. Bush’s playbook and just not call on Acosta for a few days to let things calm down.
“You know, it’s part of the rough and tumble of the First Amendment,” he said. “Remember Jefferson: ‘I would rather have newspapers without government than a government without newspapers.’ A bit hyperbolic but you can understand the value of the free press to the Founders.”
Evidently, Varney could not, saying, “I’m just trying to understand the value of Jim Acosta being rude to everybody including the president of the United States” before ending the segment.
