Politics
CNN excluded from Trump’s Tennessee flight despite court order restoring press access
The White House left CNN off the press rotation for President Donald Trump’s Saturday trip to Knoxville, days after a federal judge ordered the administration to restore the network’s White House credentials. With no television pool aboard, footage of the visit may not be widely available to other broadcasters.
The White House blocked CNN from traveling with President Donald Trump aboard Air Force One on Saturday, barring the network from a scheduled press-pool assignment for his trip to Knoxville, Tennessee.
A CNN spokesperson confirmed the network’s exclusion. CNN had been slated to cover Trump as part of a rotating television pool, in which one broadcaster travels with the president when space is limited and shares its reporting and video with other networks.
The White House’s Saturday guidance omitted CNN, and a pool report said there would be no television pool for the trip. That means independent video of the president’s activities may not be broadly available to news organizations.
The decision came two days after a federal judge ordered the administration to restore press credentials for CNN, MS NOW and POLITICO. The ruling followed Trump’s announcement that he was barring the three organizations from the White House, accusing them of repeatedly reporting “FAKE NEWS.”
The court order restored the outlets’ White House credentials, but CNN was again kept off the president’s plane. The network had also been excluded from an Air Force One trip to New York earlier in the week. ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox News, the other members of the five-network television pool, declined to take CNN’s place on that trip.
Trump was expected to attend a college football game in Knoxville. On Saturday morning, he posted 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.”
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The administration’s decisions over press access have put the role of the rotating pool—and the availability of shared, independent video of presidential events—at the center of its dispute with news organizations.