It’s been a busy week for news about the news, what with three major news outlets now banned from the White House grounds. All three are suing President Donald Trump’s administration on First Amendment grounds, and may potentially win, given the history of these things.
That said, one of the banned outlets, Politico, proved exactly why they’re not welcome at 1600 Pennsylvania for the moment in a 2025 exchange with Sebastian Gorka, deputy assistant to the president and senior director for counterterrorism in the Trump administration. It’s now going viral again thanks to Gorka, who posted it to remind everybody why the left-leaning Beltway outlet got a ban in the first place.
For those of you who missed it, on Friday, Trump announced on Truth Social that Politico, along with CNN and MS NOW, were banned for “their constant ‘reporting’ FAKE NEWS!”
“Media Outlets shouldn’t be able to constantly write or report FICTION and LIES when they’re covering the President of the United States, the Trump Administration, or the United States of America.”
According to The Associated Press, the three outlets filed suit Monday, saying that the First Amendment “does not allow a president or any other government official to deprive the press of their First Amendment rights and liberty and property interests with no notice or process based solely on his dislike of the content of their reporting.”
It’s worth noting that we’ve been through this wringer before with Jim Acosta’s preposterous reportage during the first Trump administration and, after CNN sued, his credentials were restored. Politico reported that the judge in the case was a Trump appointee who nevertheless restored Acosta’s pass in 2018, so it’s unlikely that this goes much differently.
Who had/has a more transparent White House: Donald Trump or Joe Biden?
One should not be so interested in that as in the fact that a president would take this step at all, and why he would take it. Gorka reminded us by taking us back to May of 2025, when he was at the Politico Security Summit and speaking to the outlet’s White House bureau chief, Dasha Burns.
Burns was Very Concerned™ about the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the alleged MS-13 gang member who was rounded up by Immigration and Customs Enforcement and returned to his native El Salvador; he was brought back after a judge ruled that he couldn’t be deported to there. His case is still working its way through the justice system and he remains free under ICE supervision, but the reporting on him as a “Maryland father” was grossly out of line.
Yet, Politico was buying it and Dasha Burns wasn’t buying that Abrego Garcia had ties to a gang, implying in a question that Gorka and others in the administration thought “it’s OK to skirt due process.”
“Never happened. Due process has never been skirted,” Gorka responded. “Politico used the ‘Maryland father,’ fake news — Maryland father, twice adjudicated by an immigration judge to be here illegally and to be deported. An individual who’s arrested on body cam footage, anyone watching right now can watch him being stopped by local police with seven illegals in his vehicle and no driving license. An individual who’s arrested on body cam footage, anyone watching right now can watch him being stopped by local police with seven illegals in his vehicle and no driving license. And this is a Maryland father for Politico.”
He added that MS-13 had been declared a foreign terrorist organization, and noted that Abrego Garcia had tattoos on his knuckles strongly suggestive of MS-13 membership.
“The tattoo did not say MS-13,” Burns said, quickly adding, “I don’t want to get into that.”
And away Gorka went.
“It’s just accidents that the four symbols represent the letters MS-13,” he said. “This is why Politico is a joke. This is why you are gutter press and fake news. That those four symbols that just happen to comport with the letters MS and the numbers 13 don’t in this case represent MS-13? You’re sitting here live defending a member of MS-13. That’s why I regret coming here, because this isn’t journalism.”
Gorka then noted that Politico was more interested in deportation of illegals than those killed by illegals, like Jocelyn Nungaray, a Texas 12-year-old raped and killed, allegedly by two individuals described by CNN as “undocumented men from Venezuela.” Of course.
He then told a story about Rep. Dan Crenshaw, who “told me a story once of a 16-year-old girl who came, was smuggled across this border.”
“The parents paid $5,000 for her to live in America, the land of milk and honey. She ended up locked in a room in New York, raped by more than a dozen men every day for 18 months until she escaped. She went to Dan Crenshaw’s office … that girl said to him, please close the border so another girl doesn’t have to be raped by 12 strange men every day for 18 months.”
“It’s strange that Politico doesn’t cover those stories. Could you tell me why?”
Burns, you will not be surprised to learn, couldn’t really:
Do you want to really know why President @realDonaldTrump is banning “media” outlets like @POLITICO from the @WhiteHouse?
Here’s why: pic.twitter.com/k0mqos5X0R
— Sebastian Gorka DrG (@SebGorka) September 19, 2026
But again, Politico was always slow on the uptake, and Burns wanted to “move on.” I bet she did.
This is the problem that the Trump Derangement Syndrome outlets have had with the administration: They want to cover it on their own terms and still be treated as nonpartisan outlets. For years, this worked. It still does, to a certain extent, but now nobody trusts the narrative outside their own bubble. In case you needed a reminder how it got that way, Gorka was more than happy to provide it.
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