Barack Obama took the stage at Colgate University and performed his favorite role: shocked elder statesman of norms he never quite practiced. Trump had just told CNN, MS NOW, and Politico they were no longer welcome at the White House. Obama’s response was to wonder, with that familiar half-smile, what the country would have done if he had ever told Fox News to get lost. Unimaginable, he said. Democracy requires better, he said. A certain 30-to-35 percent of the country just doesn’t get it, he said.
See for yourselves and yes, he's as unlikable as ever.
Former President Barack Obama on President Trump's White House press ban: "I’m trying to think what would have happened if I had said, you know what, Fox News, you’re out of here! It’s unimaginable!" pic.twitter.com/R1pmoVasEz
— CSPAN (@cspan) September 20, 2026
Except of course, we all know Obama did this ... and much worse.
The archives would like a word.
In October 2009, Obama’s White House did not need a Truth Social account to treat Fox as the enemy. Communications director Anita Dunn went on CNN and called the network “more a wing of the Republican Party,” “opinion journalism masquerading as news,” and something you appear on only when you want to “debate the opposition.” David Axelrod told viewers Fox was “not a real news organization” and that other outlets “ought not to treat them that way.” Rahm Emanuel helpfully added that Fox “is not a news organization so much as it has a perspective.”
But that's exactly what @BarackObama did.
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) September 20, 2026
— Oct. 22, 2009: Treasury planned to make "pay czar" Kenneth Feinberg available to every network pool member except Fox.
— The Washington bureau chiefs of ABC, CBS, CNN & NBC said they wouldn't interview Feinberg if Fox was shut out,… https://t.co/VbggKvUjuy
Then they tried to make it operational. Treasury set up a pool interview with TARP “pay czar” Kenneth Feinberg and, per emails later pried loose by Judicial Watch, a White House official wrote that “we’d prefer if you skip Fox please.” Deputy press secretary Josh Earnest later bragged they had “demonstrated our willingness and ability to exclude Fox News from significant interviews.” The other networks — including CNN, now suddenly a martyr — refused to play along.
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The White House folded. For a few hours. After getting caught.That was not a full campus-style ban of three outlets. It was smaller, sneakier, and just as revealing: access as a privilege for the cooperative, a punishment for the inconvenient. Obama’s team spent months isolating Fox, skipping its Sunday show, and instructing America that one cable channel didn’t count as press.
Now the same man lectures the country that kicking hostile outlets off the White House grounds is a civic emergency.
The fact that a reporter won't immediately interject with, "But, sir, that's EXACTLY what you did!" is proof that Trump is right to treat these media organizations as no different than any tabloid rag. https://t.co/u74UmChUMG
— Jared A. Chambers 🇺🇲 (@C4CEO) September 20, 2026
There's that as well.
That silence you hear is "journalist" Jake Tapper not responding with self-righteous outrage at Barry's transparent lie.
— Tweetoleon (@Tweetoleon) September 20, 2026
Proving Trump's point. https://t.co/5IMytKAhPl
The difference is not principle. It is whose ox is being gored, and whether the lecture comes with a teleprompter and a standing ovation at Family Weekend. If “unimaginable” is the standard, someone should forward Obama those 2009 emails. His imagination used to work just fine.
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