A 7-Day Standoff That Said So Much About Trump and the Media
An abrupt decree, a network boycott, a legal intervention and an uneasy détente: This was no typical battle between a president and his press corps.
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An abrupt decree, a network boycott, a legal intervention and an uneasy détente: This was no typical battle between a president and his press corps.
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· 6:03 min
Michael Grynbaum has reported on Donald J. Trump’s relationship with the news media since 2016.
Sept. 26, 2026, 5:03 a.m. ET
A week ago Friday, at 3:04 p.m., with his chief of staff in Florida and the West Wing winding down for the weekend, President Trump signed off on a 130-word message that sent the Washington press corps into a tailspin.
“Effective immediately,” the president wrote on Truth Social, he was “banning” CNN, MS NOW and Politico from the White House “as a result of their constant ‘reporting’ FAKE NEWS!”
Mr. Trump says this kind of thing all the time. But the idea of a “ban” caught reporters — and the president’s own advisers — by surprise. How would a ban work? Was it legal? Was this for real?
Amid a dragging war effort in Iran, soaring gas prices and higher interest rates, Mr. Trump had managed to generate a media tempest out of thin air.
When Kelly O’Donnell of NBC, an hour later, asked Mr. Trump about the First Amendment and its promise of freedom of the press, the president shrugged. “That’s fine,” he said. “But I don’t have to let them into my — into the people’s house.”
Lawyers for the barred news outlets disagreed, and eventually, so did a federal judge. But the seven-day saga that unfolded — a frenzied news cycle in itself, born of a single social media post — illustrated quite a bit about Mr. Trump’s complicated relationship with the press.
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Originally published by nytimes.com. Syndicated material does not necessarily reflect the views of Glamour Canada.
