by Paul Farhi and Felicia Sonmez July 25 at 10:00 PM
A CNN reporter said she was blocked from an open media event at the White House on Wednesday after officials objected to questions she asked President Trump at an event earlier in the day. Reporter Kaitlan Collins said press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders and communications director Bill Shine told her she was banned from a late-afternoon announcement in the Rose Garden involving Trump and European Union president Jean-Claude Juncker a few hours after she sought to question Trump during a press-pool “spray” in the Oval Office.
Blocking a credentialed White House reporter from an event open to all members of the media is highly unusual and possibly unprecedented, and it marks another low point in the Trump White House’s highly strained relationship with the news media. It wasn’t clear whether Shine and Sanders were acting on their own against Collins or were carrying out a directive from Trump himself.