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The Enemy of the People Audiobook Summary

From CNN’s veteran Chief White House Correspondent Jim Acosta, an explosive, first-hand account of the dangers he faces reporting on the current White House while fighting on the front lines in President Trump’s war on truth.

In Mr. Trump’s campaign against what he calls “Fake News,” CNN Chief White House Correspondent, Jim Acosta, is public enemy number one. From the moment Mr. Trump announced his candidacy in 2015, he has attacked the media, calling journalists “the enemy of the people.”

Acosta presents a damning examination of bureaucratic dysfunction, deception, and the unprecedented threat the rhetoric Mr. Trump is directing has on our democracy. When the leader of the free world incites hate and violence, Acosta doesn’t back down, and he urges his fellow citizens to do the same.

At Mr. Trump’s most hated network, CNN, Acosta offers a never-before-reported account of what it’s like to be the President’s most hated correspondent. Acosta goes head-to-head with the White House, even after Trump supporters have threatened his life with words as well as physical violence.

From the hazy denials and accusations meant to discredit the Mueller investigation, to the president’s scurrilous tweets, Jim Acosta is in the eye of the storm while reporting live to millions of people across the world. After spending hundreds of hours with the revolving door of White House personnel, Acosta paints portraits of the personalities of Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Stephen Miller, Steve Bannon, Sean Spicer, Hope Hicks, Jared Kushner and more. Acosta is tenacious and unyielding in his public battle to preserve the First Amendment and #RealNews.

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The Enemy of the People Audiobook Narrator

Jim Acosta is the narrator of The Enemy of the People audiobook that was written by Jim Acosta

Jim Acosta is CNN’s chief White House correspondent, currently covering the Trump administration. He previously reported on the Obama administration from the White House and around the world. He regularly covers presidential press conferences, visits by heads of state, and issues impacting the executive branch of the federal government.

About the Author(s) of The Enemy of the People

Jim Acosta is the author of The Enemy of the People

The Enemy of the People Full Details

Narrator Jim Acosta
Length 10 hours 3 minutes
Author Jim Acosta
Category
Publisher HarperAudio
Release date June 11, 2019
ISBN 9780062916150

Subjects

The publisher of the The Enemy of the People is HarperAudio. includes the following subjects: The BISAC Subject Code is Biography & Autobiography, Editors, Journalists

Additional info

The publisher of the The Enemy of the People is HarperAudio. The imprint is HarperAudio. It is supplied by HarperAudio. The ISBN-13 is 9780062916150.

Global Availability

This book is only available in the United States.

Goodreads Reviews

Beth

June 17, 2019

If you've ever wondered if the journalists covering this current administration find it as mind-boggling, disturbing, and downright batshit crazy as many of the rest of us do, this book will answer your question. Jim Acosta's spars with press secretaries and Individual 1 himself are legendary, and he writes about it all here. He pulls no punches. He comes across as stubborn and dogged and also quite funny. I remember all of these exchanges and it was interesting to read about them from his viewpoint. But his underlying message is important: a free press is vital to a democracy. Truth matters. And "American democracy is only as strong as the people willing to hold it accountable."

Phil

June 16, 2019

Words can never express the gratitude of the nation for reporters like Jim Acosta. He is a top shelf journalist . His advice to young journalists: "Do your job and tell the truth." To be clear, his book is commentary. His job is reporting.

Jim

July 09, 2019

This book could be titled American Horror Story, subtitled with an update to the 2004 Daily Mirror headline: How Can 62,984,828 People Be So Dumb? But Mr. Acosta calls it like the journalist he is: the hate-filled, physically threatening, dangerous to the remaining shreds of a faux democracy spew from the mind-boggling swamp we have descended into since that amended headline. From the ichor of the campaign trail and the surreal hate mongering rallies to the peat bog of covering the White House and having to deal with the ilk of Spicer and Sanders, and the childish tantrums of their boss, enduring public attacks and death threats, Acosta has seen much, reported on much, seen such blatant lies, called out such blatant lies, and been the target of petulance unheard of from an office that has changed the face of public interaction forever...and in case my description leaves any ambiguity, not in a good way. Acosta's detractors and enemies will cry much fault here, and he does lapse his professionalism a bit - admitting so when he does - because the high road is so far out of the intellectual range of the wrong wingers as to be invisible and silent, so he descends closer to their level to throw a few punches back at the mindless bullies.Okay. That'll draw some comments. This book covers a period from the time of a candidacy announcement through a successful restoration of WH credentials that had been childishly revoked under contrived accusations (somebody doesn't like to be confronted, and really doesn't like to be confronted by someone smarter). Acosta "dangerously" calls out the truth:Beyond the slash-and-burn tactics employed by his campaign against his rivals, [T] has often twisted the truth, lied, and attacked those who would call out his falsehoods— most notably the national press corps. The Washington Post fact-checkers have catalogued nearly ten thousand false or misleading statements in the first two years of his presidency. He paid a price and still does.I have seen my life turned upside down covering Trump. His attacks on me and my colleagues, dedicated and talented journalists, have real-life consequences. My family and friends worry about my safety. I hope at the end of the day the sacrifice will be worth it. No. I know it will be.Acosta was not new to the WH beat. And he, like many of us, saw a problem looming. As a reporter who’d covered previous administrations as well as much of [T]’s campaign, I suspected the office would not transform the man. [T] struck me as potentially unprepared for the White House. "potentially"?? say rather, "wholly". Acosta drew a line earlyBut there was a more pressing emergency that day [January 11, 2017]: [T]'s disregard for the truth. The incoming president was questioning the validity of a perfectly legitimate news story. [...] One thing I tried to make clear at that news conference is that the truth is worth defending.And his credentials (the real ones, not the paper ones issued and revoked) gives him access to some placed anonymous sources... As a very senior White House official would later tell me, this was all by design. “He rules by instability. He wins by making everything around him unstable,” the official told me. That way, the official said, [T] controls the chaos. Acosta discusses the immigration imperative ("It appeared he’d come to the White House to weaponize his biases, and the travel ban was his first order of business ") that he rightly ties directly to a tragically/comically deranged evil in the form of Stephen Miller ("Miller wasn’t drinking the immigration Kool-Aid. He was making it.") and the beginnings of the concentrated attacks on the press, quoting transcripts (and honestly admitting when the transcript did not reflect his recall because microphones were turned off or pulled away) like when T answers another reporter "... the leaks are absolutely real. The news is fake because so much of the news is fake."The leaks are real, but the news is fake. Did you get that? Let that wash over you for a second. It’s a bit of a mind-bender. This was when, listening to [T], I would feel my eyes glaze over. My thought at that moment was, What the hell is he talking about? Curiously, neither T nor his sheep ever seem to have registered that crying "leak" admits guilt. (Yes, someone can leak fake information, but seriously, look at the many, many contexts where the leaks were not of fake information.) When T says to Acosta for all to hear "Well, that’s— well, you know, we do have other people. You do have other people and your ratings aren’t as good as some of the other people that are waiting.", does he hear himself? Another anonymous official: “[T]watches you guys nonstop,” the official said of the president’s secret preference for watching CNN. “He watches Fox to make himself feel better,” he added.Head shake. Just wow. In the Spicer "era", Acosta tells a sad truth:Part of the problem we have run up against as reporters in the age of [T] is that we have to serve as fact-checkers in real time. Because [T] sometimes begins the day with untrue or unfounded claims on Twitter, journalists must spend much of their time setting the record straight.There's that chaos. And it sadly works...the sheep swallow the manure with shallow minds blank...the rest of us can't sift fast enough. Spicer, Acosta observes, was sorely unqualified, and would scream inanities, even calling Acosta at homeThere I was, standing next to my young son, who had come into the room, listening to Sean screaming at the top of his lungs, “You’re a f***ing weasel!” When I hung up, I looked down at my son. With a look of astonishment on his face, he asked, “Who was that?”“Son,” I said, “that was the White House.” Acosta doesn't, nor should he, censor the interchange. His replacement...though not a screamer, was worse (or better at lying.) On one of the quite rare occasions where Stephen Miller was at the press briefing, Miller's stealth leaked:One interesting moment in our exchange came when Miller, after being challenged on these points, lobbed what appeared to be a fresh line of attack. According to him, I was revealing my “cosmopolitan bias.” What in the world is a “cosmopolitan bias,” you ask? It is as bizarre to me now as it was then, but it is not an unfamiliar term. As it turns out, the term cosmopolitan was used by Joseph Stalin to purge anti-Soviet critics in the USSR.Surprised? Acosta said Miller was too smart to be drawn in by obvious questions ("Isn't this a racist policy?"), so he had to throw him off with the unexpected - the poem from the base of the Statue of Liberty - to maybe get a candid remark. Acosta says For the record, I would debate Miller anytime anywhere on the subject of immigration— not because I have a passion for flooding America with immigrants from south of the border, as the xenophobes would have you believe. (Miller accused me at that briefing of being in favor of “open borders,” a tactic used by anti-immigration zealots.Immodest? Why not?The chapter on Charlottesville is a dark one in our history, and a revealing one of the true T. "It is still stunning to read the president’s remarks from that day. As of this writing , remarkably, they remain on the official White House website. " Of the Helsinki embarrassment:“Every time he [Putin] sees me, he says, ‘I didn’t do that,’ and I really believe that, when he tells me that, he means it,” [T] said to reporters on Air Force One. “I think he is very insulted by it, which is not a good thing for our country.” Jaw drop. Who the eff cares if Putin is insulted??? Putin maybe, his people on his behalf, ... and T (oh...yeah...) This book was published before the latest flipflop love affair with Kim Jong Un...T was bragging to the Puerto Rico governor about being able to use his nuclear football on Kim, and now he's besties? When T was crowing over the body slamming of a journalist by a future congress, um, man, Acosta saysIt was a perfect example of why my concerns are not just about the president’s behavior. They’re about his effect on the rest of the country.And that effect was intensely personal, after his revoked credentials were forced to be restored:There I was, standing in the street tossing a football with my son (as we often do), and about fifty feet away from us stood a man with a gun on his belt: a security guard assigned to my family and me in response to the death threats that had been pouring in as part of the backlash to the judge’s ruling in CNN’s favor.Damn. Acosta closes with something I hold dear and repeat out loud, almost as a mantra:There must be a common understanding that words matter. They have meaning. Words have power. I believe the term “the enemy of the people” will come to help define this era, when one group of people was pitted against another in ways that I had not seen in my lifetime.This. Really this. And finally:Some of us, not I, have sacrificed everything for this profession, from war zones to, unfortunately, newsrooms. Journalists have done this out of a deep devotion to the people. It is a devotion born out of a love for all people. That is a truth worth defending, as journalists are people too.Yes. They are.

Chris

June 16, 2019

Jim Acosta will be remembered by history as central to the narrative of President Donald Trump's war on the free press. That makes "The Enemy of the People" an essential work of contemporaneous journalism regarding the Trump administration.Let's get this out of the way upfront. Is Acosta an irritating, self-satisfied and cartoonishly macho figure whose persona harms the seriousness with which other journalists are taken? Yes, yes, yes and maybe a little bit. But no criticism of Acosta's personality detracts from the fact he stands on the right side of history and recounted this important moment with clarity. Acosta presents a full-throated defense of the concept of a free press and expertly contextualizes his first-person experiences with the Trump administration. "The Enemy of the People" is a solid read from an obviously gifted long-form reporter.

Wayne

June 19, 2019

I’m normally not a reader of political non fiction books. Especially ones that are negative in tone, I’ve always found them to be a bit tacky. That being said, I’ve watched the President of the United States of America shout “fake news” instead of intelligently defend his record every time a news story comes out that he doesn’t fancy. I’ve watched press briefings disappear and reporters disrespected. Acosta has stood up to our bully in chief time and time again and has defended the right to free press and free speech. This story is worth telling and he tells it effectively with humor and heart.

Linda

June 13, 2019

Thank youIt’s encouraging that you remain committed to freedom if the press and it’s importance to our democracy. I remain hopeful.

Brian

July 04, 2019

Acosta details the behind the scenes chaos of covering this White House, which attacks the press on a daily basis. But here, we see what it is like covering the news as a White House Correspondent, particularly if you are Jim Acosta from CNN, who literally had his 1st and 5th Amendment rights violated by the White House as determined by a federal judge appointed by Trump.The book begins with the Inauguration and covers through early 2019, when Acosta had his press credential revoked and then restored by the judicial process. We learn more details of the utter contempt this Administration has for a free press that can ask critical questions (they have done so of every POTUS). Acosta of course has serious criticism and even nasty stories about Trump, but his real animus is directed towards Sean Spicer and even more so for Sarah Huckabee Sanders (who comes across as a political hack and disingenuous press secretary of dubious tactics). Let's face it: if you're a Trump supporter, you're not going to read or like this book. But if you are concerned about the state of our country, the actions of this Administration, and especially the violent attacks on the media when you remember when the media investigated and reported the news, you will be sympathetic to Acosta's account. These stories only really get out in books and not in broadcast interviews, and Acosta tells a great story.

Thelizyouknow

July 07, 2019

By way of disclaimer, I should say that I've been a news junkie since CNN was the only 24 hour news channel, and I've pretty much stayed with this network. That means I was watching the events Acosta, the network's White House correspondant, describes in the book.It's still worth hearing his point of view.The Trump administration has not behaved toward the press as its predecessors did. They seem to disallow any intelligence on behalf to the average citizen in telling obvious untruths--that's my point of view as a news consumer, but I believe it to be valid. When journalists have called them on it, the White House's reaction has been like using a nuclear missile on a mosquito--overkill to the point that it draws criticism and is in fact ineffective--the mosquito just circles around for another try.Mr. Acosta might not appreciate the comparison to a blood-sucking insect, since he is in fact doing his job. For the record, he does it quite well. This book describes his struggle against the administration's designation of him, his employer and the whole of the American press as "enemies of the people" in ways I found intriguing, to say the least. However, the bit that will stick with me is the image of Acosta, having been advised by his employer and his legal counsel to keep quiet during his court case, waiting until he got in the car after the temporary restraining order restored his press pass was issued before yelling "We beat Trump!"This is a memoir, not news reporting, so it's not supposed to be unbiased. The facts Acosta states, though, seem to comport to the things I saw at the time. The book is readable and enjoyable.We now return you to your regularly scheduled fiction reviews.

Everydayreader1

June 19, 2019

Veteran Chief White House Correspondent Jim Acosta, forthrightly details his confrontation with the Trump White House on matters of truth, fact, lies, deceit, fake news, and the necessity of a free press. He also shares his family history as a first generation American, his views on democracy, and where we go from here.I anxiously awaited the publication of this book, and it does not disappoint. Jim Acosta's candor about the Trump administration's assault on our democracy and freedom of the press, though scary and disheartening, is also refreshing and hopeful because he, and other journalists, continue to do their jobs and inform the American people about what is happening, speaking truth to power. There is nothing fake about that. It is admirable and, in my view, heroic, especially in the face of threats to personal safety. There is much to think about concerning intolerance, lack of acceptance of others, and immigration and other policies this administration has enacted which stifle democracy, and our response to it as citizens. I am thankful to Jim Acosta for his contributions to journalism and his unwavering efforts to hold the Trump administration accountable to explain to the American people and the world what they are doing and the consequences of those actions and policies. I highly recommend that everyone, regardless of political beliefs, take the time to read this book.

Jennifer

June 20, 2019

EXCELLENT book! I am a news junkie, and my channel of choice is CNN. So when all of the hubub went down between Jim Acosta and the White House, I was riveted to see how it would all turn out. Jim Acosta offers an inside view from his perspective of dealing with "Trump World" as he calls it and navigating his way around the open hostility directed at both him and other members of the press. It is always shocking to me when I hear of the repeated attempts by our current administration to suppress the news they don't like, and discredit those who report it. Hearing how things occurred from Jim's perspective is an interesting insiders' viewpoint. Although we are almost all aware of it now, it still surprises me to see the lengths some of the White House staff will go to in an attempt to back up Trump's lies. This was an engrossing read and I whipped through it in 2 days!

Denise

July 01, 2019

Do I wish that at this point the world really didn't need any more books calling out some form of egregiously awful behaviour or other by the Trump administration and certain individuals therein? Why yes, I certainly do. But as long as such behaviour continues and, if anything, intensifies, books such as this remain very much relevant and needed and will continue to end up on my TBR. The enduring attacks on the media and free speech in particular have been and continue to be shocking and appalling not only to many Americans but also to those of us watching and shaking our heads in dismay and disbelief from around the world, and anyone who stands up against them has my full and unwavering support.

Susan Lawson, SL

June 22, 2019

Amazing What Journalists Do.Consider a country without the press and the kind of president we have today. It boggles my mind that Trump supporters have not ever considered that possibility. It's very scary. This book is not a hit piece, it explains in a very respectful way what journalists have to go through.

Diana

July 03, 2019

A very well-written narrative of what it is like to cover the Trump White House. Keep up the good work, White House Press Corps! You are NOT the enemy of the people.

Susan

July 11, 2019

Anyone who follows Jim Acosta, and the news briefing. Already knows the story whats in the book. My recommendation is if you follow Mr. Acosta religiously on the news. It is just a repeat of what has been going on. I don't want to re-live the last two years again. I did, by buying the book. But, if you are not a political junkie. I recommend that you read it. Most of the things he went through in the last two years I already knew about.There are some things I didn't know about Mr. Acosta. Such as that he comes from a Cuban father. Which makes sense why he stands up, and not to be silenced. Why the freedom of speech and freedom of the press is so important to him. One thing I have to say that irritates me over, and over again. Is that journalists and reporters are so competitive for the story. Many of them were angry at Mr. Acosta for standing up to the President. They felt he was part of the story. To stand up to the president, unfortunately. The only way is to be part of the story. Thank g-d for Mr. Acosta and others like him. Who makes the President, and his cabinet accountable for his actions.

Lee

July 01, 2019

DebateI debated my rating for this book. I really felt there was a lot of "poor me" in it and almost quit reading before I was done. I'm glad I finished, though. I respect Acosta's reporting, which is the primary reason I bought the book. I agree with the abuse and disregard of this President and administration to the rule of law is unconstitutional. The author's epilogue saved the book IMO. I remain hopeful the institutions created by our Founding Fathers with our Constitution will get us through this era and return to the values we've held for over 2 centuries.

Mary O'Driscoll

July 06, 2019

Great read!Reading Jim's book gave me a great insight into to the chaos in the White House. I now have a more negative opinion of Sarah Sanders, the press secretary. Vindictive and nasty behavior ,worse than I thought. Kudos to Jim Acosta trying to get the truth out to the American public! His job is not an easy one, especially in this hostile environment.

Marcia

June 16, 2019

wanted to love this book, liked it very much. I am trying to read all the books written about the current strange political times we are in. Historically important.Many scenarios which were not greatly reported.The press pass incident explained.Mildly scary.must read for those trying to understand the current state of the union.

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