Please watch this video of two giant scumbags, Jim Acosta and Tara Palmeri, spewing a torrent of utter bullshit about me

I know people are going to accuse me of “milking” what is now, amazingly, Day Five of this insane Jim Acosta / Substack Brawl journo-fracas, but if Jim is going to hop on his little video stream with the “gaslighting” queen herself, Tara Palmeri, and unleash a tornado of utter bullshit about me, I’m sorry, but I am journalistically and patriotically obliged to respond! Frankly, I’m obliged as a Real American, who won’t take this shit lying down!

I apologize in advance for subjecting you all to a 10+ minute video of Jim Acosta and Tara Palmeri telling each other how brave they are — if you’d rather spend that ten minutes twisting your eyeballs out with a rusty screwdriver, you’d be more than justified — but unfortunately, there’s no other way I’m aware of to deliver the spellbinding “content” they just vomited.

First, please take note of how Acosta introduces the whole subject of the aborted Substack brawl he initiated. He labels me an “online troll who calls himself a journalist” — as though I have not gone through an Acosta-approved accreditation process to obtain my Serious Journalism Card, which I guess would entail going through hours of hair and makeup at CNN HQ in Columbus Circle, to make doubly sure I’m immaculately well-coiffed for my next important TV “hit,” in which I’d pompously recite that day’s trite Trump-related talking points, and preen for the cameras as a Savior of the First Amendment. That would be Journalism 101 at the Jim Acosta Graduate School of Journalism, which perhaps should be established at Barnard College or somewhere. We can only imagine the legions of eager students who’d be lining up to be imparted with Jim’s once-in-a-generation journalistic wisdom.

Just to run through some of the Greatest Hits:

And who could forget his hilariously self-righteous book cover:

Well, in the interim, Jim got booted from CNN for whatever reason, and is now relegated to Substack with the rest of us schmucks (where he appears to be doing spectacularly well, even though it’s difficult to fathom who his tens of thousands of paid subscribers possibly are. But whatever, respect the hustle.)

You gotta feel for Jim on some level though, because it must be a bit emasculating for him to have to schlep to the same White House Correspondents’ Dinner party as little ol’ me. Surely I don’t even deserve to be in his hallowed presence; he’s one of the leading journalistic titans of our age! And me? I’m just a lowly “online troll” who’s never done anything that could be rightly described as “journalism.” Maybe such taunts, however obnoxious, would’ve at least carried a little more weight back when Jim was a vaunted Chief White House CNN Correspondent of slinging daily pre-recorded video segments for Wolf Blitzer — but when you’re now suddenly a fellow “Substacker,” and still think you’re entitled to preach from your mountaintop about who gets to be called a “journalist,” that’s just so hilariously pathetic. But perfectly in character for sniveling Jim.

Jim and his little buddy Tara ran through a series of such wild lies and distortions about Yours Truly — and with such sublime, irreproachable self-certitude — that it’s almost impressive. Acosta claims that he personally witnessed me “harassing” the groundbreaking investigative journalist (and serial quote fabricator / fraudster) Julie K. Brown, and in addition, that I was “not really letting her get away” from me. This is just 100% made up. If you really want, you can consult the surplus of eye-witnesses who will eagerly dispel this nonsense, including Justin Robert Young, who was right there the entire time. I never made any physical contact with Julie whatsoever, of course — nor would I ever seek to! I’m not retarded! (Jim is the one who decided to introduce physical violence to the mix, lol, by demanding that I “step outside” with him and have an old-fashioned slugfest. To which I of course instantaneously agreed.)

But anyway, no, I was not “blocking” Julie’s movements in any respect, nor did I even have the ability to do that if I wanted to. I literally just walked up to her, at an ostensible media party, introduced myself, and then she immediately started scurrying away like the uncaged rat she is. I then remained within earshot of her for approximately 30 seconds, repeating my paramount question of the night: Does she have any evidence for her ongoing sleazy insinuations that I am being illicitly paid by Epstein co-conspirators? Asking her this worrisome question is apparently what constitutes “harassment,” according to Julie’s petulant pampered worldview — which chivalrous Jim was of course leading the charge to co-sign. Julie evidently regards herself as some kind of Epstein Survivor by Proxy, and therefore believes herself entitled to all the same Survivor Protections the Real Survivors are speciously afforded, meaning: never can they be asked a single discomfiting question about anything, despite raking in millions of dollars tax-free from ill-gotten settlement funds, and appointing themselves international political activists. They constantly huddle with Congress, including as recently as this week, they’re always advocating legislation, and so forth. But you can’t ask them any probing questions about any of it. Rather, the proper role of journalists is to simply Lift Up Their Voices (and the Voices of their profit-seeking lawyers). Julie, by extension, is deserving of the same rigorous protections.

So that’s Big Lie #1 on Jim’s dopey little stream with Tara: there was no “harassment,” and no physical obstruction by me whatsoever.

Jim then dazzles Tara with his exciting tale of how “he [Michael Tracey] and I kind of got into it” — notably without clarifying that he’s the one who drunkenly blurted out the challenge that we “step outside” and physically fight! But of course I’m the presumed Baddie in this whole situation, and therefore also the presumed aggressor. A very savvy omission on Jim’s part, I’ll grant. (Jimbo, if you’re out there, I’m still more than willing to meet you at the time and place of your choosing to “throw hands,” as the kids say, since that’s what you claimed you wanted to do on Saturday night. Let’s go, for real! You want an elbow drop from the top rope? Tombstone piledriver right into the frickin’ concrete?)

Big Lie #2 is when Jim mentions that Tara informed him I had the audacity to show up at “some vigil” earlier in the day, April 25, which is true — the “vigil” in question was not some somber private remembrance ceremony, but a public political event in which legislation such as “Virginia’s Law” was being advocated, and at which members of Congress such as the insufferable Jamie Raskin (D-MD) melodramatically orated. Raskin went the whole nine yards, proclaiming Virginia Roberts Giuffre to be in the same pantheon of American Heroes as Frederick Douglass and Rosa Parks! So yeah, I did “show up” to that event, Jim. You at least got that part right. There was also an interpretative dance interlude:

The minute I showed up to this thing, on the frickin’ National Mall mind you, I was swarmed by unknown security goons. Before I could literally do anything at all, except stumble onto the premises, these guys and gals were getting in my face, refusing to identify themselves, and purporting to restrict my movements — claiming they were empowered to dictate who I was allowed to speak with, or not. Obviously what’s going on here is that the Survivor Group Chats light up the instant I’m spotted anywhere these days, so a fake “security” protocol can be activated, and I can be physically blockaded from doing the most basic acts of journalism amongst sainted Epstein Survivors, Inc. One particularly nasty woman, who claimed to be some sort of “safety” volunteer (Hey, Heidi) even at one point started physically grabbing at me, demanding that I not approach the “memorial” stage, and refusing my polite request to keep her grimy paws off my torso. Sure, I could’ve reported her for “battery” or something if I really wanted — the Park Police and National Guard were amusingly puzzled by the whole spectacle — but I was not looking to get any law enforcement involved. I literally just wanted her to buzz off, but she and her nameless colleagues wouldn’t relent. At one point, a group of five weirdos seriously followed me all the way to the Washington Monument! They just wouldn’t leave me alone, so passionate were they in their mission to stymie my ability to do anything journalistically useful.

Tara was apparently there that afternoon too, sneaking around like a dumb little creep, and surreptitiously filming me. Which was fine, I guess: there’s nothing particularly interesting in the footage she intrepidly obtained, beyond me standing there, fruitlessly trying to reason with the Security Goons who designated themselves my unwanted minders, for the crime of merely showing up to a political rally in Our Nation’s Capital. After creep-posting her unremarkable video of me, Tara even linked up on Twitter/X with another Scumbag Tara — the scam-artist currently known as “Tara Reade,” to spread totally made-up garbage about there supposedly being “police records” in my shameful past for having stalked women, which is 100% fictitious. Absolutely never happened — nothing remotely of the sort. So please, Tara(s), go ahead and try to locate those non-existent police records. I’m begging you. Behold the depths to which these scumbags sink:

Tara then tells Jim that at the Epstein Survivors Press Conference back in September 2025, I was “shoving my camera in the faces of survivors,” which also literally never happened. She completely made that up. I do seem to remember Tara doing to me exactly what she falsely accused me of doing to others, but that’s neither here nor there:

So she’s just straight-up lying, over and over again! She explains to Jim that I also “started following her around at the Capitol” that day last September, which I also did not do. There is either something gravely wrong with Tara’s memory, or she’s knowingly confabulating an alternate-reality for herself, in which she’s the benighted heroine. As with the Epstein Survivors, it’s difficult to know one way or another what’s guiding her broken epistemology.

Tara then says Julie K. Brown was having a really rough day on Saturday, because she was so close to Virginia (true enough, Julie dedicated her ridiculous 2021 book to her) — with the idea being that I guess I should have known how emotionally fragile Julie was, and refrained from trying to talk to her at a media party we were both invited to attend. WTF? God, what absolute wimps these hucksters are. I really do hate the term “gas-lighting,” but the term does perfectly capture this whole perverse dynamic. Tara bemoans how “sad” and tragic it was that I would “target” Julie under such trying circumstances… by again, walking up to her and introducing myself, which I thought was the whole point of these tedious media parties? Perhaps not — I hadn’t realized that an emotional No Fly Zone had been declared around poor Julie. I deeply apologize for the pain I caused!!!!! I will administer twenty lashes to myself for flouting this important tenet of the Survivor Journo Code.

Tara goes on to declare how “mystified” she is by me in general, and reprises her standard shtick of darkly speculating about what my true motives could possibly be for covering the Epstein saga in the manner I do. She says she resents that I have viciously “attacked” her past journalistic “collaboration” with Virginia Roberts Giuffre, a person whose trail of proven confabulations is so vast and mystifying that it would be impossible to rehearse in this post and still keep it a reasonable length. Tara, however, proclaims that she was totally correct all along to “collaborate” with Virginia, because we’ve all subsequently learned that “she was telling the truth,” and her hallucinated fantasies have been vindicated, pursuant to the epochal “anti-trafficking” crusade she was waging, enabled by her cabal of lawyers, publicists, media lackeys like Tara, and various political emissaries. Those are the people that I really have “contempt” for, if I have contempt for anyone, despite Tara telling Jim how suspicious it is that I have such disproportionate contempt for the “survivors” themselves.

Tara then naturally proceeds to rehash our famed Piers Morgan appearance together from February, in which Tara, totally incapable of responding to a single thing I said on the merits, decided to pull out the Joe McCarthy-inspired “Are you now, or have you ever been paid by Epstein co-conspirators” card. Jim remarks that I was caught not answering her sleaze-fest question, because of the random technical glitch with my earpiece — a falsehood Tara eagerly corroborates on the video stream, knowing full well that I did respond to her scummy little question the moment I could actually hear it. Such are the vaunted journalistic standards of Jim Acosta: he couldn’t be bothered to watch the full YouTube panel before rushing on air to impugn me as a guy who goes around avoiding inconvenient questions about whether I’m being secretly paid with pedo blood money.

Jim has a hearty laugh about my admittedly blusterous exhortation in the early hours of April 26 that he haul his butt over to the Hampton Inn where I was staying in DC, so we could finish what he started (wanting to duke it out). He again suggests that I’m the one who first introduced the concept of physically fighting this shithead, when it was literally HIM who got all high on his own White Knight supply and threatened ME! There’s no factual dispute about this, he admits it himself! Yet the sequence of events has been flagrantly misreported all across the godforsaken internet. Alas, what are you gonna do.

Tara again intimates that I must have some kind of corrupt financial motive for my foul Epstein coverage. “What is this man fighting for?” she piously asks of me. “Who is he fighting for?” Because when she finds herself wondering, as she often does, why I am so very “passionate” about this one issue in particular, she says she uses her formidable skills of inferential reasoning to surmise that it must be totally about the money. OK, Tara. Again, I only wish I had access to this great billionaire largesse you keep scummily imagining me to be lavished by. Because I could maybe move out of my one-bedroom apartment in Jersey City, and perhaps also upgrade to a newer model of Hyundai Accent.

Tara mournfully relays that the “survivors” were super distressed when I showed up to the VRG “memorial” on Saturday afternoon, as “it caused a whole commotion,” because the Security Doofuses had no choice but to annoyingly descend on me. NOTEWORTHY DETAIL: I caused absolutely none of this (negligible) commotion! Any commotion which might have transpired was solely due to the consternation apparently triggered by the mere fact of my presence at this public political event. But fine, whatever, I’m the one who’s obviously to blame, and morally sullied for my outrageous conduct. I DISAVOW! I DISAVOW MYSELF. Maybe I’ll go to Little St. Jeff’s in the US Virgin Islands and blow my brains out, right on those heinous sandy beaches, out of penance to Tara and Julie and Jim, so they’ll never again have to be “harassed” by my stumbling visage.

Jim says he “hates to talk about me” any further, because it only “elevates” me in my despicable quest to do… something. What calumny I’m doing exactly, he never quite identifies. (Of course, these two shit-stains have 100% ignored any of the relevant substantive issues this entire time.) He informs his audience that I am truly “repugnant” for having the gall to “go after the truth-tellers” such as Julie, Tara, and I guess the general agglomeration of “survivors” who are now so deeply fearful of me. Jim then advises that I owe an apology to “all of us,” although I’m not sure what cohort he’s exactly referring to as apology-warranting. Regardless, Jim, I hereby apologize for not more assertively demanding that we follow through on your tough-guy drunken threat to throw haymakers in front of the Smithsonian. Because while I am certainly not a natural-born fighter (I think my last fight was when I was approximately 11 and my behaviorally-challenged 12-year-old neighbor randomly charged me on my front lawn) I nonetheless would’ve been happy to let the chips fall where they may that night, fueled by Substacker Adrenaline and a couple of cocktails. I would’ve loved to see your smug face smashed into the sidewalk, thus rendering you a Survivor of sorts, which is clearly what you crave. Maybe you would’ve cried out for Wolf Blitzer to come save your hide, but let me tell you something Jimbo, there’s no Wolf to swoop in and save you anymore. It would’ve been just you and me, alone, exchanging hard blows like Real Men, as the pathetic reality of your failed TV career came crashing down.

Tara then lumps me into the same category as the other “prominent men accused of crimes” who have allegedly also tried to “target the survivors” — as though I’ve got some sordid pedo-sex criminality in my past that I’m desperately trying to cover up, and so need to intimidate the “survivors” from exposing. Jim dutifully nods in his usual wimpy affirmation. These pieces of shit!

To wrap up, finally, Jim and Tara agree that I should be likened to… Donald Trump (?????) because both of us are notorious “bullies,” and we both need to be taught a lesson: that bullies ought to be socked in the face. “I’m sick and tired of bullies like Donald Trump, I think he’s a bully,” Jim bloviates. “I think what this Michael guy was doing over the weekend makes him a bully. And America, we’re tired of bullies… this is the year when bullies, maybe they get punched in the nose!”

Alright Jim: for the millionth friggin’ time: let’s square the fuck up! Right now! Where you wanna meet Jimbo? Las Vegas? Palm Beach? Times Square? In front of the White House? Truly, I will go to the ends of the Earth at this point to grant your wish for a decisive beatdown.

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