U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Mike Waltz went directly on CNN to defend President Donald Trump’s decision to bar the network from the White House. Speaking with host Dana Bash, Waltz rejected the idea that freedom of the press gives every news organization an automatic right to enter government facilities. He confronted the media over the use of anonymous sources and what he described as corrections that come only after damaging claims have spread. Bash pushed back, but Waltz refused to retreat.
The exchange aired Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union,” after Bash and Waltz discussed Iran, China, artificial intelligence, and other foreign-policy issues. Bash shifted to Trump’s decision to ban CNN, MS NOW, and Politico from the White House. She accused the president of “backsliding” on press freedom and asked Waltz whether he was comfortable with the move. Waltz responded that Trump was “absolutely spot on.”
“The president is absolutely within his rights to limit journalists to government facilities, particularly when, in his opinion, they’re not behaving as good-faith journalists,” Waltz said. He cited the Supreme Court case “Zemel v. Rusk” while acknowledging that he’s not an attorney. “You can have the ability to speak, you can have the ability to publish as an open and free press, but you don’t have an inherent right to any government facility that you want, whether it’s Langley or the White House,” he added.
Bash invoked Waltz’s military record, noting that he had served in the Green Berets during a 27-year military career and defended freedoms such as the First Amendment. She argued that Trump had banned three news organizations because he disliked some of their reporting. Waltz responded by pointing to restrictions placed on outlets and journalists deemed right-wing under the prior administration, adding that they have since been allowed into the White House. He said Trump doesn’t believe that some outlets are operating in good faith.
Waltz turned directly to the media’s reporting practices. “Heck, I just saw one yesterday use anonymous sources referencing someone who’s dead,” he said during the exchange. Waltz said news organizations should take “a good introspective look” at how they handle anonymously sourced claims and subsequent corrections. “It throws things out there and then puts a little baby correction that nobody pays attention to, and it sticks to people like napalm,” he said.
The ambassador described those practices as “incredibly frustrating” for someone serving in public office. He returned to the distinction between the freedom to speak or publish and a demanded “right” to enter a particular government building. Waltz said Supreme Court decisions going back to the 1960s have treated those as different questions. Bash answered that courts would determine the legal issue but argued that press access also involves longstanding institutional norms.
Watch Waltz confront Bash over CNN’s reporting practices here:
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Bash told Waltz she was “kind of at a loss for words,” arguing that CNN’s reporting was critical rather than merely negative. Waltz immediately pushed back on her description. “There’s a big difference, Dana, I’m sorry, in negative reporting and garbage gossip journalism that will sit on one anonymous source and then push it out in the ecosphere,” he said. He added that the original claim can be repeated by other journalists as though it’s already been established as fact.
Bash replied by pointing Waltz back to the first ten minutes of their interview, during which they’d discussed substantive foreign-policy matters. Waltz continued pressing the national-security consequences of reporting based on anonymous information, citing stories about “sensitive conversations on deployment orders” and American munitions stockpiles during a conflict. Bash insisted that serious news organizations take national security seriously and tried to distinguish such reporting from criticism Trump considers overly negative. Waltz answered that those disputes are “not simple black-and-white issues” and told Bash, “I think you know that.”
Featured image credit: screengrab from the embedded video.