Off the Record: Draining the Press Pool

0:00Hello, my favorite slatesters. It is time to go off the record, which means you're 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 a 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. release date truth social kicking a few reporters out of the White House. Welcome Oliver You're gonna 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

1:03I feel like this is like This is your Super Bowl this week. Oh It's 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 sorry. Yeah, I mean for a lot of people holiday weekend Yeah, it's yom kipper 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 MS now and political and obviously you know banning any reporter is Fairly unprecedented Donald Trump did it which in Macosta last time he was in office and that was reversed by a judge But yeah, the same judges they got this case actually But he's never actually outright banned entire news organizations from the White House It's been talked about a Stephanie Grisham had talked about how he kind of floated it during the first term But he's never done it and he just abruptly did this this message catches everyone off guard

2:05including 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 get where to come to that it didn't basically deactivated their hard passes The 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 that the 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 in 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

3:06But 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 The 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 Okay 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 that White House and therefore the government is retaliating against these news organizations for the speech For the free speech rights for for exercising their first amendment rights that is not allowed under the US Constitution So most legal experts I haven't come across any that believe that Donald Trump has any legs to stand on here even his most You know staunch supporters in the legal community

4:07Uh 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 are on MS now this weekend Yeah, so this is going down right? Yeah, it was all 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 for people who have never been to the White House and the way this works is you go up to this little Like hot basically 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 gonna do what our lawyers are gonna do And like let's just set the scene and explain to people what happens when you go in Um One of the things I'm curious about though all of our

5:10Do 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 MS now Politico though does seem like slightly a bit of a curve fall. I'm curious why these three it is it does seems 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 A Natalie Harp, you know 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 and And so he ultimately decided to go after these outlets, but it's unclear Bing High listeners. This is future Lizzie four hours after this taped all of her actually broke the news that Politico was banned for six stories about the Iran war Including one where vice president JD Vance was the primary source in a background call that was sanctioned by the White House

6:18Sejra Matik Okay, that's it back to Oliver again Bing He did threaten though. I 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. He 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 Unlocked Slate Plus now by going to slate.com forward slash what next plus