Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Ambassador to the United Nations Mike Waltz said President Donald Trump’s decision to ban CNN, MS NOW and Politico from the White House was “spot on.”
Anchor Dana Bash said, “On Friday, President Trump banned CNN, MSNOW, and Politico from the White House, The president, as I mentioned, is about to host the Chinese leader. Historically, it was the United States pushing countries like China for greater press freedoms. Now President Trump is the one backsliding on these rights. Are you comfortable with this?”
Waltz said, “The president is absolutely within his rights to limit journalists to government facilities, particularly when, in his opinion, they’re not behaving as good-faith journalists,” Waltz said. “And that’s just not his opinion. That’s the Supreme Court’s opinion. There are multiple cases. Zemel v. Rusk, off the top of my head, and I’m not a lawyer. That said, look, you can have the ability to speak. You can have ability to publish as an open and free press. But you don’t have an inherent right to any government facility that you want, whether it’s Langley or the White House. And so I’ll leave it to the lawyers, but I think the president’s absolutely spot on here.”
Bash said, “Mr. Ambassador, you are a decorated veteran. You served in an elite unit, the Green Berets, for 27 years defending freedoms like the First Amendment. And the president you work for just banned three news organizations, and he said it. It’s because he doesn’t like some of the things that are being reported.”
Waltz said, “Dana, the prior administration limited all kinds of journalistic outfits and journalists themselves that they deemed as right-wing. Those have now been allowed onto the facility, and the president doesn’t believe others are acting in good faith. Heck, I just saw one yesterday use anonymous sources referencing someone who’s dead. And so, you know, I would hope that the media would take a good introspective look at itself and its practices because it throws things out there and then puts a little baby correction that nobody pays attention to and it sticks to people like napalm. And so it is incredibly frustrating, I can tell you as someone who’s serving in the public space. But meanwhile, again, the Supreme Court has been very clear in multiple cases going back to the 60s, there is a different in your right to speak — different your right to publish — than having access to any government facility that you want.”
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