Jim Acosta attacks Marc Lotter in Trump’s trash can defense

CNN presenter Jim Acosta met with Trump’s former spokesman Marek Lotter over the former president Donald Trump tirade calling the United States a “garbage can” and vehemently pushed back against Lotter’s defense.

At a rally in Tempe, Arizona on Thursday evening Trump complained “We are a garbage dump. We are like a garbage can to the world. That’s what happened. This is what happened to us – we are like a garbage can.

Trump seemed to shock even himself when he remarked, “It’s the first time in my life I said ‘trash can.’ But you know what? That’s a very accurate description.”

On Fridays issue With CNN Newsroom with Jim AcostaAcosta contrasted Trump’s tirade – implicitly calling people crossing the border “garbage” – with Ronald Reagan He was unimpressed by the “Shining City” speech and Lotter’s response:

JIM ACOSTA: The party has changed, hasn’t it? I mean, I want to play the clip. This is the part of the game we’ve been playing for the last hour. This is Ronald Reagan talking about the shining city on a hill. I want to play it again in case viewers missed it in the last hour. There are a lot of younger viewers who weren’t around when Ronald Reagan was president. This is how Ronald Reagan saw America.

RONALD REAGAN: I was thinking a little bit about the shining city on a hill. In my mind, it was a tall, proud city built on rocks, stronger than the oceans, windswept, blessed by God, and full of all kinds of people living in harmony and peace.

A city with free ports that was bustling with trade and creativity. And if there had to be city walls, then the walls had doors and the doors were open to anyone who had the will and heart to come here.

JIM ACOSTA: Mark, you and I have been together for a while. You were in the world of politics. I was involved in politics. That’s all. I mean, what happened to Ronald Reagan’s Republican Party?

It speaks not only of America as a shining city on a hill, but also of it being a city. If it has a wall, it has a door. And people who have the means, the courage and the fight to get here are welcome here too.

And Trump calls this country a garbage dump because of the immigrants coming here. I don’t know, I don’t know, I can’t imagine that you see America the same way. Don’t you see in it a shining city on a hill?

MARC LOTTER: I’ll point to one of the other great phrases that Ronald Reagan used in 1980, which is: Make America Great Again. And this sounds awfully familiar here.

And when I hear Donald Trump talk about wanting to rebuild America, whether it’s through our infrastructure, our economy, our energy, our military. I see him doing the exact same thing.

Even on immigration, during his four years in the White House, the president made it very clear that he was in favor of legal immigration. He wants to stop illegal immigration.

So I think it still applies to the door that Ronald Reagan talked about. But open the door. Don’t break the window. Do not go through or under the wall. Enter the door legally. And I think that’s what President Trump is talking about.

JIM ACOSTA: Yeah, I just think if people are looking from the outside, it means no, we don’t need to fact-check. You could just walk outside your house and look out the door. Look out the window. This is not a garbage can!

But. All right. Mark Lauder, thank you very much. We appreciate it. We’ll be right back.

Watch above via CNN Newsroom with Jim Acosta.

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