Media Fires Back and Cuts White House Feed in Response to Trump Blocking CNN/MSNOW/Politico From White House

0:00Michael Popok:If you block mainstream media and other media from the White House by name in violation of the First Amendment and the Fifth Amendment, you might not get any coverage of your ribbon cutting for your$6 million great presidential seal heliopad at the White House. as major news organizations cut the feed for any events at the White House, and CNN and the other mainstream media locations have gone completely dark at the White House. And we got a breaking development in the lawsuit filed by the three major news organizations blocked by Donald Trump. He literally clawed back their press credentials because he didn't like how they were reporting about his administration.

0:47Michael Popok:And in his new postings on Truth Social, they will be used by those three news organizations to convince Judge Timothy Kelly that this is nothing more than First Amendment viewpoint discrimination, Fifth Amendment discrimination under the due process clause and all the other constitutional violations. Donald Trump is making it easy. He's presenting the evidence at a silver platter to Judge Kelly, and he's already worried about Judge Kelly because Judge Kelly's the same judge, a Trump-appointed judge, but in 2018, sided with CNN and Jim Acosta when Donald Trump tried to take away credentials the first time around.

1:26Michael Popok:Donald Trump's so worried about it, he already put up on social media in the last couple of hours, oh no, they've got a really good judge for themselves. And then, of course, he goes off and proves the case against himself. I'm Michael Popak. Back on the microphone, you're here on Legal AF. Let's talk about, of course, the lawsuit filed, the temporary restraining order emergency filed, the scheduling by Judge Kelly of an emergency hearing this Wednesday at 3.30 in the afternoon. Of course, we as members of the press are going to attend that and report back on that. and what happened today when nobody showed up to follow and to cover any of the news that Donald Trump wants in his master beautification program.

2:13Michael Popok:That's all he's got time for these days as he's losing and failing at home and abroad. Take a minute, by the way, and hit that free subscribe button as we continue to grow our pro-democracy channel. All right, this should not come as a surprise. A couple of days ago, I did a whole video telling you that by Monday, there's going to be a lawsuit. I thought it could be three lawsuits consolidated. It was one lawsuit. Just shows you Donald Trump is the great unifier. He was able to get competitors, cable news network, MSNOW and Politico to join together along with their reporters to bring one lawsuit.

2:48Michael Popok:You know how hard that is to get that to happen and to pick the lead lawyer? And they filed their case right on time. I said on Monday it would be filed, if not even earlier. They got their temporary restraining order. And as I said, it's based on two major constitutional arguments and claims. One, viewpoint discrimination under the First Amendment. See, the case law under the First Amendment says under the freedom of the press, you cannot, as the government, block out news agencies because you don't like how they're reporting on you. Fake news is not a thing under First Amendment law. Viewpoint retaliation is a thing.

3:28Michael Popok:And it's really easy to prove viewpoint retaliation because all you got to do is point to Donald Trump's attack on on fake news and the enemies of the people who can forget this best of clip. Because they're fake news. You get so tired of reading and seeing fake news. When you look at CNN, it's just fake. that's why their ratings are no good when you look at MS now which used to be MS NBC which some people called MSDNC Democratic National Committee it's fake news it's fake news and and excuse me excuse me and when you look at P is political I mean they got a government the government under Biden gave like eight million dollars to keep them afloat and the stories they wrote a So there's a lot of news and there may be others to join them and maybe they can get better and would like to have men But our country has to have honest news, you know, you don't have a country unless you have as I say borders Good voting we're straightening them out the borders are unbelievable Nobody's coming to our country in the last 17 months illegally, but you need Borders and you need fair free voting and you know what you need you need a free press You need a fair press and an honest press.

4:46And CNN, and you know it, and everybody knows it. You're intelligent. I've known you a long time. You know how fake their reporting is. It's one-sided. It's never good. I've done many, many... Look at this story today about favored nations on drugs. We lowered the drug causes by 50%, 60%, 70%. They won't even put it... If they put it on, it'll be a leg. They will find a reason why that's a negative, okay?

5:12Michael Popok:Now it gets even easier for them. That's First Amendment viewpoint discrimination claims. They also bring claims under the Fifth Amendment due process, meaning they have a property right, a property interest. As members of the press, those credentials have a value to them to be able to do their job. And that was taken away from them, that license, because of the viewpoint discrimination, but without any due process whatsoever. It was almost immediate. I'm going to read to you from the complaint, which of course we're going to put up on Legal AF Substack as well. Let me read to you from the posting by Donald Trump.

5:50Michael Popok:We'll put it up on the air. This is in the last hour or two after he learned that his first term appointee, Tim Kelly, who had, to be frank, nonpartisan credentials. He worked in the public integrity section of the U.S. Attorney's Office, overlapping with some people that worked with Jack Smith. He worked in the Department of Justice. He clerked. He worked for a major firm in Washington that's well-known and well-respected, Arnold and Porter. He worked for Chuck Grassley on the Senate Judiciary Committee. He had all of the credentials. He was a Republican, and Trump put him on. But of course, ever since then, in Jan 6 cases where he presided over the Proud Boys and their convictions, And of course, in the Jim Acosta case, where Jim Acosta's credentials were famously taken away, and he got them back, he gave them back, citing Fifth Amendment due process considerations.

6:48Michael Popok:Eventually, Trump caved in and Acosta was able to continue as a White House correspondent. it. Here's what Trump said in the last couple of hours. As expected, fake news, CNN, Politico, and MS Now have brought suit to gain access to the White House and your president, me. This is like written by a nine-year-old. They have drawn a great judge for them, a man who ruled in favor of Jim Acosta, who now seems to have disappeared from the planet. No, he hasn't disappeared from the planet. In fact, here's a clip of Jim Acosta talking about the new attack on the media. He's just on places like independent media, YouTube, and Substack.

7:29Michael Popok:You should try it sometime. Play the clip. Hey, guys, Trump's ban on the press is already in big trouble. Trump is already complaining on his True Social account about the judge now handling the case. It turns out it's the same federal judge he appointed who handled my case when I won eight years ago. Trump went on True Social to whine about this and even said at one point that somehow I had disappeared to another planet. Trump, you should understand something. Minutes after you put that out there, I was on MS Now with Nicole Wallace. By the way, I also have a very successful sub stack and YouTube show.

8:03You might want to check it out. But this kind of whining and complaining from Donald Trump about this press ban already is a sign that it's in trouble. It's a great day for the First Amendment. Great day for the free press.

8:14Michael Popok:The judge's name is Tim Kelly, and he was sadly appointed by Trump, all in caps. In other words, almost without question, And as usual, we'll go for appeal because fake news people and publications that only write negatively and who violate our national security by writing false and defamatory stories with unknown sources shouldn't be allowed access to the most important office anywhere in the world. It's called the White House. It's called the Oval Office. And it should be treated with decorum, respect, and dignity. Hey, there's an idea. Maybe Donald Trump should stop dropping his trousers and taking a crap all over the presidency.

8:49Michael Popok:And maybe we'll then understand what it means to have decorum, respect and dignity for the office. With such a crooked and corrupt press, how did I win such a landslide? It's because the media has no credibility. Again, this is line after line after line of viewpoint based discrimination, making Wednesday's hearing in front of Judge Kelly that much easier to handle. Let me read to you from the complaint as it's been filed. It goes along with a motion for emergency temporary restraining order, hence Wednesday's hearing that we will cover in full. Introduction, page one. On Friday, September 18th, Trump announced that he was banning journalists with three news organizations.

9:38Michael Popok:CNN, MSNOW, and Politico from the White House effective immediately for one simple reason. He dislikes the content of their coverage of him and his administration. He expressly was clear about his viewpoint discriminatory motive for targeting these three. He called it the result of constant reporting and fake news. Every time you hear fake news, what a judge of the Supreme Court hears is viewpoint discrimination. Say it with me. This ban, paragraph two, should not be a more direct assault on the First Amendment, nor a more blatant violation of our most fundamental constitutional rights. Presidents from the earliest days of the republic have disagreed with and complained about the tenor and content of press coverage.

10:23Michael Popok:But as the Supreme Court has recognized, the First Amendment, including its guarantee of free press, reflects a profound national commitment to the principle that debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust and wide open. And that leads to sometimes unpleasantly sharp attacks on the government and public officials. The president banned, this is paragraph four, banned CNN, MSNOW, and Politico and the individual reporters covering the news in disregard of the most basic guarantees of the First Amendment and the Due Process Clause. He did so expressly for the improper purpose of retaliating against plaintiffs for their negative press coverage.

11:02Michael Popok:They then walk through how it violates the Constitution. Paragraph five, the ban violates the due process clause that those media outlets and their journalists have liberty and property interest in their press credentials and the access those credentials afford to the White House grounds. The ban deprives them of those interests without due process or advance notice. Second, the ban retaliates against protected news gathering and speech in violation of the First Amendment. There's a reason we call the press the fourth estate. It's considered the fourth branch of government. Third, the ban violates the First Amendment.

11:43Michael Popok:This is paragraph seven of the separate and independent reason that it bars those media entities from a non-public forum for its unlawful purposes and stops them from being able to effectively cover the president. Now, look, there's been other cases in which it depends on the room and the judge. We had a case involving Associated Press, where most people get a lot of their news from. That press credential, because they wouldn't acknowledge the Gulf of Trump or the Gulf of America, whatever it was, in their reporting, that was eventually, they were put back in the game. But the president was seen as having a lot of control over small access points like the press room or the Oval Office or Air Force One.

12:34Michael Popok:But by and large, it supported First Amendment rights of AP. CNN, Jim Acosta, same judge, Judge Kelly. Great result for Jim Acosta, First Amendment rights and CNN. I expect a very similar thing to be happening now. Obviously, Donald Trump does, too. as you can see from their postings that he just made a couple of hours ago. And we've had other news agencies and individual White House correspondents have their credentials pulled. And they've all been put back into the game, including the New York Times coverage of the Pentagon. There's a lot going on in this case, but we will keep it, keep you focused, keep you centered, explain all of these various legal and political issues that are going on.

13:20Michael Popok:The next big event is going to be Wednesday at 3.30, but leave it to Donald Trump between now and Wednesday to continue his evidence manufacturing machine that's going to help the three media outlets. And we'll follow it because this is important to what we do. Our First Amendment, right? To be heard, to do commentary that you respect and you enjoy, and your First Amendment, right? To hear what we have to say in the marketplace of ideas. Now is a great time to support what we do here on Legal AF and make sure we don't disappear or we don't get blocked. Hit that subscribe button, come over to Legal AF Substack, and do the exact same thing.

13:59Michael Popok:And you can therefore read the complaint, which I will post for you for paid members. Great time to support independent journalism and commentary now. Until my next report, I'm Michael Popak. Can't get your fill of Legal AF? Me neither. That's why we formed the Legal AF Substack. Every time we mention something in a hot take, whether it's a court filing or a oral argument, come over to the Substack. You'll find the court filing and the oral argument there, including a daily roundup that I do call, wait for it, Morning AF. What else? All the other contributors from Legal AF are there as well. We got some new reporting.

14:33Michael Popok:We got interviews. We got ad-free versions of the podcast and hot takes. Wear Legal AF on Substack. Come over now to free subscribe. Thank you.