Acosta: Trump Inner Circle "Down To Kool-Aid Drinkers And Next Of Kin," No Adults To Rein Him In

ANDERSON COOPER, CNN HOST: Is there anyone around the president who shakes their head when they hear rambling in the Rose Garden like this.

JIM ACOSTA, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: No, Anderson we are down to Kool-Aid drinkers and next of kin here at the Trump White House. There are no more adults who will level with the president and tell him he can't deliver a rally-like rant in the Rose Garden as he did earlier this evening. The reason why that took place in the Rose Garden was so much like a rally is because of the way he just went into the lies, the myths and the truth-stretching that he does out on the campaign trail...

What he essentially did in the White House Rose Garden is essentially transform one of the last places in any presidential administration that is supposed to be sort of removed from politics and plunged it headfirst into a cesspool of just campaign politicking...

So no, Anderson, getting to your question, there aren't any adults to rein him in, to make sure he doesn't do that in the Rose Garden earlier this evening, and what I think we're left with for the rest of this campaign cycle is the president using the Rose Garden like a rally space. What we saw tonight was a bait and switch. They told us it would be a press conference. The White House put out a press release that said he's having a press conference in the Rose Garden. He spoke, he went on that rambling tirade for 53 minutes and then took ten minutes of questions, one of the questions was from essentially a propaganda outlet for the president...

One of the things he did during this press conference, so-called press conference, it wasn't a press conference was he went back attacking China and going as you said one of the greatest hits that he likes to put out there that China is solely responsible for this pandemic in this country and what's been taking place around the world. As we all recall and we've been trying to make this clear to the American people from the very beginning of all this, the president has time and again praised China. Praised Xi Jinping and so on. And so, Anderson, one of the reasons why this event in the Rose Garden, the 53 minutes of rambling incoherence and ten minutes of questions is because the president is out of good answers. And I think, as coherent as he was, he knows what the questions are going to be. But he knows he can't answer them. So that's why he had a rally in the Rose Garden.