CNN reporter Jim Acosta writing book about Trump’s war with the press

Jim Acosta, the CNN correspondent who was temporarily barred from the White House last November following a tense exchange with President Trump, is writing a book about the president’s relationship with the media.

Harper Collins imprint Harper will publish Acosta’s “The Enemy of the People: A Dangerous Time to Tell the Truth in America” this spring, the publisher said in a news release.

“Simply put, I am writing this book to share what I’ve experienced covering President Trump during his first two years in office,” Acosta said. “This sobering, bewildering, and sometimes frightening experience has made it absolutely clear that this is a dangerous time to tell the truth in America. The president and his team, not to mention some of his supporters, have attempted to silence the press in ways we have never seen before.”

Harper said the book will detail Acosta’s “view from the frontlines of Trump’s relentless war on the media.”

“He details never-before-revealed stories of this White House’s rejection of truth, while laying out the stakes for how Trump’s hostility toward facts poses an unprecedented threat to our democracy,” Harper said. “With fresh portraits of infamous administration officials such as Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Stephen Miller, and others, Acosta, a veteran of reporting on four administrations, presents a damning vision of bureaucratic dysfunction, deception, and danger, offering a fly on the wall view of the White House communications during one of the most dramatic and contentious, but consequential, times in the country’s history.”

Acosta has worked for CNN since 2007, and became the network’s chief White House correspondent in January 2018.

Last November, the White House suspended Acosta’s press credentials after a heated exchange with Trump over a question about a caravan of immigrants headed through Mexico to the U.S. border.

The White House accused Acosta of “placing his hands” on an intern who was trying to take a microphone away from Acosta. The reporter responded to the White House’s accusation, calling it “a lie.”

CNN sued the White House in an effort to get Acosta’s press pass restored. A federal judge ordered the White House to restore his press credentials, saying that the reporter was denied due process.

Harper publisher Jonathan Burnham said Acosta’s book was “required reading.”

“Jim Acosta’s account of his experience as CNN’s Chief White House Correspondent takes the reader into the world of reporters who are seeking accuracy and openness in a time when the freedom of the press is under threat,” he said.

“The Enemy of the People,” which is Acosta’s first book, is slated for publication on June 11, 2019.