Trump ‘bans’ CNN and other media groups from White House for reporting of ‘FAKE NEWS’
President Donald Trump on Friday claimed to have “banned” three of the country’s most prominent news outlets from the White House, taking a page from authoritarian leaders by attempting to limit coverage of his administration by legitimate journalists as his and his party’s popularity continue to crumble as the midterm elections approach.
Writing on Truth Social, the president said he would “effective immediately” be “banning Fake News CNN, MSNOW ... and Politico ... from the White House as a result of their constant ‘reporting’ FAKE NEWS.”
“Media Outlets shouldn’t be able to constantly write or report FICTION and LIES when they’re covering the President of the United States, the Trump Administration, or the United States of America. Other Fake News Media Outlets to follow,” he added.
All of the outlets mentioned by the president are legitimate and reputable news organizations with long histories of aggressive and independent reporting under both Republican and Democratic administrations.
It’s unclear what, if anything, specifically led to the president’s outburst, but Trump has had a years-long feud with CNN dating back to his first campaign for the presidency and his first term in the White House.
The president does not actually possess the authority to arbitrarily ban entire outlets from the White House based on the content those outlets publish.
A 1977 District of Columbia Circuit Court case, Sherill v. Knight, states that “bona fide journalists” cannot be denied access to White House press facilities except in cases when a journalist seeking a press credential to enter the White House “presents a potential source of physical danger to the President and/or his immediate family so serious as to justify his exclusion.”
That decades-old precedent was upheld during Trump’s first term after he attempted to revoke the credentials of CNN’s then-chief White House correspondent, Jim Acosta, and later a columnist for Playboy, Brian Karem, for behavior the White House considered to be inappropriate.
In both cases, the DC Circuit upheld lower court orders directing the White House to restore both journalists’ White House press passes.
Trump has nonetheless pushed to punish news outlets by restricting their access to the White House during his second term.
Last year, his administration seized control of the press pool that had for decades been organized by the White House Correspondents’ Association in order to punish the Associated Press for refusing to change its’ widely used style guide to reflect his administration’s attempt to rename the Gulf of Mexico as the “Gulf of America.”
His handpicked Pentagon boss, ex-Fox News presenter turned Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, has instituted sweeping restrictions on the Pentagon’s own press corps that led nearly every legitimate media outlet covering the Defense Department to turn in their credentials.
It is not clear whether anyone from the White House has attempted to enforce the president’s purported “ban” on CNN, MSNOW and Politico.
As of Friday afternoon, CNN’s press workspace was fully staffed and multiple camera and sound technicians from the network were present on the White House campus.
