A week ago Friday, at 3:04 p.m., with his chief of staff in Florida and the West Wing winding down for the weekend, President Trump signed off on a 130-word message that sent the Washington press corps into a tailspin.
“Effective immediately,” the president wrote on Truth Social, he was “banning” CNN, MS NOW and Politico from the White House “as a result of their constant ‘reporting’ FAKE NEWS!”
Mr. Trump says this kind of thing all the time. But the idea of a “ban” caught reporters — and the president’s own advisers — by surprise. How would a ban work? Was it legal? Was this for real?
Amid a dragging war effort in Iran, soaring gas prices and higher interest rates, Mr. Trump had managed to generate a media tempest out of thin air.
When Kelly O’Donnell of NBC, an hour later, asked Mr. Trump about the First Amendment and its promise of freedom of the press, the president shrugged. “That’s fine,” he said. “But I don’t have to let them into my — into the people’s house.”
Lawyers for the barred news outlets disagreed, and eventually, so did a federal judge. But the seven-day saga that unfolded — a frenzied news cycle in itself, born of a single social media post — illustrated quite a bit about Mr. Trump’s complicated relationship with the press.
Since his earliest candidate days, when chants of “CNN sucks!” rang out at rallies, Mr. Trump has used the media as a reliable punching bag. And in his second term, he has drastically escalated his attacks, drawing on the levers of government — issuing subpoenas, seizing devices and using regulatory pressure — to intimidate outlets that displease him. Mr. Trump has also sought to bar The Associated Press from parts of the White House and started handpicking which journalists can attend certain events.
His abrupt White House ban was another novel effort to micromanage his coverage. And with Republicans worrying about a bleak midterm outlook, Mr. Trump’s allies seized the moment to rehash the usual complaints about a corrupt liberal media — perhaps a soothing topic for a president whose poll numbers have dipped.
But Mr. Trump, inadvertently or not, had also threatened something he deems precious: his own television coverage.
By barring CNN outright, Mr. Trump threw a wrench into the White House TV pool, a group of five networks that share the responsibility of broadcasting the president’s daily events. On Monday, after a weekend of discussion, the networks, Fox News included, suspended their footage of Mr. Trump until CNN was reinstated, an exceedingly rare collective action by a famously rivalrous group.
Television is Mr. Trump’s oxygen — he regularly scans the news channels with the aid of a DirecTV Genie HD DVR in his dining room — and his absence from the screen was notable. When he held an elaborate ceremony on the South Lawn on Monday to unveil a new helipad, one of his primary home improvement projects, audio problems marred the official White House video feed; Mr. Trump was stuck pantomiming as viewers heard only white noise.
The president got himself back on TV by joining Mayor Zohran Mamdani of New York at a Monday news conference, which local TV crews captured. “They said they’re going to boycott me, but they never boycott me,” Mr. Trump said. Gesturing toward the cameras, he added, “Look at all that press.”
His return was short-lived. By Wednesday, the TV pool was still dark, and no major network carried footage of that day’s pomp-filled event: Mr. Trump welcoming President Xi Jinping of China with a red carpet at Joint Base Andrews.
As for the locked-out journalists, they argued their case to viewers — that a ban on the press was a disservice to the public — while their lawyers argued their case in court, calling the move unconstitutional. Around 1 a.m. on Thursday, a federal judge in Washington ordered the White House to “immediately” reinstate the barred outlets.
It took nearly 12 hours for the administration to comply. And without an assurance that CNN would be restored to the pool, the major networks kept up their boycott. The result was an ironic spectacle: American journalists locked out of the White House as Mr. Trump feted Mr. Xi, a dictatorial leader who has suppressed free speech.
“CNN and MSDNC, to show you how fake they are, today refused to cover one of the Biggest and Most Beautiful Events to take place in many years,” the president complained on Thursday, using a nickname for MS NOW. He did not mention that his administration had barred the outlets from the White House grounds.
On Friday, both sides climbed down.
After the White House indicated that CNN could provide the pool camera for a midday event, the TV networks resumed normal operations. Shortly before noon, a CNN crew was rolling as Mr. Trump guided Mr. Xi, along with their wives, around the National Archives.
Among the documents that Mr. Trump pointed out: the original articles of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
By Saturday, tensions had resumed: The White House declined to let CNN travel aboard Air Force One with Mr. Trump, who planned to attend a college football game in Tennessee. Once again, the TV pool went dark.
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