Politico Blocked From Air Force One In Latest Trump White House Effort To Punish Media Over Reporting
The White House blocked Politico from traveling with Donald Trump on Air Force One on Monday for the president’s trip to Nebraska.
A Politico spokesperson confirmed that the publication was excluded from the out-of-town travel pool, the handful of reporters who cover the president’s travel with each outlet assigned on a rotating basis. The Washington Post was providing reports as the secondary print pooler, but the White House did not find a replacement for Politico, according to a member of the pool.
The exclusion of Politico comes after Trump banned the publication, along with CNN and MS NOW, from the White House grounds on Sept. 18. But a federal judge ruled that the administration failed to provide due process, and ordered that hard passes to dozens of reporters be restored. The judge’s order expires later this week, and the three outlets are seeking a preliminary injunction to sideline the ban in the longer term. A hearing is scheduled for Thursday.
Since then, the White House also has banned CNN from Air Force One travel and other events.
The Trump administration restrictions on access to certain areas of the White House grounds is a separate but related issue. White House officials have argued that they can freeze out media from certain areas like the Oval Office, as well as spaces like Air Force One, even when the reason has to do with what stories an outlet publishes or reports. In a separate case, the Associated Press has been challenging those restrictions, arguing that it violates the First Amendment as a form of viewpoint discrimination. The case is on appeal.
A White House official said, “Many outlets including Politico are granted access to attend and cover presidential events unilaterally, but traveling with the President of the United States aboard Air Force One is a privilege not a right. President Trump is the most accessible President in American history — holding open press events, taking unfiltered questions directly from the media almost every day, and posting directly to his TRUTH Social account — and he will continue to grant an unprecedented level of access to the press.”
The DOJ argued in a court filing on Friday that, in restricting CNN and other outlets from the White House grounds, the president made a determination that they did not meet “minimum requirements of professionalism,” citing reporting on national security information and other stories.
CNN first reported on the ban on Politico from the pool.
