00:00U.S. President Donald Trump has announced that he's banning media outlets CNN, MSNOW and Politico from the White House
00:08for what he calls unfavorable coverage.
00:11In a post on Truth Social, Trump accused the outlets of having poor viewing figures and of lacking credibility.
00:17CNN says that the ban would be an illegal assault on press freedoms.
00:22Well, for now, it seems that CNN and others still have access to the building.
00:27Here's what the president said a little while ago.
00:30What I do ask is just a semblance of truth.
00:34CNN is fake news. MSNOW is fake news. They're fake news. They know it.
00:40They're put there for a reason.
00:43Politico was bailed out by our government from going out of business.
00:48I don't know if it was $8 million or something, but they were given this massive subsidy prior to my
00:53coming into office because they write only negative, you know, only negative.
01:00An attack there on a pretty wide spectrum of the media.
01:04DW's Washington bureau chief, Inaz Pohl is there at the White House.
01:08Inaz, what's it like there right now?
01:13Yeah, you know, to give you a little context.
01:15So I'm also a White House pooler.
01:17I'm a foreign press pooler, so I'm here fairly often.
01:20And I just tell you, colleagues are shocked.
01:23This kind of came out of the blue and it is unprecedented in the way that like whole outlets are
01:30banned from access to the White House.
01:34So having that said, we have to be a little bit more specific here.
01:39So the White House, it's a huge parameter, right?
01:41You see that in the background right behind me is the Oval Office, but the White House is, of course,
01:46much more.
01:47And we journalists with a hard pass have access to this whole area.
01:52The president, it's not easy for the president to ban colleagues from the whole parameter, from the whole White House
01:59ground, so to speak.
02:00But what he can do and what he obviously did is banning access to the Oval Office, of course, to
02:07Air Force One and to certain presidential events.
02:11I talked to colleagues who are working for the named outlets and they actually try to go in and out
02:17so they can get into the White House ground.
02:21But they, as of now, at least, are not allowed to cover any Oval Office events.
02:27Now, you say that he can ban them, but these organizations are calling this an illegal assault on press freedom.
02:37So can he ban their access or can't he?
02:45So, you know, of course, we will see what the courts will decide.
02:48Of course, these are big organizations.
02:50These are powerful organizations.
02:52They have many, many lawyers in place.
02:54They are also not giving any official statements to colleagues as of now, which, of course, is totally understandable.
03:00But from what I understand, the president has quite some rights when it comes to his Oval Office to allow
03:08access or to not allow access.
03:11So we shall see, but I think in the moment it looks like as if these three outlets would not
03:17be able to cover events in the Oval Office,
03:20which, of course, would make their lives much more difficult because the president is holding basically an Oval Office meeting
03:29pretty much every day,
03:30you know, when he signs his executive orders or when he's greeting foreign leaders next week, Xi Jinping, as expected
03:38here.
03:38That's, of course, a huge event and every of these outlets normally would be in there to cover.
03:44Also, what happens to their pool rotations?
03:46They are all in the pool.
03:48That means they go in there and kind of provide the information other outlets need who are not able to
03:55cover the Oval Office from inside.
03:58So this is really a shock here and you can see it.
04:01I mean, they're all little groups standing together and debating what that means,
04:06not only for these three outlets, but basically for all of us.
04:11And of all the major media organizations, do we know why he's picked out these three?
04:20Well, he hates CNN.
04:22CNN is critical.
04:24They're doing their jobs.
04:26They have great reporters on the ground.
04:29They always have people here.
04:31They're constantly working.
04:32I see that with my own eyes and they're also doing a lot of underground reporting.
04:36They're all over the country as well.
04:39They are, of course, pretty powerful and very critical with the president.
04:43This is also true for the other two outlets.
04:46So he picked these three.
04:48We shall see if others will be following.
04:51You know, he's kind of threatening us journalists all the time.
04:56He calls us names when we are in meetings.
04:58When we are in the Oval Office, he called a colleague, quiet piggy.
05:03He's calling some of the more famous CNN reporters' names.
05:09This is something which we have to deal with all the time.
05:14But what is kind of new in the last months, that he's giving more and more access to those
05:19outlets who are particularly friendly with him.
05:23And we shall see if this is just the beginning of a major shift that these outlets,
05:28many of them are from social media platforms or news flow answers, single people,
05:33if they will gain more and more access to the president and the more critical news outlets
05:41or colleagues will get less access to the president.
05:44This is something, as you say, this is something that's been going on throughout Trump's presidency,
05:50but also since his first administration, right?
05:52Going back to his first administration, CNN, The New York Times, Politico, the BBC,
05:58they all had in different ways their access restricted at times.
06:02Do you see a shift in his attacks on the media?
06:06Is there a way that they've changed now in his second term?
06:12Yeah, in the White House press briefing room, I'm sure that our viewers know this from many movies,
06:18it's this blue background, the secretary, the press secretary,
06:21he was speechless, sometimes the president himself.
06:24I saw him there last time after this attack on him during the White House correspondence dinner
06:30when he addressed the crowd, I was there.
06:32And there is a whole new bench for his friendly media colleagues, friendly for him.
06:42In that regard, they are only reporting positively about him.
06:46And that is something new.
06:47So, he's really, literally giving more space to those outlets.
06:52And that's a shift.
06:53And we shall see what we will be experiencing in the next couple of weeks ahead of the midterms.
06:59And then, of course, also after the midterms.
07:02You know, David, this doesn't come, even so many people here say this came totally out of the blue.
07:09But on the other hand, this is only like, what, 40-something days ahead of the midterms.
07:14Donald Trump's pollings are terrible for him.
07:17There are 32, 3, 4 percent approval rate.
07:20This is, of course, a disaster for a sitting president.
07:24So, is this just kind of another distraction?
07:28Or is this just the beginning of a new period in his way to deal with free and critical press?
07:36And last year, there was a lawsuit.
07:40AP, the Associated Press, actually sued the Trump administration for access.
07:47Do you think we're going to be seeing more of these lawsuits by these big media organizations?
07:55Oh, definitely.
07:56They will sue him.
07:57And my feeling is because I also talked to some people who are working in the press office.
08:03They also seem to be taken by surprise.
08:07They didn't have any answers also off the record.
08:10So, we shall see where he goes from there.
08:12He was asked which access is kind of limited for those colleagues.
08:18And he said the Oval Office and his space.
08:21So, again, we shall see.
08:23It's just really early on to know.
08:25But this is, it's really a new dimension, I shall say.
08:29It has never happened before that three major outlets were all banned at once totally from the access to the
08:37Oval Office.
08:38And not just for certain events or certain trips on Air Force Ones.
08:43DW Washington Bureau Chief Inez Pohl.
08:46Thanks for your reporting, Inez.
08:47I'll see you next time.
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