President Trump’s speech on Thursday honoring the brave Allied fighters who "stood in the fires of hell" on the 75th anniversary of D-Day drew unexpected acclaim from two of his biggest mainstream media critics: CNN’s Jim Acosta and MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough.
“This is perhaps the most on-message moment of Donald Trump’s presidency today. We were all wondering if he would veer from his remarks, go off of his script but he stayed on script, stayed on message and, I think, rose to the moment,” Acosta said on CNN immediately following the speech.
The CNN White House reporter is often combative with Trump and members of his administration but praised Trump’s remark that the men who stormed the beach are among the greatest Americans who have ever lived.
“That could not be more of a fact check true,” Acosta said. “It was really one of those moments that Donald Trump needed to rise to in order to, I think, walk away from the cemetery, walk away from this hallowed ground and have people back at home saying, ‘You know what, no matter what I think about the current president of the United States, he said the right thing at Normandy. He did the right thing at Normandy.’”
PRESIDENT TRUMP'S SPEECH AT 75TH D-DAY ANNIVERSARY IN NORMANDY IN FULL
Acosta then said Trump “hit all of the right moments” when paying respect to the D-Day heroes.
Over on MSNBC, recurrent Trump critic Scarborough echoed Acosta’s thoughts.
“[Trump] delivered what, again, I believe is the strongest speech of his presidency,” Scarborough said, noting that it was a “beautiful moment” when Trump acknowledged that many of the troops feel the “heroes were the ones that never came back” but the survivors formed a remarkable generation.
Viewers on the pair of liberal networks were presumably shocked, as Acosta and Scarborough typically condemn Trump’s every step. Acosta even has a book coming out titled, “The Enemy of the People: A Dangerous Time to Tell the Truth in America,” which is billed as “an explosive, first-hand account of the dangers [Acosta] faces reporting on the current White House while fighting on the front lines in President Trump’s war on truth” as “public enemy number one.”
Acosta, who has raised eyebrows inside CNN for blurring the line between reporter and pundit, was recently named the media member who “hates” Trump the most by “Unmasked — Big Media's War Against Trump” authors L. Brent Bozell III and Tim Graham of the Media Research Center.
“He would proudly wear the moniker of the face of the Resistance if it was bestowed on him by us, but we won’t do that. No man in the world of journalism has made a mockery of his profession quite like this man,” Bozell and Graham wrote.
MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” duo Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski share the second spot on the list of media members who clearly loathe the president. The married co-hosts were famously tight with Trump before eventually turning on him. They now criticize the president on a regular basis, but Scarborough had nothing but positive remarks about Trump’s D-Day speech.
Fox News’ Bradford Betz contributed to this report.