White House removes CNN from Trump’s Air Force One media pool

The White House has removed CNN from the media group travelling with President Donald Trump on Air Force One, replacing it with Real America’s Voice News for his Saturday trip to Knoxville, Tennessee, according to White House guidance cited by CNN. Trump is scheduled to attend a college-football game between the University of Tennessee and the University of Texas at midday. CNN’s place on the flight had traditionally been reserved for a member of the US network video pool, of which Real America’s Voice News is not a participant.

The decision came as CNN, MS NOW and Politico returned to the White House complex with television cameras. The organisations had been barred from the grounds by Trump last week, but US District Judge Timothy Kelly temporarily blocked that restriction in an overnight ruling early Thursday. The judge’s order addressed the outlets’ “hard passes” for access to the White House grounds but did not directly settle pool assignments or access to Air Force One.

Theodore Boutrous Jnr, a lawyer for the organisations, had said on CNN that the plaintiffs believed the ruling also covered pool access. He did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Friday night, and the White House did not immediately provide additional details. The White House video pool briefly resumed operations on Friday for the first time since the ban.

CNN aired footage of Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping visiting the National Archives, alongside their wives, Melania Trump and Peng Liyuan. CNN analyst Brian Stelter said on social media that the network had been assigned to cover the event and that its credentials had been approved. The pool consists of five major US broadcast outlets that rotate responsibility for filming and sharing presidential coverage.

The other four providers had declined to participate after CNN, MS NOW and Politico were barred, according to the source material. The White House Correspondents’ Association created the pool decades ago to ensure that journalists travel with the president and distribute reports and images to the wider press corps. The latest dispute follows other clashes between Trump and media organisations, including his exclusion of Associated Press reporters over the organisation’s treatment of his executive order renaming the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America.”