Judge Blocks Trump's WH Ban on MS NOW, CNN & Politico

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0:36Plus, they come in three inseams and a ton of colors. Ready to try a pair? Go to viore.com slash arch and get 20 % off at checkout. I think you're going to love them as much as I do. That's viore.com slash A-R-C-H and get 20 % off your first order. Exclusions apply. Visit the website for full terms and conditions. Not only will you receive 20 % off your first purchase, but enjoy free shipping on any U.S. orders over$75 and free returns. Have a great day. Welcome to The Beat. I'm Ari Melber. We're reporting on President Trump losing the first court test of that press ban today, a win for the First Amendment at this stage, which comes at a pretty tense time for Trump and arguably the country.

1:09White House has featured, of course, Trump hosting a Chinese leader who has been criticized for his own authoritarian tactics against the press. And it is with that backdrop at this very week that Trump is losing his own bid to target the free press at home. The judge who just heard the swift challenge to Trump's press ban yesterday, which we were covering here, then ruled overnight against the Trump White House, flatly ordering these government defendants to immediately return, reinstate, and restore White House press credentials held by employees of CNN, MS Now, and Politico that were revoked.

1:47That's a full rejection of the ban under the current legal posture. Now, this is a restraining order, so it stops the White House ban for now. And that renders Trump basically powerless to carry out this attempted ban under this court order. The case will continue under normal procedure. But this is kind of the worst outcome for Trump here. It stops the ban in its tracks after just a few days, so it didn't work in any functional way for very long. And we should note, if you follow these kind of legal skirmishes, it's a much faster rebuke than Trump has faced in other cases testing his powers. To pick one example, we all remember the tariffs.

2:26Courts let that policy actually continue for many months before ultimately finding most of them unlawful. Here, they didn't get months. They didn't get weeks. They got a couple days. Now, Trump himself has made, of course, this press clash a big deal, which also drew attention to his loss today as reporters from those outlets were reentering the White House grounds UNDER COURT ORDER. SOME MS NOW JOURNALISTS ARE JUST NOW REGAINING ACCESS TO THE WHITE HOUSE. THIS IS REALLY JUST A NUTTY DAY THAT WE'RE WITNESSING. THERE'S BEEN A NEW DEVELOPMENT. AFTER SIX HOURS, THESE CNN JOURNALISTS WERE FINALLY ABLE TO GET BACK INTO THE WHITE HOUSE GROUNDS.

3:06PRESS FREEDOM IS YOUR FREEDOM. AND THAT IS WHY THIS MOMENT IS SO IMPORTANT. IT'S A SYMBOL OF SOMETHING SO MUCH GREATER. THERE IS SOMETHING GREATER HERE. Now, let's keep in mind the context. The United States faces many significant challenges right now, from the Iran war to the sagging economy. And the press typically covers those stories rather than becoming a story or a legal clash itself. But I can tell you today, September 24th, is now marked in First Amendment history as a president went farther than any in the modern era in order to, as this court has now ruled, likely illegally abuse government power to try to bar the free press from reporting on the government.

3:54And so that actually does matter to the other issues mentioned of war and the economy and whether you, the public, hear facts and views about those topics free from government interference. This legal development today, this first loss for Trump on this issue, restores reporters to the seat of White House power, where they can go back to doing their jobs, asking questions, talking to sources, doing reporting, which actually, of course, offers the possibility of extra fairness and context to this or any White House, because they're there talking to the people who work there. That's the side of the story they're getting, the government's side.

4:38But it also empowers them to question power in person. I think that's the balance the framers had in mind when they wrote these protections into the Bill of Rights as the first one to kind of start off and uphold the others. Today's news also beats back Trump's attempted escalation in this particular clash, but it comes after other Trump losses in very well-known free speech battles. In a very real sense, this isn't just about any one outlet or any one journalist. It's about something much larger. We all know, in fact, it was one of Trump's kind of most famous losses of these two years of this term.

5:21We all know the Trump FCC tried to cancel Jimmy Kimmel. And it failed so early in that process, that one never even made it to court. There was a separate Trump bid to target and punish the AP for its independent reporting. That one was narrowed in court. The case is ongoing. And don't forget, there are Trump's unusual and likely unlawful, although we will find out, but unusual criminal indictments of two members of the media. Those cases grind on. They are not paused like the ban. Those cases may ultimately fail, but for now, they also reflect an administration that is on the record trying to imprison some members of the press.

6:02and it is not accidental, we should note, that those two reporters are not currently employed by major outlets. They might have been targeted precisely because they have less money behind them and they don't have a big national standing legal team and law firm set up to fight. There may be other reasons as well, but that also is part of this, plus the battery of civil cases and attacks against publishers, outlets, and tech companies, clearly designed to shake down and chill any opposing views. We've been tracking them. They are many. So today is a loss for Trump on this issue, perhaps an embarrassing one with its speed, but it fits into a larger challenge in our country.

6:48The attacks on free speech continue to mostly fail when tested, but not every company and not every entity has tested them, as you certainly know by now, and this is a very real thing, not a drill. This one also came under a kind of, call it a political or PR strain for Donald Trump, because it very quickly operated in real time to limit Trump's own TV coverage, which has been reported on, a result he may not have foreseen or deeply considered. And against this backdrop, Trump is now rerouting your tax dollars to pay for TV messages during the midterm homestretch. New video I'm about to show you, but I want you to note at the bottom what it says there.

7:31Paid for by the U.S. government, i.e. by your tax dollars, which ultimately could also prove unlawful. Take a look at the new video. America will never be a communist country. Love me. Love me. Love me. Nothing was going to stop him from fighting so hard for the country he loves. You paid for that. They made you pay for it. If you look at that as a potential corrupt act, well, keep that in mind going into the midterms. The Trump administration ran that in certain media markets, paying for the ad and buying the airtime. A court might often look at that and say it's potentially spending for a campaign purpose.

8:22Now, that's something that you have to analyze. looked a lot like a campaign ad, and we are in campaign season. But in all fairness, it has not been adjudicated in court yet. But if it were deemed a campaign ad, then the video you just saw would also be illegal. All of this is the pressure of someone willing to try to get away with this much, in broad daylight, as they say, against how our First Amendment holds. And while, as I've mentioned, there is an effort here to also lure the press into being a combatant by kicking Politico out, for example, and MSNOW and CNN were among the same band, but say kicking Politico out is also a desire, apparently, by the government to make Politico into a kind of combatant when they want to just report on this.

9:07But of course, they had to sue, a type of legal combat, just to get back to reporting. But that doesn't mean that anyone has to take the government's claims at face value or fall into that mode and that partisan clash, because one of the high points of recent history is that presidents in both parties who have clashed with the media in many ways, for sure, including using their speech, their First Amendment to attack those of us in the press, which they have every right to peacefully do. But even those presidents from different parties have often made a point to recognize First Amendment is the law.

9:42It is a foundation. And the free press is a good and essential thing for our functioning democracy. The president of a great democracy such as ours and the editors of great newspapers such as yours owe a common obligation to the people. Whether one is working in the Oval Office or in the newsrooms of America, whether one is putting together the nation's policies or the next day's edition, the purpose is the same. the continuing purpose of defending America's liberties, the state of our democracy. It goes without saying that essential to that is a free press. It goes without saying, sometimes tonight it needs to be said and fought for.

10:33I'm joined by Reverend Al Sharpton, our colleague here on MSNOW, Politics Nation, president of National Action Network. You, our colleagues, myself, we are all, of course, a party to this suit. Well, we promised to cover it fairly. But at this juncture, the government is losing. I'm curious your thoughts as someone who's been in and out of court in the civil rights context. And now we see the First Amendment context. It has to be fought, has to be defended in court. Otherwise, they would boot whoever they wanted. What is so troubling on two levels to me is here we are with the U.N. General Assembly in New York.

11:12can hardly drive around. And I've been meeting with various heads of state, almost to a person meeting on other issues, they say, how do you defend what your president is doing? And some of them are democratic states. Some of them do not. But one said something to me very pointed. He says, I thought the American Revolution was about freedom of speech. The second part of this is he's doing this with, what, 40 days, 40-some-odd days to the general election. How does a Republican that is running in any of these close races defend a president that is blatantly giving all kind of welcoming and comrade behavior to Mr.

12:06Xi of China, who is a autocrat, a totalitarian, while he's banned in press? The optics is what I'm saying couldn't be worse on the international level. And you've got that now on a domestic level, coupled with the fact that diesel and gas oils and all has gone on. So the image of the country internationally and the reality of the country internally couldn't be worse if I was somebody on Trump's ticket, which is why they may be using taxpayers' money to try to do commercials for Trump. Yeah, which could be stealing money, could be illegal. I want to show folks, because it all happened so fast, where the judge came down on the arguments.

12:48The White House arguments were not serious. They weren't backed by the facts. The lawyers really failed to get anywhere with it. Two examples. One, on the security. The judge says nothing in the record. Not that it was, you know, short. You came up short. You didn't have enough examples. Quote, nothing in the record suggests the revocation of these passes was motivated by national security. That's not what President Trump even said, quote, when he announced he was banning plaintiffs from the White House. Then on the actual reporting, I mean, this is a real failure. Washington Post reports the White House banned Politico, citing certain sources.

13:26The argument being from the White House, well, maybe this went over the line, the sources you used. Among the examples the White House cited, their argument was an article based on a White House hosted call where reporters were told to cite an anonymous senior administration official. It would be laughable if it weren't such a serious issue. It's a very serious issue. To, one, say things that just are patently untrue and filed in the court. For a judge to have to say, there is nothing there as to what you said. And then to find out the other White House call is something that is the absolute, I mean, it's not even remotely the same.

14:08It's almost like you're mocking the courts, like you think they just supposed to fall in line because you want to. There was not even an argument here. You're the lawyer, but I've been to court many times. There wasn't even an argument here to debate because the basic foundation that they were putting their allegations on didn't exist. So it's like you're telling somebody here's something. This is how these glasses fell. But you have no glasses. There's no there there, and that is what is more offensive. But it's also telling he wants to be the autocrat. Do it because I say. Forget about facts.

14:46Right. And loyalty means putting the facts aside. With the glasses, you remind me of the old school Al Sharpton MS viewers who remember. They got the blueberry pie all over their face. That's right. Right? You're exposed. I remember. But, yeah, in closing, one minute left, you get the sense here, unlike some other cases I've covered from this administration, that there wasn't even an effort to strategically plan and win. There was just a panicked effort to say, Trump said it. We'll see if we can get it going for a couple of days. Lawyers threw this out. And now they've lost. I think that you're probably absolutely right.

15:23I think they throw something out there. I think it's one of these things of let's just calm him down, go ahead and do it. It'll go away. But I think that they've underestimated the damage it does politically. Yeah. And like I said, globally, why the U.N., all of the presidents in town watching this saying, he did what? How do you do that? And I think that, and with Xi coming, I mean, you couldn't have had it set up at a worse time for Trump. But I don't think he realizes that. Right. You make that point. There have been many, we've been around many U.N. weeks where U.S. officials are pressing foreign governments about what they do to their reporters.

16:03and here it was backwards and people can make up their own mind about that. Again, as I said, we're a part of the case, but we're covering it. But there's a reason why a Trump-appointed judge said this was contra first amendment. At the time that she's coming, you roll out the red carpet and we can't even show it to the country because all of the press is boycotted you. Right, you don't have to end that. We couldn't even see the great walk up the red carpet. Absolutely. Reverend Al Sharpton, as always, great to have you, our leadoff guest. Coming up, GOP majority facing new trouble in the midterms.

16:31Anthony Scaramucci on the insiders blowing the whistle about Trump's decline. And next, we go live to our MSNOW team that has been in the news at the White House. We're going to hear a ground report on the setback for Trump's now failed ban in 90 seconds.

16:55The White House struggled initially to follow what was a late-breaking overnight judicial order. pausing this attempted press ban. I wanted to get into some of the details here because this is part of what's really playing out here, even if it's what we might be more accustomed to, as mentioned, in other countries. Our government, saying the Secret Service indicated press badges under the court order were back online around 9.07 a.m. today. We should know White House lawyers then had to also still file a document with the court about complying with this new order to stop this press ban. They said White House operations were notified at 710 to restore access.

17:32About an hour later, one MSNOW reporter was still turned away. 8, 18 a.m. this morning that I went through this first perimeter. Secret Service let me through the first perimeter. I proceeded to that northwest gate and I put in my pin and it flashed red. I put it in again. It flashed red again. I asked the Secret Service what was happening with my badge. The officer behind the desk scanned it again, said, yeah, it's still saying disabled badge. And that was really all that the officer told me. He proceeded to confiscate my badge, and then I had to leave the premises. And there was no White House official around to explain what was happening or to answer any questions.

18:16This was some of the early confusion and delay in following a court order. I have to mention and emphasize, although viewers probably know, our reporters and reporters at other networks rarely come out from these buildings to talk about their own daily work. Most of that happens off camera. It is a direct result of the government's attempted ban and a court now overruling it through a temporary injunction. The case is open that this has become part of the news. I want to bring in MSNOW White House reporter, Akayla Gardner, who is back on site. Good to have you tonight. Good to be here. What did we learn today, both in what was a delay in compliance and what is the state of compliance with this court order pausing the press ban of three outlets?

19:03Yeah, a lot of these filings seem to really rush on the part of the administration. You laid out a lot of them in your first block. At this point, what we are really still waiting to know is whether the White House is going to push any further, whether they're going to continue to find new avenues to ban, not just MSNOW or CNN or Politico, but potentially other outlets as the president laid out, that is still a real open question. And at this hour, the TV pool, the five networks that rotate assignments to cover the president, offering video and audio to the rest of the public and the press corps, they are still not operational because they still want to get those assurances that CNN will be allowed to participate in the pool.

19:45So there's still a lot up in the air at this point. An important point you mentioned, and again, most viewers don't have to think about the pool, but it is a very clear tradition across the press pool that it provides on a rotating basis the video and other things we see. Explain to us what you mean about that, that basically those involved in those decisions, at least at this hour, I don't want to put words in anyone's mouth, but at this hour are not receiving the kind of firm assurances that would make them go back to the way it was before the ban? So the thing about the pool is at one point it was run by the White House Correspondents Association.

20:22The White House last year basically took over running the pool. So there has been a real tension there between the White House and WACA control. And basically the pool, those five networks, are waiting for some assurances from the White House that when it is CNN's turn in that five rotation in covering the pool both here at the White House and potentially domestically or abroad, that CNN will be honored. And those are the assurances that we are still waiting to hear tonight. Really interesting stuff. Again, this has been a fast-moving story. Akayla Gardner, thanks for your reporting. Appreciate it.

20:58When we come back, we look at the midterms and by the end of the hour, how people are fighting to ensure our voting rights in these contagious elections. Rupert Murdoch's media empire has been hammering the Trump economy based on the numbers. Tucker Carlson sounding like, well, a first-term resistance hero. He says Trump should leave office immediately, basically. Trump White House vet Anthony Scaramucci, who has been critical of Trump lately, joins us next. Finding the right size rug can be hard. Enter Ernesta. Designer-quality, custom-sized rugs cut to the exact size of your room and delivered in as little as two weeks.

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22:58Some of the biggest issues bedeviling us right now are what's actually going on inside our White House, which has failed on many governing matters, including the war, and what's going on in our economy, which is hurting for so many people, the high prices, the gas crunch. And we have a guest right now who's got a lot of experience at the intersection of both. A Trump White House vet, he briefly led the communications department in the first term. He's got a lot of financial experience. And he has, like other people who've been close to Trump at one point or another, come around in public to saying Trump is actually the problem.

23:34Here's a quick look at the journey of Anthony Scaramucci. Former campaign advisor Anthony Scaramucci, the new communications director. Here's what I tell you about the president. He's the most competitive person I've ever met. OK, I've seen this guy throw a dead spiral through a tire, and he's hitting foul shots and swishing them, OK? He sinks three-foot punts. Anthony Scaramucci has resigned as White House communications director. Wow, he's only been there for about a week, and you can hear the reaction in this studio right now. He's a clear and present danger to the society now. So if you want to accuse me of not seeing it early on, if you want me to say that I was wrong for not seeing it early on, I was wrong for not seeing you early on.

24:20It's good to see you as well. You know, I've been through quite an odyssey, Ari. That's nine years ago I got fired, but it's about seven years ago I broke from the president and actually said that Joe Biden would be better than him and also helped Kamala Harris on debate prep. So it's been quite an odyssey, sir. An odyssey, which is, of course, an ancient Homeric tale that is newly relevant. I enjoyed the movie adaptation. You mentioned that journey, and we have had these conversations over the years. Let's start with Trump and the economy, as I mentioned, something where you have a lot of experience.

25:06They've tried to control or corrupt the Fed and failed. They've recently tried to sort of adjust or do gimmicks with the bond market. That doesn't seem to be going well. What does your expertise tell you about this president and his administration's struggle to deal with an economy that, as you know, has a lot of people hurting? Well, I think I would start with the yes people around the president, as indicative this past week where he barred you guys, CNN and Politico. So somebody should have told them that's not going to work and the judges will never go for that. It'll just be an embarrassing thing for you.

25:42But they're afraid of them. And you've got the thing down to a decision body of one person. So let's start with that. That's what's so dangerous about it. Because a smart economics person would go to the president and say, hey, we have a good thing going from the Biden administration. Good growth, lower inflation. Why don't we stay the course? I get the story about controlling the border. That's positive with the American people. But the president didn't do that. So unleashing the tariffs, that's a regressive tax, Ari. You know that. That hurts the poor and middle class. He promised affordability.