Ari Fleischer
Role at the time: Former White House press secretary and Fox News contributor, on his personal X account
Statement summary
Fox News contributor and former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer wrote on X that he agrees with President Trump that several media outlets covering the White House are biased and unfair, but that excluding them is not the solution. He urged opening the pool and the briefing room to conservatives to challenge liberal reporters, and warned that conservatives could someday be excluded in the same way.
“Banning them from the WH is not the solution.”
Fleischer's own long-form post (about 57 words) on his X account (id 35218566, verified badge). Read in full through https://api.fxtwitter.com/AriFleischer/status/2101049132895126013 and cross-checked against X's syndication endpoint (author, timestamp, opening text) and the timestamp encoded in the post ID. The post's first sentence says he agrees with President Trump that several media outlets covering the White House are biased and unfair. The post does not name CNN, MS NOW or Politico; its connection to the announcement rests on its timing (about 1 hour 38 minutes after Trump's 3:04 PM EDT post), its topic (excluding outlets from the White House) and Mediaite's same-evening reading of it as a reaction to the announcement.
Why we used this label
The case's fixed reference point is President Trump's announcement, by Truth Social post and again in the Oval Office on September 18, 2026, that CNN, MS NOW and Politico are banned from the White House because of their coverage, that is, excluding named news organizations from White House access over what they report. Fleischer writes "Banning them from the WH is not the solution," an express rejection of the exclusion, and the rest of his post proposes opening the pool and briefing room to conservatives as the alternative. The closest competing label is mixed_or_conditional, because the same post says he agrees with Trump that several outlets covering the White House are biased and unfair. That loses because the agreement concerns the outlets' coverage, which is outside the reference point, and his rejection of the exclusion carries no condition.