Trump Bars CNN From Air Force One Again, Deepening Press Standoff

The White House on Saturday once again barred CNN from flying aboard Air Force One, blocking the network from fulfilling its pool duties as President Trump traveled to Tennessee for a college football game. No outlet was named as a replacement, meaning there was no television pool coverage of the trip at all.The move is the latest escalation in an increasingly bitter fight between the administration and the press corps — one that comes as Mr. Trump has said he wants the upcoming midterms to center on his leadership. Yet barring major news outlets from covering him risks undercutting that message, raising questions about why the White House would limit visibility into the president’s actions just as he’s asking voters to judge him on them.“IMPORTANT: Please note that there is no TV pool for today’s trip, meaning there won’t be widely available independent video of events,” a print reporter wrote in a pool report to White House journalists on Saturday morning.Mr. Trump was accompanied on his trip to Knoxville by reporters for Real America’s Voice and LindellTV, both conservative outlets sympathetic to the president.Mr. Trump announced last week he was banning CNN, MS NOW, and Politico from the White House entirely, an order that also stripped CNN of its Air Force One privileges during his trip to the UN General Assembly. A federal judge quickly intervened, ordering the administration to restore the outlets’ credentials after finding the bans lacked “constitutionally adequate due process.” Judge Timothy Kelly wrote that the government’s national security justification appeared to be an afterthought, noting that “nothing in the record that predates this suit suggests that the revocation of Plaintiffs’ hard passes was motivated by national security concerns.”In protest, the other major networks — Fox, NBC, ABC and CBS — refused to perform pool duties until access was fully restored. Coverage resumed Friday, with CNN back in the rotation as Mr. Trump hosted Chinese leader Xi Jinping. But Saturday’s Air Force One snub suggests the truce was short-lived.On Saturday morning, Mr. Trump wrote on Truth Social, “FAKE NEWS SHOULD NOT BE ALLOWED IN THE WHITE HOUSE!!! IT HAS GONE ON FAR TOO LONG, AT A TREMENDOUS COST TO OUR COUNTRY.” Asked by an MS NOW reporter whether he only wants friendly outlets in the pool, Mr. Trump said, “I want real news, not fake news. I love an open, free press. What I don’t like is the fake press.”Press advocates warn the stakes go beyond any single outlet. The pool system “allows the networks to share video of the president with the whole country. If they aren’t there, the pool can’t function,” the White House Correspondents’ Association president, Jacqui Heinrich, said September 20 during a guest host appearance on “Fox News Sunday.” Her guest, CBS’s Weijia Jiang, added, “America cannot have state TV. That’s what makes America America.”Nearly 50 news organizations have since joined a friend-of-the-court brief urging the court to permanently block the bans, with the WHCA arguing the law is clear: “The government cannot remove journalists from the White House because it dislikes their reporting. That is viewpoint discrimination and a clear violation of the First Amendment.”The litigation continues, with a judge giving the outlets until Monday to seek a longer-term injunction against the administration’s actions.

Trump Bars CNN From Air Force One Again, Deepening Press Standoff

Trump Bars CNN From Air Force One Again, Deepening Press Standoff

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