New York Times spokesperson calls Trump's announcement "yet another retaliatory and unconstitutional threat"
Newspaper, in a statement by spokesperson Charlie Stadtlander posted by NYTimes Communications
“The president’s statement today is yet another retaliatory and unconstitutional threat. The Times stands in support of the news organizations being unfairly targeted by the president.”
Source and context
Original post
About this source
Post from The Times's communications account quote-posting its breaking-news alert. The spokesperson's statement is in the attached image's alt text, which was read through the fxtwitter API (created 23:56:54 UTC on September 18, 2026); TheWrap carries the same wording.
Original video
About this source
Official White House video of the President's health-care event in the Oval Office on September 18, 2026, which began at about 3:38 PM EDT and ran 56 minutes. YouTube auto-captions garble words in this video (they render "bans" as "bands"), so the audio was transcribed with whisper large-v3-turbo and the quoted passage checked against that transcript. Transcription adds punctuation but no words.
Before the quotation
Trump said in the Oval Office that The New York Times and The Washington Post are "fake news", that "We're probably not going to display the paper anymore in the White House, those papers," and that "we haven't taken the step of throwing them out." The Times statement was posted at 7:56 PM EDT.
After the quotation
The statement is one of several institutional responses to the announcement on September 18 and 19.
How this statement is classified
Case context: Should President Trump bar CNN, MS NOW and Politico from the White House over their coverage?
The label describes this statement’s response within the context above.
Why this label?
The case's fixed reference point is President Trump's announcement on September 18, 2026 that CNN, MS NOW and Politico are banned from the White House because of their coverage, as reaffirmed in the Oval Office that afternoon. The Times, which Trump named in the Oval Office as fake news and a possible next target, calls the announcement retaliatory and unconstitutional. The closest competing label is challenges_characterization, because the statement is partly about how the administration treats the press generally. That loses because it expressly characterizes the announcement as unconstitutional retaliation and supports the targeted outlets.
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- Donald Trump
Should President Trump bar CNN, MS NOW and Politico from the White House over their coverage?
Explore the case context, sources and public responses.
More from this case
Read the full caseMS NOW
“MS NOW intends to take any and all steps necessary to defend our First Amendment rights and the essential role of independent journalism in our democracy.”Read statement
The White House
“The White House declined to comment further Saturday, referring NBC News to Trump’s previous comments.”Read statement
Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression
“When the White House opens its doors to the press, it must comply with the First Amendment. The president is as free as any other person to criticize media coverage. But he can’t ban outlets from the White House just because he doesn’t like their reporting or commentary.”Read statement