CNN anchor Jake Tapper challenged President Donald Trump’s UN Ambassador Mike Waltz during a wide-ranging interview on Sunday.
As the interview concluded, Tapper asked Waltz to speak with Trump about the White House decision to remove CNN from the presidential press pool.
Tapper criticized the administration’s move, saying it had prevented CNN from carrying out its pool assignment for five major television networks.
“I would just ask if you could please convey to President Trump to let CNN back in the pool,” Tapper said.
“It was not OK when President Obama tried to freeze FOX out of the pool back in 2009. And I don’t think we want a world where presidents decide who gets to cover them.”
Waltz rejected the criticism and reiterated Trump’s attacks on news organizations the president has accused of biased coverage.
“Well, I hear you, Jake, but I think we need fair and objective and well-sourced reporting,” Waltz replied.
The ambassador went on to say that he and his family had personally been affected by what he described as misleading reporting.
CNN anchor Jake Tapper pressed Trump’s UN Ambassador Mike Waltz over the president’s media ban during an interview on his Sunday program
CNN White House reporter Kaitlan Collins has openly criticized the Trump administration’s decision to bar her and her colleagues this month
“We need a free and fair and honest press corps without an agenda that tries to take facts to fit a narrative,” he said.
Waltz cited CNN’s reporting on former President Joe Biden and rejected the idea that Trump was punishing media outlets merely because they published unfavorable stories.
He also pointed to the Washington Post and the New York Times, which have continued to receive access to the White House despite publishing reports the Trump administration has viewed as unfavorable.
“So that’s a false narrative that it’s about negative reporting,” Waltz argued.
Tapper challenged that claim, referring to Trump’s own public comments.
“President Trump specifically said that there’s something wrong with a country where people are allowed to report things that are purposely negative,” Tapper responded. “That’s his language, not mine.”
Waltz said Trump was addressing broader concerns about media bias, including negative narratives and the use of anonymous sources.
“So, this needs to be fixed, and President Trump is quite frustrated with this – this media bias across the board.”
Tapper closed the exchange with a pointed observation: “As has every single president that I’ve ever covered been frustrated with the press.”
In a show of solidarity with the barred outlets, which also included MS NOW and Politico, Fox News, NBC, CBS and ABC have refused to cover the president. The networks make up the television pool that provides rotating presidential coverage.
Trump banned the news outlets earlier this month in a fiery social media post accusing them of peddling ‘fake news.’
He was reportedly shown a slate of negative coverage from the outlets by his aide Natalie Harp in the moments before the ban was announced.
Days later, the White House made a stunning U-turn on its media ban on Thursday, allowing reporters back in after initially turning them away before Xi Jinping and Donald Trump’s summit late last week.
‘CNN was allowed back into the White House on Thursday at noon,’ host Kaitlan Collins posted on X after the debacle.
The White House had initially turned away multiple members of the press on Thursday, even after a judge reinstated access to the banned outlets just hours before.
US District Judge Timothy Kelly granted a temporary restraining order early Thursday morning, effectively forcing the Trump administration to restore access to Politico, CNN and MS NOW, which the President banned the Friday before last.
Yet the White House still denied these outlets and seized some employees’ credentials on Thursday morning before allowing them back in later in the afternoon.
