Hillary Clintons latest broadside against Donald Trumps treatment of the press is not merely hypocritical; it is something closer to a master class in political self-exemption.
In a recent interview, the former secretary of state lamented Trumps move to keep serially hostile outlets such as Politico, CNN, and MSNBC out of the White House, calling the decision deeply disturbing. According to RedState, Clinton told The Washington Post that the Trump administrations actions represented a grave threat to constitutional norms and the free press, even as her own record on transparency and media access tells a very different story.
Honestly, every day that goes by, another unconstitutional, illegal action takes place on the part of this administration, she said, casting Trumps decisions as a rolling crisis for the republic. And this latest one is so troubling because kicking out news organizations from covering the administration from the White House really sends a signal that everything is at risk.
Clinton then wrapped herself in First Amendment rhetoric, as if she had long been a stalwart defender of open debate and press freedom. Freedom of the press, as you know so well, is a cornerstone. I mean, it is at the core of who we are as Americans," she added, presenting herself as a guardian of constitutional liberties rather than a seasoned practitioner of message control.
The problem is not merely that Clinton is wrong on the facts; it is that she selectively discovers her concern for civil liberties only when it serves her partisan interests. When Donald Trump was being mass deplatformed while calling for peace on January 6, Clinton was silent, as she was when millions of Americans were censored for questioning the heavy-handed COVID response or challenging official narratives on issues ranging from the Russia-Ukraine war to climate policy.
This is why Hillarocrisy feels like an apt term: Clinton routinely denounces alleged authoritarianism on the right while excusing or ignoring the very real censorship and coercion emanating from the left. Her outrage over supposed unconstitutional behavior by Trump rings hollow coming from a political figure whose own party has embraced governmentBig Tech collusion to police speech and marginalize dissent.
Hillary Clinton complaining about unconstitutionality is kind of like an arsonist complaining about house fires. The administration she served in under Barack Obama was itself accused by nearly 40 news organizations of restricting press access and manipulating public perception through tightly controlled imagery.
Those outlets charged that the Obama White House limited independent photojournalists access to the president while giving its own photographers free rein to distribute curated, polished images. In a letter and subsequent meeting with thenPress Secretary Jay Carney, the organizations argued that the administration was blocking an unvarnished view of government business while effectively turning official photographers into taxpayer-funded competitors to private news agencies.
Limitations on photographers access to President Obama create a troubling precedent with a direct and adverse impact on the publics ability to independently monitor and see what its government is doing, charged the letter from the 38 organizations, including the White House Correspondents Assn. and the Tribune Co., owner of the Los Angeles Times. That is not a minor complaint; it is a direct challenge to the transparency of a Democratic administration that Clinton now conveniently forgets as she scolds Trump.
And Clintons own record is even more damning when measured against her lofty rhetoric about press freedom. A proposed community note circulating online recently resurfaced the fact that she personally blocked a reporter from covering one of her campaign events in New Hampshire during the 2016 cycle.
David Martosko, U.S. political editor for the Daily Mail and that days designated national print pool reporter, was denied access to Hillary Clintons New Hampshire events in 2015. That included an early-childhood-education forum at the YMCA of Strafford County in Rochester, where a Secret Service agent told him, No. You cant come in, and he was also kept off the press vans.
This was not a matter of revoking a courtesy or trimming back a bloated press corps; it was an outright exclusion of a duly designated pool reporter from campaign events. By any reasonable standard, that is more egregious than telling a hyper-partisan news network that devotes roughly 90 percent of its coverage to attacking a sitting president that it will not enjoy prime real estate inside the White House.
The Trump administrations skepticism toward outlets like CNN did not arise in a vacuum; it was forged in response to a staggering series of media hoaxes and misrepresentations. These were not innocent mistakes but real, damaging, and intentional hoaxes that run in only one direction: Against President Donald Trump and Republicans.
This Democratmedia alliance has never meaningfully repented for the Russia collusion hoax, the fine people hoax about Charlottesville, or the fabricated suckers and losers story about Trump allegedly insulting fallen soldiers. Each narrative was weaponized to damage a Republican president and shape public opinion, and each collapsed under scrutiny without prompting serious accountability from the outlets that pushed them.
Can we expect anything better from Hillary Clinton when it comes to discussing her political opposition? No.
But we should expect better from outlets like CNN, Politico, and The Washington Post when they purport to arbitrate what counts as a violation of press freedom versus a justified revocation of press privileges. The distinction matters: the First Amendment protects speech from government suppression; it does not guarantee any particular outlet a permanent, privileged platform inside the executive branch.
As RedStates Nick Arama recently observed, CNN has reverted to its familiar pattern of campaign-season fearmongering and narrative engineering. As we've reported, just in the past day or so, CNN spread a ridiculous story suggesting Trump might declare martial law before the midterms. That's stoking fear against Trump right before the election. Then they also didn't tell the truth to their audience about who was covering the pool feed on Trump's trip to Tennessee. They claimed that because they were removed, no one was covering it, which wasn't true. It was actually being covered by Real America's Voice (RAV). But they wanted to act like they were essential when they weren't. They made themselves the story, rather than covering the real news they should be covering.
The same press corps now lamenting the loss of special access under Trump is the one that downplayed or concealed Joe Bidens obvious cognitive decline and excused his near-total avoidance of unscripted press engagement. Their selective outrage and partisan framing only reinforce the conservative argument that these institutions have forfeited any claim to neutral authority.
Their shameful behavior simply proves the Trump administration's point: You can't be trusted, and therefore, you do not get a privileged podium from which to spout your untruths. For Americans who still value genuine freedom of the pressmeaning robust, competitive, and honest journalism rather than state-aligned narrative enforcementthe real threat is not a president who pushes back on hostile outlets, but a political and media class that demands deference while refusing accountability.
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