Tangle - The White House press bans.

Episode Date: September 22, 2026

On Friday, President Donald Trump announced he is barring journalists from CNN, MS NOW, and Politico from the White House. The president accused the outlets of inaccurately reporting on his administration and suggested that additional news organizations could be banned. On Monday, the outlets sued the government for allegedly violating their First Amendment rights.Ad-free podcasts are here!Get 20% off your first year of ad-free episodes, exclusive interviews, and deep dives with Tangle’s podcast membership!The DSA debate.On Friday, Ross Barkan authored a guest column making the case for the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). The piece has generated over 500 comments and a robust debate over Barkan’s arguments and the DSA’s merit. Check out the piece and join the conversation here.You can read today's podcast⁠ ⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠ and today’s “Under the radar” story ⁠here⁠ and today’s “Have a nice day” story ⁠here⁠.You can subscribe to Tangle by clicking here or drop something in our tip jar by clicking here. Take the survey: What do you think of Trump’s press ban? Let us know.Our Executive Editor and Founder is Isaac Saul. Our Executive Producer is Jon Lall.This podcast written by: Isaac Saul and audio engineered and edited by Dewey Thomas. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75.Our newsletter is edited by Managing Editor Ari Weitzman, Senior Editor Will Kaback, Bailey Saul, Audrey Moorehead, and Carina Pacheco. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From executive producer Isaac Saul, this is Tangle. Good morning, good afternoon and good evening, and welcome to the Tangle podcast, a place we get views from across the political spectrum, some independent thinking, and a little bit of mind take. I'm your host, Isaac Saul, fresh off a young Kippur fast and a day spent in synagogue yesterday. I feel sufficiently reminded of all the things I have to atone for from the last year. and also how much I need coffee and water. I was dying yesterday. Special thanks to Will Kayback, who hopped in on the take yesterday, which was a fascinating listen on the evolving situation in the Middle East.

Highly encourage you to check it out if you have not yet. Today, I'm back to write about the president's media diet, which apparently excludes CNN Politico and MS now, as those outlets are now banned from the White House press press. pool. Plus, a reader question about Congress's early recess and an under-the-radar story on enforcing a law against firearm sales to 18 to 20-year-old buyers. It's a great episode. I'm excited to lock it in. I'm going to pass it over to Will Kayback to get us started. Thanks, Isaac. All right, let's get into today's quick hits. Number one, a federal appeals court reinstated a Missouri

congressional map designed to net Republicans an additional seat in the U.S. House, finding that requiring the state to use the previous version of the map would be unconstitutional. The case is now expected to go to the Supreme Court. Number two, the Federal Aviation Administration grounded flights at major airports in the northeast after a telecommunications outage. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said that, quote, an Amtrak construction crew accidentally cut into a fiber line in New Jersey, end quote, which caused the outage. Three, Paramount and a group of state attorneys general reached an agreement that will allow the company to proceed with its $81 billion merger with Warner Bros. Discovery.

As part of the deal, Paramount said it will create an editorial independence board to oversee CNN and CBS News. Number four, the United Nations General Assembly begins today in New York City with President Donald Trump, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and Iranian President Mazud Pajeskian, all expected to be in attendance. And finally, number five, President Donald Trump said his administration is negotiating a deal with Belarus to buy potash, salts used as agricultural fertilizer, amid the United States' ongoing trade war with Canada, its largest potash supplier. However, Belarusian President Alexander

Lukashenko said his country does not have available supply to sell. Trump silenced by his own hand. Today, Trump held a ribbon-cutting event to show off his new helipad. A helipad he's bragged about again and again talking with the grass around it and he walks people out there. He's really proud of this. He was thrilled to show it off, except for the fact that nobody could hear him when the big ribbon-cutting happened because he'd banned CNN, Politico, and Now from the White House. The other networks all stood for the First Amendment and refused to bail him out by providing the pool coverage of presidential events that CNN was slated to deliver today. On Friday, President Donald Trump announced he is barring journalists from CNN, MS Now, and Politico from the White House.

The president accused the outlets of inaccurately reporting on his administration and suggested that additional news organizations could also be banned in the future. On Monday, the outlets sued the government for allegedly violating their First Amendment rights. In a truth social post on Friday, Trump wrote, quote, media outlets shouldn't be able to constantly write or report fiction and lies when they're covering the president of the United States, the Trump administration, or the United States of America, end quote. On Monday, he said the ban was not an assault on the free press,

but, quote, an assault on the fake news, something that has grown like cancer in our beloved United States. States of America, end quote. On Saturday, CNN, MS now, and Politico reporters shared that they had been blocked from entering the White House grounds and had had their press passes confiscated. In a Monday statement, the outlets announced that they have filed a lawsuit against the ban, quote, to protect our First Amendment rights and defend the principle that the government does not decide what the press reports or publishes, end quote. The organizations are seeking an injunction to pause the ban's enforcement and restore their

journalists' access to the White House. CNN, along with ABC, CBS, Fox News, and NBC, is a member of the White House television press pool, which provides broadcast coverage of the president. The networks share the costs and duties of reporting from the White House, and with CNN barred from the grounds, the pool announced they will stop providing televised coverage of President Trump while the press ban is in place. Brian Botton, the White House Bureau Chief at the Fox News Channel and current acting chair of the pool, said the decision, quote, followed the White House's position preventing CNN from fulfilling its assigned pool duties, and quote.

On Monday evening, the White House announced the launch of Trump TV, a streaming channel that will share, quote, top videos, major remarks, and must see highlights, end quote, from the Trump administration. Next up, our perspectives from the right and left on the bans, followed by executive editor Isaac Saul's take. We'll be right back after this quick break. Here's what the right is saying. The right is mixed with some arguing that the ban does not violate the First Amendment. Others say that Trump took the wrong approach to a legitimate problem.

Still others predict that the president's action will not hold up in court. In American thinker, Andrew Windberg said Trump is targeting cover. that has consistently erred. The mainstream media instantly insisted that Trump was violating the First Amendment. Since the Constitution doesn't mention an inherent right to be in the White House to report on and comment on the news of the day, that argument is invalid. As I see it, the only colorable basis for the media's fight is to claim illegal viewpoint discrimination. That is, that these outlets are being kicked out because they oppose Trump and his policies. However, Trump never said that they were going to be kicked out because they disagreed with him. Indeed, there's no indication

that he's globally blocking any political opponents from access to the White House at all. Instead, he made a specific allegation about these outlets, which is that they have engaged in a knowingly dishonest reporting. In some, the White House position is that it's not kicking out newsrooms that disagree with Trump. It's kicking out newsrooms that lie to destroy Trump. In PJ Media, Matt Margolis suggested Trump didn't pick the smartest way to fix the problem. Let's be honest here. The First Amendment doesn't entitle any media outlet access to the White House grounds. Not every outlet gets a press pass, and that's never had anything to do with freedom of the press. You don't have to try too hard to find examples of these outlets pushing fake news,

and let's be honest here, I don't even think MS now pretends to practice journalism. There's nothing wrong with journalists being critical of a press. president. That's the job. But the job is to report the news accurately, not promote an agenda as legitimate news coverage. Still, this probably could have been handled better. The optics aren't good. Picking a fight with the press this close to the midterms isn't the message Trump's team should want dominating the news cycle. It's a distraction from arguments he could be actually winning. In his blog, Jonathan Turley argued the odds are against the president. In Cheryl V. Knight, the Supreme Court ruled that the First Amendment

limited the right of the White House to arbitrarily deny a press pass to a journalist. Since that time, viewpoint discrimination has long been viewed as not a reasonable basis for exclusion. In this case, the White House gave no procedural protections or any reason other than the president's view that these outlets were publishing, quote, fake news. The White House will have to argue that it can deny access

without notice, procedural protections, and based entirely on the government. content of coverage. In other words, it will have to argue that it can engage in viewpoint discrimination. This would create a dangerous and unfettered power. Future presidents could use it to bar conservative media outlets that expose government abuse or waste. Whatever the outcome of this litigation, it is not a policy that advances our core values and traditions. Now here's what the left is saying. The left opposes the ban, with some tying it to Trump's past actions against the press. Many argue the action violates the First Amendment. Others suggest the move

will backfire. The New York Times editorial board said Trump is attacking press freedom and disregarding the law. Twice during President Trump's first term, his administration tried to prevent a journalist whose work it did not like from reporting at the White House. Twice, judges rejected the moves as unconstitutional and restored the journalists' access. the administration is attempting the same move, barring journalists from CNN, MS Now, and Politico from the White House because they had written what the president called purposefully negative stories. The seeming arcane question of which media organizations have access to the White House fits with a larger pattern of Mr. Trump's attempts to control the media.

Officials from his administration have searched the home of a Washington Post reporter and served subpoenas to staff members of the New York Times. He has impinged on press freedom in ways that no other modern president has. If he now gets away with punishing CNN, MS Now, and Politico, he'll be able to credibly threaten other organizations. In MS Now, Dan Frumkin called the action Trump's unconstitutional press ban. Banning journalists won't make the bad news go away. The media isn't lying about the war Trump started in Iran or the haphazard and nonsensical tariffs he imposed or the grocery and gas prices. And now, increasingly, unavoidably, Trump can see that more and more American voters are turning against him.

The polls predicting democratic success in the midterm elections must be weighing on him, but shooting the messenger never works. And it likely won't last either. It is hard to imagine a more overt violation of the First Amendment than punishing journalists because he doesn't like their coverage. That is a textbook example of viewpoint discrimination, which is unconstitutional. This is a tired playbook that will do little to distract the nation's focus from his dismal record and his failure to deliver on his biggest campaign promises, stopping the forever wars and bringing down prices. And unfortunately for Trump, journalists can keep reporting on all of those things, whether standing in the Oval Office or safely outside the Secret Service perimeter.

In the Atlantic, Jonathan Chate argued Trump's attacks on the media are self-defeating. Donald Trump is presiding over a failing presidency and lashing out at the news media, most recently by banning CNN Politico and MS now from the White House. There might seem to be a connection between these two things, but the causal link is not that Trump is punishing the press because he is failing, rather it's the opposite. His inability to govern is in part a consequence of his hatred for the news media. Trump has turned his party into a personality cult that disregards all evidence of failure.

This project requires constant reminders that the hated press cannot be trusted, and that Trump himself is the source of all truth. The most profound effect of his attacks has been to seal off many Republican minds from the fresh air of critique and correction. But the GOP's efforts to discredit the media, rather than protecting the party from its own governing failures, have only made those failures worse. And that is it for what the right and left are saying,

So now I'll pass it over to Isaac for his take. All right, that is it for the left and the writer saying, which brings us to my take. Let me start with an obvious point that everyone should grant. News organizations don't just have a First Amendment right to the White House. The Trump administration and its defenders under what the right is saying are correct when they argue that covering the White House as part of the press pool is a privilege, not a right.

However, frustrating the president's messaging, these organizations aren't having their rights infringed solely by being denied presidential access. I am the leader of a news organization, and I've been reporting on national politics for 15 years, yet all my applications for a White House press pool have been denied. I don't immediately get access to the president just because I'm a member of the media. So yes, a White House press pass is a privilege. You have to apply, be accepted, and be accepted in to the press pool and follow the rules once you're inside. There is a reason the room is populated by the biggest news organizations in the world. However, that doesn't mean this move is fair or even legal. Banning news organizations based on the content of their reporting is a form of viewpoint discrimination, which would make it a violation of their First Amendment rights. The Trump

administration may also be violating their Fifth Amendment due process and property rights, and those are the grounds on which news organizations are now suing the Trump administration. I suspect, too, that those outlets will win their lawsuits on the merits, especially since the Trump-appointed judge assigned to the case has shown a keen deference toward press freedom in the past. So yes, the White House gets to choose who's in the room, but they don't get to revoke access for people or organizations because they don't like their coverage. That tug-of-war between the federal government and the media is well-established,

and it's something we should all be grateful for. Which brings me to the White House's defense of this move. In response to CNN posting a statement about the ban, the White House rapid response team posted a graphic of purported CNN hoaxes over the years. The graphic shows more than 50 stories that CNN has reported on with the story hoax appended to it. The graphic is actually instructive

as it looks into how the White House thinks about past reporting and what it deems fake or real news. Very few of these stories were actually hoaxes, that is, totally fictional accounts, save examples like Jussie Smollett faking his own racially charged attack, which was something CNN reported on with insufficient skepticism,

not a myth the outlet itself created from whole cloth. But in Magaland, the definition of the word hoax has morphed into anything from story published with inaccuracies to exaggerated or misleading story. And it's true, CNN has had some whoppers over the years. The Covington Kid story was reported with so much bias as to obscure the reality of what happened, and CNN paid the price for it in a lawsuit.

Claims that Trump promised a bloodbath if he lost the election were intentionally quoted out of context to make it seem like he was promising a civil war, rather than warning that the auto industry would fail without him. Kyle Rittenhouse was never driven across state lines by his mother, and he did not illegally transport a rifle across state lines, both inaccurate claims by CNN guests that they aired. Trump never called for Liz Cheney to be executed, but he did insist she stand on the front lines of a war

before sending our kids off to fight for us. This was, of course, before Trump launched the Iran War. Other times CNN leaned into a technically true framing, like the fact that Kamala Harris was never technically border sara that obscured the truth so much as to be misleading. I have written or tweeted about most of this inaccurate or misleading reporting in the past, and all of these mistakes always seem to go in one direction. CNN is deserving of criticism for its consistent and demonstrated anti-Trump bias,

and the White House is well within its right to use its bullhorn to call it out. At the same time, a lot of the purported hoaxes in the graphic are real things that happen that CNN and other outlets reported accurately. The man who assaulted Paul Pelosi was a diehard Trump supporter, and after the assault many in Maga World, including Trump's own son, mocked Pelosi for being brutally beaten by one of their own supporters. That isn't a hoax. Trump did run for re-election while promising to pursue death penalties again, and he has since pushed for reinstating firing squads. This, too, is not a hoax.

Israeli troops did actually shoot and kill food-seeking Palestinians at an aid site. also not a hoax. And Melania Trump's documentary was a box office flop, earning just over $16 million after Amazon spent $40 million to buy it. You guessed it. Not a hoax. CNN was right to report that Biden never ban gas stoves and never pushed for such a ban.

All that he did was appoint a commissioner on the Independent Consumer Product Safety Commission who once called gas stoves a hidden hazard and said any option is on the table in an interview, which conservative columnists then wrote about as Biden planning to ban gas stoves. It was a rather silly story that got blown way out of proportion, and under the Trump administration's definition, it's actually an example of a conservative media-led hoax.

Trump has offered other justifications for the ban, like claiming Politico was awarded some kind of untoward contract by the federal government as a quid pro quo arrangement for favorable coverage. This claim is also a lie, one that I wrote about at the time in a piece for the free press. Some of Trump's defenders have offered their own defense, arguing, for example, that past administrations have limited access to certain members of the press. Many of these examples are deliberately misleading, like the case of an African journalist named Simon Atiba being barred by the Biden administration when, actually, he was denied a permanent hard pass but granted a day pass every single time he requested one. Other defenders of the president argue that he has a right to ban these outlets because of their bias.

Reporters covering the White House briefing should be conveying facts, not spin, Ward Clark wrote in Red State. Ironically, if that's true, then Red State's own press credentials for the Pentagon and White House should be revoked immediately, given that, as their name implies, they are a news organization whose agenda is explicitly aligned with Trump's. Quotes like Clarks make it all exceedingly clear how silly and dangerous this all is. Every administration has their critics and allies in the press. This has been true since the Washington administration, and it should be true going forward for a long time. None have done what Trump is attempting to do now. Bias is in the eye of the beholder, which is precisely why nobody should support an administration banning news outlets it deems his bias,

even if they have a track record of mistakes. All that does is ensure future administrations will restrict press access they don't like, which is a loss for anyone who believes in free exchange. Of course, this isn't actually about eliminating bias. The Trump administration literally created a special seat in the White House briefing room just so it could invite quote-on-quote independent news creators, i.e., huge Trump fans, into the room to ask questions like, President Trump looks healthier than ever before.

I'm sure everybody in this room would agree. Is he working out with Bobby Kennedy and is he eating less McDonald's? That's a real question. A real reporter named Kara Castro Nova asked. She's a former professional boxer and credentialed journalist from Lindell TV. It is truly astonishing to me that the administration thinks this is the play right now. Yes, the media writ large is distrusted by the public and obsessed with itself and will inevitably devote plenty of coverage to its own lawsuits and fights with

administration. I'm sure some of them will even build subscription drives off the battle. That's their right. And maybe Trump is just betting that CNN, MS now, and Politico will spend more time on resistance navel-gazing and less time critically reporting on his administration. But the knock-on effects are already breaking against him. Yesterday, the administration held an event so Trump could brag about his new helipad, but there was no audio on the televised event because there was no press pool. Other broadcast networks, including Fox News, have banded with CNN against the ban. Trump then launched Trump TV, a 24-7 streaming show on the White House YouTube channel that purports to play the greatest hits of his administration, live updates, and breaking news.

When I checked the channel out this morning, there was a grand total of 934 people watching a rerun of a Trump rally, and commenting was prohibited. This is the same administration that promised to restore, free speech. Really consider the context here. Gas and diesel prices are both significantly higher than they were when Biden left office and rising. We're still stuck in the Iran war, which is now spreading. The Russia-Ukraine war rages on. Inflation is higher today than it was when Biden left office. The number of uninsured Americans has gone up since Biden left office. The native-born employment rate is stagnant. Real wages are down, too. There is no long promise health care bill, no election

reform bill, no immigration reform bill. Congress was just sent home after doing a grand total of four months of work this year because they didn't want to take a tough vote on impeaching Trump's Secretary of Defense. Now, they won't be back until after the midterms. If any of this concerns you, don't worry. President Trump is focusing his time on what matters. He just got a new helipat at the White House. He's hard at work building his ballroom and fighting to get his name on the Kennedy Center or knock it down, and he's got plans to turn his grand arch into a drone-deploying military station. And now, thankfully, he's banned three news organizations from the White House who post stories he doesn't like, which will inevitably result in taxpayer money being used to fight lawsuits from those

organizations that he will probably lose. If this is how the president thinks he can stave off a midterm blowout or rescue his quickly sinking approval rating, then the bubble he's living in is more removed from reality than even thought. That's bad news for Trump, worse news for us, and it is a much bigger deal than any of the shoddy reporting we've all had to live through over the last decade. We'll be right back after this quick break. All right, that is it for my take, which brings us to your questions answered. This one is from Brad in Springfield, Michigan, and it's not unrelated to today's story. Brad said, has sending everyone home to avoid certain votes been a key part of the House Speaker

job before Mike Johnson. It seems pretty common these days, but I don't recall this happening regularly in the past. Speaker Johnson has used this tactic several times during the 119th Congress. Outside of the most recent example, when GOP leadership adjourned the House one day early, seemingly to delay a vote on impeaching Defense Secretary Pete Egtseth, Johnson deployed similar maneuvers to put off tenuous votes on the Save America Act in June, and releasing documents related to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein in July. Before this Congress, the specific tactic of beginning a scheduled recess early was fairly rare. One of the closest examples on the Democratic side came in 2010 when then-Sener Nancy Pelosi, the Democrat from California, cast the decisive vote

to adjourn the House after the midterms to avoid voting to extend the Bush-era tax cuts. Separately, adjournments in general, not necessarily early, adjournments are a familiar way to sidestep votes. In June, June of 2026, Speaker Paul Ryan, the Republican from Wisconsin, adjourned the House until after the 4th of July, despite a 26-hour sit-in protest by Democratic lawmakers, attempting to force a vote on gun control measures following the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando, Florida. A standout characteristic of Speaker Johnson's early adjournments is that they've all been used to counter measures pushed by fellow Republicans. Representative Thomas Massey,

the Republican from Kentucky, introduced the Hegsef impeachment articles. President Trump and other Republicans were a driving force by the Save America Act dispute, and members of the House Freedom Caucus had long been pushing for release of files related to Jeffrey Epstein. All right, that is it for your questions answered. I'm going to send it back to Will Kay back for the rest of the pod. I'll see you guys tomorrow. Have a good one. Peace.

And now here's an under-the-radar story. In a legal opinion released last week, the Department of Justice concluded that a federal law restricting the sale of handguns to 18 to 20-year-old buyers violates the Second Amendment. The Supreme Court has never weighed in on the constitutionality of that 1968 law, which does not restrict the purchase of other firearms, such as rifles or shotguns. The opinion from T. Eliot Geiser, the assistant attorney general for the DOJ's office of legal counsel, is not law and does not bind judicial actions, but it is expected to impact how prosecutors across the country approach cases involving underage handgun sales.

Axios has this story, and you can find a link in today's show notes. And now we'll wrap up with today's Have a Nice Day story. Matt Krishnan Bird wanted a group of like-minded individuals to share the problems and joys of parenthood in his hometown of Colchester, England. Mom's support groups seemed abundant, but he couldn't find any groups for dads. So Krishna and Byrd took matters into his own hands and created the good dads clubs of Colchester. Now 400 members strong, the group's dads share parenting tips, meet up for in-person outings, and provide each other with mental health support. Quote, I think men notoriously are not good at talking and opening up to people, Christian and Byrd said.

But I think by creating a safe space and an environment where people feel that they can trust other dads, it's a really good. chance to address mental health problems. The BBC has this story, and again, you can find the link to it in today's show notes. All right, that is it for today's episode. Thanks as always for being with us, and we'll be back with you tomorrow. Until then, in the words of our esteemed colleague, John Lawl, peace. Our executive editor and founder is me, Isaac Saul, and our executive producer is John Wall. Today's episode was edited and engineered by Dewey Thomas. Our editorial staff is led by managing editor Ari Weitzman with senior editor Will Keeback and associate editors Audrey Moorhead and Bailey Saul. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75.

To learn more about Tangle and to sign up for a membership, please visit our website at retangle.com.