Jonathan Karl, Scalise Spar Over Media Ban

House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) defended President Donald Trump’s ban on three news organizations from the White House, which led to a war of words with ABC’s Jonathan Karl.

The exchange happened Sunday morning on ABC’s “This Week.”

Karl asked Scalise if he supported Trump banning CNN, MSNBC and Politico from the White House.

“Do you support him banning these news organizations because he doesn’t like what they’re reporting?” Karl asked.

“First of all, I don’t think we’ve had a president that’s been more open to the press,” Scalise said. “Look…you go to a bill signing with President Trump, and the first thing he does before he even signs the bill is he brings in the press, and everybody gets to not only take pictures but ask questions.

“Go look at Joe Biden. Joe Biden removed the press credentials from over 400 different agencies. You know, what President Trump’s done has brought a lot of those back in. But he wants a free and fair press,” the lawmaker continued. “He’s … been to the White House Correspondents Dinner. He just the other day was answering questions about this to the press and they’re asking him about his attitude towards the press while he’s holding a press conference. You never saw that under President Biden.”

Karl responded by disputing the claims made in recent days.

“That’s actually not true about Biden,” Karl said. “The 400 individual reporters who had credentials 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. That did not happen!”

“[Trump] is now banning CNN, MSNBC and Politico from the White House,” Karl said. “Do you support him doing that? Do you think it violates the First Amendment?”

“Well, I don’t know why he did it. I don’t know what the background is. Look, when we have our press conferences every week, the speaker, myself, our leadership team, we take questions from everybody,” Scalise said. “CNN’s there, all of them. But the president takes those questions. I’ve never seen him turn a question down from anybody. Again, I’ve been in the room with the president when he’s taking questions from the press. And again, most of the time, it goes over a half hour, almost an hour long. Where he takes questions from everybody, and some of them are very hostile questions, and the president sits there and takes them, answers them all.”

“OK,” Karl replied. “Well, I guess he’s not gonna be taking questions, at least from those three news organizations, because they are banned from the White House.”