Standing outside the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday, Donald Trump looked at CNN anchor Kaitlan Collins and told her, 'You should not be here covering me.' She was, in fact, there. She did, in fact, cover him. And now his administration is headed to federal court to defend a press ban that reeks of something you'd see in a country with a very different kind of flag.
What Actually Happened Outside the UN
Collins had asked Trump a straightforward question: when will the war with Iran end? A new poll, which CNBC reported on Tuesday, found that two-thirds of Americans do not believe the U.S. is winning that war. A reasonable question. A question a president should expect.
Trump's response was not to answer the question. Instead, he gestured at Collins and told reporters he was 'surprised' CNN was there at all, before informing her directly that she 'should not be here covering me.' Collins pointed out, calmly, that the United Nations had credentialed CNN. Trump left anyway.
Collins addressed it on air afterward. 'We never said we were never going to cover the president,' she said, responding to Trump's claim that CNN had promised not to cover him. According to CNBC, CNN has made no such commitment and has no intention of making one.
The Ban, the Badges, and the Saturday Morning Shake-Down
Back up a few days. Last Friday, Trump announced he was banning CNN, MS NOW, and Politico from the White House. No specific stories cited. No formal process. Just a presidential decree that three of the most prominent news organizations in the country were no longer welcome on the grounds of the people's house.
The ban went into effect Saturday morning when, according to CNBC, Secret Service officers physically took press passes from journalists at those outlets when they showed up to do their jobs. Think about that image for a second. Federal law enforcement, removing press credentials at the door of the White House. Because the president didn't like the coverage.
By Monday, all three outlets had filed a joint lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Washington. The suit alleges Trump violated both the First Amendment and the Constitution's Due Process Clause by summarily barring them without any process whatsoever. 'We are filing a lawsuit today to protect our First Amendment rights and defend the principle that the government does not decide what the press reports or publishes,' the outlets said in a joint statement.
The Judge Trump Already Doesn't Like
The case landed with Judge Timothy Kelly, a Trump appointee, who scheduled a hearing for Wednesday and ordered the DOJ to respond to the outlets' injunction request by Tuesday. Trump, apparently unconcerned with the optics of preemptively trashing his own judge, told reporters he expected Kelly to rule against him.
'It probably will, because this is a judge who's not a particularly fair judge,' Trump said. The reason Trump has beef with Kelly is instructive: back in November 2018, Kelly ordered the White House to restore CNN correspondent Jim Acosta's press pass after Trump revoked it following a combative briefing room exchange. So 'not a particularly fair judge' appears to translate as 'a judge who ruled that the First Amendment applies to CNN.'
The TV news pool situation got messier too. The five-network consortium that rotates White House pool coverage, ABC, CBS, Fox, NBC, and CNN, suspended pool coverage ahead of Trump's New York trip after the White House blocked CNN from taking its scheduled turn as pool network. Four networks went on strike, in effect, because the White House was punishing the fifth.
The Talking Points Are Something Else
MS NOW reported Tuesday that it had obtained White House talking points sent to congressional Republicans to help them spin the ban. The talking points are, as you might expect, extraordinary.
Among the gems: 'No president has been more transparent or offered more of his time to the press.' This was distributed to defend a decision to physically strip press credentials from journalists. The document also argues that 'the First Amendment protects their right to publish; it does not entitle certain outlets and members of the press to a hard pass, briefing room seat, or place in the press pool.' Which is a real legal argument that real lawyers will now have to make in front of a real federal judge, while keeping a straight face.
The talking points also claim that 'fabricating facts or reporting verifiable falsehoods from inside the White House complex is an intentional breach of professional decorum.' Again, no specific stories were cited. Not one. Just a blanket accusation deployed as cover for what is, by any honest reading, a punitive crackdown on outlets whose coverage Trump finds unflattering.
The Dingo Take
You are supposed to believe this is about journalistic standards. That a president who called the free press 'the enemy of the people,' who has lied publicly and provably thousands of times in office, who cannot identify a single specific false story that triggered this ban, is banning CNN, MS NOW, and Politico because he cares deeply about accuracy. Sure.
What this actually is: a sitting U.S. president using Secret Service agents as bouncers to physically remove journalists he doesn't like from the White House, then flying to New York to tell one of those journalists to her face that she has no right to be there. At the United Nations. In front of cameras. With the casual confidence of someone who has concluded, correctly or not, that there are no consequences. The talking points sent to Republicans don't even bother with a real defense. They're just vibes on letterhead.
The courts may fix this. Judge Kelly fixed the Acosta situation in 2018 and Trump has already telegraphed he expects to lose this round too. But every time this happens, something gets normalized that shouldn't be. A president openly contemptuous of the press is a feature now, not a bug. The UN didn't throw Collins out. The other networks blinked and suspended pool coverage rather than fight. And Trump is already casting the judge as unfair before the hearing has even happened. This is the playbook, and it is not subtle, and it is not stopping.
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