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. And in an unrelated Oval Office press availability, he doubled down shortly after.

The president launched into a lengthy rant in the Oval Office in which he repeated a bogus claim that Politico had received a subsidy from the Biden administration — actually subscription revenues from government agencies — and suggested that other outlets could also face similar fates if they do not write positive stories about his administration.

“Something is wrong with a country that can allow people to write purposely negative stories,” the president said. “If they want to write them, that’s fine. I don’t have to let them into the people’s house.

“They purposely write negative news, and they do that because want to try and diminish the Republicans and a Republican administration,” he continued. “And honestly, we’ve done a fantastic job.

“Look at the numbers. Look at the economic numbers. We have more money coming into our country today than ever before, we have the highest employment that we’ve ever had in history … we have the best poverty rate, the lowest poverty rate in the history of our country, and people are making more money today than they ever had.”

The president does not actually possess the authority to arbitrarily ban entire outlets from the White House based on the content those outlets publish.

Not only does the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution protect the right of journalists to report without government interference, but 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 Court upheld lower court orders directing the White House to restore both journalists’ White House press passes.

“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,” Jameel Jaffer, the executive director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, told the New York Times.

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.

“CNN stands fully behind our White House team and their fair and accurate reporting. We have a right under the U.S. Constitution to do that reporting without hindrance or interference from the government,” the network said in a statement.

“Should the ban which President Trump threatened go ahead, it would be an illegal assault on that fundamental and constitutionally-protected right.”

CNN star Jake Tapper took to X on Friday evening and slammed Trump for the ban attempt.

“Less than an hour after @KristenhCNN did this report about the WH announcement of lower drug prices, President Trump complained CNN would never cover such a thing and banned us from the White House. In addition to being unconstitutional, it’s so ill-informed,” he wrote.”

In a statement, Politico said it “will continue to fairly report on this White House and future ones. We will vigorously defend our First Amendment rights against any attempt to restrict them. The claims that POLITICO received government subsidies are false and have been thoroughly debunked.”

Asked how he could justify attempting to ban news outlets when he has taken an oath to uphold the U.S. Constitution, Trump replied: “Because they’re fake news, and you get so tired of reading and seeing fake news.”

Very little of what the president said was actually accurate. For one, the highest-ever recorded U.S. employment rate was 64.7 percent, 26 years ago in April 2000.

Asked about his prior attempts to ban individual reporters, Trump suggested a different judge would have been more amenable to his authoritarian push to restrict a free press.

“To be honest with you, I don’t think that a court should allow fake news to be written day after day after day, I think that somebody has a right to keep them away if they’re going to write false stories all the time,” he said.

He continued complaining that the coverage of his administration by legitimate news organizations is not fawning in the manner practiced by Breitbart News and other partisan outlets.

When a reporter attempted to ask Sanders — who was actually in the Oval Office for the event in her new role as Governor of Arkansas — whether she agreed with Trump’s push to ban entire news organizations, he interjected and repeated himself.

“I don’t think somebody should be allowed to come in and write fake stories, fake news, and that’s why they have no credibility,” he said.

“They never write a good story … it’s sick. I mean, there’s something wrong with a country that can allow people to write purposely negative stories. Now, if they want to write them, that’s fine. But I don’t have to let them into my — into the people’s house.”

He also complained that two of the nation’s largest papers — The New York Times and The Washington Post — were “fake” and “disgusting,” but he did not indicate that he would attempt to bar their reporters from the White House.

Bruce Brown, president of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, said in a statement: “A ban like this would be flatly unconstitutional. The First Amendment is clear that once the White House invites in some journalists, it can’t ban others because it doesn’t like their reporting.”

Jacqui Heinrich, president of the White House Correspondents Association, also addressed the ban.

“The president said it plainly in the Oval Office, describing his own planned action as a “ban on the free press.” The Constitution protects the freedom of the press from government interference. That protection does not depend on whether the president likes a news organization’s coverage, agrees with its reporting, or approves of the questions its journalists ask.

“This is about more than the rights of journalists. It is about the right of the American people to receive a full and independent account of the activities, policies and decisions of whoever occupies the nation’s highest office. The WHCA stands in defense of our colleagues at CNN, MSNOW, and Politico who are being singled out for doing their jobs.”