White House Blocks CNN From Air Force One
“The White House blocked CNN from a Saturday trip to Tennessee after a court order restored access following a ban. The TV pool had boycotted coverage but resumed after CNN filmed an event with Xi Jinping.
CNN won’t be able to join President Trump on a Saturday trip to Tennessee. He had banned CNN and two other news outlets from the White House, but a court order on Thursday restored their access.
The White House on Friday night blocked CNN from accompanying President Trump on a Saturday trip to Tennessee, a network spokeswoman confirmed, in the latest twist in a weeklong standoff between Mr. Trump and the Washington press corps.
The decision immediately raised the question of whether the television pool would cover the president’s trip. The TV pool, a rotating group of networks that share the work of filming the president’s daily activities, had boycotted those responsibilities this week after Mr. Trump first banned CNN from participating in the pool.
In a Friday night email detailing logistics for the Saturday trip, the White House did not list a primary television pool representative. The White House did not return a request for comment.
In a post on Truth Social on Saturday morning, Mr. Trump continued to argue for banning the media from the White House. “Fake news should not be allowed in the White House!!! It has gone on far too long."
The tumult in White House coverage began a week ago, when Mr. Trump announced he would ban CNN, MS NOW and Politico in a social media post. Journalists for the outlets were denied access to White House grounds on Saturday. By Monday, the outlets had challenged the ban with a lawsuit in federal court.
Other news organizations made adjustments to their White House coverage in a show of solidarity with the banned news outlets. The TV pool suspended its work while CNN was banned from White House grounds, declining to film most of Mr. Trump’s visit this week with the Chinese leader, Xi Jinping.
On Thursday, a federal judge ordered the White House to restore the journalists’ credentials “immediately.” And on Friday, the White House let CNN film Mr. Trump and Mr. Xi during an event at the National Archives in Washington. When it did, the TV pool resumed its coverage.
The media outlets’ lawsuit requested that the White House restore the level of access that they had before Mr. Trump’s ban. The judge’s order directed the White House to reinstate the journalists’ hard passes to enter the White House complex but didn’t explicitly address their pool rotations.
In a Thursday interview with CNN, Theodore J. Boutrous, a lawyer for the media outlets, said he believed the order required the White House to restore their pool assignments“
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