All posts tagged "cnn"

Bari Weiss's CNN takeover in jeopardy as Paramount sours on her: expert

Paramount boss David Ellison has reportedly cooled on CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss after her '60 Minutes' debacle, throwing her CNN takeover into doubt.

Status founder Oliver Darcy made the claim on Saturday's episode of the "Power Lines" podcast, as CNN staffers brace for Ellison's Paramount Skydance to take control of their network within weeks.

Paramount cleared its last major obstacle this week when a dozen states led by California Attorney General Rob Bonta settled their lawsuit blocking its merger with Warner Bros. Discovery. The deal required no structural changes, and CNN was not spun off.

Darcy said the long-standing expectation was that Weiss would run CNN's newsroom alongside CBS News.

"The plan had always been, from our understanding and other reporting, that David Ellison was going to put Bari Weiss in charge of CNN's editorial as well as CBS News and The Free Press," Darcy said. "And that was the plan. That's why he bought The Free Press. That's why he brought Bari Weiss and made her editor-in-chief of CBS News."

That plan may no longer hold.

"I'm told Ellison's enthusiasm for Bari Weiss has cooled in recent months, particularly after the CBS News 60 Minutes disaster that she led there," Darcy said.

He added that Paramount has refused to say who will run CNN.

"I've asked Paramount, you've asked Paramount, I think every day this week what the plan is for CNN, and the spokesperson literally says they don't know," Darcy told co-host Jon Passantino.

Darcy argued that sidelining Weiss would amount to a public rebuke of her tenure at CBS News.

"Look, if Bari Weiss is not given control of CNN in some capacity, I think that's sort of a vote of no confidence in her, right? Because that was the plan," Darcy said. "So if they say Mark Thompson's going to remain in charge of CNN, in some cases, that's a really poor reflection on how David Ellison feels that she's been doing at CBS News."

Thompson, CNN's chief executive, has been left in the dark himself. At a town hall this week, first reported by Status, he told anxious staffers he had little to offer.

"I'm afraid this is one of those occasions where you'll find the answers are slightly scarcer than the questions," Thompson said, per Status.

Trump's war on CNN takes flight as network kicked off Air Force One: 'Singled out'

President Donald Trump's Saturday trip to Knoxville, Tennessee, will go without TV pool cameras after the White House barred CNN from traveling aboard Air Force One, The Washington Post reported Friday, citing two people familiar with the decision.

CNN had been scheduled to fly with Trump to a college football game as the network representing the White House TV pool. The White House announced the change Friday night in its schedule and did not list a replacement, meaning there will be no TV pool coverage of the trip, CNN reported.

The move comes just hours after the five-network pool resumed coverage of Trump. CNN's Alayna Treene told viewers on "Anderson Cooper 360" that it was clear CNN was being "singled out."

Trump banned CNN, MS NOW and Politico from White House grounds last week, and a federal judge temporarily restored their access early Thursday. Even so, the three outlets were kept off the grounds for hours that morning, and Senate Republicans ducked questions about whether the president must follow the court's order.

It's unclear how the latest move will affect the outlets' lawsuit. CNN's outside lawyer has said he believes the court-ordered restoration of access covered the White House pool, according to CNN. The judge has given the news organizations until Monday to seek a preliminary injunction, which would keep Trump's ban on hold longer.

The pool, made up of ABC, CBS, CNN, NBC and Fox News, rotates responsibility for filming the president when space is limited and shares the footage with other outlets. The networks stopped pool coverage on Monday after the White House pulled CNN from its scheduled turn at the United Nations.

"This follows the White House's position preventing CNN from fulfilling its assigned pool duties," Fox News Washington bureau chief Bryan Boughton, who chairs the TV pool, told the other networks at the time.

The standoff left Trump's Thursday meetings with Chinese President Xi Jinping without American TV pool cameras, a situation MS NOW's Jen Psaki called "maddeningly ridiculous." Coverage resumed Friday, with CNN part of the pool when Trump and Xi visited the National Archives.

Press advocates have pushed back on the White House's efforts. "America cannot have state TV," CBS' Weijia Jiang, a former president of the White House Correspondents' Association, said on "Fox News Sunday."

Trump has suggested that The New York Times and The Washington Post could be next.

A CNN spokesperson declined to comment. The White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

DOJ files last-minute response to White House media ban lawsuit

CNN reported that the Justice Department responded to the lawsuit against President Donald Trump's media ban just minutes before a court-ordered deadline.

CNN reporter Katelyn Polantz said on Tuesday night that the DOJ filed a last-minute response. The filing argued that "at Donald Trump's will, he should be able to kick whomever he would like out of the White House," and "part of it is because there is national security information kept in the White House," Polantz paraphrased.

CNN, MS NOW and Politico are all suing after Trump banned them from the White House last week. They're asking U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly, a Trump appointee, for a temporary restraining order that would block the ban and restore their press access.

Polantz said that the DOJ's filing "does spell out how they may want to challenge this."

Trump's attack on Kaitlan Collins backfires as CNN and MS NOW use it for lawsuit

President Donald Trump's own words are being used against him as CNN and MS NOW boost their lawsuit against his White House media ban.

On Tuesday, several developments came in regarding CNN and MS NOW's lawsuit against Trump, even as the White House had yet to file its response before a deadline set for the end of the day.

Among the developments was CNN and MS NOW's lawyers adding to the court record Trump's attack against CNN reporter Kaitlan Collins at the United Nations earlier in the day.

Trump told Collins, "You shouldn't be here," because of the White House ban on CNN last week. Collins explained in the moment that she was let in by the United Nations.

MeidasTouch Capitol Hill correspondent Scott MacFarlane reported in a post on X that lawyers for CNN and MS NOW were submitting the statement as an exhibit to U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly, a Trump appointee, ahead of a court hearing on Wednesday.

Lawyers for the banned media outlets didn't finish there. Fallon Gallagher, a legal affairs reporter for MS NOW, reported via a post on X that lawyers for CNN and MS NOW, who are also representing Politico, informed Kelly of a D.C. Circuit Court ruling that "held the East Steps of the U.S. Capitol are a 'nonpublic forum' -- much like the White House -- and therefore any press restrictions must be 'viewpoint neutral.'"

The D.C. Circuit Court ruling about the East Steps came from a Trump appointee, who wrote the majority opinion, and was backed by an appointee of George H.W. Bush.

According to Gallagher, "the lawyers are using this ruling as additional evidence in support of the TRO ahead of tomorrow's hearing," referring to the temporary restraining order they're seeking to block the ban.

Meanwhile, Kellie Meyer, the White House correspondent for NewsNation, reported that the White House had no primary TV pool listed for Wednesday, but the secondary TV pool is led by Lindell TV, the outlet of MyPillow founder Mike Lindell, an election denier who lost the Republican primary for Minnesota governor.

'Ominous': Stunned CNN analyst warns Trump's media mayhem goes beyond anything before it

CNN special correspondent Jamie Gangel called President Donald Trump's decision to bar three news organizations from the White House "ominous" during the network's coverage Friday, saying the move goes further than the administration's previous actions against the press.

Gangel noted that Trump's hostility toward the press is not new, tracing it to his first campaign and his use of the phrase "fake news" across a decade in public life. What sets Friday apart, she argued, is the step itself.

Even measured against the Pentagon restrictions, the revocation of Jim Acosta's credentials and the dispute with The Associated Press, she said, this goes beyond and carries the threat of more outlets to follow. She called it unconstitutional and predicted the courts would overturn it.

She also raised questions the announcement leaves open, such as whether something specific triggered it or it was simply cumulative, and whether senior White House officials knew it was coming or were blindsided.

Trump had told reporters in the Oval Office that there was "no particular reason" for the ban, saying instead that "you get sick of it" after what he described as two years of accumulated coverage.

CNN responded with a statement backing its White House team, saying the network has a constitutional right to report without government hindrance or interference and that carrying out the ban would amount to an "illegal assault" on that right.

Bruce D. Brown, president of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, was blunter, calling such a ban "flatly unconstitutional." He argued that once the White House admits some journalists, the First Amendment bars it from excluding others over their reporting, describing the move as textbook viewpoint discrimination that courts would strike down if challenged.

The organization has made that argument successfully before.

When the White House barred the AP over its refusal to adopt Trump's renaming of the Gulf of Mexico, the Reporters Committee filed a brief supporting the wire service, and a federal judge ordered the AP's access restored, writing that a government which opens its doors to some journalists cannot close them to others because of their viewpoints.

As of Friday afternoon, the practical effect remained unclear. CNN reported that Trump specified no action had actually been taken against the outlets and identified no specific reporting that prompted the announcement, and its journalists were working from the White House grounds as usual.

Trump's psychotic CNN freakout proves he knows his demise is imminent

As the polling keeps cratering for Republicans, red districts tilting to purple, purple states turning blue, and blue states turning to midnight blue, some pundits have been saying that Donald Trump doesn't actually care about the midterms.

Jonathan Swan was on Deadline White House with Nicolle Wallace yesterday. He talked about how the book he wrote with his fellow New York Times columnist Maggie Haberman makes this case. When Trump isn't on the ballot, he essentially has no interest. There’s that and, as Swan said, Republicans telling him that when his name isn't on the ticket, they lose.

That may explain why he's made it clear he wants to make the midterms relentlessly about himself. There is no one more selfish on the planet than Trump, and when a selfish person doesn’t get their way, we all know what happens next.

What happens next is something I think the pundit might be missing, and that is the psychological toll of a cratering GOP and how Trump’s help is backfiring. Obviously, because he’s Donald Trump, he’s not being told the real truth about what’s happening, so when he sees the opposite on cable news or reads about it, he thinks it’s all lies.

However, even Trump can’t be that stupid or obtuse, so deep down, seeing that the impending disaster is due to the fact that America is done with him, he lashes out.

On Friday, Trump posted on Truth Social that he was banning CNN, MS NOW and Politico from the White House, "effective immediately," accusing them of "constant 'reporting' FAKE NEWS." "Media Outlets shouldn't be able to constantly write or report FICTION and LIES when they're covering the President of the United States," he wrote, warning that more outlets could be added to the list.

Think about what has to be happening in his lunatic mind for that sentence to make sense to him. Trump is watching these networks, reading Politico, and seeing coverage of these polls, and the historically atrocious numbers that are genuinely disastrous for his party, and concluding it must be fake. Not just disparaging. Fake, one of Trump’s trifecta of favorite words that include tariffs and groceries.

His lashing out can only be about the polls and nothing else, because if you’re addicted to cable news and political sites like I am, you know that is the only thing that everyone is talking about right now. That and Trump’s obsession with the Kennedy Center.

So his media ban is not the reaction of someone who's checked out. That's the reaction of someone who is watching the walls close in — and can't process what he's seeing.

Trump surrounds himself with sycophants who tell him what he wants to hear, not what he needs to hear, and when they do have to deliver bad news, they deliver it in the simplest, most digestible terms possible.

We saw this literally illustrated this week when an AP photographer caught Trump on Air Force One studying a poster board about demolishing part of the Kennedy Center. His aides give him happy picture books and not detailed briefing books.

It's not hard to imagine his own people doing the same thing with polling data: rejiggering it, dumbing it down, telling him it's not so bad. And probably, “Sir, they're teeny weeny bit weak because you’re not on the ballot.”

And then he turns on CNN or MS NOW, or opens Politico, and sees the opposite. Real numbers. Real trend lines. And because they contradict what he's been told, he decides they must be lying.

And then he goes crazy!

I've come to firmly believe Trump is showing signs of cognitive decline, some real deterioration in how he processes information that contradicts his preferred version of reality. And banning news organizations that report accurately on how badly his party is polling is a trigger.

So, what happens when a man who cannot tolerate being told the truth stops being able to distinguish "teeny tiny bad" from "false"?

People ask me a lot if Trump will get worse as his term progresses. They can’t imagine the answer could be yes, but my answer is always yes. Always.

When you have a man convinced he's surrounded by liars, a rabid narcissist, an unstable idiot, and when you combine all that with authoritarian instincts and a shrinking grip on reality, he will do whatever it takes to suppress the criticism he can't process.

Thus, silencing the press should not be a surprise, made even more so because that’s one of the first moves in an authoritarian society.

We're already watching at the Pentagon, which is exactly why soldiers have had to leak photos of damage from strikes in the Middle East rather than trust it would ever be reported through official channels, because the media is being blocked. It's unable to report bad news.

None of this is normal, and none of it is really about CNN or MS NOW or Politico. Seriously, it’s not. It's about a psychotic madman who cannot metabolize the fact that his party may be about to get wiped out in November, all because no one likes him. Not even a teeny-weeny bit.

I think it’s time for Jack Nicholson to visit the White House and tell Trump, "You can't handle the truth!" Well, I wish it was that easy, or if that would make Trump come to his senses, but he’s too far gone for that.

I've stopped trying to predict exactly what Trump will do next. But I'm certain of one thing: when a deranged and demented maniac starts to come apart, we haven't seen anything yet.

'No reason': Whining Trump tries to explain newsroom ban that shook Washington

President Donald Trump defended his decision to bar CNN, MS NOW and Politico from the White House during whining remarks Friday, insisting the country needs "a free press" even as he explained why he had just expelled three of its largest outlets.

Pressed by a reporter on whether there was a particular reason for the ban, Trump initially said there was none.

"No. No reason," he said. "No, it's a it's really just cumulative stories over the last two years. You get sick of it, and you call them, and you tell them."

He said administration officials call reporters to walk them through the substance, gesturing to aides standing behind him, and argued it makes no difference.

"They know it as well as smart people. But they purposely write negative news. And they do that because they want to try and diminish the Republicans. And a Republican administration."

Trump took shots at each outlet in turn. He said CNN is "just fake" and claimed its coverage was reflected by poor ratings. He referred to MS NOW as MSDNC, a nickname aimed at tying the network to Democrats, and repeated his false claim that Politico received roughly $8 million from the government under President Joe Biden "to keep them afloat."

Fact-checkers debunked that claim last year. Federal agencies across the government spent about $8 million in 2024 on subscriptions to Politico Pro and E&E News, paywalled products offering policy tracking and specialized reporting. USAID's share was $24,000, according to CBS News. Agencies bought subscriptions to The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal as well. Politico has said it has never received government funding.

Trump left open the possibility that the outlets could return, or that even more could get banned.

"There may be others to join them, and maybe they can get better and would like to have them in," he said. "But our country has to have honest news."

He then listed a free press alongside borders and elections as the foundations of a country.

"You need borders, and you need fair and free voting. And you know what you need? You need a free press. You need a fair press and an honest press."

The announcement set off alarm bells among journalists and Democratic officials, some of whom pointed to the contradiction between the president's free speech rhetoric and his decision to expel newsrooms.

Trump then pivoted to predicting that if Democrats take power, they will end the filibuster and grant statehood to Washington, D.C. and Puerto Rico.

'This is unusual!' Jaws hit floor in CNN newsroom as Trump announces media ban

President Donald Trump announced on Friday that the White House would be banning CNN, MS NOW, and Politico — and it left CNN's media analyst Brian Stelter scrambling to assess the situation.

"Well this is unusual, isn't it?" Stelter told anchor Brianna Keilar.

Stelter added that he is curious "what did CNN and MS NOW and Politico write that might have made the president so upset? And there is no specific answer in his post. There is no indication in that post." However, "there is no indication that the administration is taking any steps to actually follow through on his threat. So even though the threat is quite serious and would have real implications for the First Amendment and for the press freedom in the United States right now ... the CNN staff remains there, working like a normal Friday afternoon."

Keilar noted that Trump has taken a number of potshots at CNN before, both publicly attacking them and trying to restrict their access to the government — to which Stelter concurred.

In the most notable case, he said, "right after the midterms in 2018, during Trump's first term in office, he was angry about a question from our former CNN colleague, Jim Acosta, who was working here at the network for many years." After Acosta infuriated him at a press conference, Trump "took steps to revoke Acosta's press pass, and some viewers might remember that actually provoked a legal battle where CNN reluctantly ... [had] to go to court to defend that White House correspondent's First Amendment rights."

Swiftly, a judge appointed by Trump himself ordered Acosta's press access reinstated, and he was back at work. And since then, Trump had largely not attempted to ban reporters or outlets altogether, noted Stelter.

"There was an attempt to ban the Associated Press from some White House events," he said, in retaliation for not accepting Trump's guidelines renaming the Gulf of Mexico, "but we have not seen the president actually announce that he's banned news outlets altogether. And in this situation, we're in a little bit of a vacuum because, as I said, there's no indication that he's actually followed through. So let's give it a couple hours, see what happens."

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'Enthralled' Bari Weiss courts fired CNN star as struggling CBS News eyes massive shakeup

CBS News Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss has been quietly courting fired CNN anchor Chris Cuomo to join her fledgling network.

In a Friday episode of Power Lines, media reporters Oliver Darcy and Jon Passantino revealed that Weiss has her sights set on Cuomo as a big-name acquisition for CBS News, whose ratings have been plummeting.

Cuomo is currently working for NewsNation, where he hosts his own prime-time show. He was fired by CNN in December 2021 after an investigation by the New York Attorney General revealed that he used his media sources to help his brother, former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, amid sexual harassment allegations.

"This is kind of a curious one," Passantino said about the move. "Bari Weiss has been just enthralled with him, thinking apparently out loud that he's a very skilled broadcaster and somebody that she would like to have join the team."

Passantino noted that Weiss has been "shuffling a lot of desk chairs on that Titanic over there" at CBS News. Correspondents and producers at '60 Minutes,' the flagship program at CBS News, have been leaving or getting axed, and Weiss recently brought on former New York Times conservative columnist Ross Douthat.

"Apparently Weiss and Cuomo have even met in person about this," Passantino said, noting the meeting may have been "just another general conversation." However, the two have "even exchanged some texts," Passantino said.

Darcy confirmed, "Bari is definitely interested in bringing Chris Cuomo over to CBS News. There's no doubt about that...they did have a meal together," and "They exchanged texts, I'm told, fairly often with each other."

However, Darcy also noted that Cuomo is in a multi-year contract with NewsNation to stay on until 2028. On top of that, Cuomo is suing CNN for $125 million because of his firing, and Paramount-Skydance, the company that owns CBS News, is trying to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery, which owns CNN. The merger has been held up by a judge after a dozen state attorneys general sued, though.

"It would be super uncomfortable," Darcy said about Cuomo coming on while suing CNN. "Just think about how totally wild that would be that she brings on somebody who is actively suing CNN."