It is a privilege to cover this white House. It's a privilege to be the white House press secretary, and nobody has the right to go into the Oval Office and ask the president of the United States questions. That's an invitation that is given. And there are hundreds of outlets on this campus. [00:00:15] Many of you in this room who don't have the privilege of being part of that pool every single day and getting to ask the president questions. If we feel that there are lies being pushed by outlets in this room, we are going to hold those lies accountable. And it is a fact that the body of water off the coast of Louisiana [00:00:32] is called the Gulf of America. Now, look what you just heard from the white House press secretary is actually mostly correct. No news agency has, you know, the God given right to be invited to [00:00:47] the white House to cover the white House or the Trump administration. However, it's also true that the federal government, or any government official for that matter, does not have the right to punish or retaliate against anyone in the country, including the media, for failing to go along [00:01:05] with what the government officials want. And in this case, we're talking about the Associated Press, which isn't just a news agency, it is a wire service, an international wire service that reporters across the globe rely on, essentially being punished by the Trump administration for refusing to call [00:01:23] the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America. And so they were not allowed to go to white House press briefings. They were punished by the Trump administration. This all started back in February, when the white House declared war on the Associated Press over their decision to keep referring to [00:01:39] the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of Mexico, because that's what the international community refers to it as. Just because the president has decided to rename it doesn't mean that every other country follows suit. So when Trump issued the executive order, the Associated Press said this in a statement. [00:01:54] The Gulf of Mexico has carried that name for more than 400 years. The Associated Press will refer to it by its original name while acknowledging the new name. Trump has chosen as a global news agency that disseminates news around the world. [00:02:10] The AP must ensure that place names and geography are easily recognizable to all audiences, so that is a perfectly legitimate reason for why they're not going along with this whole Gulf of America thing. So the Trump administration did not like that stance, and the white House decided [00:02:27] to start barring AP reporters from official white House events, the Oval Office and Air Force One. Now, again, it is the Trump administration's right to say, nah, we don't want the we don't want the inclusion of the Associated Press, but to tie it to editorial decisions made by the Associated Press [00:02:47] means that the government is punishing a news agency over their work, over their expression, over their speech. So the AP decides we're going to actually go to court over this. And the federal judges weighed in and has decided, yeah, [00:03:04] the Trump administration can't do this. So look, in the complaint, the AP said that the white House had ordered it to use certain words in its reporting and that it was suing to vindicate its rights to the editorial independence guaranteed by the United States Constitution and to prevent the executive [00:03:21] branch from coercing journalists to report the news using only government approved language. That is a totally justified reason to go to court 100%. Now, the Associated Press was seeking a preliminary injunction to urge the Trump administration, to basically prevent the Trump administration from excluding [00:03:41] the Associated Press over this reason. And federal Judge Trevor McFadden, who, by the way, is a Trump appointee, actually sided with the AP and granted the injunction. So in his memorandum, the judge wrote that the Associated Press, you know, [00:03:57] could have been barred for many reasons, but their viewpoint is not a valid reason to bar the AP under the First Amendment. If the government opens its doors to some journalists, be it the Oval Office, the East Room or elsewhere, it cannot then shut those doors to other journalists [00:04:15] because of their viewpoints. The Constitution requires no less. The injunction, by the way, stated that the government was required to immediately rescind the denial of the AP's access to the Oval Office. Air Force One and other limited spaces based on the AP's viewpoint, [00:04:33] when such spaces are made open to other members of the white House press pool and immediately rescind their viewpoint based denial of the AP's access to events open to all credentialed white House journalists. So I'm going to pause for a second and again differentiate between what the [00:04:51] Trump administration did in this case, where they are retaliating over the AP's editorial decisions versus the white House just deciding we're going to pick and choose which media companies or agencies we're going to invite to cover us. [00:05:07] They have the right to do that. So I'll give you an example. I believe TYT applied for press credentials to cover the Biden White House to attend, you know, some of the white House press briefings. And we were denied. Now we were denied, as lots of other news organizations get denials. [00:05:24] But it wasn't tied to, you know, our editorial decisions, at least not that we know of. Okay. Not that we know of. So this is the thing with the Trump administration, John. They like, keep making this like dumb error where they're like, we don't like we don't like that you're not writing or saying what we want you to write and say. [00:05:43] So we're going to ban you. Okay. That's unconstitutional. Well yeah. So and I agree, it could have been that why TYT was banned. But but at least they were smart enough not to say it. I agree that's why Trump did it. I might disagree with you that they were making a mistake in directly tying it. [00:06:00] I mean, it's a mistake insofar as it has now been reversed, although it remains to be seen if the AP actually gets to come back in. Just because a judge told them to do something is no guarantee that Trump administration is going to. But I don't know if they were making a mistake. I think they were sending a signal because many in their base, [00:06:16] their most devoted base, wants them to be discriminating based on viewpoint. They it wasn't like a random thing that they they ate that up. They love it. Right wing media wants to be chosen because they're loyal to Trump, because they reinterpret everything to make it seem as if he's a genius. [00:06:34] And they want other news outlets to be barred because they don't agree 100%. There's no concept of the First Amendment in Assembly speech free like the right of a free press. They're just not ideologically interested in any of that. The very fact that they have government approved terms that you have to use [00:06:54] or you're done as an agency, a massive wire agency, you're just done because you didn't use the right terms. That's it. And and it isn't just that they have those standards, it's that they know their base wants those standards. They want enforcement of certain terms. They don't want the government to be able to use certain terms [00:07:10] having to do with diversity and all that. There's this desperation for the exact sort of cancel culture that they've pretended to be opposed to for so many years. And that's why I disagree that it's a mistake. I think that the Trump administration knows they need to to to give their base what they want. [00:07:27] Look, I disagree with you. I think it's more right wing media that loves this, loves the idea of what they have determined to be left wing media. Although the Associated Press, again, is a wire service, they don't really get into opinion at all. They just report what the story is. [00:07:45] They might get things wrong time to time, but the point is it is a wire service used by international journalists. So, you know, anyway. But my point is, like the conservative media folks, of course, I mean, they see everything as competition, just like left wing media [00:08:01] will see everything as competition. So the The exclusion of what they have deemed left wing media is something that they might support. But I mean, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter what anyone wants. What matters is the Constitution. And the Constitution plainly states that the government is not to retaliate [00:08:21] against the free expression of Americans and also, of course, the press. And that's exactly what happened here. I just just I'm not going to go along, but just to quickly like and when I say base, I don't mean 40% of the voters necessarily are super like hot for this. [00:08:37] But I think a certain percentage are and certainly the media side of the base and the electeds. And I think at the same time you're having, what are some of the most high profile disappearances that we've seen? It's activists. It's people who have dared to take positions on, like Gaza and speak out in support of Palestinians. [00:08:53] And they don't seem scared at all that they're going to be sending the signal that they are specifically going out and tracking down, hunting down and disappearing people who've just in an op ed or whatever expressed a politically incorrect position, and now they're gone and we may never see them again. [00:09:09] I think they're doing it to the media in one way, the way they the farthest they think they can go right now. And with activists, they're doing it in a different way. And again, I think they're maybe base isn't the right word, but they're most like loyal foot soldiers are. In both of those cases, they are eating it up because they want this sort of targeting of people that they disagree with. [00:09:30] Well, again, regardless of what anyone wants, the Constitution is something that needs to be valued right by the administration, by the government. And when the government does something unconstitutional, they're going to go to court and federal judges are going to weigh in. [00:09:46] And that's the final thing I'll say about this. You know, there's been a lot made about, oh, these federal judges, they need to be impeached because they're not giving Trump exactly what he wants. We're talking about a Trump appointee here. And he I mean, look, the outcome of this case was entirely predictable. [00:10:05] And for those who think it's a good idea to open up a situation in which our constitutional rights fall by the wayside, because you want to have the government retaliate against your political opposition. Just understand that your favored party isn't going to be in power forever. [00:10:24] So don't open up that Pandora's box where you're cheering on the deterioration of constitutional rights under the assumption that it won't come back to bite you in the ass, because it will. Anyway, I'm happy with the outcome of this case. [00:10:40] Now again, the Trump administration is not obligated to include the Associated Press. But if they're going to exclude the Associated Press, maybe they should be smarter and not say that they're doing it as retaliation, but [00:10:57] they probably will still keep doing that. So we'll see. Every time you ring the bell below, an angel gets its wings. Totally not true, but it does keep you updated on our live shows.