CNN Says It’s Banned From Covering Trump’s Tennessee Trip: What We Know
The White House is barring CNN from traveling with President Donald Trump on Air Force One for a Saturday trip to Tennessee, the network said late Friday, preventing CNN from carrying out its scheduled role in the White House TV press pool.
The move comes hours after the five-network press pool resumed its duties, following several days without coverage after the administration barred CNN from participating.
The pool is “designed to document history, and it's been in place for many decades under presidents,” CNN’s Jim Sciutto said on Friday night’s The Source. “But this president alone appears intent on trashing that tradition because of news coverage he does not like.”
CNN said no outlet was listed as replacing it in the White House note. However, the Associated Press reported that conservative network Real America's Voice News was taking CNN's spot.
Trump is scheduled to attend the University of Tennessee vs. University of Texas football game at noon ET Saturday in Knoxville.
Newsweek has reached out to the White House for comment.
The television pool is designed to provide shared footage of the president to news organizations when space is limited. The five networks—ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox News and NBC—rotate for filming and distributing that coverage, including when Trump travels aboard Air Force One or appears at events that cannot accommodate the full White House press corps.
The pool had resumed Friday after the other four networks declined to replace CNN when the administration barred it from carrying out its assigned duties. CNN served as the pooler for Trump's meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping at the National Archives, according to the network.
This move will likely require CNN’s lawyers to go back to court, CNN Senior Legal Analyst Elie Honig said Friday on The Source, arguing that the same issues apply: The network was not given due process, and the move violates the First Amendment.
"Tonight’s action clearly violates the spirit of the judge’s order, I suppose it’s a bit of an open question whether it violates the technical letter." Honig said.
A federal judge on Thursday ordered the Trump administration to restore White House press credentials of journalists from CNN, MS NOW and Politico for 14 days, temporarily blocking the ban on the three outlets.
U.S. District Judge Timothy J. Kelly, a Trump appointee, wrote that the news organizations were "likely to succeed in showing that their hard passes were revoked without constitutionally adequate due process."
The ruling came nearly a week after Trump announced the ban, accusing the three outlets of being “fake news.” The following day, journalists from the three news groups were turned away from the White House grounds.
On Monday, CNN, MS NOW and Politico sued the Trump administration, challenging their exclusion from the White House. The dispute also disrupted the television press pool: After CNN was barred from participating, ABC, CBS, Fox News and NBC declined to replace it for its scheduled pool assignments, leaving the pool without live video coverage of Trump for several days.
“The public has a vital interest in receiving accurate, independent information about its government," a joint statement from the five networks said Monday. "No administration should restrict a news organization because it objects to its reporting."
Trump said Monday that the outlets' reporting poses a national security risk, accusing them of publishing what he called "false and defamatory stories" based on unnamed sources.
Later Monday, the White House launched its own 24-hour video service, Trump TV, promoting it as a place to watch the administration's “biggest moments all in one place.”
Newsweek’s reporters and editors used Martyn, our AI assistant, to produce this story. Learn more about Martyn here. Contact Newsweek editors on this story: Edward T. Cummins
