Watch: Obama Walks Into Own Trap, Trashes Trump WH for Booting CNN, Then Video of His WH Booting Fox Hits

Those who live in glass houses should not throw stones.

The hypocrisy of President Obama condemning President Trump from excluding certain members of the press is almost laughable.

On Friday, our 44th president sat before students at Colgate University in a wide-ranging discussion about AI, democracy, and Trump’s recent eviction of CNN, MS NOW, and Politico,

“I’m trying to think what would have happened if I had said, ‘You know what, Fox News? Get out of here.’” Obama said. “It’s unimaginable.”

No it’s not. In fact, it happened in the first year Obama was in the White House.

Look what I found.

In October 2009, David Axelrod, senior adviser to the Obama administration, argued on ABC News that Fox News was not a “real news organization.” The Obama White House later excluded Fox News from a pool interview with Treasury official Kenneth Feinberg and… pic.twitter.com/JJDbsqcMFe

— I Meme Therefore I Am 🇺🇸 (@ImMeme0) September 20, 2026

In an Oct. 18, 2009, episode of the ABC News Sunday show “This Week,” Obama senior adviser David Axelrod argued that Fox News wasn’t a real news organization and that it shouldn’t be treated that way, as Politico reported at the time. Following that interview, the Obama White House attempted to keep Fox out of a round-robin interview with a top Treasury official in the Obama administration.

The administration suggested that the incident was all just an accident, but s uncovered in 2011 by the conservative group Judicial Watch revealed that the attempted exclusion was quite intentional.

In an Oct. 22, 2009, regarding a White House pool interview with the Treasury official, Dag Vega, then the director of broadcast media for the Obama White House, wrote Jenni LeCompte, then-assistant secretary for public affairs at the Treasury Department with a very specific request:

“Let me know which cables you add … and, we’d prefer if you’d skip Fox please,” he wrote.

It’s couched politely enough, but it’s a direct White House directive to leave Fox out of an important news event.

As Fox News reported on Oct. 23, 2009, the attempt failed, thanks to other networks rallying around Fox.

In the hours and days that followed, the Obama communications team spent a good deal of time and effort attempting to deny it had tried to exclude Fox in that specific incident, but as one that Judicial Watch turned up showed, in the process it basically proved that the White House not only was willing to take that kind of action against Fox, but that it had done so.

In the , Josh Earnest, then-deputy White House press secretary, essentially bragged about the White House’s power to hurt a network it didn’t like.

“We have demonstrated our ability and willingness to exclude Fox News from significant interviews – but yesterday, we didn’t,” Earnest wrote in the Oct. 23, 2009, .

For Earnest, that might have counted as a denial. For a normal person, it’s a damning confession that the Obama White House had no qualms about taking action against a media outlet it disapproved of.

Fox, however, was not the only target of exclusion during Obama’s presidency. His administration consistently restricted the access of all members of the press. Oftentimes, the only photographs given to the public were those taken and approved by White House staff — not independent photographers.

Journalist and political commentator Amy Holmes argued in a 2013 CNN roundtable that these news releases from the White House were starting to “smack of propaganda.” She concluded that “finally, it seems possible that the media love affair with this administration might be over and they’re no longer willing to be lapdogs taking predigested tidbits.”

MUST WATCH. With all the gaslighting going on about Obama and his supposed transparency with the press, this is the a great reminder of the truth.

2013. CNN’s Brian Stelter does a segment on the growing frustration of the press over not being given access to Obama.

Stelter’s… pic.twitter.com/8tUFpwDuKO

— MAZE (@mazemoore) September 20, 2026

It is possible that media outlets were becoming disillusioned with the controlling behavior of the White House, but even after 38 major news organizations sent a joint letter of protest, the Obama administration ignored their concerns and continued with the status quo.

Despite his avoidance of reporters, limits of non-approved photography, and exclusion of content-based journalists, not one liberal news outlet accused Obama of being a fascist. They never described him as authoritarian or censorious, “an enemy to a free press,” or an “existential threat to democracy.”

Trump on the other hand, has received all of these epithets, even though according to CNN’s Kaitlan Collins, he is such an “accessible president.” In fact, in May, The Associated Press reported on a study that showed that Trump had spoken to journalists more in his first 100 days in office than all previous presidents, including Obama.

Whether or not you agree with Trump’s decision to remove CNN, MS NOW, and Politico from the White House press pool, it’s easy to understand why he calls them “fake news.” The hypocrisy is clear.

Speaking of hypocrisy, it is well to remember that Obama has been using this blame tactic for years now. He’ll constantly accuse Trump of a crime of which he is equally guilty (use of executive orders, strict immigration enforcement, challenging constitutional norms).

The Obama administration might be history, but its ridiculous double standards will never pass away.

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