THE JAMES S. BRADY PRESS BRIEFING ROOM, FIVE CHAIRS EMPTIER THAN USUAL, WASHINGTON, D.C. (The Daily Whatever Press) — Friday night, Donald Trump got on Truth Social and banned CNN, MS NOW, and Politico from the White House “effective immediately,” on the grounds that their reporting amounted to, in his professional media-criticism opinion, “FICTION and LIES.” Real boo-hoo crybaby shit coming from the so-called leader of the free world, but nothing less than we’ve come to expect.
No process. No warning to his own press shop — several aides reportedly found out from the same post the rest of us did. Saturday morning, three reporters showed up for work anyway: CNN’s Betsy Klein, MS NOW’s Akayla Gardner, and Politico’s Cheyenne Haslett. All three got turned away at the gate, hard passes confiscated on the spot.
That part, you already know. Here’s the part that turned a petty tantrum into a four-alarm, self-inflicted humiliation.
CNN was up this week as the White House’s TV pool lead — the network that shoots the shared video every other outlet runs, including coverage of the UN General Assembly trip Trump is on right now. So the White House pulled CNN off pool duty. Fine, you’d think. Somebody else steps in. ABC, CBS, Fox, NBC — four other networks sitting right there.
Except pool coverage doesn’t work if the White House gets to hand-pick who’s allowed to cover the president based on how it feels about the coverage. And rather than simply slot another network into CNN’s place, the pool did something considerably more consequential. Monday morning — as in, today — the acting chair of the pool sent out a memo shutting the whole thing down. Not “we’ll find a workaround.” Done.
“Effective today, the TV pool will not be covering events designated as pool coverage of the President,” it read. “There will be no replacement pool put in place.”
The guy who wrote that memo is Bryan Boughton. He runs Fox News’s Washington bureau.
Fox. News. The network that has spent a decade wearing a Trump hat to the office picnic just told the White House it would rather go dark on the President of the United States than pretend a hand-picked press corps is normal. My teenagers manage smoother substitute-teacher logistics than the White House managed here, and they’re fifteen. You spent eight years building a media ecosystem that owes you everything, and it just walked off the beat rather than help disappear the outlets you don’t like. That’s not loyalty breaking. That’s loyalty finding a floor.
This isn’t even the first rerun. Trump yanked Jim Acosta’s credentials in 2018; a federal judge — one he appointed, for the bit — put them back within the week and called it a due-process problem. The administration tried the same move on the AP last year over three words on a map; an appeals court ruled that one unconstitutional too, though it’s stayed pending appeal, because apparently losing once isn’t instructive if you can lose again slower.
Even the White House Correspondents’ Association isn’t buying the “we’re just holding liars accountable” framing — and its current president, Jacqui Heinrich, is also Fox. She put it plainly: a standard used to exclude one outlet for its coverage works on any outlet, the second you’re the one they don’t like.
So here’s where we’ve landed, seventy-two hours in: CNN, MS NOW, and Politico filed suit today. The consortium that’s supposed to be neutral plumbing for presidential coverage went on strike rather than launder the ban. And the man who spent his second term turning conservative media into a loyalty test just found the one thing it turns out not everybody was willing to fail.
This is the most solidarity the Fourth Estate has managed since the 2023 SAG-AFTRA strike, when every late-night host stayed dark rather than cross a picket line their own union wasn’t even on. Except this time the picket line is the First Amendment, and the guy who drew it just got refused by his own network.
I don’t know how the lawsuit shakes out. Courts have sided with the press before and the administration keeps doing this anyway, so maybe they will again and maybe it won’t matter this time either. But somewhere this week, a Fox News bureau chief looked at “help us ban the network we don’t like” and said no, actually, we don’t do that here. Write that down. Some Mondays deserve to be remembered for what didn’t happen.
Thanks for reading!
We’re Dana DuBois and Lawrence Winnerman, lifelong BFFs and co-hosts of The Daily Whatever Show — our independent home for smart, irreverent conversations about culture, politics, media, creativity, relationships, aging, and whatever else is shaping modern life this week.
We’re live every weekday at 10am ET with thoughtful analysis, sharp interviews, cultural commentary, humor, and the kind of conversations that don’t pretend everything is fine when it clearly isn’t.
If you’re enjoying what we’re building, please consider supporting our work with a paid subscription. Your support helps us keep the show independent, book fascinating guests, and continue creating smart conversations with your morning coffee.
We love you — mean it!
I can't wipe the smile off my face. And I keep getting the deep belly laughts swelling up inside me. I do believe the press pool figured out they didn't need to amplify lies by a despot. What a great day.
@Miles Taylor