White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders is standing by the revocation of CNN reporter Jim Acosta’s press pass for refusing to give up his microphone to an intern tasked with passing it along, she said in a Thursday statement.
“The question is: did the reporter make contact or not? The video is clear, he did,” Sanders said. “We stand by our statement.”
Acosta’s pass was revoked Wednesday evening following a dispute with a White House intern during a presidential press conference. President Donald Trump repeatedly tried to move on from Acosta’s line of questioning to another reporter while an intern attempted to grab the microphone away from the CNN reporter.
We stand by our decision to revoke this individual’s hard pass. We will not tolerate the inappropriate behavior clearly documented in this video. pic.twitter.com/T8X1Ng912y
— Sarah Sanders (@PressSec) November 8, 2018