WASHINGTON — Handed a simple question about President Donald Trump defying a court order to ban the press, Senate Republicans delivered five ways of saying nothing, with one telling slip: “It just scares me.”
That slip came from Alabama’s Tommy Tuberville, who defended Trump’s authority to bar CNN, MS NOW and Politico before conceding where it could lead.
“It just scares me because if we get down this path, it’s going to start on both sides and we’re not ever going to get anything done for the American people,” he told Raw Story.
Asked whether he’d worry about a Democratic president using the same power against conservative media, Tuberville dodged, riffing about the need to keep Democrats out of the White House.
Across the Capitol, Republicans pressed on the standoff, refusing to say the ban was wrong, or that a president must obey a court’s order on press access.
North Dakota’s John Hoeven waved the confrontation away as a matter of temperament.
“He’s a New Yorker. He’s combative. That’s his style. It’s a New Yorker style. But I do think it gets resolved,” Hoeven insisted, declining to weigh in on the ruling itself.
Montana’s Tim Sheehy couldn’t engage the question, because he didn’t appear to know what had happened.
“I haven’t read up on it, but I don’t know. Sorry,” he said. Told that the banned outlets had been kicked out and then restored, Sheehy replied, “Oh, they are? Okay.”
Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina, a frequent thorn in Trump’s side, was asked directly about the White House failing to comply with the court’s ruling overnight. He deflected with a quip.
“It may be a pretty quiet reporting in the state dinner tonight,” he joked.
Utah’s Mike Lee simply ignored Raw Story’s question and walked away.
U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly ordered the administration to immediately restore access for the three outlets, finding Trump’s ban likely unconstitutional because the passes were revoked without “constitutionally adequate due process.” Hours later, reporters were still turned away Thursday morning, and the news organizations went back to court arguing the White House was defying the order, before some were finally let in around noon.
Kelly, a Trump appointee, is the same judge who ordered the White House to reinstate CNN’s Jim Acosta in 2018, on the same due-process grounds.
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