00:00Jeff joins us now. The man never sleeps. I absolutely swear. Jeff, did you just wander
00:04down there yourself? Was this an assignment you were on or did you, I mean, I know where you live
00:07in Washington. It's not terribly far, but it's not around the corner. Do you just want to go
00:11see what was going on and what is going on? I wandered down from the White House. Yeah. I mean,
00:15I've been covering the Kennedy Center for a long time. And ironically, it has turned from an art
00:21story into a very big political story. So it was pretty interesting to see that many people outside.
00:26You haven't actually seen a lot of protests in Washington in the last year and a half since
00:32President Trump came into office. And that's emblematic in some ways of, I think, a fatigue,
00:37not only in D.C., but around the country about some of the things that he's doing that people,
00:43at least who aren't his supporters, don't like. But the Kennedy Center has become a lightning rod,
00:49certainly in this city for an enlightening rod and also just an example or a manifestation of some of
00:58the policies that President Trump is doing and the work that he's doing to recast and remake
01:05Washington that is now really hitting a wall of opposition. We have a photo here that kind of
01:11kick-started all of this. A photographer capturing the president on Air Force One there with Bill Pulte,
01:16formerly the acting intelligence chief, on the plane. He's looking at this giant poster on which
01:20it says Kennedy Center demolished. Jeff, let me pivot to the other big story we talked about at the top,
01:26and that is the president announcing this ban on reporters from a number of media outlets. And
01:30again, that kind of colloquy between him and the reporters continued. Let's take a listen to what
01:33he had to say just about what he means by this ban.
01:36Oh, the ban on the free press, right? A very simple ban. I don't want him in my office. I
01:44don't want
01:44him here. I would say the ban would go as far as you can. And if they could straighten themselves
01:49out, you know, if they could straighten themselves out, I'd love it.
01:52I've been looking at the response for a number of these news organizations from Jackie Heinrich,
01:55who's the president of the White House Correspondents Association. She wrote,
01:58this is about more than the rights of journalists. It's about the right of the American people to
02:01receive a full and independent account of the activities, policies, and decisions of whoever
02:05occupies the nation's highest office. Jeff, what are reporters saying about this? I should
02:09note, you were the past president, a past president of the White House Correspondents Association.
02:14I was. And that overlapped with the very beginning of President Trump's first term
02:19when I was in office. And what I can say is that this is part of a pattern that started
02:25then
02:26with attacks against the First Amendment by President Trump and an attempt, rather,
02:34to reduce the ability for journalists to be able to do their jobs and to attack their work.
02:40And this is also, this pattern has increased during the second term. It's certainly not just
02:46at the White House. Our colleagues at the Pentagon and the mainstream media were essentially kicked out
02:51of the Pentagon for not signing agreements that would limit what they would be reporting on.
02:57The Treasury Department, just within the last couple of weeks, excluded a number of news
03:02organizations, including Bloomberg News, the Wall Street Journal, and the New York Times from
03:07covering a meeting of finance ministers. So it is all a part of a broader effort by the president
03:14and his administration to undermine the press and to make it harder for reporters to do their jobs.
03:22To your question, David, TBD, a little bit about how the press corps broadly responds
03:27to this latest ban. I think we're interested to see how the president intends to enforce it.
03:33There will almost certainly be a legal challenge by those news organizations if their reporters are
03:39kicked off the White House campus. The president has a little bit more legal backing if he enforces
03:46it in such a way that he just tries to keep reporters from those news organizations out of
03:50the Oval Office or off of Air Force One, because there is precedent for that. He has so far prevailed
03:57in a case with the Associated Press after the AP was first kicked out of the White House press
04:02pool. And a judge agreed that he had the right to determine who came into the Oval Office
04:08or went on the plane. But that is different from a broader ban from the White House complex. And
04:14that's just one of the many questions that this effort that he announced yesterday is raising.
04:19And Jeff, before we let you go, obviously, the president is set to announce UNGA,
04:24the General Assembly of the UN on Tuesday. This is all coming, of course,
04:28while the conflict in Iran is still ongoing. And we want to play you a little bit of what he
04:32said
04:32last year at the UN.
04:33When Operation Midnight Hammer, seven American B-2 bombers dropped the 14 30,000 pound each bombs
04:42on Iran's key nuclear facilities, totally obliterating everything. With Iran's nuclear
04:50enrichment capacity demolished, I immediately brokered an end to the 12-day war, as it's called,
04:56between Israel and Iran, with both sides agreeing to fight, fight no longer.
05:04How much has changed in a year? So obviously, the president in the White House has said once again
05:08that there was a threat that they needed to go after. And is that conflict with Iran? What are
05:13we expecting? How is he going to frame the war in his remarks this time around?
05:17Well, I think it's a good question. It's certainly a big speech for him. And I'm not sure how warm
05:21of a
05:22reception he's going to get at the UN General Assembly. But given the tension between allies
05:29that the president has created with his policies and with his words. But certainly, Iran is a top
05:35foreign policy topic at UNGA, as we call it. And as you call it, Christina, he is going to be
05:41meeting
05:41with Gulf leaders on the sidelines of the General Assembly meeting. In terms of his speech itself,
05:47we've seen the president's rhetoric on Iran change just within the last couple of weeks. For some time
05:53since they got rid of the MOU, the agreement for a ceasefire, the president had been saying and said
06:00to me directly that he was not looking for a deal and not necessarily even looking for a quick end
06:05to
06:06the war. He shifted that rhetoric a little bit within this last week. And maybe he will say that again.
06:13But again, this is also a conflict that the president has used mixed messages to describe
06:18really from the very beginning. And you mentioned Greenland at the very top of this segment as well.
06:23I think foreign policy broadly is an issue where he has used a lot of contradictions. And that is
06:31a that just as part of the DNA of who President Trump is as a leader. And it will shine
06:37through,
06:38I suspect, in that speech at UNGA as well.
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