Trump has taken the war against CNN “fake news” to the next level.
Politico is reporting that the Trump White House will not allow its staff and surrogates to appear on CNN, and will instead go to “places where we think it makes sense to promote our agenda.
Well, it’s official…according to a note from Politico, the White House has confirmed that surrogates of the Trump administration will no longer appear on CNN and will opt to go to “places where we think it makes sense to promote our agenda.”
“We’re sending surrogates to places where we think it makes sense to promote our agenda,” said a White House official, acknowledging that CNN is not such a place, but adding that the ban is not permanent.
A CNN reporter, speaking on background, was more blunt: The White House is trying to punish the network and force down its ratings.
“They’re trying to cull CNN from the herd,” the reporter said.
Before the liberal left gets bent out of shape regarding the Trump Administration’s embargo of CNN, Obama’s White House was also in a quasi-war with Fox News when he was the POTUS…
It’s not unusual for a White House to tangle with certain outlets. A former official in President Barack Obama’s office acknowledged that they had their “battles with Fox,” and that there may have been some times where “we sent people on other networks and not on Fox.” But as a general rule, the official said, officials would go on the network.
“I think, in my hazy recollection is it would be unusual to do all [the networks] except one. What drives that is sometimes amount of time available to the person doing them,” the official said. “If they are stiffing CNN intentionally, that is different than what normally happens.”
A spokesperson for Fox News did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Of course, this development should come as little surprise to anyone who has been paying attention given that Trump has constantly blasted CNN as a “Fake News” outlet ever since his heated exchange with Jim Acosta at a press conference on January 11th.
But while the Trump administration has refused to send surrogates on CNN talk shows, Spicer has confirmed that the “Fake News” outlet won’t be frozen out of press briefings. Speaking at an event at George Washington University on Monday, Spicer pointed out that he’s answered CNN’s questions in the regular daily briefings but also noted that he’s “not going to sit around and engage with people who have no desire to actually get something right.”
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