After what must have been an insanely painful 42 days for the White House press corps, Monday afternoon featured a White House press briefing and, needless to say, carnival barker, CNN chief White House correspondent, and infamous newsman Jim Acosta made sure to make this briefing count.

Acosta used his allotted two minutes as best he could, tussling with Press Secretary Sarah Sanders over the Democratic Party’s issues with Jewish people and the President’s rhetoric as a source of what ills America.

He led off his questions by, well, making it about his own news organization at CNN by asking whether President Trump “ask[ed] Gary Cohen to intervene or block AT&T's merger with Time Warner” to which Sanders replied that she wasn’t “aware of any conversation” about it.

It was here that Acosta decried the President’s comments about the left becoming a safe haven for anti-Semitism, ruling that it’s the “kind of rhetoric” that’s “just sort of beneath everybody.” Acosta then went on a brief civility lecture to Sanders, who wasn’t having it (click “expand”):

ACOSTA: And do you think that the president has thought at all going into this 2020 campaign that the rhetoric just needs to be lowered, whether it’s talking about Democrats, the media, immigrants. Or should we just plan on hearing the President use the same kind of language that we heard in 2016 and all through the first couple years of his administration? SANDERS: Look, I think that the real shame in all of this is that Democrats are perfectly capable of coming together and agreeing on the fact that they're comfortable ripping babies straight from their mother’s womb or killing a baby after birth, but they have a hard time condemning the type of comments from Congresswoman Omar. I think that is a great shame. The President has been clear on what his position is. Certainly, what his support is for the people and the community of Israel and beyond that I don't have any further. ACOSTA: Don’t you think that just sort of drags down the rhetoric and the debate when you're saying something that's patently untrue. I mean, obviously — SANDERS: I think stating their policy positions is not patently untrue. ACOSTA: — but Democrats don't hate Jewish people. That's just silly. It's not true.

Sanders tried to move to April Ryan, but Acosta tried to keep a hold of the spotlight by bringing up the President’s Charlottesville comments. The Press Secretary put out that fire and only then did Acosta relent.

Afterward, on CNN Newsroom, Acosta uncorked another long-winded, uninterrupted lecture about his dismay for what comes out of the White House. Here is the portion dealing with the Democrats being “anti-Jewish” (click “expand”):

I think this issue of the President referring to Democrats as anti-Jewish or hating Jewish people, I mean, I think that just naturally is going to dredge up some of his own questions from his past. You know, the days after Charlottesville when he said that there were very fine people on both sides down in Charlottesville. I mean, that is a comment that's just going to live on forever no matter what they say here at the White House and I do think it's important to say and not even put it in the form of a question, that obviously, Democrats don't hate Jewish people. I mean, that is just a silly thing to say, but it just goes to where we're headed I think over the next you know, 18 to 24 months, Brooke. We are in for probably, it's astonishing I think to say this and to hear it and so on, but we're in for the nastiest campaign we've ever seen in our lifetimes coming up in 2020 and I wanted to ask, you know, whether or not the President plans on tamping down the rhetoric because, as we all know, you know, he is — he is largely responsible for this driving down of our political discourse. You know, going out and making speeches saying Democrats are hating Jewish people. I mean, that just goes to pushing people's buttons in ways that you know the President of the United States really shouldn't be engaged in doing.

Acosta had a lead-in of sorts during the briefing on that topic. ABC’s Jonathan Karl was first to ask Sanders questions during her portion (see transcript below) and then NBC’s Hallie Jackson did the same.

In Jackson’s case, Sanders again put the onus on the left, noting that “they've had a lot of opportunities over the last few weeks to condemn some abhorrent comments,” but have avoided doing so and instead passing the watered-down resolution about various forms of hate instead of Congresswoman Ilhan Omar’s anti-Semitic comments.

Jackson cut Sanders off and so Sanders responded in kind: “I'm trying to answer you. If you stop talking, I'll finish my statement.”

Ah, yes. Clashes in the briefing room. It’s been a while since we had one of those!

To see the relevant transcript from March 11's CNN Newsroom with Brooke Baldwin and the White House press briefing, click “expand.”