Trump says he is banning CNN, MS NOW and Politico from the White House

Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump said Fri­day that he was ban­ning CNN, MSNOW and Politi­co from the White House due to what he called un­fa­vor­able cov­er­age, and threat­ened that more such me­dia pro­hi­bi­tions could be com­ing — of­fer­ing his ad­min­is­tra­tion’s lat­est test of con­sti­tu­tion­al First Amend­ment pro­tec­tions guar­an­tee­ing the free­dom of the press.

Trump has long bris­tled at news cov­er­age he main­tains casts him in a neg­a­tive light, and has a his­to­ry of fil­ing law­suits against news or­ga­ni­za­tions, while lash­ing out at in­di­vid­ual re­porters in per­son or over so­cial me­dia.

The move fol­lows the pres­i­dent’s de­ci­sion, in Feb­ru­ary 2025, to keep As­so­ci­at­ed Press jour­nal­ists out of the Oval Of­fice, Air Force One and oth­er events too small for a full press corps, in re­tal­i­a­tion for the news out­let’s de­ci­sion not to fol­low his lead in chang­ing the Gulf of Mex­i­co’s name.

The AP filed suit and the case is on­go­ing. Since re­turn­ing to of­fice, how­ev­er, Trump has pur­sued oth­er le­gal ac­tion against a va­ri­ety of dif­fer­ent out­lets, in­clud­ing The New York Times, The Wall Street Jour­nal and the BBC.

Trump seek­ing to block White House ac­cess for CNN is es­pe­cial­ly no­tably, how­ev­er, as it could up­end the tra­di­tion­al five-net­work tele­vi­sion pool that trav­els with the pres­i­dent and tracks his every move — meant to pro­vide in­de­pen­dent cov­er­age of his ac­tions and in­ter­ac­tions for the Amer­i­cans who elect­ed him and the world.

In the so­cial me­dia an­nounce­ment, Trump did not pro­vide de­tails on how the ban would be im­ple­ment­ed.

It came mo­ments be­fore Trump spoke to re­porters in the Oval Of­fice as part of a health care event. He lat­er planned to take the press pool to his golf club in Vir­ginia for a meet­ing and din­ner spon­sored by his Su­per PAC be­fore spend­ing the week­end at Camp David — one of the few places re­porters don’t fol­low him.

The pres­i­dent wrote on his so­cial me­dia site that ef­fec­tive im­me­di­ate­ly, “I am ban­ning” 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,” Trump wrote. “Oth­er Fake News Me­dia Out­lets to fol­low.”

By WILL WEIS­SERT

WASH­ING­TON (AP)

As­so­ci­at­ed Press writer Dar­lene Su­perville con­tributed.