CNN’s Jim Acosta on Tuesday went off on Donald Trump’s “strange, surreal stunning and baffling” press conference, explaining the world witnessed “a presidency go off the rails.”

“The president was trying to have it both ways during this news conference,” Acosta said. “At one point he said he likes to wait to see all the facts come in, he said he did not know that David Duke was at that protest on Saturday in Charlottesville, but at the same time he said later on—almost in the same breath—that he was watching the events unfolding in Charlottesville, ‘very closely.’”

ADVERTISEMENT

“The other thing that he tried to say at one point is that not all of the protesters in that white supremacist, neo-Nazi crowd were bad people,” Acosta continued, noting authorities would say the white supremacists were “very much responsible for that violence and that unrest that unfolded.”

“Keep in mind this is the same president who said that Barack Obama was not born in this country and that Barack Obama wiretapped him here at Trump Tower without any proof at all,” Acosta noted, referring to Trump’s assertion that he wanted to be accurate in his statement after Charlottesville. “So, for a president to come out here and say he likes to wait for the facts to come in, the record reflects that he does not always do that, and you could probably make the case that he does not very often wait for the facts to come in.”

“This was the president I think unguarded, unvarnished, unplugged,” Acosta continued. “These were the real views of the president of the United States today. What we saw at the White House yesterday where he came out with that very scripted statement, that was not really the president of the United States deep down inside.”

“Donald Trump made his true colors very clear here inside of Trump tower and it felt like when you’re watching it here in person, you’re not just seeing a press conference go off the rails or jump the tracks, you are watching a presidency go off the rails and jump the tracks. It was just that strange, surreal, stunning and baffling to watch,” the CNN reporter concluded.

Watch the video below, via CNN: