Opinion: How a Mitt Romney op-ed became Exhibit B in Trump’s defense of the White House media ban

A version of this article was first published in the Right to the Point newsletter. Sign up to receive the newsletter in your inbox every Wednesday morning and to vote in subscriber-only polls.

Read more Polls: Do Utah voters differ from the rest of the nation in their support of the Iran War?

The most divisive president in recent memory brought about a remarkable moment of unity when Donald Trump banned CNN, MS NOW and Politico from the White House. Besides the predictable howls of outrage from the political left, the right also stood up and said, “No, sir, you can’t do that” to the president.

Brit Hume and Jonathan Turley are among those who have spoken out against the ban, as the banned outlets wait for a judge’s ruling on the issue. The New York Times reported Wednesday that Judge Timothy J. Kelly of the U.S. District Court in Washington “seemed skeptical of the administration’s arguments” and would rule on the case soon.

Earlier, Fox News joined with CNN and the Big Three legacy networks in issuing a statement that read: “The public has a vital interest in receiving accurate, independent information about its government. No administration should restrict a news organization because it objects to its reporting.”

It’s unclear whether Trump anticipated the unified blowback, and whether this was just a stunt devised to distract the media and redirect our collective attention. But the administration on Monday posted a defense of its action on the White House website, one that invokes an incident involving Barack Obama and Mitt Romney.

In 2011, The Boston Herald published an op-ed by Romney that consumed the tabloid’s front page. A reporter for the Herald was later denied access to a Boston fundraiser for Obama, and a White House spokesman pointed out the op-ed and its placement as justification for the reporter’s exclusion.

Per Mediaite, then-White House spokesman Matt Lehrich told the Herald, “We tend to consider the degree to which papers have demonstrated to covering the White House regularly and fairly in determining local pool reporters.”

He added: “My point about the op-ed was not that you ran it but that it was the full front page, which excluded any coverage of the visit of a sitting US President to Boston. I think that raises a fair question about whether the paper is unbiased in its coverage of the President’s visits.”

The op-ed no longer appears to be in the Boston Herald archives, but a summary of it published by the Deseret News the week it ran said it criticized Obama’s economic policies, which Romney had described as the “Obama Misery Index.”

Given the likelihood of a “Trump Misery Index” going viral this fall, the administration may come to regret bringing this matter to our attention. But it is one of nine examples of restricted press access by the Obama and Biden administrations cited as justification for Friday’s announcement.

“For years, Democrat Administrations have restricted, punished, and locked out the press,” the White House news release says, sounding much like a child arguing that something bad that he did is OK because his brother or sister once did it, too.

It goes on: “No President is required to host a hostile operation on the grounds. Access has always been a privilege — and President Trump is applying that rule.”

To describe Politico as a “hostile operation” is hyperbole to the extreme, even if you don’t like what some of its reporters write. And Trump’s action is bewilderingly at odds with some of his other behavior toward the media.

On one hand, he has been one of the most accessible presidents to the press, not changing his cellphone number even though it’s widely known and used by reporters. (“Literally everybody” has the number, former press secretary Karoline Leavitt told Sean Hannity on his podcast.) On the other, he has coldly and cruelly insulted individual reporters and broadly painted the outlets they work for as “fake news.”

Theirs is a symbiotic relationship, with both sides needing the other. Many will argue that Trump needs the attention the most and will soon cave, but the people betting on the question on Kalshi right now say there’s only a 27% chance that Trump will relent before Nov. 1.

The average person, however, pays no attention to what media outlets are present at any given presidential event, so this is the ultimate inside-the-Beltway test of wills.

A new gig for Matt Calkins

Matt Calkins, the Seattle Times columnist who resigned after the newspaper wouldn’t run a piece he wrote about two women who support WNBA player Sophie Cunningham and her position on transgender athletes in women’s sports, has a new job.

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The multimedia platform OutKick, owned by Fox Corp., has hired Calkins to write columns on sports and culture, Fox News Digital announced.

OutKick was founded by Clay Travis, the talk-show host who, along with Buck Sexton, occupies the late Rush Limbaugh’s time slot on the Premiere radio network. It is home to podcasts by Riley Gaines and Tomi Lahren, among others.

As I wrote just after Calkins left the Seattle Times, there is a cost to speaking your mind, but there is also a reward if you play your cards right. Increasingly, it seems that things that used to get people canceled and deplatformed now get them publicity and new jobs.

Here’s Calkins’ latest column for OutKick: 5 tough questions Colin Kaepernick didn’t hear during his media tour.

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Naomi Schaefer Riley recently sat in on a parents meeting when she took her son to college and was astonished to hear an administrator talking about 18-year-olds like they are babies.

“Things began on an optimistic note about the adventure ahead but then quickly descended into worst-case scenarios. ‘Many of your kids will call wanting to come home,’ one dean warned us. Really? I looked around the auditorium wondering how many of our 18-year-olds were going to ask to leave. What was not to like?”

The college students who need to ‘self-soothe’

The images of Sen. Mitch McConnell returning to Congress after an extended, unexplained absence did not silence debate about whether or not he belongs there. Jay Evensen explains why age limits might sound good, but are problematic.

“A poll by the Deseret News and the Hinckley Institute of Politics, conducted in 2023, found 64% of Utahns agreeing there should be a maximum age limit for elected officials. That’s a decisive majority, at least at first blush. It fell apart quickly, however, when asked what that limit should be. The highest percentage, 48%, said 70, while 22% said 80 and 15% said 60. The smallest cohort, 2%, would allow up to 90. Perhaps this is because many of us know people in their 90s, like Grassley, who are bright and capable of a high level of functioning, and many of us also know people much younger who are not.”

When it comes to public service, it’s not about a specific age

A lot of people tell us we should have conversations with people different from us. Mónica Guzmán has done just that, and her experience might not be what you’d think.

“This is a far cry from what many people assume is ‘healthy dialogue.’ But that’s where they’re missing something important. Dialogue at its most mature form can and maybe should include a sharing of honest frustrations and even a pressing of each other.”

If you’ve stopped talking with your political opposite, you’re missing out on a lot of fun

End Notes

In last week’s Right to the Point subscriber poll, we considered the question “Should academic visas for international students and professors be capped at four years?” (The Trump administration is trying to do that.)

Only about 16% of us stand with Trump on this issue. A larger share wants to extend their visas for five or six years (more in line with how long it takes American students to finish their degrees), and even more say they should be able to stay in the U.S. as long as they are working or studying.

Here are a few of your comments:

• “Students of any background may take longer than four years, for a number of valid reasons, to finish an undergraduate degree. For example, I took a semester off between sophomore and junior years of college in order to work to raise funds for subsequent college semesters.”
• “Capping at 4 incentivizes them to work hard, study hard, apply themselves towards their chosen degree. Then they should return to their homeland and strengthen their home country with their new skills.”
• “These are exactly the type of people that we should be welcoming to America. If they are being educated here, we should also allow them to stay and contribute towards our country’s continuing success.”
• “We lose when we limit the potential of talent.”

Finally, if you listen to that Sean Hannity podcast I mentioned above, you might notice that he mentions a journalist in the room a couple of times. That was me. I visited the set of Hannity’s podcast for a forthcoming profile while he was taping an episode with Karoline Leavitt last week, and although the phrase “fake news” did come up once or twice in their conversation, I found both to be exceptionally warm and friendly.

Honestly, the most jarring thing about the experience was landing at what used to be Palm Beach International, or PBI.

That said, it wasn’t as jarring as landing at Clinton National in Little Rock would be.

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