CNN fires back after ex-Biden aide claims White House pressured network to blacklist him
"The White House pressured CNN not to ever have me on again," Michael LaRosa, a former aide to First Lady Jill Biden, said Wednesday on Mark Halperin's 2Way podcast Wednesday during a segment discussing how the media "covered up" for President Joe Biden's mental decline.
LaRosa, who served as Jill Biden's press secretary from 2021 to 2022, explained how he was allegedly "punished" for being "outspoken" about his former employer after he left the White House in July 2022.
"They punish reporters. They threatened access. I was booked 45 times in 2023 on CNN and the White House pressured CNN not to ever have me on again after the turn of the year… I've experienced this stuff now."
"They threatened CNN with access, and I was noted in their guest tracking system. So, whenever someone wanted to book me, they would see a note or a flag... Look, I had never experienced the media like that until this election cycle," LaRosa continued. "And that's how my personal views about everything and the media and Democrats has somewhat shifted, and it cost me a lot of friends because I've been outspoken as I am."
A CNN spokesperson disputed LaRosa's comments in a statement to Fox News Digital.
"The White House does not dictate our bookings," they said.
A former Biden White House official also told Fox News Digital they were "not aware" of any effort to blacklist LaRosa.
A Grabien search of LaRosa's name showed he appeared on the network at least four times in 2024: March 7, 2024, February 25, 2024, February 20, 2024, and February 9, 2024.
The former aide frequently knocked the White House for "shielding" President Biden from the public during his 2024 presidential campaign.
In March, LaRosa claimed that Biden staffers made "really unethical" demands of the press in an effort to "bully" reporters into covering Biden in a favorable manner.
"They did bully a lot of journalists, and I think they would tell you that now. They wouldn't have told you at the time," he said to "The Young Turks" host Cenk Uygur.
LaRosa said later on in the 2Way podcast that the Biden White House did not view the press as "an advocate or an ally."
"Sometimes I think Democrats in general expect the press to work for them and when they aren't working for them they will come down on you pretty tough… But they never treated the press with anything but suspicion," he added.
Fox News' Marc Tamasco contributed to this article.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Hill
7 minutes ago
- The Hill
Texas Democrat says she was threatened with arrest after escort lost her on trail
A Texas state House Democrat said she was threatened with arrest after an officer assigned to follow her lost track of her on a walking trail. Texas state Rep. Sheryl Cole (D) said in a post on X on Tuesday that an escort from the Texas Department of Public Safety, whom she said 'was forced upon me to track my every movement,' lost track of her on the trail, became angry and 'made a scene' in front of her constituents. 'While a little shaken up from the incident, I remain undeterred by this intimidation tactic by House Republicans to have a 24/7 state police presence to intimidate me and my colleagues,' Cole said. Cole's account of the incident comes as a fellow Democratic state representative, Nicole Collier, has chosen to stay on the floor of the state House chamber for more than 24 hours rather than having a law enforcement officer shadow her. After the state House Democrats returned to the Lone Star State on Monday, ending their two-week out-of-state stint to prevent Republicans from passing a new map, state Speaker Dustin Burrows (R) declared that those who came back would have an officer with them to ensure they didn't leave the state again. Collier chose to stay in the state House overnight instead and told MSNBC's Ali Vitali in an interview that she would stay 'as long as it takes.' 'At the moment that the directive was issued, I felt like it was wrong. It's just wrong to require grown people to get a permission slip to roam about freely. So I resisted,' she said. Cole said she stands in solidarity with Collier, who has 'refused to go along with this charade.' 'We will not be intimidated by this, and history will remember this,' she said. The Texas state legislature is expected to approve a new map as soon as this week, with enough Democrats back in the state for the body to conduct business.
The Hill
7 minutes ago
- The Hill
Boston mayor to Bondi on ‘sanctuary' threats: ‘Stop attacking our cities'
Boston Mayor Michelle Wu (D) struck back Tuesday at the Trump administration's legal threats over her city's immigration policies with a blistering letter asserting Boston won't 'bow down to unconstitutional threats or unlawful coercion' from the federal government. 'The U.S. Attorney General asked for a response by today, so here it is: stop attacking our cities to hide your administration's failures,' Wu wrote in a social media post linking to her formal letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi. Bondi sent letters last week to 32 state and local governments that have been deemed ' sanctuary jurisdictions,' including Boston, warning that they could lose federal funds or face legal action if they do not assist with President Trump's sweeping immigration enforcement efforts. 'For too long, so-called sanctuary jurisdiction policies have undermined this necessary cooperation and obstructed federal immigration enforcement, giving aliens cover to perpetrate crimes in our communities and evade the immigration consequences that federal law requires,' Bondi wrote to Wu and other local letters. In her formal reply to Bondi, Wu lauded safety measures Boston has taken to tackle crime, often in partnership with federal authorities. 'Our City's longstanding and productive partnership with state and federal law enforcement to protect the people of Boston far predates your tenure,' Wu wrote to Bondi. 'The Boston Police Department, the first municipal police department in the United States, works closely with state and federal agencies to address counterterrorism threats, protect our airport and our harbor, combat drug and human trafficking and hold perpetrators accountable for crimes.' She blasted the Trump administration for lobbing 'false and continuous attacks on American cities.' 'On behalf of the people of Boston, and in solidarity with the cities and communities targeted by this federal administration for our refusal to bow down to unconstitutional threats and unlawful coercion, we affirm our support for each other and for our democracy,' Wu wrote. 'Boston will never back down from being a beacon of freedom, and a home for everyone.' The Justice Department didn't immediately respond to The Hill's request for comment. The Trump administration has taken aim at cities and states — mostly ones led by Democrats — that have high crime rates or have not aided the mass immigration arrests and deportations that Trump has pushed. The president last week declared a public safety emergency in the District of Columbia and seized control of the Metropolitan Police Force (MPD) and sent members of the National Guard and federal law enforcement agencies in a sweeping crime crackdown in the nation's capital. Trump deployed Marines and National Guard troops in Los Angeles in June amid protests over Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids.
The Hill
7 minutes ago
- The Hill
There is a solution to America's gerrymandering problem
The redistricting war going on across the country began with the president asking — or, as some see it, directing — Texas to redraw its congressional map to give the GOP as many as five additional House seats in the 2026 midterm elections. Given that the party that holds the White House typically loses House seats in the midterms, and with a thin GOP majority after the 2024 election, the president is looking for any advantage to hold the House. This action has elicited outrage among Democrats, pushing the most populous state, California, to redraw its map. Several other states, including Ohio, Florida and Indiana, are also investigating the possibility of redrawing their maps, in an all-out gerrymander fest to squeeze every last seat out of Congress. Yet the maps drawn after the 2020 census were already well gerrymandered. Of the 435 total seats, just 36 were deemed competitive in 2022, defined as winners determined by a margin of victory below 5 percent. In 2024, the number of competitive seats jumped to 43. Though the problem appears to be the gerrymandering of congressional maps, the real problem is how representation is determined. The popular vote in each congressional district determines its winner, but the way the population of each state is dissected into discrete districts partitions the popular vote across each state. Since each district seat is represented by a winner-take-all vote, the design of each state's congressional map effectively determines how its voters are represented in Congress. Take, for example, Massachusetts. Its nine congressional seats are all represented by Democrats. In the 2024 election, five of the seats were uncontested. Among the four contested races, the closest margin of victory was 13 percent. Yet in the presidential race, 36 percent of the votes cast were for Donald Trump, the same percentage that voted for the Republican candidates in the four contested seats. This begs the question: Should these 36 percent of voters have some GOP representation? A similar situation occurred in Oklahoma, with all five of its congressional seats held by Republications, even though 32 percent of the votes cast were for Kamala Harris. Given that computational redistricting can draw House maps that are either maximally gerrymandered, provide sensible voter representation, or anything in between, there is no need for maps to be drawn by redistricting commissions, whether they are independent or made up of partisan legislators. The necessary mapping criteria specified by state laws can now be incorporated into mapping algorithms. Examples of such criteria include compactness of districts or preserving communities of interest. The only role for redistricting commissions is to specify the desired bias of the map. Gerrymandered maps demonstrate that we no longer have representation of the people but of the parties, making Congress a de facto House of Mis-Representatives. At the core, the problem is how members of the House are elected, and indirectly, the Electoral College. As long as voter preferences are packed into discrete ongressional district seats, the current gerrymandering wars will continue to discount and ignore voters. In fact, Trump told a group in 2024 during his campaign that they would not need to vote again if he were elected. Despite not knowing precisely what he had in mind, he may indeed be correct, given that representation of voters is mostly predetermined. Is there a solution? Continue to hold elections with congressional districts. However, the number of seats won by each party should be allocated by each party's state popular vote. Then the top vote getters, either in absolute number or in percentage of votes won, across all the districts from each party are assigned seats, up to the number of seats won by the party. This means that all the representatives in each state would be at-large, representing all the people of the state. A formula for rounding would be needed to determine which party gets the partial seat fraction, much like how congressional apportionment is used after each census to determine the number of House seats in each state. With such a system, in Massachusetts, Republicans would have won two congressional seats and Democrats would have won seven. In Oklahoma, Republicans would have won four seats and Democrats would have won one. Such a process would neutralize the impact of gerrymandering, since each state's haul of seats would be determined by the state popular vote, giving every eligible voter the added incentive to cast their vote. The net effect of such a system would likely not yield a difference in the overall number of House seats held by each party. It would, however, redistribute party representation across all 50 states. Most importantly, it would neutralize the benefits of gerrymandering to the parties, since each state's popular vote would determine representation. —Such a new system would require a change in the Constitution something that is highly unlikely in this vitriolic political environment. Yet without such a change, gerrymandering will continue to erode the influence of voters and elevate the power of parties. Texas's actions to redraw their congressional map midterm has unleashed a war on democracy. More accurately, it has taken gerrymander politics to unprecedented levels. The final outcome will be less voter representation and more partisan party politics. What the Texas 'seat steal' effort demonstrates is that, in the eyes of parties, voters are no longer relevant. Every voter in the 2026 midterm elections who is disgusted with such disrespect should write in an unnamed candidate, 'Other' — if such a name won a seat, it will send a strong message that gerrymandering is no longer acceptable, that the current toxic mapping system is shattered beyond repair, and a new model for earning representation is needed. Sheldon H. Jacobson, Ph.D., is a computer science professor in the Grainger College of Engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. As a data scientist, he uses his expertise in risk-based analytics to address problems in public policy. He is the founder of the .
