CNN's Acosta agrees with guest likening GOP gun control opposition to 'human sacrifice'
CNN's Jim Acosta agrees with guest Kurt Andersen saying Republican opposition to gun control is akin to 'human sacrifice.'
CNN’s Jim Acosta agreed on Sunday with a liberal guest who compared Republicans not passing gun control to "mass human sacrifice" practiced by ancient societies.
Acosta, the network's "chief domestic correspondent," invited author Kurt Andersen onto his left-wing weekend program to discuss his new book that claims conservatives who oppose vaccines have brought "human sacrifice" to America.
"You write that the right’s ongoing propaganda campaign and organized political resistance to vaccination, among other health protocols has been for no reasonably, ethically justifiable social purpose," Acosta said. "Let’s talk about that, expand on that."
CNN’s Jim Acosta said Republicans not passing gun control is a "maximalist view of freedom over lives." (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
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Andersen then declared, "Once the Republican Party decided, under Donald Trump, to politicize this so strictly – vaccine protocols, the public health protocols – and then once we had a vaccine that was so astoundingly effective, and refusing to take it, not taking it led to deaths very clearly."
The author then explained some of the research that led him to believe in parallels between anti-vaccine rhetoric from the "American right" and mass human sacrifice practiced by ancient societies as Acosta nodded along in agreement.
"It often involves volunteers, it’s not just people forced to be sacrificed … There were volunteers and people were treated well and encouraged to go ahead and embrace death," Anderson said. "At this point I have no doubt that historians in the future will see it that way."
Acosta responded by reminiscing about his time covering former President Trump, saying that he once covered a Trump rally and met an unmasked supporter who said "If I die, I die," when asked about COVID protocols.
CNN's Jim Acosta averaged only 561,000 viewers through the first three episodes of his primetime audition last week. (CNN)
"It’s that kind of mentality, and you’ve also heard Republican politicians talk about, ‘Well, some senior citizens they’ve lived a long life,’ sort of hinting at the fact that senior citizens have lived long enough and so on. Before vaccines became widely available, there was essentially no difference in the average COVID death between red states and blue states," Acosta said.
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Anderson compared lower vaccine rates among red states to "mass human sacrifices that took place in large complex empires not unlike ours," before the duo pivoted to gun control.
"Perhaps, this revival of mass human sacrifice in the United States is just a passing thing that will go away but … on the other hand, the Republicans have, for years now, been doing a different kind of what is effectively mass human sacrifice in terms of gun deaths and eliminating all gun regulation," Anderson said as Acosta jumped in.
"A maximalist view of freedom over lives," Acosta said.
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