Why Jim Acosta Is Asking Donald Trump To Apologize For January 6th Events

CNN weekend anchor and chief domestic correspondent Jim Acosta spent four years trying to hold former president Donald Trump accountable for his actions and words, often asking questions Trump didn't like, and sometimes refusing to give up even when Trump disparaged him and wanted to cut him off.

During the Trump presidency, Acosta was CNN's chief White House correspondent, as he had been during Barack Obama's administration (via CNN). And during one 2018 altercation with Trump in which he didn't give a microphone back to a White House intern so he could finish his question, Trump called him a "rude, terrible" person and had his White House press pass revoked (via NBC). Fortunately for Acosta, his press credentials were restored about a week later, according to The New York Times. While Trump never apologized to Acosta for that incident, Acosta did ask for an apology for a much more dangerous and consequential incident that happened more than two years later — the January 6, 2021 riot at the Capitol.

When Jim Acosta traveled to the Texas southern border on June 30, 2021 to cover former president Donald Trump making a small speech at an uncompleted part of the border all, Acosta took the chance to ask the former commander-in-chief if he would apologize for the insurrection at the Capitol on January 6, 2021 that many feel Trump incited. Apparently, Acosta just wanted to see a little accountability.

"We sort of spent a day trapped in Trump's alternate reality about the 2020 election," Acosta explained to CNN's Poppy Harlow later. "Of course Trump used the day to keep spreading the big lie and claim that he was cheated out of the 2020 election and so on ... so, it was at this event at the border wall where it got quiet for a few seconds and so I tried to ask the question 'Do you apologize for what happened on January 6?'"

Acosta continued, saying that the event in question did not present "profiles of courage" on the parts of Republican lawmakers that were present at the time. He also claimed that Trump heard his question regarding January 6, 2021, but did not answer. "That was when we heard boos from the crowd," Acosta continued. "This was not a crowd of Trump supporters you'd see at a rally. This was a crowd of Republican members of the House who skipped out of the vote today for the January 6 committee that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi proposed. Instead, they were down in Texas kissing Trump's ring."