Republicans are supporting President Trump’s banishment of three left-leaning news outlets from the White House, arguing that Mr. Trump has been more accessible to the press than any other president and that President Biden did more to restrict press access.
U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Mike Waltz said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union” that Mr. Trump “is absolutely within his rights,” to bar CNN, Politico and MS NOW from the White House if he believes the new organizations “are not behaving in good faith as journalists.”
House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, Louisiana Republican, brushed off concerns that Mr. Trump is restricting media access to the White House.
Mr. Trump has spent countless hours answering questions from dozens of media outlets inside and outside of the White House, far surpassing any of his predecessors, he said.
Many reporters have have access to his cell phone number, and when they call him, he answers.
“I don’t think we’ve had a president that’s been more open to the press,” Mr. Scalise said on ABC’s “This Week.”
Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso, Wyoming Republican, told NBC’s “Meet the Press” that the three-outlet ban doesn’t violate the constitution.
“The press has an obligation to report fairly. And the president doesn’t see it happening that way,” Mr. Barrasso said.
The three GOP officials were among several Republicans who stood by Mr. Trump’s sudden removal of the media outlets.
The ban went into effect Friday afternoon.
The president said they were kicked out “as a result of their constant reporting Fake News!”
But legal experts predicted the courts would force Mr. Trump to rescind the ban.
“What’s going on here is a flagrant violation of the First Amendment,” said Conor Fitzpatrick a expert on thag provision with the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, a free speech advocacy group.
“I would expect the courts to very quickly enjoin these three organizations from being ejected from the White House. The precedent on this point is clear,” he told “This Week.”
White House officials carried out the president’s order.
All three outlets said their reporters were denied access to the White House on Saturday and had their badges confiscated.
Politico Editor-in Chief Jonathan Greenberger, in a statement to the newsroom, pledged to “not be deflected from our duty to hold the government and other public bodies to account.”
MS Now said in a statement it will “take any and all steps necessary to defend our First Amendment right and the essential role of independent journalism in our democracy.”
But on Sunday conservatives pointed out Mr. Biden also moved to pare back White House access by revising rules on who qualified for the passes. The Biden-era requirements were aimed at eliminating credentials for outlets that did not report from the White House regularly.
The resulting new standards culled several hundred outlets who were previously allowed into the White House, among them the Daily Signal and other conservative sites.
On Sunday, Mr. Trump doubled down on his decision, posting a photo of three black garbage bags outside the White House fence. The trash bags were labeled with the names of the three ousted media outlets.
While the president’s supporters have rallied to his side on the ban, mainstream media outlets and Democrats condemned the move.
CBS News Senior White House Correspondent Weijia Jiang, who served as the president of the White House Correspondents’ Association from 2025 to 2026, said expelling news outlets from the White House is unprecedented and could lead to additional bans by future adminsitrations and increasingly limit journalists’ access to the executive branch.
“It would set a precedent. It would draw a red line and then who knows what’s to come for future administrations who might do the same on the other side of it,” Ms. Jiang told “Fox News Sunday.” “So that’s why it is so worrisome. That’s why every outlet, every reporter, every member of the public who consumes the news should be worried about this.”
Sen. Cory Booker, New Jersey Democrat, said the ban “clearly” violates the Constitution along with the Justice Department’s recent investigation of Trump administration leaks to the media.
“This president has no regard for the First Amendment. He’s going after reporters, and this ban just doubled down on that,” he said.
The president has been dueling with the press since his first term in office, arguing the media has reported stories that are flat out untrue, chief among them the claims that Mr. Trump colluded with Russia’s efforts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election.
Mr. Trump stepped up attacks on mainstrean news outlets in his second term.
He has sued The New York Times, CBS News and other media organizations over their coverage of him and his administration, and he successfully ended guaranteed access to the White House press pool for the Associated Press and other wire services. The wire outlets now take turns in the pool rotation like all other news outlets.
The Trump administration last year tried to to bar journalists from the Pentagon if they would not agree to restrictions on coverage.
A judge blocked that policy but an appeals court has for now upheld a Defense Department rule restricting journalists’ access to the Pentagon building unless they are escorted.
On Friday, former President Barack Obama weighed in on Mr. Trump’s ban during a discussion on artificial intelligence hosted by Colgate University.
“I’m trying to think what would have happened if I had said, you know what, Fox News, you’re out of here! It’s unimaginable!” Mr. Obama said.
Yet his administration in 2009 attempted to bar Fox News from a pool of reporters scheduled to interview Treasury Department official Kenneth Feinberg, who Mr. Obama appointed to scrutinize Wall Street compensation packages.
Obama administration emails from October 2009 obtained by the conservative-leaning Judicial Watch showed that Jen Psaki, then the White House deputy communications director and now an MS NOW host, told Treasury Department spokewoman Jenni LeCompte that “I’m putting some dead fish in the fox cubby - just cause.”
In another email, White House Director of Broadcast Media Dag Vega wrote to Ms. LeCompte that “we’d prefer if you skip Fox please,” for interviews with economic officials.
When Fox News reported on the exclusion, Ms. Psaki wrote in a White House email that “brett baier did a stupid piece on it — but he’s a lunatic.”
The Obama administration ulimately decided not to exclude Fox News from any interviews.
Contact the author
Please read our comment policy before commenting.