CNN spent years staying quiet while the Biden White House quietly locked hundreds of journalists out of the building.
Then Donald Trump banned three outlets, and suddenly the network found its voice.
Sean Spicer noticed the timing, and he decided to call it out directly on X.
The Exchange That Kicked Off On X
Former White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer accused CNN anchor Abby Phillip of having a double standard when it came to President Donald Trump’s press ban on her outlet, as well as MS NOW and Politico, with Spicer saying she didn’t seem to care too much when hundreds of outlets lost access during Joe Biden’s presidency.
Spicer and Phillip got into it during a back-and-forth exchange on X. He posted a clip of Phillip asking New York Post reporter Lydia Moynihan earlier that day if Biden had taken away press passes; Spicer said that’s exactly what happened.
Spicer did not hedge. He went straight at the number.
“Yes, Biden stripped the press passes of 440 independent journalists,” Spicer posted.
He was referring to when the Biden Administration changed its press pass rules in 2023, which led to 442 reporters, to be exact, having their passes expire.
Phillip did not let it sit for long.
She responded soon after. “Lol @Seanspicer, Google is free!” she posted, along with a link to an Associated Press “fact check” comparing Trump’s press ban to Biden’s ’23 move.
The AP piece Phillip linked took direct aim at the 440 figure. “This is false,” the outlet wrote. “In 2023, the White House revised its policy for obtaining long-term press passes. All journalists holding such passes were required to apply for a renewal under new criteria. This led to a drop in the number of journalists who had one.”
Spicer wasn’t buying the distinction.
He said he wasn’t buying it, though. He responded to Phillip’s response with his own “lol,” before claiming it was a distinction without a difference.
“Name another time when the WH ‘expired’ all the badges and then changed the criteria to ensure independent journalists could not qualify,” Spicer said. “The only reason you care now is because it’s CNN. When it’s someone else your concern for press freedom & the 1st Amendment is harder to find than a Trump supporter on CNN.”
How CNN, Politico, And MS NOW Ended Up Locked Out
All of this came after Trump banished CNN, MS NOW, and Politico reporters from the White House on September 18.
The three outlets banded together and sued Trump soon after, claiming it was unconstitutional on First Amendment and due process grounds. Trump defended the ban, saying the free press is “something which I cherish,” but he viewed the outlets as nothing more than “FAKE NEWS” peddlers. He also claimed it was important for national security reasons.
The discussion between Spicer and Phillip took place days after Trump was ordered to lift the media ban he had imposed on CNN, MS NOW and Politico. That court order is what got the whole fight going in the first place, since it put press access back in the news and gave Phillip a reason to bring up Biden in the first place.
The clip Spicer originally posted came from Phillip’s own show, where the topic had already generated some sparks before Spicer ever weighed in.
On CNN’s “Table For Five,” Phillip pushed back on Moynihan’s point that the New York Post was suppressed or ignored by the Biden White House, insisting they never lost press passes. “Wait. Hold on. Did they, but did he take away the press passes and prevent them from covering the White House press conference?” Phillip asked.
Moynihan responded that the Post reporters “were not allowed to come to certain events.” Phillip pressed her further. “You’re not answering my question. Did he take away the press passes?”
A commentator on the panel tried to settle the semantic argument on Phillip’s behalf. Adam Mockler of Meidas Touch chimed in, “That’s what blanket means in this situation.”
Moynihan didn’t back down either. She noted the press passes are reinstated and added that Trump is “the most accessible president,” guessing “probably half of us have his number at this table. A lot more accessible than Biden.”
A Pattern That Goes Back Years, Not Days
Spicer has been on the other side of this exact fight before, and it goes back to his own time at the podium. Back in 2017, the White House blocked a number of news outlets, including The New York Times, CNN, Politico, and Al Jazeera, from covering a question-and-answer session with Spicer held in place of the daily press briefing.
CNN howled about press freedom then too, and it never seemed to notice its own selective memory.
The bigger issue Moynihan and Spicer both pointed toward never got resolved on the CNN panel. The New York Post had its social-media accounts suspended in the final weeks of the 2020 election over the Hunter Biden laptop story, a suppression effort that stretched across multiple platforms and lasted far longer than CNN’s current predicament. Big Tech censored that story before the 2020 election, and the same media figures now lecturing about press freedom had nothing to say about it at the time. CNN never cares when reporters from conservative-leaning outlets are sidelined or insulted by Democrat presidents and/or press secretaries.
What This Says About The Press Corps’ Priorities
Nobody should pretend the White House locking any outlet out of the briefing room is a good thing. Restricting press access ought to draw scrutiny no matter which party occupies the Oval Office, and the First Amendment protects reporters chasing stories that make a president uncomfortable regardless of who that president is.
But that scrutiny only counts if it applies consistently, and that’s exactly where CNN keeps tripping over itself.
When 442 journalists lost their long-term credentials under a Democrat administration, the outrage from Phillip and her colleagues amounted to a shrug. When three outlets, one of them her own employer, got locked out under a Republican, it became a First Amendment emergency worthy of a court fight and a sitting anchor personally sparring with a former press secretary on social media.
That’s the pattern Spicer was pointing to, and it’s hard to argue he got the facts wrong. The Biden White House did rewrite its credentialing rules in 2023, and hundreds of reporters who had passes before that rewrite didn’t have them after it. Whether AP wants to call that a “revocation” or a “renewal requirement” is a semantic argument, not a factual dispute, and Spicer made that point directly.
The same reporters who spent four years insisting the Trump White House represented a unique threat to a free press had remarkably little to say when the Biden White House quietly thinned out its own press corps using a paperwork technicality. Nobody at CNN ran wall-to-wall coverage of the 442 reporters who lost access in 2023. Nobody demanded congressional hearings. Nobody sued.
It took CNN itself losing access before the network suddenly rediscovered its love of the First Amendment.
That selective concern isn’t an accident, and it isn’t new. It’s the same dynamic that showed up when the New York Post got throttled across social media platforms over the Hunter Biden laptop story right before the 2020 election, a story that turned out to be entirely true and that Big Tech companies suppressed anyway. The press corps that now demands access to Trump’s briefing room never once demanded answers about that censorship campaign.
Spicer’s larger point still stands regardless of how the current lawsuit against Trump gets resolved. A press corps that only discovers its principles when its own credentials are on the line isn’t defending the First Amendment. It’s defending itself, and dressing that self-interest up as a constitutional crisis.
Sources: Mediaite, “Sean Spicer Squabbles With Abby Phillip Over Trump Press Ban: ‘Only Reason You Care Now Is Because It’s CNN'”; Irish Star; NewsBusters; Al Jazeera