One industry insider said: "Sidelining Acosta would also work to curry favor with Donald Trump, who very much despises the CNN anchor."

CNN has told anchor Jim Acosta that they want to move him to from his morning ET slot to midnight ET, a less high profile time period where cable news networks have traditionally run reruns of programming from earlier in the day.

They want to get rid of Acosta to throw a bone to Trump,’ one media exeucitve said of the proposed move, adding that ‘midnight is not a serious offer’