Trump vs. the media
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It's been almost 10 years since President Trump first tweeted out the words fake news. In the time since, he's found many new ways to ratchet up attacks on the press, including a ban on multiple outlets from the White House grounds. The outlets are fighting back in court and on screen. Where's this headed? It's the NPR Politics Podcast, and we are recording this at 1.12 p.m. Eastern Time on Wednesday, September 23rd. I'm Miles Parks. I cover voting.
I'm Tamara Keith. I cover politics.
And NPR media correspondent David Folkenflik is also here with us. Hi, David. Hey, guys. So I just want to start with where this all began last week, David, with a truth social post, as many things in our current political environment do. What did that post say, and what is President Trump's goal here? Well, what Trump said was too long to
read aloud, right? But in part of it, he said that CNN, MSNOW and Politico were writing things that were fake news. He said media outlets shouldn't be able to constantly write a report fiction and lies when they're covering the president of the United States, the Trump administration, or the United States of America. And then he added other fake news media outlets to follow. So what he promised to do was to take away their press credentials. And he explained back and forth with reporters shortly after his post that it wasn't about anything specific, but it was just about a buildup of anger with this. And yet in some of the legal documents in this lawsuit that has ensued, The administration has pointed to very specific pieces that they haven't liked.
So Trump has had the administration yank the credentials for all these reporters covering the White House. That's 40 for CNN alone. And it's an attempt to inhibit them from reporting closely and perhaps an attempt to intimidate the others.
And I should note, CNN and MSNOW are both financial supporters of NPR. Tam, I'm wondering if we're seeing any practical impact of this decision at this point.
Yeah, I mean, these are journalists who cover the White House in a robust way, as many of us do. And journalists from all three outlets went to the White House on Saturday morning as they normally would. They went to the Secret Service entry point, scanned their badges, and their badges came up rejected. And they had their badges confiscated. They were not able to get onto the White House grounds. And you have seen them reporting from the street outside of the White House. And CNN was supposed to be the network that was following President Trump when he went to New York this week for the U.N. General Assembly and a series of meetings with world leaders. They were not able to do that because the president has kicked them out.
David, you mentioned this lawsuit that these outlets have filed. Can you explain what the outlets are arguing and then how the administration is defending itself in court? Right. So the first court hearing about
that is taking place virtually later today as we tape this. They are alleging that this is just – an exceptionally flagrant violation of constitutional protections. In fact, two of them. The first is the First Amendment, free speech. That is, they're being punished for their coverage because the president doesn't like it. Now, let's give Trump credit here. He has said the press does not have an absolute right to cover the White House from the White House. As he said, you can say what you want, but you can't do it from here. There is some truth to that. But there's case law, which is to say judicial decisions going back decades that have been embraced by the courts that say once admitted to the White House grounds to report, you can't then take that away from them.
just because you don't like what they report or how their people analyze things.
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