While the Democrat-pleasing “fact checkers” at PolitiFact aren’t throwing any “False” flags at wild-eyed Trump haters comparing the president to mass-murdering dictators ("Hitler to Stalin to Idi Amin") over pulling White House access for CNN, MS NOW, and Politico, they did pull out the “Mostly False” card for a mostly true claim about Team Biden dramatically shrinking the press-pass list in 2023.
This was allegedly wrong:
President Joe Biden “cut off 440 reporters’ credentials.”
PolitiFact research analyst Jeff Cercone took after a TikTok video with 72,000 views from “Barbie Unfiltered 67” which said, “Biden changed the White House press pool and CUT OFF 440 reporters’ credentials, yet got ZERO outrage from the fake news media.”
The actual facts: Correct, and correct. Team Biden shrunk the list without almost anyone in the elitist media noticing. They only care about their own access.
Cercone admitted the numbers weren't wrong, but were somehow Mostly False:
After the changes, about 500 fewer journalists had hard passes, the court filing said. A Politico report in August 2023 said there were 442 fewer hard passes, which matches the numbers used in some social media posts defending Trump.
Cercone noted that when Rep. Steve Scalise told ABC This Week host Jonathan Karl that Biden removed 440 reporters from the press-pass list, Karl claimed “They were not banned from the White House." Their press passes were ended -- exactly like CNN and MS NOW now. Cercone sided with Karl, who wasn't found "Mostly False." The "mainstream media" are pretty immune from PolitiFact scrutiny. He quoteed Andrew Bates, former deputy press secretary for Biden, who said "no reporters were banned as a result of Biden’s policy."
The article explained Biden shrunk the press list by adding new conditions for a press pass:
- must be employed by a news organization.
- must be accredited for a press gallery in the U.S. House or Senate, or U.S. Supreme Court.
- must have a physical address (personal or professional) in the greater Washington, D.C. area, and
- must have accessed the White House for work at least once in the past six months.
You can claim this wasn't a "ban," but it did cause 440 passes to be pulled. You can point out that reporters could still request a "day pass" to be admitted, but their "hard passes" were ended. There was a "due process" here that's unlike Trump's sudden cancellations.
Still, it's kinda funny that the liberals are so outraged that anyone would scrub the names off voter rolls of people who are dead or no longer have a "physical address" where they're registered, but they are totally fine with this. Because Democrats did it.
Cercone noted that journalist Simon Ateba was thrown off the list, and he didn't have a judge rule in his favor:
Simon Ateba, a journalist with Today News Africa who lost his hard pass after the change, filed the lawsuit against the White House in 2023, but a court ruled the new policy did not violate his First Amendment rights, a decision upheld in April 2025 by the D.C. United States Court of Appeals.
The court ruling found Biden’s new hard pass policy both “reasonable and viewpoint neutral” and said it did not violate the First Amendment.
Ateba did enter later on a "day pass" but press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre loathed him and energetically ignored him.
Snopes.com engaged in the same exercise, but at least they ruled the claim a “Mixture” of true and false. “In 2023, the Biden administration tightened the requirements for obtaining an all-access White House press credential called a ‘hard pass.’ After the stricter requirements went into effect, the number of hard passes issued dropped from 1,417 to 975, in part because many journalists chose not to renew them.”
