Last Friday, Trump announced that CNN, MS-NOW, and POLITICO were henceforth banned from the White House. By the next day, he’d made that ban a reality.
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The mainstream media instantly insisted that Trump was violating the First Amendment. (See here and here.) 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 being kicked out because they disagreed with him. Indeed, there is no indication that he’s globally blocking any political opponents from access to the White House.
Instead, he made a specific allegation about these outlets, which is that they have engaged in knowingly dishonest reporting. That is, rather than spinning facts to suit their views, he claims that they consistently misreported facts when they knew or should have known that their reporting was in error:
Trump’s Rapid Response team swiftly followed this announcement with a list of stories that one of those outlets—CNN—got very, very wrong:
https://t.co/h78fUx200J pic.twitter.com/20CHMpdTw3
— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) September 18, 2026
Some may argue that these stories were factually correct and subject only to heavily opinion-driven “shading.” Other reports, however, were manifestly at odds with the facts, and one can argue that CNN’s newsroom, with information at its fingertips, knew or should have known this.
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In sum, 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. That’s a serious charge, and one that essentially says that these news outlets have been engaged in an open act of war against Trump, so that Trump is now forced to defend himself.
And no, I’m not exaggerating. Beginning with World War I, the phrase “the first casualty of war is truth” entered the English language. In modern warfare, propaganda and war go hand in hand. All sides in a fight engage in it. It’s a weapon to bolster your own side and demoralize your enemy.
But within America itself, while the media should always have a healthy skepticism toward the government, that’s not the same as enmity, and that healthy skepticism is not what’s happening now. Instead, through an endless series of reports that, at best, involve underreporting good news and overreporting bad news and, at worst, involve out-and-out fraud, the American media are using propaganda to undercut the duly elected American president.
Put another way, the media are using a tool of war within their own country to conduct what amounts to a coup against the presidency. Again, this is not the same as having strong anti-president feelings and trying to convince an audience that those feelings are a valid approach to the president’s policies. Instead, this is a concerted effort to use propaganda to bring down the presidency.
In that light, one can go to a less profound source than the old phrase that “the first casualty of war is truth.” Instead, we can understand Trump’s latest actions by looking to that great sage of the 20th century, Bugs Bunny:
Yes, as Trump has realized, the only response to the media’s actions is to say, “Of course, you realize, this means war,” and to act accordingly. It’s heartening to remember that, while Bugs’s methods may have been unorthodox, he usually won.
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“Th-th-th-that’s all, folks!”
Image created using AI.