On September 18, Trump announced that he was banning CNN, MS NOW, and Politico from the White House over their “constant ‘reporting’ FAKE NEWS!,” which he absurdly called “a threat to our National Security.” The next day, their press credentials were deactivated. As evidence of the supposed security threat, the White House later pointed to stories about the Iran war, the East Wing ballroom, and even the GOP’s midterm convention. Well, the three outlets sued—and U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly, a Trump appointee, issued a 14-day temporary restraining order. Kelly found the ban likely violated their due process rights.
The White House let the reporters back in, but it has kept finding ways to punish the outlets, including barring CNN from Air Force One. With the restraining order set to expire on October 8, the outlets are asking the court to keep the ban blocked until the case is resolved.
NPR explains:
Three news outlets that President Donald Trump abruptly banished from White House grounds this month asked a federal court to block the ban until the case is resolved, saying the administration has “persisted in unpredictably and inconsistently implementing its ban” despite a judge’s restraining order—including selectively barring CNN from White House pool duties. ... [Attorney General Todd] Blanche defended [the Air Force One exclusion], too. “The president has every right to decide who gets to fly on his plane,” he said in the Sunday interview. He added that Trump was “sick and tired of certain media outlets just refusing to report accurate news.” He added that news coverage he described as “misinformation” amounted to a national security issue.
“That is what is a national security problem, when you have complete misinformation coming out of the White House,” he said. Kelly threw cold water on that argument in his ruling last week granting the temporary restraining order against the White House ban. “The court is skeptical … that defendants’ interest in safeguarding national security is the actual motivation” for removal of access, Kelly wrote.
The press pool fight shows how the administration is working around the court. When CNN was first barred from pool duty, the other four networks in the TV pool, Fox News included, refused to take its place. That led to absurdities like this press conference with no audio.
Kelly’s order covers access to the White House grounds. It doesn’t reach Air Force One or the president’s travel, where the White House picks the reporters who come along. So the White House kept CNN off Air Force One and, days later, pulled it from the pool for a trip to Texas and Oklahoma, leaving that trip with no television pool coverage at all. And in an October 2 filing, the Justice Department argued that Trump may ban the outlets because he determined they failed to meet “minimum requirements of professionalism.” A president who gets to decide which outlets meet his standard of professionalism also gets to decide which coverage the public sees.
The Executive Watch is a project of the Institute for the Study of Modern Authoritarianism, and its flagship publication The UnPopulist, to track in an ongoing way the abuses of the power of the American presidency. It sorts these abuses into five categories: Personal Grift, Political Corruption, Presidential Retribution, Power Consolidation, and Policy Illegality. Click the category of interest to get an overview of all the abuses under it.
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