Attorney General Todd Blanche has argued that CNN’s reporting is nearly uniformly hostile toward the president, yet he also appears to struggle with keeping the facts straight in the case.
When President Donald Trump barred CNN, MS NOW, and Politico from the White House on September 18, his stated motive was clear. He claimed their coverage amounted to “fake news” filled with “fabrications and lies.” It was “deliberately negative,” “one-sided,” and constantly unflattering. But after CNN and the other outlets challenged the ban in federal court three days later, the administration’s lawyers offered a different justification: the move was intended to protect national security.
U.S. District Judge Timothy J. Kelly, a Trump appointee who issued a temporary restraining order (TRO) against the ban on September 24, understandably questioned that justification. And as the plaintiffs note in a brief filed on Monday, Trump himself has had difficulty remaining consistent with the official narrative.
In a September 28 interview with Time, Trump returned to his original rationale for punishing CNN, MS NOW, and Politico. “It’s just bad story after bad story,” he complained, adding that “most of them are fake.” “I don’t think anyone should be forced to endure fake news, constant negative reporting, because I’ve done great things.” He went on to say, “I can name 100 great things I’ve done,” while conceding that he “never gets good press. I never get fair press.”
Trump evidently forgot what his aides had stated in court five days earlier. The defense had asserted that the outlets had “threatened national security” by publishing stories that included “sensitive or classified information.” Even as they invoked vague and pretextual national security concerns, the plaintiffs note that “the President himself has continued telling anyone who will listen precisely what this ban is really about.”
The president’s willingness to lay out the underlying motive strengthens CNN and the others’ argument that the ban discriminates against them on the basis of viewpoint and punishes them for protected speech. Kelly’s TRO rested on due process concerns, and he has not yet ruled on the First Amendment challenges. Yet he has signaled that he is not inclined to credit the Trump administration’s post hoc justification for excluding the three outlets.
The defendants “offer little to back up their asserted national security interest to justify revocation of Plaintiffs’ hard passes,” Kelly noted when he ordered the White House to restore those passes. “The Court is skeptical—at least on this record—that Defendants’ interest in safeguarding national security is the actual motivation for, or is even advanced by, the revocation of Plaintiffs’ hard passes.”
Kelly elaborated: “Nothing in the record that predates this suit suggests that the revocation of Plaintiffs’ hard passes was motivated by national security concerns. Certainly, that is not what President Trump said when he announced that he was ‘banning’ Plaintiffs from the White House—instead, he focused on the alleged lack of truthfulness and negativity of Plaintiffs’ reporting.”
Attorney General Todd Blanche attempted to resolve that inconsistency during an appearance on ABC’s This Week the day before Trump’s Time interview. CNN, MS NOW, and Politico “refuse to report anything accurately,” Blanche asserted, and “that is what constitutes a national security problem.”
How does that translate into a threat to national security? “When you have…complete misinformation coming out of the White House,” Blanche explained, “that affects our relationships with foreign partners” and even our relations with adversaries. The issue, he argued, is “the information that the American people have a right to hear coming from what should be respected media outlets.” As evidence that “CNN doesn’t report accurately,” Blanche claimed that “the information coming out of CNN and some of these other networks” is “almost 100 percent negative toward the president.”
Notably, Blanche avoided mentioning “sensitive or classified information,” and his national-security assertion quickly morphed into Trump’s usual complaint that the press coverage is overwhelmingly negative. “At some point,” Blanche insisted, “the widespread misinformation and the inaccuracy and one-sided news from certain organizations do become a national security issue.”
Again, Blanche’s reasoning was hazy. “What every American should expect is that when they are told something on any network or when they read something in the paper, it should carry at least a hint of impartiality and accuracy about what is actually happening,” he argued. “It is absolutely the president’s duty to ensure that the American people are hearing accurate news. It doesn’t have to be favorable to the president. It doesn’t have to paint everything as positive about what’s happening in the administration. It must be very accurate.”
Blanche, in short, believes it is “absolutely” the president’s job to guarantee that press coverage of him is “very accurate,” which is why he supported the ban on CNN, MS NOW, and Politico from the White House. He also tied it to a national-security dimension, suggesting that “misinformation” could affect U.S. foreign policy in unclear ways.
As the head of the Justice Department and a practitioner with many years of experience, Blanche should be able to provide a clearer explanation of the government’s position. His inability to do so underscores the fragility of defending a personal vendetta by presenting it as a public service.
