Barack Obama is calling out Republicans for sitting on their hands as Donald Trump wages war on the press, banning top outlets from the White House.
“You can’t do that and say that you are still living in a democracy,” Obama told historian Doris Kearns Goodwin during a sold-out event at Salem State University in Massachusetts.
The 44th president said that he was “not surprised” by Trump’s move to ban CNN, MS NOW, and Politico from the White House over unfavorable coverage, “because he’s that guy.”
“The president of the United States can’t take some criticism,” he quipped during the Monday event.
But Obama, 65, shamed Republicans for failing to speak up as Trump, 80, puts First Amendment protections under pressure.
“You do not have, as far as I can tell, any substantial group of Republicans who are standing up and saying, ‘No, you can’t do that, because we don’t want—if there’s a Democratic president—to be banning Fox News,’ or whatever other outlets that are going off on Democratic presidents,” the former president said, according to CNN.
“I’m trying to think what would have happened if I had said, you know what, Fox News, get out of here. It’s unimaginable,” he added. “This should not be a partisan issue. I want to underscore this. This should be something that rises above partisanship.”
With a few exceptions, most Republicans in Congress have remained silent on Trump’s press ban or defended it.
Sen. Ron Johnson, a MAGA Republican from Wisconsin, said, “I can understand why the president of the United States doesn’t want the news outlets that are aiding and abetting our enemies into his workspace,” according to MS NOW.
Asked on NBC’s Meet the Press whether Trump had violated the Constitution, Wyoming Sen. John Barrasso, the Senate Majority Whip, told Kristen Welker, “No, I believe the press has an obligation to report fairly.”
But Obama argued that keeping the press free from government interference was “foundational.”
“The free press, the idea that the government cannot discriminate against, or pick on, or bully, or exclude somebody because they don’t like the criticism that’s being leveled at them, that is a foundational issue,” the former president said.
Reached for comment, a White House spokesperson told the Daily Beast, “Refer you to the President’s TRUTH posts.”
Trump suddenly banned the three outlets in a Truth Social tirade on Friday, saying it was “a result of their constant ‘reporting’ FAKE NEWS!”
The White House has since recast the ban as a national-security measure, after the outlets sued Trump and argued that it violates the First and Fifth Amendments, citing the president’s own words as evidence that the ban stemmed from anger over unfavorable coverage, not legitimate security or logistical concerns.
The White House has also published a press release claiming Trump’s ban is “nothing new,” pointing to Obama’s time in the White House.
Obama, however, never banned outlets from the White House. The nearest Obama-era parallel was a far more limited episode in 2009, when his Treasury Department briefly left out Fox News from a group interview with executive-pay czar Kenneth R. Feinberg, but quickly reversed course after pushback from the other outlets.
