White House replaces CNN with Real America’s Voice on Air Force One
By The Conservative Desk (/journals/conservative-desk)
White House guidance issued Friday night removed CNN from the television press pool for President Donald Trump’s Saturday trip to Knoxville, Tennessee, and listed Real America’s Voice in its place. Trump was scheduled to attend the University of Tennessee versus University of Texas game at Neyland Stadium. CNN had been set to fly aboard Air Force One as the rotating network responsible for shooting and sharing video with the rest of the pool. The new guidance ended that assignment.
The exclusion arrived after CNN had returned to pool work. On Friday the network aired live pool video of Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping touring the National Archives, the first live CNN footage of the president in several days. That resumption followed an overnight ruling early Thursday, September 24, by U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly. Kelly temporarily struck down the administration’s ban on CNN, MS NOW and Politico from White House grounds, calling the ban likely unconstitutional and ordering credentials restored for 14 days. The order addressed hard passes to the complex. It did not explicitly address pool duties or Air Force One access.
The original ban had taken effect September 18. Trump announced that CNN, MS NOW and Politico were barred from the grounds over what he described as unfavorable reporting. The three outlets sued, alleging First Amendment and due process violations. Fox, NBC, ABC and CBS briefly refused their own pool turns in solidarity, suspending regular shared coverage until access was restored and the pool restarted Friday. CNN and MS NOW reporters were still denied entry to Thursday’s state dinner arrival coverage for Xi Jinping even after the judge’s order.
On Saturday morning Trump answered a female reporter who asked whether he wanted only supportive outlets in the pool. “No, I want real news, not fake news, like you,” he said. “I love an open, free press. What I don’t like is the fake press.” When she tried a follow-up he cut her off: “Wait, wait, quiet.” He continued, “What I don’t like is fake news, and they’re fake news, 100%. In two years, I doubt they did one good story, and I won the election in a landslide. So what we don’t want is, we don’t want fake news.”
Earlier he had posted: “Why should perpetrators of FAKE NEWS, like CNN and MSDNC, be allowed access to a very sacred place, the White House? Despite my big Election Win, almost 100% of ‘TRUMP’ coverage is negative, and has been for years!” and “FAKE NEWS SHOULD NOT BE ALLOWED IN THE WHITE HOUSE!!! IT HAS GONE ON FAR TOO LONG, AT A TREMENDOUS COST TO OUR COUNTRY.”
Real America’s Voice correspondent Taylor Mitchell was interviewed before boarding Air Force One. “We take our job very seriously, and we believe that we have a responsibility to the people to provide this footage and content of the President of the United States,” she said. Real America’s Voice is not a member of the official five-network U.S. video pool. Lindell TV had already stepped in to cover portions of Xi’s visit while the major networks were boycotting. The Gateway Pundit and Red State Media also traveled with the president to the Tennessee game.
CNN White House correspondent Alayna Treene and Anderson Cooper announced live that the network had been left off the pool guidance. Kaitlan Collins reported on air that CNN had not been allowed on Air Force One. Attorney Theodore Boutrous Jr., representing the outlets, told CNN’s The Lead with Jake Tapper that the legal team believes Judge Kelly’s ruling covers pool access. The White House has not issued a public legal interpretation equating hard-pass restoration with travel-pool seats. News organizations were given until Monday to file for a preliminary injunction that could freeze the broader restrictions longer while the case proceeds.
The television pool exists because space on Air Force One and at many presidential events is finite. One network films and feeds the product to the others so the public receives independent video without every outlet crowding the cabin. That arrangement is a practical accommodation, not a constitutional entitlement to a particular seat. The White House controls the aircraft, the manifest, and the allocation of scarce berths. Nothing in the First Amendment requires the executive to underwrite travel for every critic, or to treat a rotating commercial pool as an irreversible property right once a temporary hard-pass order is entered.
Trump’s stated standard is performance, not viewpoint quotas. He has repeatedly said the coverage from the barred outlets has been almost uniformly negative for years and that the public paid a cost for it. When the major networks walked away from their pool turns, the administration did not halt the presidency; it accepted coverage from outlets willing to do the work. Real America’s Voice and Lindell TV filled gaps that the boycott itself created. Taxpayers fund Air Force One. They are entitled to see the president’s movements without a veto exercised by networks that first refused the assignment and then demanded the seat back on their own terms.
Jacqui Heinrich, president of the White House Correspondents’ Association, has warned that without the pool “America cannot have state TV.” Weijia Jiang, her predecessor, argued that independent observers are required so the public is not limited to what the government chooses to show. Those concerns are real in the abstract. They do not convert a temporary court order about ground credentials into a permanent injunction against substituting one willing camera crew for another on a football-weekend flight. The administration continues to produce its own streams; the pool remains one channel among several, not the sole legitimate source.
Judge Kelly found the government had offered no classified or unclassified evidence that the disputed reporting damaged national security, and he restored hard passes for two weeks. That is the holding. It leaves unresolved whether pool rotations and aircraft access fall inside the same decree. Boutrous asserts they do. The Friday-night guidance treating them as separate is the administration’s operative answer until a further order says otherwise. CNN’s own earlier claim that “no outlet was listed as replacing” it was incorrect once Real America’s Voice appeared on the guidance.
The concrete next step is Monday’s deadline. The outlets may seek a preliminary injunction that would test whether courts will extend hard-pass logic to every travel and pool decision, or whether the executive retains authority to decide who boards a limited aircraft when the president travels to Neyland Stadium. Until then, Real America’s Voice holds the Tennessee seat CNN lost.