Trump Truth Social Post Friday: Outlets Reporting “FICTION And LIES” Banned From White House Press Badges Confiscated By Secret Service At West Wing Gate MS NOW Akayla Gardner Denied Entry Badge Deactivated CNN Betsy Klein Denied Access Politico Cheyenne Haslett Turned Away
President Donald Trump said Friday he would block MS NOW, CNN and Politico from White House grounds. Trump said in a Truth Social post on Friday he was banning these outlets from the White House, citing negative coverage of his administration and saying media outlets shouldn’t be able to constantly report “FICTION and LIES” when they cover the president of the United States. He warned other news outlets would follow. The Washington Post
The White House on Saturday denied access to journalists from CNN, MS NOW and Politico. All three news outlets separately said their teams’ press passes were confiscated on Saturday morning when their journalists went to the White House. MS NOW reporter Akayla Gardner reported from outside the White House gates on Saturday morning instead. CNN announced later its White House reporter Betsy Klein was also denied access, and Politico editor-in-chief Jonathan Greenberger said the same of that news outlet’s White House reporter Cheyenne Haslett.
The White House Correspondents’ Association called on the Trump administration to immediately restore the journalists’ access, saying the action violates the First Amendment. Jameel Jaffer, executive director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, said: “If President Trump means to expel these news organizations from the White House press pool, his action is doubly unconstitutional because the press pool is a ‘public forum’ under the First Amendment, which means the president can’t exclude journalists from it on the basis of their viewpoints.”
A CNN statement on Saturday called the ban “an illegal assault” on its constitutional right to do journalism without interference from the government. Trump previously tried to keep the Associated Press out of press gatherings because the news agency did not adopt Trump’s preferred name for the Gulf of Mexico. AP has challenged that ban.
The White House press pool is not a courtesy. It is a constitutional public forum. That distinction is now before the courts again. Check out our previous coverage of US politics on The Trusted Times.
