There is something almost touching about JD Vance's faith in the English language. It’s almost as dedicated as his faith in Donald J. Trump.
Trump says he is banning CNN, MS NOW and Politico from the White House. Their reporters' credentials are deactivated. They are turned away from the building. The three organizations sue the administration, alleging violations of the First Amendment and due process. A federal judge will hear the case on Wednesday. And then, out of the vaguely fascist-smelling ether, comes the vice president to explain that nobody has actually been banned at all.
“He's not banning media outlets,” Vance told reporters on Monday. He is merely declining to give them “special access” if they engage in what he calls “effectively far-left propaganda.”
Just like the war in Iran is, according to Vance, not actually a war, the Trump media ban is not a ban. This is simply an unusually forceful decision to make certain journalists unable to report on politics! Somehow, it’s not censorship; it’s the opposite of censorship! And what better way to celebrate a meeting with China’s Xi Jinping than to crib some of his best ideas about media control?
Let’s make one thing clear, JD told everyone on Monday as he descended further and further into the rabbit hole: This is not retaliation against unfavorable coverage. It’s a victim pushing back against abuse! I’m not propaganda; you’re propaganda!
The problem, unfortunately for Vance, is that Trump has already described what he is doing rather more plainly. Last week, he specifically said he was banning CNN, MS NOW and Politico from the White House after complaining about their coverage. He said the organisations should not be allowed to “constantly write or report FICTION and LIES” about him and his administration. He later objected to the idea that this amounted to an assault on the free press, arguing instead that it was an assault on “FAKE NEWS”.
Another problem is that not even Republican operatives or other right-wing news outlets seem to be celebrating the whole get-rid-of-people-who-criticize-me thing. Even a Newsmax anchor tentatively suggested on Monday, after audio went awry at a pool event, that the whole thing might have backfired “a bit.”
But Vance has reassured us that the banned organizations can still report on the White House (truly, how noble of them to allow this!) They can read public statements. They can talk to administration officials. They can stand outside the building and report from there. What they cannot do is maintain their previous access inside the White House, because Donny is delicate right now, and if he hears anything from beyond his little circle of sycophants then we’re all going to be in deep trouble (I may have extrapolated a little on this last part.)
This is all technically true, in the same way that you can still read the menu if you’re locked out a restaurant. But it’s not functionally true, is it?
Vance added that “92%” of coverage on the “far-left propaganda” outlets his boss has so bravely banned is negative. He declined to mention where that statistic came from, but it seems like it comes from a Media Research Center study on the first 100 days of Trump’s second term, which found that the stat applied to ABC, CBS and NBC (notably not CNN, Politico or MS NOW, but who cares about details?) It was noted in the study that tariffs, DOGE and ICE drove the negative coverage. And obviously, the only reason anyone would see those things badly is because they’re evil conspiracy theorists in the pockets of North Korea.
So, onto another court case and another chance for the increasingly absurd Trumpist yes-men to pretzel themselves around his latest whim. The question in Wednesday's hearing is not whether CNN can continue to publish critical stories about Trump in America, because of course it can, but rather it’s about whether the president can treat outlets differently if he sees them as too critical.
Interestingly enough, the case has landed with Judge Tim Kelly, a Trump appointee who has encountered this particular constitutional mess before. In 2018, Kelly ruled in favor of CNN correspondent Jim Acosta after the Trump White House revoked his press pass, finding that the administration had failed to provide adequate due process. Kelly at that time chose not to bring in the First Amendment but did talk about the Fifth, which guarantees due process and protects Americans from government abuse. He said that the internal workings of the Trump administration at that time were so “shrouded in mystery” that no one could even tell him who had actually revoked Acosta’s press pass. That in itself, he said, was a problem.
Clearly, things have now escalated even beyond that kind of authoritarian chaos.
And so here we are, watching another, familiar MAGA play: Trump positions himself as the victim, he uses presidential powers to “defend himself,” and Vance comes out to try and put a nicer, less volatile sheen over the madness. Rights that everybody agreed were rights are recast as privileges that the government can paternalistically remove if the naughty outlets say too many mean things at the dinner table.
To underline this in red pen, a Monday press release from the administration was headlined, “White House Access is a Privilege — Not a Right” (the gist of the release was that Obama and Biden had restricted outlets’ access to some events before, so why can’t Trump do it bigger and better and more beautiful anyway?)
It is a little sad to watch JD Vance — who is an intelligent man, if not a likable one — humiliate himself by defending this.
Recent months have shown that he will loyally go to bat for Donald, even in some truly stupid situations, and this might be the stupidest one of all. As he argues passionately that the press is victimizing the poor, delicate president of the free world, he doesn’t give one the impression that his boss is powerful and smart and in control, either. He instead gives the impression that the president is volatile enough that he must be appeased, thin-skinned enough that he can’t handle pushback, and surrounded by a team of people so high on their own supply that they don’t understand how concerning this might look to anyone with a passing knowledge of the existence of the Constitution.
There is an obvious practical reason this all matters, too. The White House press pool exists partly because no individual news publication can be everywhere the president goes. Its members share the job of covering presidential movements and distributing footage and information to other outlets across the world. Because ABC, NBC, CBS and Fox have refused to replace CNN on the rotation and therefore left nobody to point a camera at the president today, it has deprived Trump of his main source of sustenance: attention.
Will this be enough to make the president entirely rethink what he’s done? That’s doubtful — our great leader is, after all, a vengeful god — but it may well give him pause. And it’s clear that right now, that’s the best we can hope for.