During an obnoxious appearance on the Wednesday edition of HLN’s S.E. Cupp Unfiltered, CNN chief White House correspondent Jim Acosta opened up and showcased his true disdain for Trump supporters after they booed and heckled him at a rally the night before.

According to Acosta, when he was surrounded by those Trump supporters in Tampa Bay, Florida, “Honestly, it felt like we weren't in America anymore. I don't know how to put it any more plainly than that.”

“Americans should not be treating their fellow Americans in this way. But unfortunately what we've seen and this has been building for some time since the campaign,” he whined. The hypocrisy was breathtaking for two main reasons. First, there had been many a CNN employee that had condemned Trump supporters as racist rubes. Don Lemon is one name who fits that title.

Second, Acosta followed up by seeming to insinuate that those Trump supporters were ready to attack him like animals. “[Trump] is whipping these crowds up into a frenzy to the point where they really want to come after us,” he proclaimed. “We have these bike rack-like barriers around the press cage, as we call it, to protect us essentially from people who might take things too far. It's unfortunate.”

As someone who used to work on large stage productions in college, those barriers are primarily put up to protect the equipment.

Of course, Acosta asserted that the reason those Trump supporters hated CNN was that they were essentially brainwashed by Fox News and other conservative media outlets:

My scene of it, S.E., is that these opinions that these folks have at these rallies, they're shaped by what they see in the primetime hours of Fox News and what they hear from some conservative news outlets that, sort of, give them this daily diet of what they consider to be terrible things we do over here at CNN. It's very unfortunate. But it's a pitting of American against American and honestly, it needs to stop.

After being teed up by host S.E. Cupp, Acosta worried that one day, one of those Trump supporters would snap and try to hurt a journalist, or worse. “I think it's been dangerous for some time. I was worried during the campaign that a journalist was going to get hurt and it has been building,” he opined. “But when you refer to members of the press as the enemy of the people, you're essentially putting targets on our backs.”

The smears against those hard-working Trump supporters weren’t just coming from Acosta. Cupp decried the pro-Trump “mob” and how a mother at the rally put an anti-CNN button on her baby. “And not even children are safe with parents using their babies as props in Trump’s war against the media,” she spat. “The fever pitch of Trump’s rhetoric and the mob-like dispositions of his supporters at these rallies has become downright scary.”

Following a clip of former Fox News commentator Lt. Col. Ralph Peters ludicrously comparing Trump’s rhetoric to Soviet purges, Cupp suggested it “might not be quite that bad, yet.”

It’s generally understood that the elitists at CNN and their affiliates look down their noses at Trump supporters in the heartland, but this level of open discontent is not too uncommon. And yet they're still struggling to rack their brains with why people dislike them.

The transcript is below, click "expand" to read: