Jim Acosta Talks About Life After CNN

Jim Acosta settled into a table at Kramers’ cafe and ordered a salad. We were meeting on a cold February morning a few weeks after Acosta left CNN at the dawn of the second Trump administration, a move the President found time to celebrate on social media. Acosta, previously CNN’s chief White House correspondent, had become famous during the last Trump term for irritating the President with tough questions. He went on to host a highly rated morning show, but in January CNN shook up its lineup and instead offered him a midnight slot. He decided to walk.

Acosta grew up in Northern Virginia, idolizing Sam Donaldson and devouring news. He wrote for Annandale High School’s student paper, the A-Blast, and was news director for James Madison University’s college radio station before making his way to national news via jobs in Knoxville, Dallas, and Chicago.

Now he’s an independent journalist, having launched “The Jim Acosta Show” on Substack—a video series featuring interviews with politicians and newsmakers such as January 6 cop Michael Fanone.“I guess I could have taken a couple of weeks off and grown a beard and headed off to the Northwest Territory,” Acosta said, but “there was so much news going on.”

Still, his new gig is less stressful than his previous position as a high-profile Trump antagonist, which “got a little intense” during the first administration, he said. CNN hired bodyguards for him and other employees when they covered Trump rallies. People around Washington were typically nice, “but, you know, if you leave DC and are going through the airport in Atlanta, it might not be the same reaction.”

Talk inevitably turned to how journalists should cover Trump this time around. Acosta suggested news organizations put more effort into fact-checking the President. Haven’t people tried that for a decade without making much of a dent? “I think it does make a difference,” he said. “Half the country still wants to hear the truth.” But, I pressed, doing that for a living is particularly exhausting these days. He nodded: “When I go talk to college students, I used to say, ‘Don’t go into this business. You’re going to lose your weekends and your holidays, and your mother’s going to say, You don’t call me anymore.’ And now I tell them, ‘Please come into this business, because we need reinforcements.’ ”

This article appears in the April 2025 issue of Washingtonian.

Andrew Beaujon

Senior editor

Andrew Beaujon joined Washingtonian in late 2014. He was previously with the Poynter Institute, TBD.com, and Washington City Paper. He lives in Del Ray.