‘Alarming!’ Law Professor on CNN Says It’s ‘Not a Stretch’ to Compare Trump’s Press Ban to J6
(These people are idiots!
Ahmad Austin Jr.
Sep 24th, 2026, 2:35 pm
A law professor said Thursday on CNN that President Donald Trump’s media ban was just as “egregious” as the January 6 Capitol riot.
Days after Trump’s stunning decision to ban CNN, MS NOW, and Politico from the White House, a judge ordered the administration to reverse its decision and allow them back on White House grounds. Until around noon Thursday, however, the White House refused to grant access to media members from those outlets.
Reacting to Trump’s initial ban — as well as the administration openly defying a court order —Georgetown University professor Michele Goodwin made the case that the situation was comparable to the 2021 riot at the Capitol complex.
“This is a losing issue for this administration,” Goodwin said, “but as [Brian Stelter] said, this is something that is deeply alarming and quite egregious. It is not a stretch to think about this in conversation with January 6th, in terms of thinking about how egregious it is.”
She continued:
Let’s put this in context. The First Amendment of the United States Constitution was proposed in 1789. That’s 237 years ago. Two-hundred and thirty-seven years of understanding freedom of the press, freedom of speech, freedom to petition your government.
Let’s also understand that it is almost a century of Supreme Court precedent that has further underscored freedom of the press. Explicit cases that have said that, whether it’s state legislatures, whether it’s the federal government, can’t impose what’s called prior restraints, which means you can’t think that the news media may say something that’s unfavorable to a president, to a governor, to a mayor and say, well, you just can’t cover. That is very clear, almost a century of precedent before the United States Supreme Court. So this is an administration that knew the law was not on its side.
https://www.mediaite.com/media/tv/alarming-law-professor-on-cnn-says-its-not-a-stretch-to-compare-trumps-press-ban-to-j6/