White House bars CNN from covering Trump on behalf of major TV networks as he travels to Tennessee
The new Air Force One aircraft is parked ahead of a trip by US President Donald Trump on July 1 at Joint Base Andrews
By Brian Stelter, Alayna Treene, CNN
(CNN) — The White House is barring CNN from flying on Air Force One on Saturday as part of the news outlet’s duties covering the president on behalf of major television networks.
CNN had been scheduled to fly aboard the president’s plane on his trip to Tennessee for a college football game as part of the White House TV press pool — a small, rotating group of journalists that cover the president in areas where space is limited and share the information they gather with other TV networks.
The move — announced Friday night in a White House note that lays out the president’s schedule — represents the Trump administration’s latest salvo against CNN and the broader White House press corps. No outlet was listed as replacing CNN, meaning there will be no television pool coverage of his trip.
Last week, President Donald Trump announced he was banning CNN, MS NOW and Politico from the White House. The move also prevented CNN from flying on Air Force One and fulfilling its scheduled pool duties when Trump traveled to the United Nations General Assembly in New York.
A judge later blocked the administration from enforcing the White House ban on the three outlets and ordered it to restore the credentials of the affected reporters. The status of the White House pool, though, was murkier.
With CNN banned, the other TV outlets — Fox, NBC, ABC and CBS — refused to perform their duties until regular access was restored. But regular coverage resumed on Friday, with CNN serving as part of the pool as Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping visited the National Archives.
It was unclear how the White House’s move might affect CNN, MS NOW and Politico’s litigation. The outside lawyer representing CNN had previously told anchor Jake Tapper he believed the restoration of the outlets’ access included the White House pool. MS NOW and Politico are a part of separate pool rotations from the five major TV networks.
A judge has given the news organizations until Monday to file a request for a preliminary injunction — which would put Trump’s promised ban on hold for a longer period of time.
A CNN spokesperson declined to comment. CNN has reached out to the White House for comment.
In two posts on Truth Social Saturday morning, Trump said CNN and MS NOW should not be allowed in the White House, calling the organizations “perpetrators of FAKE NEWS.”
Later that morning, as he took questions from reporters while departing for Knoxville, an MS NOW reporter asked Trump if he only wants outlets that support him to be part of the White House press pool, to which Trump responded, “I want real news, not fake news.”
“I love an open, free press. What I don’t like is the fake press,” Trump said as he singled out MS NOW and CNN. “What we don’t want is — we don’t want fake news.”
The Washington Post was first to report the White House’s decision.
The TV pool is the primary way that people around the world watch Trump’s speeches and appearances because it supplies video feeds and information to other news organizations.
“That’s the system that allows the networks to share video of the president with the whole country. If they aren’t there, the pool can’t function,” the current president of the White House Correspondents’ Association, Jacqui Heinrich, said on “Fox News Sunday.”
“And America cannot have state TV,” her guest Weijia Jiang of CBS, who was Heinrich’s predecessor as WHCA president, said.
“That’s what makes America America,” she said. “That’s why we need independent coverage, and that’s why this press pool system has been set up for so long and why it works – because you need independent actors to be able to be the observers.”
Along with the TV pool, there are also print, radio and still photography pools. This system exists partly because presidents travel and speak in places where the wider press corps cannot be present.
The Trump White House also produces its own content, including live streams of events.
But, as Jiang put it, “if the government is only showing you what it wants, then you have to question, what are we missing? And that’s what the pool, that’s what these outlets bring to the table.”
This story has been updated with additional details.
CNN’s Logan Schiciano contributed to this report.
The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2026 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.
