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Jim Acosta
Hey guys. This is a breaking news edition of the Jim Acosta Show. I was just signing off a few moments ago, but when I'm signing back on because the Associated Press has won it, I guess you could call it round one in its fight over its assets to covering Trump at the White House against Donald Trump. A federal. This is according to the New York Times. This was just happening, I guess as I was signing off last hour. Forgive me. New York Times says federal judge orders the White House to restore the Associated Press's access to certain White House events and agreed that it had been taken, I guess singled out. The New York Times says over its editorial decision. Let's dive into this. This is coming in from the New York Times. They just posted their story at 5:07pm is literally when I was coming off of the show. But I'm going to just go ahead and do this as a breaking news edition of the Jim Acosta Show. Judge Trevor N. McFadden of the Federal District Court for the District of Washington wrote in his opinion that the Trump administration must, quote, immediately rescind their viewpoint based denial of the Associated Press from the White House press corps. This is what the judge wrote. The government repeatedly characterizes the AP's request as a demand for special access. But that is not what the AP is asking for and it is not what the court orders. All the AP wants and all it gets is a level play playing field. Basically this all came to head, folks. We've been talking about this for some time that the Associated Press, and forgive me, I put all my equipment away, no lights. You just got me raw and unfiltered here. The Associated Press refused to buckle to Donald Trump's demand that, that the press refer to the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America, which I've called on this program many times. A silly, stupid thing. The Associated Press made the right and correct decision, the right and correct editorial decision to continue calling the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of Mexico, because that's what it is. It's not the Gulf of America. That's silliness. And the Associated Press sued and as a matter of fact, in their lawsuit, last time I did one of these breaking reports to you was when I was at the airport in Boston. I think it was when I was reading the lawsuit that the AP had filed against members of the Trump White House. That lawsuit mentioned my press pass case that took place back in 2018. The Associated Press cited my case as one of these reasons why the judge should not let Trump get away with this. And you'll recall, you know, when we were going through the lawsuit, I believe it was Caroline Levitt, the White House press secretary, who admitted somewhere along the way this was cited in the Associated Press lawsuit, that it was Trump who was directing her and her office to do this. And so this is Trump trying to do this, trying to attack the press. And this is why I've been saying this time and again that folks need to have some semblance of hope that the guardrails of our democracy will hold. They're going to get beat up, they're going to get banged up. Sometimes the car is going to crash through the guardrails. I agree. There's no question about it. I'm not trying to minimize things. But this is an example that our courts can work and hopefully this is a sign of that. Now, of course, I fully expect, and perhaps I'll be wrong about this, but I fully expect that Trump and the White House will try to appeal this. They're going to try to go to the Supreme Court. He sees the Supreme Court as his get out of jail free card and perhaps he'll try to take it there and we'll see what happens. But this is at least an initial sign. I wish this had happened during the regular edition of the Jim Acosta, you're getting the breaking news edition of it. But this is at least some semblance that the courts understand what's at stake here. You cannot have the president of the United States, can't have the White House discriminate against a news outlet for content reasons, for editorial reasons, for the way they report the news. If we go down that road, we become like Russia and Hungary and all of these God awful places where they don't have freedom of the press. We can't do that in this country, folks. And so forgive the raw and unfiltered edition here or this breaking news edition of the Jim Acosta show. But I wanted to make sure folks got this breaking news. I saw some people at the end of the last hour say, Jim, there was some development the AP case. And I was actually, as I was trying to wrap up, I was trying to Google some of this and see if I could find it. Couldn't find it in time. Didn't want to get anything wrong. But now that I'm seeing this, it is in the New York Times. The Hill is also reporting this says a federal judge on Tuesday ordered the Trump administration to restore the Associated Press's access to key White House spaces after it exiled AP reporters over the organization's refusal to gallery or to use Gulf of America in its popular style book. Oh, this is an interesting little wrinkle in all this. The judge in this case, U.S. district Judge Trevor McFadden, is an appointee of President Trump. He directed the White House to resume allowing the AP into the Oval Office, Air Force One and other limited spaces when they're made available to other press pool members. What's interesting about that, in my case, it was also a Trump appointed judge who ruled against Trump and the White House. So if you're listening over at the White House, I doubt that there are subscribers of my substack. Maybe they're secret subscribers. Maybe it's possible there are some people at the Trump White House who are secret subscribers of the Jim Acosta show. This is very, very possible. I don't want to rule that out, but I doubt it very seriously. But if somebody could tell the folks over at the White House that the First Amendment still means something in this country, the Constitution still means something in this country. Freedom of speech, freedom of the press still means something in this country. You can't take it away because your feelings are hurt because you, you, you're pissed because they won't call something that it isn't, something that it isn't. They're not going to call the Gulf of Mexico, the Gulf of America because it's a cockamamie, silly, stupid idea. It's bullshit. We're not going to make your, our, there's already enough bullshit in the world. So maybe he's busy enough right now screwing around with the economy and screwing around with all these other things that he, maybe they won't want to mess with the, when my case went down and they lost and the judge ruled against them, they kind of just threw up their hands and said, okay, whatever. And they let me back into the White House and I did my thing. I hope that that's what they do with the Associated Press. But Donald Trump, you need to understand that we have a constitution in this country. You can go out on the campaign trail, you go out on fox, and you can say, I'm going to tear up the Constitution. And you can say all of the kooky, cockamamie things that you say. It doesn't mean you can do that, doesn't mean you can tear up the Constitution, doesn't mean you can tear up the First Amendment, doesn't mean you can tear up freedom of the press just because you want to do it. You want to call something the Gulf of America. And he has that map in the Oval Office that says the Gulf of America on it. And he's, he's, he's perfectly free as an American to have a goofy map in the Oval Office that says Gulf of America on it. Nobody's stopping you, Donald Trump, from having a goofy map in the Oval Office that says Gulf of America on it. That's not what this is about here. This is about forcing a news organization to call it something when it's not called that because of the silliness that is going on inside your head. So I just wanted to jump in with the breaking news. Federal judge earlier today ordered the Trump White House to restore the Associated Press's access to key White House spaces after it exiled the ap. This is according to the Hill over the organization's refusal to use Gulf of America. It's a victory for the First Amendment. It's a victory for free speech, victory for freedom of the press. And with that, that's all for this breaking news edition of the Jim Acosta Show. Thanks for tuning in. I'll see you guys tomorrow. Take care, everybody. Bye.