Obama ‘not surprised’ by Trump’s media ban, calls issue of press freedom ‘foundational’

By Edward-Isaac Dovere, CNN

(CNN) — Barack Obama said he’s “not surprised” by President Donald Trump’s decision to ban CNN, MS NOW and Politico from the White House, arguing that the issue should not be “partisan.”

“You do not have, as far as I can tell, any substantial group of Republicans who are standing up and saying, ‘No, you can’t do that, because we don’t want, if there’s a Democratic president, to be banning Fox News,’ or whatever other outlets that are going off on Democratic presidents,” the former president said Monday night at an event at Salem State University in Massachusetts.

“You can’t do that and say that you are still living in a democracy,” Obama told historian Doris Kearns Goodwin during the event, describing the situation as “the president of the United States can’t take some criticism.”

“This should not be a partisan issue. I want to underscore this. This should be something that rises above partisanship,” Obama went on to say.

Trump announced the move to ban the organizations on social media on Friday saying it was “a result of their constant ‘reporting’ FAKE NEWS!” He later described it as “a very simple ban.”

“I don’t want them in my office. I don’t want them here. I would say the ban would go as far as you can,” Trump said from the Oval Office.

Obama said the issue of a free press was “foundational” at the event in Massachusetts.

“The free press, the idea that the government cannot discriminate against, or pick on, or bully, or exclude somebody because they don’t like the criticism that’s being leveled at them, that is a foundational issue,” the former president said.

“And so, I am not surprised that the current president wants to ban newscasts that are critical of him, because he’s that guy,” Obama added.

Obama pointed out that when he was president, he pushed for more press freedom in countries that repress the media.

Obama faced some questions about press access during his own time in the White House. At one point, aides briefly excluded Fox News from a group interview with an official; at another, he was criticized by the White House Correspondents Association for not providing photographs of a round of golf he played with Tiger Woods. The White House press corps remained generally united against these moves throughout.

In a press release earlier this week, the Trump White House sought to justify its ban against the three media outlets by citing those actions by the Obama administration, among others.

The three media outlets subject to the ban have sued the Trump administration to restore their access.

Obama also applauded the larger solidarity among media organizations. Major television networks, for instance, declined to replace CNN’s White House pool crew after the Trump administration barred the network from fulfilling its assigned duties on Monday.

“This one’s actually in the Constitution. It’s pretty straightforward, right? Free speech, there’s a reason why it’s the First Amendment,” Obama said on Monday.

“The issue is not the fact that (the ban) ultimately will be overturned. The issue is the brazenness with which any president could act like this, and the people in his or her own party not say, ‘No, you cannot do that. That’s not acceptable.’ That lack of guardrails is what I’m most concerned about.”

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