US Vice President JD Vance arrives to speak at a rally at Koury Convention Center in Greensboro, North Carolina, on September 21, 2026. KENT NISHIMURA/Pool via REUTERS
Vice President JD Vance was accused of “putting lipstick on a pig” Monday after defending President Donald Trump’s decision to ban CNN, MS NOW and Politico from the White House.
The biting observation came after Vance argued that Trump was not banning the outlets, but merely denying them “special access” for engaging in what he called “propaganda.”
“He’s putting lipstick on a pig,” The New York Times’s Lulu Garcia Navarro said on CNN. “This is viewpoint discrimination. They’re targeting specific outlets and saying, ‘We don’t like your coverage, and therefore we don’t think that you should have access.”
Garcia-Navarro argued that the public ultimately loses because White House reporters ask questions on its behalf.
“This is a very dark day indeed that I never thought I’d see, where I had to go on social media and say I stand with a free press,” she said.
Former Trump White House communications director Alyssa Farah Griffin called the ban “outrageous” and “an incredible self-own by the president.”
“Donald Trump with no TV is like a beach with no sand,” Griffin said Monday. “He needs it to thrive. He needs it to get his message out.
Griffin said the move represented “a step toward” authoritarianism. She urged Trump’s advisers to pursue “more access, not less.”
“Let him have his back and forth,” she added. “Let him get his, you know, his little swipes in at the reporters, but have them there to tell the story.”