The White House is blocking CNN from traveling aboard Air Force One with President Donald Trump on Saturday, a CNN spokesperson confirmed, days after a federal judge ordered the administration to restore the network’s access to the White House, along with POLITICO and MS NOW.
CNN had been scheduled to travel with Trump to Knoxville, Tennessee, where the president is expected to attend a college football game, as part of the rotating television press pool that covers the president in settings where space is limited. The pool’s reporting and video are shared with other television networks.
But CNN was left off White House guidance for Saturday’s trip, preventing the network from carrying out its scheduled pool duties aboard the president’s plane. Such interventions in the television rotation have historically been rare. Typically, the five networks decide who is up for rotation.
A Saturday pool report noted that there would be no TV pool for the Tennessee trip, “meaning there won’t be widely available independent video of events.”
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The move marks the latest development in the Trump administration’s ongoing fight with CNN, MS NOW and POLITICO over access to the president. Trump announced last week that he was barring all three news organizations from the White House, accusing them of repeatedly reporting “FAKE NEWS.”
CNN was also prevented from traveling aboard Air Force One when Trump traveled to New York for the United Nations General Assembly earlier this week. In response, the four other members of the five-network television pool — ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox News — declined to take CNN’s place.
But a federal judge early on Thursday stepped in and ordered the White House to immediately restore the three news organizations’ press credentials.
On Saturday morning, Trump wrote on Truth Social, “FAKE NEWS SHOULD NOT BE ALLOWED IN THE WHITE HOUSE!!! IT HAS GONE ON FAR TOO LONG, AT A TREMENDOUS COST TO OUR COUNTRY.”
This story originally appeared on POLITICO and is courtesy of the Axel Springer Global Reporters Network, which harnesses the resources of the company’s newsrooms to publish ambitious scoops, investigations, interviews, opinion pieces, and analysis. It allows journalists — including those from POLITICO, Business Insider, WELT, BILD, Onet, and Fakt — to collaborate on major stories for an international audience of hundreds of millions across platforms.
