Trump Bans CNN, MS NOW and Politico From the White House, Effective Immediately

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump on Friday announced that he is “banning” CNN, MS NOW, and Politico from the White House, a decision he said was “effective immediately,” a phrase that in this administration functions less as a legal status and more as a mood. The move, which the President attributed to what he called the outlets’ “constant ‘reporting’ FAKE NEWS,” breaks with the long-standing protocol governing the relationship between the executive office and the press corps and has been greeted by news organizations with the measured calm of people who have, in fact, been doing this to one another for years.

The three outlets named in the ban are, by any operational measure, already effectively banished from the White House, which is to say the ban accomplishes precisely what it claims to accomplish and then some. CNN has not had a functioning White House bureau in the ordinary sense for some time, Politico is a trade publication whose proximity to the building is a matter of ambition rather than access, and MS NOW — a channel the President’s own base watches with the affection of a family member one does not discuss at holidays — is, as one analyst put it, “the only name on that list that is actually doing the work of a ban.”

It ends today, the President said. And then, in the same breath, he added that additional media organizations could be “coming,” a phrase that has taken on a specific texture in this news cycle, the way a weather front is described when it is not yet a storm but is, structurally, a storm. The threat is the news, in other words. The ban is the headline. And the two are, as is often the case, the same thing.

The reaction from the named outlets was swift and characteristically split. CNN, which is simultaneously the subject of the ban and the network broadcasting the story of the ban, issued a statement describing the move as “an attack on the free press” and noting, with a precision that has become a national habit, that it would continue to cover the administration “from wherever the administration’s own press corps is no longer willing to go.” MS NOW declined to comment, which is to say MS NOW did what it has always done, which is to wait for the story to develop into something its viewers already believe. Politico, which is a trade publication and therefore the odd one out, noted that it had, in fact, been reporting from the White House for the full term, which is to say the ban was, from the company’s own perspective, a demotion.

The legal dimension, which is the dimension that has been asked about most, is the dimension that has been answered least. No executive order was issued. No memo was distributed. The ban, in the words of one constitutional scholar, “is a ban in the way that a word on a whiteboard is a law, which is to say it has the authority of the person who wrote it and none of the enforcement of the person who is supposed to enforce it.” The First Amendment, which is the amendment that has been asked about most, has not been asked about, which is to say it has been, in the language of the news, “invoked” by the named outlets and by no one else.

The White House, for its part, has not indicated what, specifically, is prohibited. Reporters from CNN, MS NOW, and Politico are not, to the knowledge of this desk, currently inside the White House. The ban, in other words, is not a change in the physical arrangement of the building’s press rooms. It is a change in the arrangement of the building’s narrative, which is to say it is the kind of move that costs nothing, accomplishes nothing, and lands, nonetheless, as a headline, which is, for this administration, the whole ballgame.

At press time, the second wave of names had not been announced. The President’s own social media account had posted the word “NEXT” in all caps, with no accompanying sentence, which is to say the news is, as the President has made clear, a thing that is about to happen, and the happening of it is, as the news, a thing. The press corps, which is the corps that has been banned, is reporting on the ban from the same spot where it has always reported, which is to say from outside, which is to say from the only spot that has ever been available, which is to say from the spot the ban was, in fact, written from.