White House Leaves CNN Off Air Force One for Knoxville Trip

The White House has left CNN off an upcoming Air Force One trip to Knoxville, Tennessee, assigning the seat instead to Real America’s Voice, a conservative network that is not part of the traditional U.S. network video pool, ABC News and the Los Angeles Times reported.

The move landed only a day after journalists from CNN, MS NOW and Politico returned to White House grounds under a temporary restraining order from U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly. Kelly’s overnight ruling restored hard passes the administration had revoked, but the order did not specifically resolve pool duties or Air Force One seating, ABC News noted.

President Donald Trump is scheduled to attend a University of Tennessee versus University of Texas college football game at midday Saturday local time. White House guidance listed Real America’s Voice in the slot long reserved for a rotating member of the five-outlet network video pool, according to the LA Times account of the travel roster.

That pool — historically ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox News and NBC — takes turns shooting shared video for the broader press corps. When the White House barred CNN from the complex last week, the other four pool providers suspended participation in solidarity. Real America’s Voice is not among those five, ABC News reported, which is why the Knoxville substitution drew immediate attention from media reporters.

Attorney Theodore Boutrous Jr., representing the news outlets in the hard-pass lawsuit, told Jake Tapper’s CNN program Friday that plaintiffs believe Kelly’s order also covers pool access. Boutrous did not immediately respond to later requests for comment on the Air Force One decision, ABC News said. The White House did not immediately provide additional detail when asked by the Associated Press.

For readers following Washington media fights on Daily News, the Knoxville snub is a separate operational lever from the hard-pass fight. Grounds access can reopen under a court order while travel seats remain under White House logistics control — a distinction that matters whenever a president boards Air Force One with only a curated set of cameras.

Earlier Friday, CNN’s media analyst Brian Stelter noted on X that the network had held a pool assignment at the National Archives during Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit and that the White House had approved credentials for that event. Viewers briefly saw shared pool video of Trump and Xi touring the Archives with Melania Trump and Peng Liyuan after the midday restoration, ABC News reported.

The broader context includes weeks of escalating friction. Trump announced on Sept. 18 that CNN, MS NOW and Politico would be banned from the White House complex, calling them “fake news.” The outlets sued Sept. 21; Kelly’s Sept. 24 order found the revocation likely violated due-process rights and reinstated passes for 14 days while litigation continues, as detailed in prior coverage of the credential restoration.

Press advocates have framed the hard-pass ban as intimidation rather than a clean national-security measure. The Air Force One decision, coming after a judge’s temporary win for the outlets, suggests the administration is still willing to reshape which cameras travel even when driveway tents reopen. The LA Times and ABC accounts both underscore that the court order’s silence on pool and aircraft seats left room for this next move.

College-football Saturdays already draw heavy political optics; pairing a high-profile SEC–Big 12 matchup with a reshuffled press plane raises the stakes for how Americans see the president in motion. Pool video is designed so that outlets that cannot fly still receive a shared feed. Substituting a non-pool network breaks that rotation and concentrates the onboard visual record.

Whether Boutrous returns to court seeking clearer language on travel and pool duties will be one of the near-term tests. Kelly set a Sept. 28 deadline for plaintiffs to seek a longer preliminary injunction on credentials; Air Force One seating may become part of that next briefing cycle even if it was not the focus of the first TRO, according to the reporting timeline in both outlets.

For now, the verified facts are narrow and consequential: CNN is off the Knoxville Air Force One manifest, Real America’s Voice is listed in that seat, the trip coincides with a Tennessee–Texas game, and the substitution arrives after a judicial restoration of White House hard passes that did not expressly lock down aircraft pool slots. How the press corps and the courts treat that gap will shape the next chapter of the feud.