Acosta also acknowledges accusations of bias against the Trump administration, writing that “neutrality for the sake of neutrality doesn’t really serve us in the age of Trump.”

Acosta also writes that then-White House aide Hope Hicks called him in February 2017, only weeks after Trump had first called him “fake news,” to pass on the president’s compliments for being “very professional today.” “Jim gets it,” Trump said, according to Hicks.

Acosta speculates that Trump’s diatribes against the media are largely for show, writing that “when he called us ‘fake news’ it was, in his mind, an act,” according to the excerpts.