CNN vs. Trump: Where might this go?
This may turn out to be a very bad idea.
And the fallout could float just about anywhere — including North Idaho.
I’m assuming we still want to know what’s happening with our own government, yes?
Well, the lawsuit that CNN has filed against President Trump and several members of his administration, including Press Secretary Sarah Sanders and John Kelly, the chief of staff, actually could jeopardize communication between the leader of the free world and the rest of humanity.
We might reach the point of a Twitter-only presidency.
The whole mess was predictable, I suppose, since Trump has used the media as his personal punching bag for his entire time in office.
Eventually there would be boiling point, and it bubbled over when the White House revoked the press credential of CNN reporter Jim Acosta, a guy who had gotten under the president’s skin.
THE REASON given for yanking Acosta’s pass was that the reporter put his hands on an intern who was trying to take a microphone away from him.
In fact, the ban on Acosta was really about his insistence on asking questions that Trump didn’t like.
That was one step too far, not just for CNN but for the media in general — in the United States and around the world.
Having a president or monarch choose who will ask questions and who won’t is something that happens in Venezuela or Saudi Arabia, but not here.
Obviously, I’m a media person and, maybe not so obviously, I’ve been in this profession for all of my adult life.
So you would think my immediate reactions would be frustration with the White House and sympathy for Acosta and CNN.
Therefore, I’d be one of the first cheerleaders for this lawsuit.
But I’m not.
The network’s savvy response would have been to wait for Trump to become enraged with something else, and then quietly ask for Acosta to be reinstated.
In that scenario, the president would not be seen to have lost a duel.
THE LEGAL action, though, is a direct challenge to Trump — a man who has been sued (and sued other people) so often in his career that he retains entire limousines full of attorneys.
The lawsuit will also keep some of his famous fury focused on the media, and one of the cardinal rules in our business is that we are not supposed to become the story.
To be clear, I’m not saying that CNN doesn’t have a solid case.
There is precedent in the network’s favor.
According to the Columbia Journalism Review, a critical case occurred in 1966, when Robert Sherrill — a muckraking investigative reporter for The Nation — was denied a White House press pass.
Sherrill and the American Civil Liberties Union sued in 1972, and five years later the District of Columbia Court of Appeals ruled that he had a First Amendment right of access to White House press conferences.
The decision stated the conferences were designed to be open to all bona fide Washington journalists, and that this required the White House to ensure that “... this access not be denied arbitrarily or for less than compelling reasons.”
IN OTHER words, by “arbitrarily” singling out Acosta, the White House violated his First Amendment rights (and Fifth Amendment protections requiring due process).
Trump and his staff have no grounds to suggest that Acosta was dangerous. He was merely annoying because the president didn’t like his questions.
Most legal scholars believe Trump cannot win a legal battle here, and we know this president refuses to be seen as a loser.
What’s more, he has a nuclear option ...
Trump can simply stop doing press conferences altogether, thus removing any bias toward Acosta.
The lawsuit would become moot.
In another era, that might have been impossible. We know that Trump has plenty he wants to say.
But here in 2018, Trump can (and does) get most of his critical messages out to the universe via tweet.
Just ask Emmanuel Macron.
If Trump saw that he was going to lose in court, he could well decide to conduct ALL communication on Twitter — and put the world’s press in the miserable position of having to decide whether to write continuously about Trump tweets, without any face-to-face questions.
Ever.
That would be a disastrous outcome for everyone concerned, except ...
President Trump, because all the news would be what he decides it should be.
Would he actually go that far?
CNN perhaps should have thought a little longer before daring this president to find out.
Does Donald Trump seem like a man who would let a relatively unknown reporter like Jim Acosta share his headlines?
You can answer that one yourself.
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Steve Cameron is a columnist for The Press.
A Brand New Day appears from Wednesday through Saturday each week.
Steve’s sports column on Gonzaga basketball runs on Tuesday.
Email: scameron@cdapress.com
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