Tuesday Talk*: Can Trump Be Silenced? Should He Be?

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After announcing at his hourly presser that he was banning CNN, MSNOW and Politico from the White House because he didn’t like what they said about him, the five networks that make up the White House pool consortium, including Fox News, decided to suspend coverage of Trump. What this means is that Trump’s every public act and utterance will not flood the airwaves and social media. Does a president exist if he’s not on air?

What does the TV pool actually do?

The activities of TV pool correspondents depend on the president’s schedule. If the president stays at the White House, they may attend meetings in the Oval Office or other parts of the White House accompanied by their camera crews. While the camera operators gather footage, the correspondents often shout out questions for the president after the official proceedings have concluded.

On overseas presidential trips, the TV pool correspondents rush between news conferences, diplomatic photo-ops, dinners and more. They also travel on Air Force One and ride in motorcades.

Despite JD Vance’s efforts to sanewash Trump’s ban, the media wasn’t buying. Remember how Trump cut the ribbon on his new White House heliport, with the black granite presidential seal embedded just in case the president forgot where he was? No, of course you don’t, because there was no pool to adequately capture it.

Then again, when Trump went to Gracie Mansion to hang with his good buddy and fellow socialist, Zohran Mamdani, he had the press coverage he craves and took the opportunity to remind the media how much they love him.

And if the press isn’t doing the job that Trump demands, there’s always the official White House youtube account, now named Trump TV, to give you Trump’s greatest hits.

Whether one watches Trump because it warms the cockles of one’s heart, or to serve as a target of your outrage and occasional spittle, the fact remains that Trump is the president and, for better or worse, matters of significant consequence spew out of Trump’s mouth at his press events without warning or forethought.

After the banning, which is a flagrant violation of the First Amendment’s freedom of the press as well as due process, the question remained whether other media outlets should act in solidarity in order to defend press freedom from Trump’s effort to control what was said about him or whether it was more important to keep Trump in the public eye such that his daily efforts to undermine democracy wouldn’t be done in secret.

I ran a strongly scientific poll on the twitters which overwhelmingly showed that other media, specifically the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Washington Post, should refuse to enter the White House in support of the banned outlets and freedom of the press. Granted, attention is like air to Trump, his survival depending on his being constantly at its center with all America, if not the world, focused on him. Ugly as that thought might be, it has worked well for him over the past decade, at least.

Is Trump right that he can’t be banned by the media, no matter how much it may want to? Is it beneficial to deny Trump a platform to spew his latest brainstorm, like eschewing Canada in favor of buying potash from Belarus, despite it having no port, no potash and its president being a dictator and Putin puppet? Will Trump avoid being held to account if the only information being broadcast about him comes either from Trump TV, Truth Social or Newsmax?

On the other hand, does it become incumbent on the media to jump through the hoops of litigation to stop Trump every time he ignores a law or violates the Constitution? Without constant watching, would we know in time that there are bulldozers outside the Kennedy Center or a crane loading ammo boxes on the Memorial Circle?

*Tuesday Talk rules apply.

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