Evidence item

AP reports an explicit unfavorable-coverage rationale and a later national-security rationale, but does not document that Trump acted to hide poor polling or presidential failures; this qualifies the broader causal claim. DIRECT_TEXT

Authenticity UNVERIFIED · extraction UNVERIFIED · independence group none (unreviewed) · created seq 11691

Source: Judge blocks Trump's White House ban on CNN, MS NOW and Politico · locator {} · excerpt hash sha256:27cf5c696fc744827c5256fb18e36f02ab7ab041846f2581a5aa2296705808cf

Trump first announced he was banning the outlets Friday, assailing what he called “fake news,” and only later arguing that their reporting was a risk to national security. The outlets argued in a joint lawsuit that the ban was a blatant violation of the First Amendment because it singled them out for the content of their coverage.