CNN Treats WH Return Like It’s Gettysburg, Normandy; ‘Press Freedom Is Your Freedom’

Years from now, people will ask (but not really): Where were you on September 24, 2026, when CNN, MS NOW, and Politico were allowed back at the White House?

Based on their coverage in the immediate moments afterward, CNN showed it’ll treat this like a birthday, wedding anniversary, or even a historical event like their version of Marines raising the flag during the Battle of Iwo Jima, soldiers storming the beaches of Normandy, or Washington crossing the Delaware.

Because if there’s one takeaway from Friday’s ban by President Trump of the three far-left outlets and the ensuing legal battle, it’s that CNN loves working for itself, and only itself. They can claim they work on your behalf, but it couldn’t be any further from the truth.

The biggest moment came nine minutes into Inside Politics when weekday host Dana Bash had pulled back with a Kasie Hunt-like commentary, starting with a statement that Trump was “absolutely wrong” before urging viewers “to stop and take a breath and take in this extraordinary moment.”

She continued: “As we speak, the President of the United States is hosting the Chinese communist leader, and instead of showing him by example how important it was to have a free press and abide by the checks and balances of democracy, he was until just a few moments ago blocking American media and defying a federal judge who ruled the three outlets he banned must be let back in.”

“So, we are talking about a situation where the Chinese state-run media is in the Oval Office, and until moments ago, the American media, part of a free press inside this wonderful democracy we live in, was not there,” she falsely stated.

In reality, TV networks fully participated, and the press corps watched, but chose not to bring in cameras in solidarity with CNN.

Chief media analyst Brian Stelter remarkably chimed in that we, the non-journalists out there, can’t and won’t have any of our rights unless the (national) press have their cake first.

Stelter said what’s happened “is a symbol of something so much bigger,” which is “[t]his is about the rights of Americans to show up at town hall meetings and at courthouses and at protests and at other public spaces and to be heard.”

Then came the most tone-deaf, Notable Quotable-worthy line: “This is about First Amendment rights that all Americans value, and I think we especially value them today. There’s an old saying, Dana, that press freedom is your freedom.”

Bragging they can be “showing up at places like the White House” as part of “a good-paying job” to “ask questions of the present, and...break big news,” the deeply partisan Stelter insisted all the White House press corps want to do is “hold the government accountable and inform the public about what’s going on.”

Stelter doubled down, showing the elitist press seem to only care about their constitutional rights, not ours: “Press freedom is your freedom, and that is why this moment is so important, and it’s a symbol of something so much greater than just these three banned news outlets.”

Rewinding to the start of the show, Bash took a page from her colleague Kasie Hunt with cartoonish arrogance. She reported the “breaking news” with bated breath and hyping innocuous video (click “expand”):

Welcome to Inside Politics. I’m Dana Bash, and the breaking news we are following is — moments ago, my colleague Betsy Klein attempted to get access to the White House. She did so earlier today multiple times, and she was denied despite a court order from a federal judge overnight saying the President’s ban was done without constitutionally adequate due process. There you see Betsy in the backpack with the trench coat on. We’re just going to follow this because we’re getting this in as we speak. She’s — she’s — she’s the one — she’s the one to the left. She’s talking to the Secret Service, trying to find out if, in fact, the White House is complying with a federal judge's order. We’re also waiting to see if our photojournalists, who are trying to get in with her to do their jobs, are able to do it.

You see Betsy in the front there. She is walking towards the White House gate, and we are waiting to hear from her what happened when she actually tried to gain access. Just by way of geography, what you’re seeing now is her walking, as I said, to the northwest gate. If you’re familiar with the campus, the Executive Office Building, the EOB, is to her right, and she’s walking to the guard shack that we all go through in order to get all of our bags swept, and just like you would at an airport, going through a — a mag. And generally, for people who have a White House hard pass, which was taken from Betsy and other reporters, you put on the hard pass, you write in, you plug in a pin, and then you go through. We will see what happens any moment now to see if Betsy and others who were banned are able to get in.

She was so excited to show live video of CNN back because she cut off Fusion GPS mouthpiece Evan Perez because “I just want to let our viewers know what’s happening right now” as “[w]e’re looking at the White House Briefing Room.”

She dissected the pictures on-screen like it was the Zapruder film before stating she was “waiting to see Betsy and our colleagues walk in there, hopefully.” She stopped mid-thought: “Ooop, I heard a yay. Let’s see if we’re going to see them.”

Moments later, she cut to a live picture of senior White House reporter Betsy Klein and declared: “[Y]ou are back and you are doing your job from the place that a federal judge said the President was wrong in the way he did it to ban you from doing that job.”

Klein relayed this seemingly PTSD-laden experience (click “expand”):

Dana, I’m very happy to be getting back to work here. But this happened just a moment ago. We were escorted through the first checkpoint that we had — had a little bit of trouble accessing, even as recently as earlier in the 11:00 hour, but a White House press team staffer came and gave us an escort to that guard house. There, I presented my driver’s license and was given back my White House hard pass and then let in through security, and now back here on our Pebble Beach, North Lawn, live shot, but this came, of course, after that judge ruled at 12:58 a.m. overnight that CNN, MS NOW, and Politico’s badges needed to be reactivated immediately. We tried just after 6 a.m. We tried again at 8 a.m. and we tried again at 9 a.m. and then again just around 11:15 this morning, never worked until now. We are back and we are ready to cover the President, but I should note that this comes after the major event of the day. President Trump welcoming China’s leader Xi Jinping here to the White House for an official state visit and a very critical set of meetings where they are set to discuss everything from trade and artificial intelligence to national insecurity, that war with Iran that is ongoing, and because the pool had — CNN had not yet been returned to the television pool rotation, there was not network TV pool coverage of that moment, and so, the entire pomp and circumstance of an arrival ceremony. President Trump as well as China’s leader Xi Jinping both gave speeches. None of that was on camera today. It remains to be seen whether CNN is indeed going to be included in the network TV pool rotation. But for now, we are back on campus and ready to get back to work.

Following the absurdist pontificating from Bash and Stelter discussed above, Bash disingenuously said the reason we all have to make a big deal about CNN’s supposed hardship is that “it’s about the free press writ large.”

The two then thanked the other networks. Once Bash said “all of our colleagues and competitors...have been so wonderful,” Stelter insisted “Fox News has been a real ally” since they were through the wringer with the Obama regime and could “when a Democrat is back in the Oval Office.”

It’s doubtful Bash and Stelter would give a genuine hoot and exhaust this much energy and rhetorical gnashing of teeth if Fox, Newsmax, One America News, or Real America’s Voice were given the boot.

Stelter again showed his cards with talk about “democratic backsliding” when Trump has been in power, meaning democracy only works these days when Bash and Stelter’s team is in power (click “expand”):

STELTER: [M]ore broadly, what are we going through in America? We’re going through a situation where we’re seeing examples of democratic backsliding. Yes, this is a democracy, but there are times it’s been a healthier democracy. Backsliding is real, and scholars who study autocratic behavior say they see it happening every day, coming out of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. So, right now, the last week or so, we’ve seen it again very clearly. The American press is in a fight to protect its fundamental rights.

BASH: And you just couldn’t make this up or script this —

STELTER: Script it better.

BASH: — in a more stark way[.]

(....)

BASH: I just do want to take a second. You mentioned that Fox D.C. bureau chief Bryan Boughton. I mean, talk about a profile in courage and doing what is right, and I think that he should be applauded, and he is being applauded across the board. And I — we personally — I personally say thank you to him.

Before going to break, Bash brought in Georgetown University law professor Michele Goodwin, who compared the “deeply alarming and quite egregious” press bans to January 6:

To see the relevant CNN transcript from September 24 (including some backhanded compliments to the Chinese Communist Party mouthpieces), click here.