Batten down the hatches, folks. On Wednesday after the press conference between President Trump and Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu, pure and utter panic set in on CNN as Inside Politics host John King and White House correspondent Jim Acosta bemoaned that “the fix is in” because “it would be nice if the conservative outlets the President is calling on would ask him tough questions.”

After Trump and Netanyahu left their podiums, King attacked questioners David Brody from the Christian Broadcasting Network and Katie Pavlich from Townhall with a dose of sarcasm. He then went serious as they didn’t ask Trump about Mike Flynn the way the media wanted them to.

“Well, it would be nice, it would be nice, if the conservative outlets the President is calling on would ask him tough questions, and they would actually — instead of trying to curry favor with the President, they might do him a favor by letting him answer these questions because until he answers these questions, this story is not going to go away,” King complained.

King unpacked what the President actually said about Flynn’s departure, arguing that Trump “just made it more complicated” and called into question “who is telling the truth” and “who speaks for the President.”

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He concluded with more potshots at outlets that haven’t kowtowed to the narrative that, say, CNN or The New York Times wanted them to: “You have a White House now that is in crisis, and calling on conservative news outlets, fine, but it doesn't answer the questions that the American people should have. Not just the news media.”

King’s admonishment of Brody and Pavlich (plus those from the past two joint press conferences) could be seen as tame compared to what Acosta leveled a few minutes later.

“Yes, the two questions that were asked or called upon from the President in this news conference went to the Christian Broadcasting Network, which is obviously owned by Pat Robertson, the televangelist down in Virginia. It's a very conservative broadcasting network, and Townhall.com, which is a very conservative news website,” Acosta began.

After being offered kudos from Wolf Blitzer for shouting a question to Trump as he left the East Room, Acosta unloaded that the system is rigged: “In the last three news conferences, Wolf, all of the questions to the American news media have been handled by conservative press” and so, therefore, “there's no other way to describe it but the fix is in.”

Acosta continued, explaining that the Trump administration doesn’t appear to be too keen on “answer[ing] questions” or ones that outlets like CNN deem as “critical” ones.

“I think that this only, you know — they may think that this is being cute or they think this is strategic in terms of trying to shield the President from questions, but those questions can only be shielded for so long, Wolf,” Acosta concluded with more smugness.

Here’s the relevant portions of the transcript from CNN’s Inside Politics on February 15: