Former President Barack Obama blasted President Donald Trump’s \u201cunimaginable\u201d decision to ban three news outlets from the White House \u2014 and mused about the likely reaction if he’d tried the same thing.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy imagination could not foresee some of the stuff that’s going on right now,\u201d Obama said during an appearance at Colgate University. \u201cI’m trying to think what would have happened if I had said, \u2018You know what, Fox News? You’re out of here.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
The Friday comments drew laughter and applause, with Obama saying, \u201cIt’s unimaginable.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBut the point I’m making here is: If you have a certain cohort \u2014 let’s call it 30 to 35 percent of the country right now \u2014 which thinks that’s OK, well, what that means is we have not developed the kind of understanding of what democracy requires. And we’ve got to shore that back up,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
In response to an inquiry from The Independent, the White House declined to comment beyond Trump\u2019s remarks on the subject.<\/p>\n
Former President Barack Obama, seen here in Chicago on June 18, 2026, wonders what would have happened if he\u2019d banned news outlets from the White House like President Donald Trump has (Getty)Trump announced Friday that he was banning journalists from CNN, MS Now and Politico from the White House, calling them \u201cfake news.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThey purposely write negative news. And they do that because they want to try and diminish the Republicans and a Republican administration,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The president followed up Sunday by posting an AI-generated image on social media of three stuffed trash bags labeled CNN, MSNBC (the former name of MS Now) and Politico outside the White House.<\/p>\n
Reporters from all three outlets were denied access to the White House and saw their press passes seized when they tried to enter Saturday morning. Their employers vowed to challenge the president’s move, which he has suggested may be extended to other news organizations, including The New York Times and The Washington Post.<\/p>\n
Shortly after his return to the White House last year, Trump sparked an ongoing legal battle when he banned The Associated Press from the Oval Office and Air Force One after it refused to adopt his name change for the Gulf of Mexico, which the president ordered renamed to the Gulf of America.<\/p>\n
Trash bags labeled CNN, MSNBC and Politico sit outside the White House in an AI-generated image posted by Trump on social media on Sunday, September 20, 2026 (Truth Social\/@realDonaldTrump)During Trump’s first term, the White House revoked the \u201chard pass\u201d issued to then-CNN reporter Jim Acosta following a contentious exchange with Trump during a news conference.<\/p>\n
A federal judge later ordered the return of Acosta’s hard pass \u2014 which allows expedited access to the White House campus \u2014 leading to new, stricter eligibility rules.<\/p>\n
On Sunday, House Majority Leader Steve Scalise defended Trump, telling ABC’s This Week that \u201cI don’t think we’ve had a president that’s been more open to the press…but he wants a free and fair press.\u201d<\/p>\n
Scalise also claimed that former President Joe Biden \u201cremoved the press credentials from over 400 different agencies,\u201d prompting pushback from host Jonathan Karl.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo, first of all, that’s actually not true about Biden. They \u2014 the 400 individual reporters who had credentials \u2014 did not reapply. There was only one that was actually denied a credential, and all of those who didn’t reapply were allowed to come in. They were not banned from the White House,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Trump talks to reporters in the Oval Office after announcing his White House ban on CNN, MS NOW and Politico (AFP\/Getty)In addition to Obama’s comments about Trump’s media ban, the former president also attacked Trump’s opposition to government regulation of the artificial intelligence industry.<\/p>\n
Obama said that AI \u201cmodels are getting powerful enough that if they get in the hands of bad humans, they can do bad things\u201d but that Trump \u2014 who’s claimed he provides all the necessary guardrails \u2014 believes regulation is \u201cfor losers.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSo, we\u2019ve got a gap of at least a couple of years where things are moving really fast and we have an administration that is not capable of or willing to \u2014 I would argue both \u2014 putting together a serious regulatory framework,” Obama said, according to The Post-Standard of Syracuse, New York. <\/p>\n
On Saturday, Trump said on social media that he planned to create an “AI Force” and appoint an AI czar to oversee the development of the cutting-edge technology, which some industry insiders have warned could kill all humans within 10 years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Former President Barack Obama blasted President Donald Trump’s \u201cunimaginable\u201d decision to ban three news outlets from the White House \u2014 and mused about the likely reaction if he’d tried the same thing. \u201cMy imagination could not foresee some of the stuff that’s going on right now,\u201d Obama said during an appearance at Colgate University. \u201cI’m […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[173],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6192","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\n