Trump Banned the Media. This Time, the Media Struck Back.

People are stunned. The fake news back there. Look at those cameras rocking and rolling. From The New York Times, I'm Rachel Abrams. Got a lot of cameras going. Whoa. And this is The Daily. Look at all those red lights. Don't worry, I won't say anything bad about your network. For every day of Donald Trump's presidency. You better make me look good with that camera. There's been a camera from one of the major television networks pointed at him. Every time I speak, they put me on live television. Look at all those cameras you got. You got a lot of television going. It's true. But on Monday, all of that changed. Today, Zolan Kano-Youngs and Michael Grinbaum explain the face-off between the president and the press and why the networks turned their cameras off. It's Tuesday, September 22nd. Michael, Zolan. Turn off your phones. Okay. That's how I greet the guests today. I love that. The two of you are so busy and on deadline covering the story we're about to talk about. I need to make sure your phones don't buzz in the interview. I hear you. My last slide was, I'm starting. Goodbye. All right. Zolan Kano-Youngs, White House correspondent and, we should note, CNN contributor. Welcome to the show. Thank you, Rachel. Michael Grinbaum. Hi. So happy to have you. You are a media reporter. You are also very invested in this story. So, Michael, let's start with you. Tell us what has been happening between the. the press and the White House. So, seemingly out of the blue on Friday afternoon. Another shake-up in the White House press corps today. President Trump decrees that three news outlets, CNN, Politico, and MSNOW, are barred, effective immediately in his words, from entering the White House grounds. Putting out a post on Truth Social about this, saying other news media outlets to follow was. We had no heads up about this. Our reporting shows that White House. were caught completely flat-footed, and by Saturday morning, the journalists from those outlets attempted to walk through the security gates like they usually do. She went through multiple checkpoints, as we always do. Not only were they told they couldn't come in, their badges were confiscated by security officers. were denied access from the executive branch grounds. This is an extraordinary escalation, even by the standards of a president who has threatened, who has sued, who has subpoenaed news outlets. Over the course of his time. to expressly say, these news organizations are banned from the grounds of the White House is something we simply have not seen from him. And so on Monday, we've seen something nearly unprecedented, which is five major television networks banding together and agreeing that they would not cover presidential pool events out of solidarity with CNN. Basically, any time you turn on CNN or Fox News and you see the president talking live, you are watching the TV pool footage of that event. And so that's a huge deal. Yes. TV networks have been covering presidents back to the Eisenhower administration, and we've almost never seen this type of collective action where they voluntarily lay down their cameras and do not cover the events for the historic record. What also makes this so intriguing is this is a president addicted to his TV coverage. He's obsessed with how he's portrayed on television. And the idea of Donald Trump not having. not having TV cameras recording his every move in utterance. I have no idea how he's going to react to that. So, Lynn, as Michael mentioned, the president has basically been calling the press the enemy of the people for years now. So why is this happening now? Well, I think it's important to say that in the lead up to this, the president had faced some significant losses, right? Right. We talk about how his first year in office was dominated basically by him expanding executive power and bending institutions to his will. And the days leading up to this action, you saw some institutions balking at his power, right? And rejecting some of his actions. So the Supreme Court did not side with the president when it came to his executive order on mail ballots. Huge loss. That was a huge loss. It was something he very much focused on and something that caused widespread concern about limiting mail ballots close to the midterms. How often have we talked about him and his attempts to assert power over the Fed, right? Well, the Fed decision last week, even with his handpicked. picked successor to Jerome Powell, did not go his way. The news last week, of course, being that he was going to raise interest rates, which is not what the president has been pushing for. No, absolutely not. He's railed against decisions just like that up until last week, right? So that was another loss. You have the ongoing war in Iran as well that he said would end in a matter of four to five weeks. Well, that hasn't happened either. And energy prices continue to be a problem. Polls show that the president's approval rating is very low. His party is not. not in a good place as you approach the midterms. There were a number of moments last week where we saw government institutions rejecting President Trump's attempt to bend them to his will and assert power over them. And that is not something we saw often in year one of Trump's return to the White House. And really what we saw last week after various institutions basically rejected his attempt to assert power over them. he turned to a familiar target, one that he could still assert some power over. And that is the media. And that's the media. That's right. So the president is clearly frustrated. This is the context in which all of this stuff is happening. Zolan, you were actually at the White House reporting last week. How did you learn about his decision to take on the press? Like, what did that look like on the ground? So I, at the time, was in the Washington Bureau when we saw this Truth Social post. And the post, just to point out, says that news outlets should not be able to report, quote, and lie. So that's right there, some window into what the president is thinking when he announces this ban. Right. And I have to be honest, you know, because the president has often railed against the media, I think there was inherent skepticism at first. What does this actually mean, right? So I go to the White House to figure out what it does mean. And once I get there, I wondered, OK, are we going to be seeing our colleagues who are there doing their jobs getting escorted out? Will they still be able to cover the president this time? Initially, when I got there. Everything seemed, frankly, normal, right? And you do wonder, is this just the president riffing? I want to just pause here for a second because when we were discussing how to cover this latest press ban here at The Daily, we were talking about how familiar this story sounds because people might be aware that the administration, the Trump administration, has banned reporters from the Pentagon. That was a big story. I just want to be clear. Has an administration ever banned reporters from the White House? Well, this president did in his first term. He tripped the press badge of Jim Acosta, the CNN reporter. Jim Acosta, I am in front of the White House. A Secret Service officer is asking for my hard pass. And there was a court battle that ensued and CNN won decisively. The judge decided that Acosta should get his pass back because the White House denied him due process. They didn't give him any notice that his pass is going to be revoked or any chance to rebut the White House's reasoning. And that's actually part of the legal precedent that we expect to come into play here when they challenge this newest president. That's right. President Trump did take steps to restrict access in term one. I would say in term two, we have seen him escalate the effort to mobilize the government to crack down on the free press. We know that our own colleagues have been restricted in their access to the Pentagon. We also know that after President Trump came back to the White House, he restricted the Associated Press from certain parts of the White House, their print reporters as well. We also know that in this term, Trump has attempted to micromanage, which outlets are covering him on a day-to-day basis. He's changed the rules of which outlets can go into certain spaces in the White House. It used to be that the White House Correspondents Association would select which news organizations were in this small pool of reporters who get to be in close proximity to the president during the day. This term, the Trump administration decreed that they get to cherry pick which outlets sit in that pool. That's right. So, Rachel, I think the instinct like initially of is this new? I guess it's totally fair because so many people have grown used to a president that often almost daily rails against the media. Right. But there's a real difference of what happened just over the last 72 hours, because now we're talking about three entire news organizations, every member of which is barred from entering the White House grounds. That's an escalation. I want to talk about the implications for that. But first, Zolan, I want to know more about how what happened became clear to you. Hello, everybody. Good afternoon, sir. So you're at the White House. It looks like business as usual. What happens next? Yes, it was initially business as usual. But then when the president's next event turned to the question and answer portion. Kelly O'Donnell, a veteran White House correspondent for NBC News. She's a former president, actually, of the Association of White House Correspondents. She asked the first question on this ban. He quickly, in his initial answer, uses the language we've often heard. He rails against the fake news. Reporters continue to press him on this, asking him, what is this ban? How are you going to carry it out? And also, how is this legal? How does this align with your commitment to the Constitution? Well, I'll just answer it again. I'll say it the same way. I don't think. somebody should be allowed to come in and write fake stories And through this Q&A, the president, while he's not very clear on the specifics of how this is going to get carried out, he actually is pretty clear on his reasoning for this. It's really just cumulative stories. And what is it? The reasoning is that he did not like the coverage of these outlets. Explicitly. He did not think that this coverage was favorable. And at one point in a remarkable statement, he actually said, if they want to write them, that's fine, but I don't have to let them into my, into the people's house. Look, if you want to write critical coverage, fine, but you will not do it from my, and then he corrected himself quickly and said, you will not do it from the people's house. A truly remarkable statement. So, OK, he defended this. What is it? And by the way, neither of us were getting clear answers from the White House. There was an initial sign there that this fell into the pattern of a haphazard, announcement that didn't have the sort of planning or preparation here. I'm going to tweet this and you're going to figure out how to make it happen. That's right. So then we're trying to figure out, well, how are they going to make this happen? At that point, throughout the rest of the day at the White House, we still see no sign that these outlets are going to be restricted. On my way out, I remember one of the last things I saw, even after most other correspondents had left the White House, was actually CNN still there at their booth, continuing to, And you had to wonder at that point, while this reporter is there doing their job, will they also have this opportunity tomorrow? Right. And the next day we saw that that was not the case. Right. That this ban was going into effect. Right. It was only on Saturday when we saw reporters show up, try to get access to the White House and get denied. Yeah. So around 8 a.m. on Saturday morning, I started getting scattered reports from my sources that reporters had attempted to go through the usual security apparatus. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And a security officer peered at his computer and said, your badge is disabled. I need to take it away from you. This happened to MS Now journalists, CNN journalists, and Politico writers. Okay. So, I mean, what kind of difference does it make? Right? So access to the White House is interesting. And it's not that journalists are actually walking around the West Wing, you know, sticking their heads in the conference rooms. Not like the show. Yes, exactly. We don't get, they don't do the walk and talk necessarily with the deputy chief of staff. Mm-hmm. What happens is reporters have, they have offices, they have booths, there's a press briefing room, and they do have some limited access into the White House press office where the press secretary and the communications director works. Now, proximity is important in reporting. I mean, it's a way to form relationships. It means that when officials come out to talk, you're right there with a microphone. You don't have to run over from your office to get into the White House grounds. There's something to be said for being close by. Can journalists continue to do their jobs and cover this administration from afar? A hundred percent. There is such a thing as a telephone. There's such a thing as email. And reporters often meet with sources off campus. But there's also something very symbolically important, and this has gone on for decades, that journalists who may be adversarial, who are there representing the American public, who are scrutinizing the actions of our elected leaders, get to be there just a few feet away from them. There's something actually very American about that. And I think that's something that was challenged by the actions of the last few days. Which is why we saw the news media find a novel way to band together against what was happening. We'll be right back. Okay, so Michael, tell us about how, how the fight between the White House and the news media escalated and what the media did to kind of push back. So I've covered the White House press corps for about a decade. And the very first thing I thought about was what the heck is going to happen on Monday morning? Because CNN had been preselected to be the pool TV network for Trump's trip to the United Nations. What does that mean? There is a television pool that consists of five networks, ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox News, and CNN. And they rotate. There are eight assignments. The networks pool their resources. So one channel will be responsible for one particular day's events. And they will share their footage with the other network partners and news outlets around the world. And then it will rotate to another network the following day. That way it's not overly onerous for any one network and everyone benefits. And CNN was going to be traveling with the president, providing all of the television footage of his UN trip that would then be distributed out to every TV channel, to news outlets like the BBC, around the world. And President Trump had barred them from participating. The other four networks spent the weekend trying to figure out, well, what are we going to do about this? And Monday morning, they revealed it. None of them would substitute for CNN. They all told the White House, we are not going to fill in. You are not going to have television footage of the president's events. And so basically what that means, just to put it really simply, is that CNN on Monday was supposed to follow the president around. They no longer can. They've been kicked out. They've been banned. And so if the White House went to ABC or Fox or either of the other two you mentioned to say, hey, can you cover us now? The answer was no. We're basically not going to walk over a dead body. Well, that's right. And news outlets are very competitive with each other, which is why it's so unusual that they take this kind of collective action. Now, I think a lot of listeners might be surprised that, hey, Fox News is actually part of this effort. But Fox News has been part of this consortium of five networks for quite a long time. Fox did not provide a camera. It crew on Monday to cover the president. Now, the other reason for banding together is because there's also a real financial concern that arose. It is so expensive to staff the president with a cameraman, an audio producer, a correspondent, and they essentially all share the cost. So if CNN suddenly was not participating in a five network pool, that's a 20% spike in the financial outlay that these other networks would have to pay in order to keep up. Their responsibility is in the pool. And one thing that stuck out to me is this is not only going to impact our reporting, but also it's going to impact President Trump and so much of how he presents, you know, his different projects and really how he goes about his day in the presidency. I mean, that is significant. That's right. And you have to remember, it's not just the journalists and the viewers who benefit from this TV pool. It's actually the White House, too, because every event gets high quality, high resolution, and video footage that can get distributed around the world. So this is a mutually beneficial system. And when that system broke down, as Zolan and I discovered on Monday after, it was embarrassing. Wait, wait, wait. So talk to us about the coverage on Monday, then. So on Monday, the president had this helipad unveiling. And he is obsessed with this helipad. He is. Can we say that? He is. The man cares about this helipad. Okay. So he's going to do a ribbon-coding ceremony of this gigantic new helipad on the South Lawn. He's got Marine One, the presidential helicopter as the backdrop behind him. I mean, this is like TV gold, right? Right, right. And for me watching this, I, when I'm watching these events, I need to hear what the president is saying. I need to hear if a reporter shouts a question to him. I could barely hear anything. But wait, if there's no television coverage, what are you guys actually watching? None of the big networks brought cameras because of what's going on. So there was a YouTube stream, the White House's own YouTube stream. So I logged onto that on my computer, wanted to see how it happened. I hear this audio. It's white noise. There's no clear audio. We're watching Trump talk. I see his mouth move. I don't hear any words. Okay. So there is no microphone because the pool cameras aren't there. So maybe. Oh my gosh. You can't hear anything he's saying. It was very difficult to take notes on the event. One of the many reasons we do not rely on state-run media. That's right. Now, I have been in situations where you're watching this White House video stream and it cuts out before the questions. And the only real reason that you know that the president was asked questions and at times gives answers that maybe the White House wouldn't find favorable is because you have those independent outlets, that video stream where it actually turns into a Q&A section. But in that situation, I just want to point out there are still networks of some kind, maybe just YouTube streamers, but there are people going to these subsequent events that, as you say, might be more important than the helipad. So if you did want to see, any of this, aren't there going to be some people covering this in some way? Look, we live in a new media era and it's not that the networks can black out coverage of the president because you can stream the president, you can go to your partisan website, you can read a print report somewhere. But television still really is like the mass medium for this. And, you know, how much of this presidency is communicated? You're in the airport and you're watching CNN and you see the president talking and that communicates something. That's what's getting lost when the major networks say we're not going to cover this. So in preparation for talking to both of you guys today, we chatted with our colleague Peter Baker, another White House correspondent who's covered many presidential administrations. Great teammate. And he actually mentioned that ever since Kennedy was shot, there has been a TV camera on the president with almost no exceptions, basically like documenting every single moment. And I wonder, Michael, if you could just talk for a second about why the press chooses to cover this. Part of it is about accountability to the American public. And part of it is a fundamental role of the press in society, which is to bear witness. The television pool, it's funny to say this, but it almost occupies this sacred space in Washington. It's representing the fact that the American people have a right to know exactly what their president is doing and what he is saying. It's a service. It's a service. Remember, we do have a sitting president right now that's had a number of assassination attempts on his life. That's right. And the pool is just so important, particularly the moving image as well, when it comes to having presidents in the current climate that we're in so that we can always have eyes on him, even if we're not physically present ourselves. And we have seen countless examples of why this is valuable, right? When President Biden was in office, and even now, as we document President Trump, we need television specifically, particularly when we have presidents of this age, right? To be able to see exactly how they are moving, to actually see their demeanor. Think about earlier this year, when there were reports of President Trump dozing off in meetings in the White House. I can tell you, I wrote one of those stories. The way that I did it, because I wasn't in the pool that day, was by actually pulling up one of the television networks that was on pool duty, and actually counting how long he closed his eyes, right? All of this is so important, particularly when, frankly, Americans are even more focused on the age of the president. And the fitness of the presidents that have been elected to serve them. As you both have referenced in this conversation, we know two things to be very true about Donald Trump. One, he's very fickle. And two, he loves being on television, and he loves TV. And it feels like he has set in motion two kind of opposing forces. One, his hatred of the press, and two, his love of being on television. And I just want to timestamp this conversation we are having. We are talking Monday afternoon. Given those two things we know about the president, what should we expect to see in the coming days? Well, I'll start from the White House side. I think already we have seen his top aides, namely Vice President J.D. Vance, when he was asked about this today. Do you think it's appropriate for the president to be banning media outlets just because he doesn't like what they report? Well, I take some issue with the premise. Seemingly sort of tie himself in knots trying to explain away this. So he's not banning media outlets. What he's doing is saying, we're not going to give you special access to the White House if you engage in what is effectively propaganda. He said it wasn't a ban on the free press. So if you're going to engage in what is effectively far-left propaganda, why would a Republican White House give you special access? President Trump was the one that used the word ban. He said that President Trump wants fair coverage. How is this not an attack on free speech? Well, they can still report on the Trump White House. They can still get the public reports. But President Trump was pretty clear the other day that if these outlets give him more favorable coverage. He would assess letting them back in. So already, I think what we're seeing on the government side is that this is a question that they're going to be faced with and they're going to continue to have to address. Michael, what are your thoughts? Well, CNN, along with MSNOW and Politico, have filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration to restore their access to the White House grounds. A hearing in that case has been scheduled for Wednesday morning. I will be watching closely to see if the judge could issue an order essentially suspending what Trump declared and letting the journalists back. Ironically, a ruling in favor of the news outlets could be an off-ramp for Trump, where he's essentially forced by the courts to let back in the television networks that he's already starting to miss. Without having to concede anything. So that's a potential denouement here of a tense situation. Right. It really feels like the question is, what's going to win? Trump's hatred of the media or his desire to be on TV? No, you guys have to say things. It's radio. You can't just nod at me. It feels like the highest stakes showdown yet between the president and his press corps. I can't remember when it felt this consequential because television coverage of the president is just so ingrained into our system. And, you know, something's going to have to give here. I mean, man, you just look at, the rest of this week for President Trump. He's got UN General Assembly. But then he's also got this meeting with President Xi of China, right? And you don't think that he wants as much television coverage that he can get when he goes to greet this leader that he's always talked about when he arrives in Washington, D.C. or when he goes to the White House? I mean, seeing how this is going to play out in the days ahead, where you have a president who has this unique relationship to television with this huge event hosting the president of China. And also an event that presents an ample opportunity for reporters to ask critical questions. This is going to be very, very important to see how this plays out the rest of the week. And look, I mean, I'll add one more note on this. We've talked about this individual case, but like, this is a piece of a broader puzzle here, right? It's not the first time we've seen the president use the tools in the federal government to crack down on those who question his power. So something that we're looking at is, you know, is this going to be something that we're looking at as journalists covering this presidency? Is what does this moment mean for his commitment to democracy and also freedom of speech, too? And what other actions might we see even after this? Because we've seen a number of them already before this ban. Zolin Kano-Youngs, Michael Grinbaum, thank you both so much. Thank you, Rachel. Thank you. That's it for The Daily. I'm Rachel Abrams. See you tomorrow.