A couple of months ago, Donald Trump wrapped up his hourlong speech at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner with some curious but memorable comments. “I have tremendous respect for the people in this room,” the president said. He added, “Sometimes you treat me very fairly, and I have a lot of respect for your profession. Your profession, it’s amazing.”
At the time, the comments were impossible to take seriously, given the degree to which he has spent much of his White House tenure targeting the nation’s free press, echoing the tactics embraced by figures such as former Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.
But two months after the Republican incumbent claimed to have “tremendous respect” for the media professionals who cover the White House, Trump offered radical new evidence to the contrary, announcing a new policy late Friday banning journalists from MS NOW (my employer), CNN and Politico from the premises. A day later, reporters from all three outlets were denied entry to the White House and had their press passes confiscated.
During a brief Q&A with reporters shortly after his online announcement, Trump quite literally referred to his policy as “the ban on the free press.” He also equated his administration’s “repressive” approach to press freedom to China’s crackdowns.
As this week got underway, the three news organizations filed a federal lawsuit against the president and several top administration officials for blocking reporters’ access to the White House, alleging that the ban constituted viewpoint discrimination that violated the First Amendment. (As the case was being filed, Trump published an item to his social media platform that equated news organizations he doesn’t like to “cancer” that “must be stopped.” He added that he considers “fake news” to be “a threat to our National Security.”)
Time will tell whether a federal judge undoes the ban and restores the affected journalists’ press credentials and access, but in the meantime, I was eager to see whether — and just as importantly, how — the White House’s partisan allies responded to Trump’s latest escalation in his campaign against the nation’s free press.
After all, while the president’s latest move was dramatic and unprecedented, it was also consistent with the kind of steps authoritarians around the world have taken before. What matters as much as the radicalism is how people respond to the radicalism.
With this in mind, Trump’s allies have come up with a handful of defenses, none of which proved persuasive.
Joe Biden whataboutism: During an appearance on ABC News’ “This Week,” House Majority Leader Steve Scalise was asked about Trump’s move, and the Louisiana Republican replied, “Go look at Joe Biden. Joe Biden removed the press credentials from over 400 different agencies.”
It fell to guest host Jonathan Karl to remind his guest and viewers that Scalise’s claim was not true: Individual reporters who had credentials during the Biden presidency did not reapply, but they were never banned from the White House by the president or anyone else.
Stress accessibility: Republican Rep. María Elvira Salazar of Florida appeared on CBS News’ “Face the Nation,” and when asked whether she agreed with Trump’s move, the Miami-area congresswoman (herself a former local news anchor) replied, “Well, I think that the president has a different type of style. But, at the same time, I think that he is the most accessible president. … He is very accessible, not like Biden.”
It’s true that Trump likes to engage in frequent Q&As with reporters, but the emphasis on accessibility badly misses the point. The question was about whether it was appropriate for the president to try to ban journalists from news organizations he dislikes — the latest in a series of remarkable steps he has taken against the nation’s free press. The fact that he likes to engage in frequent gaggles is irrelevant.
Try to legitimize Trump’s feelings: On NBC News’ “Meet the Press,” Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso was also asked whether he agreed with what Trump did. “Look, we all respect and value the freedom of the press. It’s in the Constitution,” the Wyoming Republican said. “You know, the president, remember in his first term, he was banned from Twitter, he was banned from Facebook, and I didn’t see people come to his defense.” (This is not a smart argument: Platforms banned Trump after his Jan. 6 efforts. This has literally nothing to do with the president banning journalists from the White House.)
Barrasso added, however, “The press has an obligation to report fairly, and the president doesn’t see it happening that way.”
Evidently. But what the president does or does not perceive is of far less interest than his willingness to honor the First Amendment.
Did something happen? During a Monday morning appearance on CNBC, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said, when pressed on the ban, “I’ve been traveling; I don’t know much about it.”
Weird parallels: On Monday morning, JD Vance tried to defend Trump’s move by claiming that Politico, an independent outlet, is a far-left analogue to Breitbart, a conservative website, which as the vice president really ought to understand, is a deeply silly argument.
All of which is to say, Trump’s allies had a few days to come up with compelling defenses, and at least so far, they have come empty.
Stepping back, the authoritarian playbook is a familiar one, and those who follow it tend to take predictable steps. What matters, however, is how others respond to those steps.
This is, in other words, an important test, not just for the president and the free press, but also for those politically aligned with the White House. So far, too many GOP officials are failing this test.
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