White House Correspondents’ Association Calls Move Retaliatory and ‘Weak’
The White House Wednesday afternoon banned a CNN reporter from an open press event in the Rose Garden because of a question she had asked the president earlier in the day.
“Collins was asked to come to Bill Shine’s office. Shine, a former co-president of Fox News, is the new deputy chief of staff for communications. Shine and press secretary Sarah Sanders met Collins there,” CNN reports.
“They said ‘You are dis-invited from the press availability in the Rose Garden today,'” Kaitlan Collins, a White House reporter for CNN says, according to the network. “They said that the questions I asked were inappropriate for that venue. And they said I was shouting.”
Collins said she reacted by saying, “You’re banning me from an event because you didn’t like the questions I asked.”
Collins said Shine and Sanders asserted that “we’re not banning your network. Your photographers can still come. Your producers can still come. But you are not invited to the Rose Garden today.”
What is the question President Trump didn’t like?
Heres Collins explaining what happened, including footage of the questions the president didn’t like:
Collins is no “liberal” journalist. Before working for CNN she was the White House Correspondent for the right wing website The Daily Caller.
The White House Corespondents’ Association issued a statement calling the move “weak”:
Outrage over the ban, especially from journalists at many different outlets, was immediate: