During a Monday, April 29 broadcast, CNN personality Jim Acosta, known for his left-leaning views, was stunned by a poll conducted by CNN that held great news for former President Donald Trump. The CNN personality’s comments and utter shock at the poll’s results came during the show “CNN Newsroom with Jim Acosta.”
The poll that Acosta referenced during the segment was conducted on Sunday, April 28. In it, CNN found that 55% of Americans believe that former President Donald Trump’s first term in office was a success. That is big news for Trump because it is a reversal from January of 2021, when the majority of those polled said that his first term was a failure.
Further, the poll showed that the public has a negative view of Biden, with 60% believing his first term has been a failure; that is noticeably higher than the 57% who thought so in January of 2022, indicating that things are getting worse for President Biden as they improve for former President Trump and his 2024 campaign.
Acosta, stunned by the result, bewilderedly pointed to things like the death toll fo the Covid pandemic and the riot in and around the Capitol on January 6 as evidence that Trump’s presidency was not a success. He said that it was “extraordinary” that those polled would be positive about it after the occurrence of such events.
Acosta said, commenting on the poll and then immediately bringing up the Covid pandemic and the death toll from it, as if Trump was to blame for that, “The other thing that’s in that poll is it shows that a lot of Americans view Donald Trump’s presidency as a success, which is extraordinary given the fact that a million people died from COVID.”
Jumping in to comment on the poll as well, CNN political commentator Alice Stewart said that the poll showed Trump would definitively win the presidential race if it were held now. She said, “Based on this poll, if the election were held today, Donald Trump would go from the courthouse to the White House.” Emphasizing that, she added, “No questions asked.”
Acosta, still shocked, said, “[Trump’s] presidency ended with an insurrection at the Capitol.” Continuing and addressing Democratic strategist Maria Cardona, Acosta then asked, “Maria, how is it that the Democrats have not been able to get that message across to voters and that they can’t break through this short-term memory?”
Instead of addressing that question’s focus on why people might look back fondly on Trump, Cardona told Acosta to just look at “other polls,” which she alleged show that President Biden and his team “have been able to break through” to voters and show that Biden is the better option. Still, that left the real question unaddressed.
Watch them here:
This is far from the first time Acosta attacked Trump over January 6 and the 2020 election. Doing so in early April 2024, for example, he said, “It is one of the darkest days that I’ve ever witnessed in my career covering the news. I never thought I would see a President of the United States just sit there and not do anything when there are people storming the Capitol and saying they wanted to hang the vice president. That episode in and of itself, his efforts to overturn the 2020 election in Georgia, calling the Georgia Secretary of State and all the other things that were going on, alternate slate of electors, I mean you can go on and on and on about this, but just the actions of that day, objectively speaking, factually speaking, without any bias or skew whatsoever, makes him a greater threat to American democracy than Joe Biden.”
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