Rep. Ilhan Omar backed calls for press outlets to skip President Trump’s pre-State of the Union briefing after he blocked CNN’s participation in the annual event.
“These journalists boycotted the British government’s briefing after their colleagues were banned,” tweeted Omar. “Solidarity needs to be modeled by news organizations here in the US for the sake of free press.”
The Minnesota Democrat tweeted an article from the Guardian, which highlighted British journalists who boycotted Prime Minister Boris Johnson after he chose to exclude journalists for a press briefing.
These journalists boycotted the British government’s briefing after their colleagues were banned.
Solidarity needs to be modeled by news organizations here in the US for the sake of free press. https://t.co/ziWj7l3ELz https://t.co/vn6NVEsov4
— Ilhan Omar (@IlhanMN) February 4, 2020
The lunch, which CNN’s Wolf Blitzer has attended for 20 straight years, is a tradition that allows journalists to get a feel of the president’s state of mind hours before he addresses the nation. The president revoked an invitation to CNN, who was included in last year’s event, on Monday amid his Senate impeachment trial, which he has decried as a “hoax.”
Omar, 38, has clashed with Trump on a host of issues since she won her House seat in 2018. She is part of “the Squad,” a four-member group of freshman House women who have championed liberal causes inside the Democratic Party.
The president has repeatedly labeled CNN “fake news” and rejected polling from the network that he called a “suppression game.”
