DOJ Investigates News Outlets That Boycotted Trump Over Select Media Ban

Last month, President Donald Trump threw a very public hissy fit over the negative media coverage he’d been getting, one that led him to ban CNN, MSNOW and Politico from the White House press pool. Predictably, the administration was taken to federal court, and a judge temporarily ordered him to restore the outlets’ access to the White House, because it turns out Trump can’t just ban media outlets because he thinks they’re mean to him, and even if he could, he’d have to allow for due process before revoking press passes outright. But before that happened, five legacy media outlets, ABC, CBS, CNN, NBC, and Fox News, boycotted the press pool in protest of the media ban, and now, the Justice Department has launched an investigation against those outlets, citing possible antitrust violations.

From NPR:

As part of a longstanding practice, the members of the pool share the logistical burden and the costs of covering Trump’s actions in public appearances that take place in smaller places, such as Air Force One. As a result of the ban on CNN, the networks did not cover an event Trump had with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

The Justice Department says it is reviewing whether the coordination of that decision constitutes anti-trust behavior, which is to say, anti-competitive.

“Members of the television press pool have proudly boycotted covering White House events. Group boycotts among commercial competitors can violate the Sherman Act,” the Justice Department said in a statement Saturday. “The Antitrust Division is investigating to determine whether these news organizations have violated the antitrust laws.”

So, let’s track this: Trump banned media outlets from the White House because he didn’t like the coverage he was getting, prompting more media outlets to suspend their White House coverage in protest of the attack on the free press, and now the administration is investigating those outlets because Trump didn’t get the select coverage he wanted.

It’s almost as if the president just figured out the White House press pool doesn’t come with his own personal ‘follow’ and ‘unsubscribe’ tabs, and he’s very upset about it.

“Summoning antitrust authority, on top of the retaliatory actions the White House has already taken to bar certain outlets, is another and even more brazen attempt to try to intimidate journalists,” Bruce Brown, the president of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, told NPR.

According to sources that spoke with the New York Times under the condition of anonymity, the DOJ sent letters to the five media outlets it’s investigating Friday, demanding copies of communications among network officials that concerned pool coverage of Trump, along with any communications about Trump’s revocation of CNN’s access to the White House grounds. Another source told the Times the DOJ had been discussing a potential investigation into the TV networks for at least a week.

Look, y’all, we have a president who is both comically delusional and obsessively egotistical. He wants to control the free press because he doesn’t get positive media coverage; he doesn’t get positive media coverage because his idiocy, incompetence and absurd behavior are so glaringly obvious that even Fox News can only do so much lying on his behalf to shield him and his supporters from reality.

This is why no matter how many polls across mainstream pollsters show his approval rating becoming more and more abysmal by the day, he gets on stage and says it’s all “fake news,” that he’s “very popular,” and that he is at “99%, the highest ever in the Republican Party,” citing polling that does not exist anywhere on this planet or whatever MAGA dementia fantasy world his mind resides in.

He’s just a sad, little man who keeps attempting to use his position to force his will against the reality that we can all see right in front of us. We should all be more concerned about a sitting president and an administration that consistently abuse their power this way.

SEE ALSO:

Surviving Trump: The President Misses The Media Attention [Op-Ed]

Surviving Trump: Trump Defends White House Media Ban [Op-Ed]