The 10 Silliest Quotes from the Lawsuit Brought by CNN, MS NOW, Politico Against WH Ban

On Monday, CNN teamed up with MS NOW (the artist formerly known as MSNBC) and Politico in a joint lawsuit against the Trump administration and a litany of officials, demanding their access to the White House grounds be restored after Friday’s shocking, unilateral ban by President Trump. Since then, of course, the three have relished the spotlight and cloaking themselves in martyrdom we are to applaud, and not demand a modicum of humility.

The 26-page lawsuit brought by famed press attorney Theodore Boutrous and the firm Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher leaned heavily on the premise that not only were the First Amendment rights of these outlets violated, but also their Fifth Amendment rights because they argued they were given insufficient notice of the ban.

So none of you have to, NewsBusters slogged through the filing, and below are ten of the lamest, silliest, and most pompous arguments sent to U.S. D.C. District Judge William Kelly.

 

1. We Don’t Report False News!

On page one, there was this farcical take:

On Friday, September 18, 2026, President Donald J. Trump announced that he was “banning” journalists with three news organizations—CNN, MS NOW, and POLITICO—from the White House “effective immediately’” for one simple reason: He dislikes the content of their coverage of him and his administration. The President was expressly clear about his viewpoint discriminatory motive for targeting CNN, MS NOW, and POLITICO. He called it the “result of their constant “reporting” FAKE NEWS!”—a term he routinely applies not to reporting that is false, but to any reporting he dislikes.

Breitbart’s John Nolte has compiled a running list of hoaxes peddled by CNN, which our friend @RoadMN made into a graphic on X:

Our Nick Fondacaro would want added this critical black eye CNN suffered in January 2025 when it was found criminally liable for defaming former Navy SEAL Zachary Young in its 2021 reporting about the fall of Afghanistan.

Many of these same lies apply to MS NOW. More recently, Stacey Abrams claimed without evidence on their air that the South has been in a state of “soft authoritarianism....since, oh, 1776.”

Last year, for example, Deadline: White House host Nicolle Wallace falsely blamed President Trump for a fire at a South Caroline judge’s home even though authorities said arson did not play a role. And, in April 2021, now-Senator Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) said without pushback that Republicans want to see “Americans murdered.”

 

2. Stop! Help! I’ve Been Murdered!

There was also this hot take on page one: “This ban could not be a more direct assault on the First Amendment nor a more blatant violation of our most fundamental constitutional principles.”

We can think of something that’d be more of an “assault” and “violation” of someone’s “constitutional principles”: Throwing them in jail or “disappearing” them, like in China or Russia.

One can disagree with the ban, but don’t pull up a fainting couch. None of these journalists have anywhere near the same level of courage as Jimmy Lai in Hong Kong or the late Russian Alexei Navalny.

 

3. Overstating One’s Self-Importance

Page 10 included two hilarious, laugh-out-loud assertions: “CNN, MS NOW, and POLITICO are widely read and watched news sources in the United States...President Trump has frequently attacked CNN, MS NOW, and POLITICO, along with other media outlets, for the content of their news coverage.”

Globally, the web-traffic site SimilarWeb clocked CNN.com at number 12 worldwide, whereas MSNOW.com and Politico were not even in the top 50. In the United States, only CNN cracked the top five with a fourth-place standing, behind FoxNews.com (third), The New York Times (second), and Yahoo! News (first).

Ratings-wise, our friend @RoadMN had MS NOW in second for total viewers among all cable channels in August 2025, with CNN in fifth.

 

4. Just Because You Say Something Doesn’t Make It True

The lawsuit took particular objection on page 13 to President Trump raising the issue of government subscriptions to Politico, writing:

The President also reiterated his claim about an “illegal” subscription to POLITICO, a categorically false and debunked claim which is clearly not the driver behind the President’s actions—as he made clear when he again emphasized that, in his view, POLITICO “write[s] only negative” coverage.

A more accurate depiction is the fact that taxpayer funds went to Politico in subscriptions to its paywalled content. So, it’s quite lazy and a game of semantics for the suit to dismiss this claim out of hand. Also, if something’s egregiously false, why not state in a sentence why it’s wrong? Insisting the public trust you isn’t going to cut it.

 

5. Our Livelihoods Depend on It!

Citing the case against then-Playboy contributor Brian Karem in August 2019, the suit said this on page 15:

White House reporters’ “First Amendment interest depends on [their] ability to freely pursue journalistically productive conversations with White House officials”—and without access to the White House, reporters “lack[] the access to pursue those conversations—even as an eavesdropper.” Id. at 216–17. Because “the news is timesensitive and occurs spontaneously, that lack of access cannot be remedied retrospectively.”

In other words, there’s a fear there won’t be as many anonymously sourced stories if they were to remain on the grounds.

Fewer anonymously-sourced stories? Sign us up for that!

 

6. Our “Liberty” Is at Stake!

It’s a legal declaration (and thus not directly literal), but the phrasing here on page 17 reeked of pomposity: “Defendants have deprived Plaintiffs and their reporters of their liberty and property interests in maintaining their hard passes and accessing White House grounds.”

 

7. The Public Will Be Dumber If We Weren’t There to Tell Them What to Think!

Pages 19 and 20 contained one of the most eye-roll-inducing proclamations as the lawyers for CNN, MS NOW, and Politico insisted the American citizenry won’t be able to make proper judgments about the Trump administration without them:

Retaliation is particularly pernicious when directed against the press, because “[w]ithout an unfettered press, citizens would be far less able to make informed political, social, and economic choices”; “the press’ function as a vital source of information is weakened whenever the ability of journalists to gather news is impaired.” Zerilli v. Smith, 656 F.2d 705, 711 (D.C. Cir. 1981).

 

8. American Life Is Improved by Our Presence Harassing Trump

Speaking of comical arrogance, there was another such missive further down the page about the public being harmed by their absences:

And as reflected in the Press Clause of the First Amendment, “[t]he Constitution specifically selected the press . . . to play an important role in the discussion of public affairs.” Mills v. Alabama, 384 U.S. 214, 219 (1966). “Suppression” of the press “muzzles one of the very agencies the Framers of our Constitution thoughtfully and deliberately selected to improve our society and keep it free.” Id. All told, speech about official action “is an essential mechanism of democracy” that “hold[s] officials accountable to the people.” Citizens United v. Fed. Election Comm’n, 558 U.S. 310, 339 (2010).

In other words, the last two passages make one thing clear: These journalists believe the First Amendment applies more to them than we, the people. It’s as though, based on their profession, they are more important than anyone else.

 

9. Perception Is Reality

Another short, tacky line was on page 23: “President Trump has expressly targeted Plaintiffs based on their perceived editorial viewpoints—targeting the “particular views taken by speakers on a subject.” Rosenberger, 515 U.S. at 829.” 

“Perceived”?

 

10. Doubling Down on Being Foolproof

Finally, we turn to page 24, where the Plaintiffs said their clients leveling anything short of pristine accounts of current events is foolhardy:

And the exclusion criteria here—that the President perceives a journalist’s reporting as “fake” or “negative”—are so vague and arbitrary that they cannot count as a “sensible basis for distinguishing what may come in from what must stay out” and are thus unreasonable. Mansky, 585 U.S. at 16.

As we established earlier (or, if you were to have a pulse and a working conscience), this is an insult to the country’s intelligence.