LEGACY MEDIA ALL DECIDE TO FADE THE WHITE HOUSE

Trump banned CNN, MS NOW and Politico from the White House on Friday, effective immediately, citing their constant reporting of what he called fake news. By Saturday morning the badges were being collected at the gate. MS NOW's Akayla Gardner said an officer told her the badge was disabled and that the reason was above him. Then Monday happened. CNN was up in the rotation to run the TV pool camera for Trump's trip to the UN General Assembly. The White House schedule that went out late Sunday listed no network at all, and ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox all declined to take the shift. Fox's Washington bureau chief, who currently chairs the TV pool, sent the email saying there would be no replacement pool. So the president cut the ribbon on his new White House helipad with no pool camera there, and the only feed, the White House's own livestream, had his remarks completely buried under helicopter noise. The three outlets sued Monday in DC federal court, alleging First Amendment and due process violations and asking for a temporary restraining order. The case went to Judge Timothy Kelly, a Trump appointee who restored Jim Acosta's press pass in 2018, and Trump posted that the outlets had drawn a great judge, for them. The White House says nobody is banned, arguing access is a privilege and not a right, and Vance says the rule is simply no special access for propaganda.

Why you should give a shit: If the government gets to pick which reporters see the president, the only footage left is whatever the White House films itself, and on day one of that experiment they couldn't even get a microphone over a helicopter.