By The Epoch Times | Created at 2026-09-27 21:26:32 | Updated at 2026-09-27 22:01:14
52 minutes ago
Attorney General Todd Blanche on Sunday said that President Donald Trump has the right to restrict reporters from accessing the White House and Air Force One, a day after CNN was allegedly not allowed to enter the presidential plane while Trump traveled to Tennessee.
While he spoke to ABC News’s “Face the Nation,” Blanche was asked about the incident.
“There was no TV pool coverage of the president’s trip to Tennessee this weekend. It was supposed to be CNN. They said they were banned from Air Force One,” ABC anchor Martha Raddatz asked him.
Blanche denied that CNN was banned, saying that it’s a “privilege” for reporters to cover the White House. “What the president has said is that he is sick and tired of certain media outlets just refusing to report accurate news,” he said.
“Even after the White House let the reporters back in, they still refuse to use pool coverage,” Blanche said. “They still refuse to, on their own, make a decision to start covering the president again with the video.”
Blanche also said that Trump made a decision to restrict media access “after years and years of one-sided media coverage,” while he described the phenomenon as “not fair to the American people.”
On Sept. 24, U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly sided with CNN, Politico, and MS NOW in a lawsuit that demanded the Trump administration restore their press credentials after he initiated a ban on those outlets earlier this month. The ban, which was announced on Truth Social, was initiated by Trump because they were reporting “fake news.”
Trump also wrote on social media that he banned those media companies due to national security-related matters because they publish stories with “false and defamatory” information citing spurious sources.
“Virtually every story about me, or anything having to do with me, is negative, wrong and, in many cases, DANGEROUS for our Country,” the president added in the post.
The federal judge in last week’s order temporarily struck down the ban, but his decision addressed “hard passes” to the White House grounds and didn’t directly address pool duties. The judge’s temporary order also said nothing directly about Air Force One.
Blanche said Sunday that Trump has the right to ban CNN from joining Trump on Air Force One despite the judge’s order.
“What I’m talking about is the government’s position, and that’s what the Department of Justice said in court, which is the same thing that President Trump has said repeatedly, which is at some point, the complete misinformation and the inaccuracy on the one-sided news out of certain organizations does become a national security issue,” Blanche told ABC.
Brian Stelter, CNN’s media analyst, posted on X that CNN had a pool assignment at the National Archives event and that the White House had approved the network’s credentials.
The press pool was created decades ago by the White House Correspondents’ Association, a group of journalists who cover the president, to make sure a rotating roster always travels with the president.
The pool distributes in-person reports and imagery to the broader press corps and is designed to ensure continuous coverage of the president is produced for the benefit of the American public.
CNN did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
