Attorney General Todd Blanche defended the White House’s reporter ban on Sunday, reiterating that it was implemented for national security purposes.
“Well, the president hasn’t denied access, that’s not the right way to describe it,” Blanche said while speaking with Martha Raddatz on ABC News’s This Week. She asked Blanche to justify the lack of TV pool coverage of President Donald Trump’s attendance at the Texas-Tennessee football game on Saturday after Trump barred CNN, Politico, and MSNOW from accessing the White House grounds on Monday.
“What the president has said is he is sick and tired of certain media outlets just refusing to report accurate news,” Blanche said. “And so look, it is a privilege to be in the White House for anybody, and the president knows that, it’s the people’s house. And what you saw play out over the past week was even after the White House let the reporters back in, they still refused to use pool coverage, they still refused to on their own make a decision to start covering the president again with the video. A lot of people saw the president. The president was not hidden from the American people at the football game in Tennessee yesterday.”
Trump-appointed judge Timothy Kelly of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia temporarily reinstated the outlets’ access to the White House grounds on Thursday morning after they filed a lawsuit on Monday. The 14-day restraining order is set to end on Oct. 8.
“It’s not just the fact that they refuse to report anything accurately, by the way, that is what it is: a national security problem,” he said. “When you have complete misinformation coming out of the White House, that affects our relationship with our foreign partners, that affects our relationship with our foreign enemies, and so this is just not about the fact that they’re refusing to report accurate news; it’s all about the information the American people have the right to hear coming out of our what should be respected media outlets.”
“Really, the unfortunate and sad thing here is that after years and years and years of one-sided media coverage of the president from certain outlets, the president finally said it’s not fair to the American people that this is happening and did something about it. There’s still obviously litigation going on, but the important thing to know, Martha, is that being in the White House is a privilege; it’s not a right.”
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Raddatz noted Kelly was “skeptical of the argument the [Department of Justice] made in court filings to defend this ban on the grounds of national security.”
Blanche, who used to be Trump’s personal attorney, has become an increasingly public-facing member of the Trump administration after being confirmed by the Senate in early August. Insiders recently told the Washington Examiner the country’s declining crime rate has positioned Blanche as a valuable asset on the campaign trail. He replaced Pam Bondi, who Trump fired in April.