Off the Record: Draining the Press Pool

0:00Hello, my favorite Slatesters. It is time to go off the record, which means we are opening up the little VIP clubhouse we have at Slate, where me and Lizzie O 'Leary, my co-host here, we talk about the stories we just can't get out of our heads each week, which means you know who's here. Lizzie. Lizzie, what's up? Hello. How are you? But here's the thing. We have a special guest this week, Lizzie. I know, I'm very excited. Someone who I read relentlessly. Yes, we have Oliver Darcy here because the story that is haunting us is the story that started at the end of last week when all of a sudden Donald Trump at 3.04 p.m.

0:39released a truth social kicking a few reporters out of the White House. Welcome, Oliver. You're going to tell us the entire story and we are going to gab about it. All right, let's do it. I'm excited to be here. Thanks for having me. so normally this is where lizzie and i would like pony up with like here's what we are just like obsessed with this week luckily oliver you are here and you are gonna pony up what you are obsessed with i feel like this is like um this is your super bowl this week oh this kind of story it has been a very busy week there's two big stories two monster stories happening i mean the tiktok is last friday afternoon everyone is getting ready for a holiday weekend i think or Yeah, I mean, for a lot of people, holiday weekend.

1:20Yeah, it's Yom Kippur, Jewish holiday. Donald Trump tweets in the afternoon that he is banning three news organizations from the White House for apparently publishing dangerous stories. And those news organizations are CNN, MSNOW, and Politico. And obviously, you know, banning any reporter is fairly unprecedented. Donald Trump did it with Jim Acosta last time he was in office, and that was reversed by a judge. The same judge, yeah. Yeah, the same judge that got this case, actually. But he's never actually outright banned entire news organizations from the White House. It's been talked about. Stephanie Grisham had talked about how he kind of floated it during the first term, but he's never done it.

2:00And he just abruptly did this. This message catches everyone off guard, including people in the White House. And they were not, it wasn't like they were read in on this. And so there was a lot of confusion in the media aftermath of like, wait, what's going on? You saw Brian Stelter on CNN say that their cameras were ready to capture them being basically escorted off the White House grounds if it were to come to that. Which it didn't, right? Basically, they deactivated their hard passes of the reporters from these news organizations. So they were unable to get in on Saturday when they went in. And now this is making its way through the courts.

2:37The news outlets immediately on Monday filed for an emergency injunction, basically, that would get the reporters back into the White House. That is being heard. We're recording this on Wednesday. It's being heard actually right now. And I expect that the judge in this case, there's well-established precedent. The judge is going to most certainly grant this injunction to allow the reporters to go back to the White House. But Donald Trump has made it pretty clear already that he is going to appeal this. And so we'll see how this fight plays out. Boop. Hey, listeners, it's Future Mary. After this taped, exactly what Oliver predicted would happen did happen.

3:20The judge temporarily blocked Trump's ban and demanded the White House reinstate everyone's press pass. That said, as of Thursday morning, CNN reporters are still saying they are being barred from the White House. OK, back to Oliver. There is a lot of established precedent here. You know, if you talk to legal experts, they point out that it's pretty obvious that the White House and therefore the government is retaliating against these news organizations for the speech. for their free speech rights, for exercising their First Amendment rights. That is not allowed under the U.S. Constitution. So most legal experts, I haven't come across any that believe that Donald Trump has any legs to stand on here.

4:02Even his most staunch supporters in the legal community are saying this is an affront to the First Amendment. So not really sure how he thinks this is going to play out for him in his favor, but that's what he's done. You know, Lizzie, we have like a little bit of an inside outside perspective here because you were on MSNOW this weekend as all this was going down, right? Yeah, it was on on Saturday. And I mean, one of the things that was interesting is that they had also, you know, the reporters who would like for people who have never been to the White House. And the way this works is you go up to this little like hut.

4:37Basically, it's a security hut. And if you have a hard pass, that means you have like standing White House credentials. You go through, you put your stuff through the metal detector. Other people can go with appointments. But they went up and their passage just didn't work and they couldn't go in. So they had their reporters on talking from the White House. And I thought one of the things that was interesting is like they were just news gathering. They were not opining at that point. They were like, our lawyers are going to do what our lawyers are going to do. And like, let's just set the scene and explain to people what happens when you go in.

5:07One of the things I'm curious about, though, Oliver, do we know why these three particular news organizations are the ones that, you know, Trump is targeting? I mean, obviously, he has railed previously against CNN and MSNOW. Politico, though, does seem like slightly a bit of a curveball. I'm curious why these three. It is. It does seem quite random, like that he picked these three news organizations. Now, there's been some reporting from CNN and the Wall Street Journal that his aide, Natalie Harp, who follows him around with a printer, showed him some clips that enraged him. And he's been generally pretty enraged, I think, about the reporting, particularly on the Iran war, which he doesn't want to answer questions about.

5:53And so he ultimately decided to go after these outlets, but it's unclear. Bing! Hi, listeners. This is future Lizzie. Four hours after this taped, Oliver actually broke the news that Politico was banned for six stories about the Iran war, including one where Vice President J.D. Vance was the primary source in a background call that was sanctioned by the White House. C 'est dramatique. Okay, that's it. Back to Oliver again. Bing! He did threaten, though, we should note, to expand his ban to outlets like the Washington Post and the New York Times. And he has been ranting for, I think, several months now that their coverage or coverage of the Iran war amounts to treason and is dangerous.

6:42He keeps using the word dangerous, saying it's a national security threat because they're reporting on, you know, the state of the war. and the state of the war hasn't been great for the United States. Obviously, again, we should be clear, any First Amendment attorney you talk to, anyone in the, any scholar of press freedom issues, they would all say that these news organizations are well within the right to publish this information. That's it for now. And if you want to hear the rest of this episode, the way to do it is to subscribe to Slate Plus. Unlock Slate Plus now by going to slate.com forward slash whatnextplus.

7:20Thank you.