CNN host Kaitlan Collins has sounded the alarm on President Donald Trump’s historic White House press ban, which includes her own network.
Trump, 80, banned CNN, MS NOW and Politico from the White House “effective immediately” last Friday. To protest the move, America’s major rival TV networks, including NBC, CBS and even Trump’s favorite, Fox News, banded together to suspend White House pool coverage of his appearances in New York on Monday.
“Effective today, the TV pool will not be covering events designated as pool coverage of the President. This follows the White House’s position preventing CNN from fulfilling its assigned pool duties. There will be no replacement pool put in place,” an email sent to TV pool subscribers stated on Monday.
Speaking on Monday night’s The Source, Collins pointed out how unprecedented it was that the TV cameras that had followed Trump’s every move for almost a decade “are nowhere to be seen” for the “first time in modern history.”
She also highlighted one of Monday’s most telling moments and how Trump’s plan could very well backfire.
“The reality of the presidency without a news camera nearby was on display today... as the president held a ribbon-cutting for one of his most cherished projects, the installation of a new helipad on the South Lawn.”
“But because the audio technician from one of the five major networks wasn’t there, it was actually impossible to know what the president was saying over the roar of Marine One,” she added.
Collins then played a video where Trump could be seen talking, but not heard.
Collins pointed out that photo agencies AFP, Getty and Reuters, as well as The Washington Post, The New York Times and the Associated Press did not publish or share any images of Trump taken in New York on Monday.
The CNN host also explained that after Trump’s ban, “The biggest rivals in television news are standing together in response to a president who is trying to pick and choose which journalists get to cover him based on how favorably they do so.”
In a Truth Social post on Monday, Trump claimed he was not “instituting an assault on the Free Press,” instead suggesting he was “instituting an assault on the FAKE NEWS, something that has grown like Cancer in our beloved United States of America.”
A joint lawsuit brought against the Trump administration by CNN, Politico, and MS NOW over his decision to ban their access to the White House will be heard on Wednesday.
Trump posted on Truth Social, “They have drawn a great judge for them. The judge’s name is Tim Kelly and he was, sadly, appointed by Trump.”
“The president seems to be anticipating a loss and a potential appeal, even though there’s been no ruling so far,” Collins said.
The CNN host also spoke to The New York Times’ chief Washington correspondent, David Sanger, who said in over 30 years he has never seen a president not covered by a White House TV pool.
“This was all pretty avoidable,” Sanger said. “The president understands well what the rules are here.”
He pointed out that under the First Amendment, Trump “does not get to choose his news coverage... The Founders understood that one of the greatest checks on power is to make sure that there is a free and unfettered press. Sometimes that leads to extremes. Often it leads to coverage the president doesn’t like.”
Sanger added, “The president has just got to understand that in great democracies, that’s what you put up with. And that’s the price we pay for a free press.”
CNN’s media analyst Brian Stelter told Collins he could not believe how Trump’s ban had created “solidarity” among usually fierce media rivals, and hinted at the motivation for the unity.
“This is different from all the other eruptions during Trump’s second term,” Stelter said. “All of his other infringements on press freedom, those were serious, but there is something just substantially different this time.”
He added, “I think it’s that all these other members of the press corps fear or know that they might be next. So they are trying to draw a line right now and say that what Trump is doing is just unacceptable.”
The Daily Beast has contacted the White House for comment.
