White House boots CNN from Trump’s Texas-Oklahoma press pool duty

BS BULLETIN:

CNN had been scheduled to provide television pool coverage for President Trump’s Thursday trip to Texas and Oklahoma.
The White House quietly removed the network from the assignment in its updated daily guidance.
A federal judge recently restored CNN’s access to the White House grounds, but that ruling did not specifically address Air Force One travel or press-pool assignments.

CNN was on the schedule.

Then it wasn’t.

The White House has removed CNN from its planned television press-pool assignment for President Donald Trump’s Thursday trip to Texas and Oklahoma, continuing an increasingly messy fight over who gets to cover the president — and how.

CNN had been listed in a White House rotation document released Sunday as the network scheduled to provide television pool coverage for the trip.

But when the White House issued its updated guidance Wednesday, CNN had disappeared from the assignment.

Trump is scheduled to visit a truck manufacturing facility in Denton, Texas, before traveling to Durant, Oklahoma, for remarks.

CNN spokesperson Emily Kuhn confirmed that the network had been removed from the coverage assignment.

The move comes only days after a federal judge temporarily blocked the Trump administration’s broader effort to bar CNN, MS NOW and Politico from the White House.

U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly restored the outlets’ access to White House grounds for 14 days while their lawsuit proceeds, after finding they were likely to succeed on their due-process claim.

Kelly’s order addressed access to the White House complex.

It did not specifically require the administration to allow CNN aboard Air Force One or to permit the network to carry out individual press-pool assignments.

And the White House appears to be making full use of that distinction.

CNN was also removed from its scheduled pool assignment last weekend when Trump traveled to Tennessee for a college football game.

No replacement network was assigned in CNN’s place, leaving the trip without normal pooled television coverage.

Theodore Boutrous, an attorney representing CNN, MS NOW and Politico in their lawsuit against the administration, has called Trump’s broader restrictions on the outlets “a blatant violation of the First Amendment and due process.”

The administration, meanwhile, has continued defending its ability to determine who receives particular forms of access to the president.

The long-running White House television pool normally operates on a rotation among major networks, with one outlet providing footage and coverage that is then shared with the rest of the press corps.

That system briefly broke down last week after ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox News and CNN effectively suspended pool coverage in solidarity when CNN was prevented from carrying out one of its scheduled assignments.

So CNN can once again enter the White House.

Whether its cameras get to follow Trump onto the plane is apparently another matter entirely.