Dem
52
Ties
4
GOP
44
When Donald Trump announced that he was banning CNN, MS NOW and Politico from the White House, the move was not immediate, in that staffers from the three outlets were allowed to remain in their executive mansion workspaces for the remainder of the day after Trump made his announcement. However, the next time staffers from CNN, MS NOW and Politico showed up for work, they were advised that their White House press badges were no longer valid, and must be surrendered. So, the ban is now in effect.
It is abundantly clear that this was the result of a Trump fit of pique, because nobody else in the White House knew it was coming. While staffers who talked to reporters (off the record) hewed to the party line, and said that Trump was in his rights to ban purveyors of "fake news," they admitted that the news caught them completely off guard.
There is zero chance that this will hold up once subjected to legal scrutiny. As we have noted, the White House can limit access, since there isn't room for everyone. However, the choice of who gets in and who doesn't cannot be based on whether or not the White House likes the coverage. Trump did not even bother to give himself plausible deniability, by claiming that the "real" issue was something else, like "We've run out of space, and have to withdraw access for some media contingents." He wanted everyone to know that this was because he's angry about the stories that CNN, MS NOW and Politico have been publishing. This is going to be a slam dunk, once it goes before a judge.
The benefit to Trump here, we suppose, is that he has sated the deep and abiding anger and resentment that always resides within him... for a few hours or maybe a day. The other benefit, though it seems pretty nominal to us, is that he'll spend some amount of time between now and the election getting a little less scrutiny. That said, there are still other outlets in the White House, many of whom are willing to hold Trump's feet to the fire. Further, nearly everything he does that hurts him politically quickly becomes known to the general public and the media because he himself announces it on his social media platform for the chronically petulant.
Indeed, can you think of a single adverse story or development that would have remained hidden, but for CNN, MS NOW and Politico having access to the White House? Heck, think about just the crazypants stuff from the last couple of weeks: the fake 9/11 firefighter story, the Kennedy Center shenanigans, the $5,000 checks, the threat to withhold disaster aid from North Carolina if they elect a Democratic senator, the claim that the Democrats were behind the Pennsylvania assassination attempt, the threat to ban trade with foreign nations if the Fed does not drop interest rates, the nonsensical blather about AI, and now the media ban. The three disfavored outlets did not break any of those stories.
Meanwhile, there are costs to the media ban. The first of those is that, to most Americans, it makes Trump look weak and petulant. This is a man whose entire political image is built around him being "strong" and "macho." Someone who gets their fee-fees hurt because the mean reporters wrote some mean things does not look "strong" or "macho."
The second cost comes from the Ronald Reagan playbook. The Gipper welcomed hostile press into the White House. In part, that is because he was a Bill of Rights zealot, and believed that Americans' rights should be observed, even if he didn't like the results. In part, however, it was because if the press is "inside the tent," as it were, then the administration has an opportunity to influence their coverage. If these three outlets are frozen out, they won't skew their coverage as "punishment," because they are professionals with a sense of journalistic ethics. But they will certainly have less ability to hear, and incorporate, the administration's position into their coverage.
Recently, Trump has been even more unhinged than is typical for him. Is this his looming dread over getting walloped in the midterms? Is he slipping, mentally? Both? Something else? Whatever is going on, we suspect we're going to have a lot of nonsense that we're going to have to write up in the next 6 weeks. (Z)