Scalise says ‘I don’t know’ why Trump banned three news outlets

Steve Scalise says he doesn't know why President Trump barred CNN, MS Now, and Politico from the White House. Good for him. It's not his call, and pretending otherwise would just feed the cable news outrage machine. The House Majority Leader has better things to do than litigate the seating chart of the Briefing Room.

The media reaction has been predictably hysterical. CNN and friends are acting like this is the end of the First Amendment. But access to the White House is a privilege, not a right. The president gets to decide who stands in his house and shouts questions. That's not censorship. Those outlets can still print and broadcast whatever they want. They just can't do it from the lawn.

What's really happening is that the press is angry about losing its status. They want the label "White House correspondent" more than they want the truth. And when Trump treats them like the partisan adversaries they've become, they cry foul. The tantrum is the tell. If they thought their coverage was fair, they'd shrug it off.

We'll take Scalise's "I don't know" over the fake hand-wringing any day. He's not going to pretend the ban is a constitutional crisis. It's a skirmish in a long-running war between the president and a press corps that abandoned objectivity long ago. Don't confuse losing access with losing liberty..