Trump Melts Down Over Lack Of Xi Coverage After Picking Fight With Press

President Donald Trump on Thursday lashed out at CNN and MS NOW over the lack of coverage of a state visit by Chinese President Xi Jinping, days after he attempted to ban both outlets from the White House.

“CNN and MSDNC, 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,” Trump claimed in a Thursday Truth Social post. “The event was magnificent — Actually made for Television but, because they’re Fake News, and because they knew how good it would be, they didn’t want credit to be given to ‘TRUMP,’ they refused to be there.”

CNN, MS NOW and Politico were barred from the White House until a judge restored their access early Thursday. CNN was also removed from the White House TV press pool on Monday, prompting other major networks to stand in solidarity with it and refuse to cover some of Trump’s events. As a result, parts of Xi’s visit have received far less video coverage than they otherwise would have.

Early Thursday afternoon, CNN chief media analyst Brian Stelter noted that uncertainty over Trump’s ban was a significant factor affecting coverage.

“The five major networks that make up the pool — CNN, ABC, CBS, NBC, and Fox News — are waiting on confirmation from the White House that CNN will be allowed to fulfill its pool responsibilities in the future,” Stelter wrote in a post on X. “At the moment, the pool doesn’t have that assurance, so it has not filmed any of Trump and Xi’s events so far today.”

Setback for Trump

In a ruling issued in the early hours of Thursday, U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly said the news outlets successfully showed that their journalists’ hard passes were seized “without constitutionally adequate due process.”

“The ‘general rule’ is that ‘individuals must receive notice and an opportunity to be heard before the Government deprives them’ of a constitutionally protected interest,” the judge noted.

Trump first announced his intention to bar reporters from the three organizations from entering the White House in a Truth Social post last week.

“Media Outlets shouldn’t be able to constantly write or report FICTION and LIES when they’re covering the President of the United States, the Trump Administration, or the United States of America. Other Fake News Media Outlets to follow,” he wrote.

On Saturday, journalists from the three outlets who tried to enter the White House grounds were turned away, and the Secret Service seized their credentials.

Trump later sought to justify the media ban by claiming that “fake news” constitutes “a threat to our National Security, and must be stopped.” The government’s court filings also pushed that narrative.

But Kelly wrote he was “skeptical” that the government’s “interest in safeguarding national security is the actual motivation for, or is even advanced by” banning those outlets, at least based on the record the government has provided so far.

“For one thing, nothing in the record that predates this suit suggests that the revocation of Plaintiffs’ hard passes was motivated by national security concerns. Certainly, that is not what President Trump said when he announced that he was “banning” Plaintiffs from the White House — instead, he focused on the alleged lack of truthfulness and negativity of Plaintiffs’ reporting,” the judge wrote.

“And even the justifications provided to Plaintiffs after this case was filed are ambiguous about the true purpose of the revocations: while Defendants’ letters to Plaintiffs mention national security concerns, they purport to identify reporting that ‘threatened national security and/or spread falsehoods,’ leaving open the possibility that all the stories fall into the later bucket, rather than the former,” he continued.

The judge added that many of the stories the government cited to justify the national security claim were, in most cases, written by reporters who did not even hold hard passes.

Trump, who appointed Kelly to the bench, had previously attacked the judge.