A former CNN anchor who has since moved to YouTube spent nearly 11 hours livestreaming outside the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., as crews prepared to remove President Donald Trump’s name from the building. But the moment that drew the most attention was not the removal itself. It was Jim Acosta’s comparison of the scene to the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Acosta, a longtime Trump critic, served as CNN’s chief domestic correspondent and later anchored “CNN Newsroom” from 2021 until early 2025. He left the network after 18 years following a reported programming shakeup that would have moved his morning show to a late-night slot from midnight to 2 a.m.
On Friday, Acosta hosted what he called a live watch party on “The Jim Acosta Show” on YouTube. The stream mostly showed scaffolding covered by a tarp, with workers behind it preparing to take down Trump’s name from the Kennedy Center.
Around 3:30 a.m., Acosta described the scene in dramatic terms.
“This is very much like watching the Berlin Wall coming down,” he said.
He continued, “It is a sign that mankind, that humankind can stand up against tyranny. As long as it took, we pledged to continue to have this coverage going, and by golly, we did, because we knew how much this meant to a lot of people out there, and we know how important this was.”
The remark quickly became the center of backlash online, with critics saying the comparison was wildly out of proportion.
The controversy began after the Kennedy Center board voted in December 2025 to rename the complex the “Donald J. Trump and John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts.” The move drew strong criticism from Democrats and other Trump opponents. A Democratic congresswoman later sued to block the change, and a federal judge ruled last week that the original name, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, had to be restored.
Acosta did not actually witness the first moments of the letter removal. After hours of waiting, he went home and left his producer monitoring the scene. The producer later noticed activity near the lettering and alerted him.
“It looks like they are potentially touching the letters,” the producer said more than 10 hours into the stream. “I can’t say whether or not they’re removing them. But it looks like there might be progress.”
The producer then added that the letters appeared to be coming down and said he would likely have to call Acosta, who “was not gonna be very happy” about being woken up.
Acosta returned to the Kennedy Center and criticized the timing of the removal, as well as the tarp that blocked much of the work from public view.
“I had just gotten home, and we thought this might take place later in the morning, and of course they did this in the dead of the night,” Acosta said. “They did this at three in the morning, and to make it — the icing on the cake, the chef’s kiss in all of this for Donald Trump — is that they had to put up a giant white tarp to shield Trump and his feelings from the humiliation of seeing this all come down in front of the cameras.”
He continued attacking the president, accusing Trump of having “slapped his name illegally and obnoxiously on the exterior of the Kennedy Center.” At another point, Acosta said Trump behaved “like a small child” who did not want to give up a toy after being told it was time for bed.
Clips from the livestream spread quickly on X, where Acosta was widely mocked by conservative commentators and other users.
“Ah yes. The Berlin Wall famously came down to a crowd of one guy talking to himself and not throngs of elated prisoners. Jim Acosta is wild,” one user wrote.
Conservative commentator Matt Whitlock also weighed in, saying, “This is wild. I can’t imagine having so little going on in my life that I would sit outside a building all day waiting for a name to get removed from it.”
Another user joked, “Decades of Communist oppression V. a sign on a building. The similarities are striking.”
One commenter summed up the reaction more bluntly: “Give that man a Pulitzer. What a dipsht.”
Asswipe Acosta is nothing but a disgrace !! Degenerate Acosta must have no life to stand outside , by himself at 3;30 in the morning to watch a sign come down !! Now all he does is sets in his basement and plays on YouTube with his Biden blow up doll next to him !!
We can only be grateful Acosta is no longer with CNN. His hatred is sickening and only ones with little intelligence follow him.