Sunny Hostin says Trump’s press ban is ‘what dictators do’

ABC’s “The View” co-hosts spent Monday’s broadcast likening President Trump’s decision to bar CNN, MS NOW and Politico from the White House to tactics used by authoritarian regimes, hours before the three outlets sued the administration over the ban.

Mr. Trump announced Friday in a Truth Social post that he was banning the outlets “effective immediately,” calling their coverage “Fake News.” Reporters from all three organizations were turned away and had their press credentials confiscated when they tried to enter White House grounds Saturday morning. By Monday, the other four members of the five-network White House television pool — ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox News, joining CNN — had agreed to suspend pool coverage of the president in solidarity, and CNN, MS NOW and Politico filed a lawsuit in federal court arguing the ban violates the First Amendment.

Co-host Sunny Hostin told viewers she was proud the networks had banded together, then turned to the president’s motives, asking what he was trying to hide. Fellow co-host Ana Navarro, who was born in Nicaragua, was more direct, saying the move mirrors what communist dictators do in places like North Korea and Cuba. 

“Trump loves being on television,” she said. “Like, I don’t understand what is happening inside of the White House that he doesn’t want us to know about … this is what happens with dictators. What is he trying to hide from the American people?”

Not every moment on the panel went unchallenged. When Ms. Hostin asked co-hosts to imagine the outcry had former President Barack Obama done the same to Fox News, co-host Alyssa Farah Griffin — a former Trump administration official — noted that an Obama-era Treasury Department official once tried to exclude Fox from an event, adding that the press “banded together” and the decision was reversed.

The exchange is the latest flashpoint in Mr. Trump’s long-running friction with the press corps. His administration took control of White House press pool selection from the White House Correspondents’ Association last year, and it restricted the Associated Press’s access to certain limited presidential events, such as the Oval Office and Air Force One, over its refusal to rename the Gulf of Mexico — a dispute still working through federal appeals court. During his first term, the White House briefly revoked CNN reporter Jim Acosta’s credential before a judge ordered it restored.

Asked Friday why he moved against the three outlets now, Mr. Trump said he doesn’t believe reporters should be allowed to write what he called fake stories about him. The White House Correspondents’ Association president, Fox News’ Jacqui Heinrich, said the credential revocations violate the First Amendment.