(Dobbs) Wouldn’t you think it was Xi who would keep some journalists out?

American journalists didn’t “refuse” to cover Xi’s visit. The White House refused to let them in.

Sep 26

“Defendants have already repeatedly violated the Court’s Order.”

That’s the kind of thing we might expect to hear about a restaurant that turns away minorities, or a parent who won’t pay child support. It’s not the kind of thing we expect to hear about a president of the United States.

But here we are.

Although Thursday in federal court, a judge put a restraining order on the president’s un-American ban that booted 78 journalists from three news organizations out of the White House…..

…. Donald Trump ignored the court order— maybe “violated” is a more accurate word, or “defied”— and still wouldn’t let them all in.

Our president is a small man. A petty man. An immoral man. An unrepentant man.

And a man who lies as easily as he breathes.

Once the White House finally restored the three organizations’ press credentials, some of their journalists were still left out in the cold for coverage of the visit of China’s president Xi. Trump’s take on it? “CNN and MSDNC (his cynical name for MSNow, the former MSNBC), to show you how fake they are, today refused to cover one of the Biggest and Most Beautiful Events to take place in many years, the arrival at the White House of the Highly Respected President of China, Xi Jinping, and his beautiful wife, Madam Peng…. Because they knew how good it would be, they didn’t want credit to be given to ‘TRUMP,’ they refused to be there.”

That version is just a little bit off. They didn’t “refuse” to cover it. The White House still refused to let them in.

Then yesterday it relented— to the court order— and opened the doors again…. but not for long. Last night a new story broke: Trump is flying this morning to take in a college football game in Tennessee, and is not allowing CNN on Air Force One. If there was any lesson to be learned over the past few days, Donald Trump is too spiteful to learn it.

And going back to the catalyst for the ban on one of Trump’s three media targets, Politico, the White House had complained that in a story about the president trying to make a deal to end his war with Iran, Politico was unethical by quoting “anonymous sources” and was “trafficking in verifiable falsehoods about national security.... and publishing sensitive or classified information.”

But again, not quite. Former CNN media reporter Oliver Darcy reports in his newsletter Status, and this is verified by The Washington Post, that in a press information call that the White House set up, media participants were told only to cite the speaker as an anonymous “senior administration official” who was, in fact, none other than JD Vance. So to be clear, our vice president was the source of what Trump’s White House called “verifiable falsehoods about national security.” And he spoke with White House approval.

But Trump could not be moved to admit to a boo-boo. He posted, “Fake News people and publications that only write negatively, and who violate our National Security by writing false and defamatory stories with unknown ‘sources,’ shouldn’t be allowed access to the most important Office anywhere in the World.”

I repeat: Our president is a small man. A petty man. An immoral man. An unrepentant man.

And a man who lies as easily as he breathes.

The chief White House correspondent for the New York Times, Peter Baker, pointed out one more piece of double-talk from Trump, who often calls some journalists left-wing “communists” if he’s not calling them “enemies of the people.” Baker reported during Xi’s visit, “At the White House gate, a throng of Chinese journalists was being admitted onto the grounds of the Executive Mansion to cover the visit of President Xi Jinping. Out on the street, several American journalists were blocked from entering the White House on the orders of President Trump.”

If you read this without knowing who did what, wouldn’t you think it was Xi who wouldn’t let some journalists in?

But no reason to ban his press corps. No one in China writes negative news about President Xi. No one asks hard questions of the Chinese leader. Reporters Without Borders ranks China 178th out of 180 countries on freedom of the press. Right now China has at least 111 people from the nation’s media locked up. Donald Trump must be drooling.

But as Baker wrote, “The president of the United States barred American reporters because he labeled them a threat to national security, while welcoming Chinese reporters who answer to the communist dictatorship in Beijing.” To press the point of Trump’s authoritarian instincts, he also wrote, “The same president who is waging economic war against the prime minister of Canada while inviting the president of Russia to visit his Florida golf club.” Forget the fact that in 2023, the International Criminal Court put an arrest warrant for war crimes on Putin’s head.

That doesn’t matter to Trump. He has no morals, he has no respect for law. He has declared more than once, “I can do anything I want.” There was a good illustration this week. The Washington Post reported that when the initial architect for the new White House ballroom resigned a year ago, he had been trying to tell the president that the plan he was pushing did not satisfy city codes for fire containment or emergency exits. Trump’s dismissive response? “I am the code.”

[Salon] Wouldn’t you think it was Xi who would keep some journalists out?

(Dobbs) Wouldn’t you think it was Xi who would keep some journalists out?

American journalists didn’t “refuse” to cover Xi’s visit. The White House refused to let them in.