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Trump finds another way to shut out CNN

26 September 2026 at 20:30

President Donald Trump’s administration barred CNN from traveling aboard Air Force One on Saturday, just two days after a federal judge ordered the White House to restore the network’s access.

CNN had been scheduled to serve as the television pool for Trump’s trip to Knoxville, Tennessee, where he was set to attend a college football game between the University of Tennessee and the University of Texas. Instead, White House guidance listed conservative network Real America’s Voice News for the trip.

Real America’s Voice is not a member of the five-network television pool, which rotates responsibility for recording presidential events and sharing the footage with other news organizations.

The latest restriction came less than 48 hours after U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly temporarily blocked Trump’s ban on CNN, MS NOW and Politico from White House grounds. Kelly, whom Trump appointed during his first term, found that the administration had failed to provide the outlets with due process before revoking their access.

Reporters from all three organizations returned to the White House following the ruling.

CNN also resumed its role in the television pool Friday, providing coverage as Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping visited the National Archives. The other four television pool members had refused to participate after CNN was barred last week, leaving several presidential events without the usual network video coverage.

Kelly’s temporary order specifically addressed the outlets’ White House “hard passes” and did not directly address Air Force One or pool assignments. The news organizations have argued that the court’s ruling should apply to their pool access as well.

Trump, meanwhile, renewed his attacks on CNN Saturday morning.

“Why should perpetrators of FAKE NEWS, like CNN and MSDNC, be allowed access to a very sacred place, the White House?” Trump wrote on Truth Social.

The president also complained about negative coverage of his administration, days after criticizing CNN for supposedly failing to cover his events during the media standoff.

CNN correspondent Kaitlan Collins disputed that claim after Trump confronted her during the United Nations General Assembly in New York, where the White House had no authority over her credentials.

“We never said we were never going to cover the president,” Collins said.

Trump announced last week that CNN, MS NOW and Politico would no longer be permitted at the White House, accusing the organizations of spreading “fiction and lies.” The three outlets sued, alleging the ban violated their First and Fifth Amendment rights.


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The dispute also disrupted the White House television pool. ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox News declined to provide substitute crews after CNN was removed from its scheduled assignments, temporarily leaving the administration without the network equipment normally used to distribute video and audio of the president.

Normal pool operations had only resumed Friday. And as of Saturday morning, CNN was off the rotation again.

The post Trump finds another way to shut out CNN appeared first on Salon.com.

News Organizations Band Together in White House Boycott

21 September 2026 at 23:58

Trump Manages to Silence Himself

The news outlets that make up the TV pool that covers the White House and the president’s schedule joined together on Monday to announce that they would not be “designated as pool coverage of the president” until further notice after President Trump banned CNN from the White House.

“This is to advise that, effective today, the TV pool will not be covering events designated as pool coverage of the President,” Fox News Washington bureau chief Bryan Boughton, who is also the chair of the TV pool, wrote in a memo to journalists in the White House press corps. The memo was obtained by the Washington Post and others on Monday.

“There will be no replacement pool put in place. All other pool coverage will continue as normal, including Congress, VIPs, and selected events in Washington and around the country,” it said.

The news comes after President Trump announced last week that CNN, MS NOW and Politico were banned from the White House — and journalists from those outlets were turned away from the White House grounds. Lawyers for the banned news outlets and individual journalists filed a lawsuit in federal court in Washington, D.C. on Monday, alleging violations of the news organizations’ First Amendment rights.

“This morning, we notified the government that 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 three news organizations said in a statement on Monday, per CNN.

“Without notice or process, the White House revoked our journalists’ credentials because it objected to our reporting,” they said. “Left unchallenged, this threatens press freedom and the public’s right to independent journalism free from government interference.”

The members of the TV pool news organizations announced their boycott on Monday morning as well.

“The public has a vital interest in receiving accurate, independent information about its government. No administration should restrict a news organization because it objects to its reporting,” ABC News, CBS News, CNN, Fox News Media and NBC News, the five cable networks that make up the rotating White House TV pool, wrote in a statement on X Monday.

The pool is a system that news outlets have been using for decades to help split the cost of having cameras follow the president’s moves on a daily basis. Per WaPo:

The assigned network records and distributes a live feed that other news outlets can use. Without a TV pooler, there will be scant video coverage of Trump unless news outlets take their own video or use feeds provided by the White House.

The Washington Post also announced it would not publish any photos of any presidential events on Monday until midnight ET.

There are legitimate concerns about the vacuum created by the news outlets’ absence — and what this White House might do to fill the void. A year ago, Trump’s White House blocked the White House Correspondents’ Association from choosing members of the White House press pool, effectively taking control over which news outlets could send reporters to cover White House events.

But for today, at least, Trump managed to silence himself. His attempt to unveil his new White House helipad was not televised live on the usual cable news channels Monday. Here’s footage from Newsmax of the event. You can’t hear him.

LMFAO — Trump is holding an event at the White House right now but there's no audio because the press pool isn't there. The Newsmax host notes that this is an example of Trump's attacks on the press "backfiring just a little bit"

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2026-09-21T17:51:50.189Z
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