Many of President Donald Trump’s senior aides were caught off guard by his abrupt move to ban several news outlets, Politico reported Saturday.
Politico, which was included in the ban, revealed that the directive landed while Chief of Staff Susie Wiles was out of town, and several senior staffers didn’t know Trump would kick members of the press out of the White House until he announced it on Truth Social. Politico’s reporting was based on three anonymous sources with knowledge of West Wing conversations.
Trump used Truth Social to bar CNN, MS NOW, and Politico from the White House. He accused them of reporting “LIES when they’re covering the President of the United States” and warned that there were “Other Fake News Media Outlets to follow.”
The press shop was reportedly blindsided and unsure how to respond, with one aide simply pointing back to the president’s post.
One person told Politico that Trump had tried to restrict certain outlets before, at one point even attempting to move the press into the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, but was talked out of it.
However, Trump’s aides are treating the order as final. “It’s real and permanent as far as POTUS is concerned,” one person told Politico.
More than a dozen current and former Trump White House officials contacted by Politico were also puzzled by the development. Some reached out to the publication unsolicited to call the move a head-scratcher, according to Politico.
The outlets hit with the ban have all said that, as of Saturday, their staff were turned away from the White House. In a statement, MS NOW said its people “were denied access to the White House grounds” and vowed to “take any and all steps necessary to defend our First Amendment rights.”
CNN said its “mission to report on the U.S. government will continue regardless of any attempts to restrict physical access to the White House.”
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