U.S. President Donald Trump speaks to the media before boarding Marine One upon departure for New York, in Washington, D.C., U.S., September 11, 2025. REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein
President Donald Trump revoked access to CNN, MSNOW and Politico on Friday, and the reporters were removed from the White House on Saturday. Axios co-founder Jim Vandehei knows why.
Speaking to CNN's Audie Cornish on Monday morning, Vandehei explained that Trump just had the worst week of his entire political career. He's been pushed into a corner, and Vandehei thinks the president is lashing out at the only things he can control.
After calling it "small, silly and stupid," Vandehei noted that nothing Trump does will alter coverage of him or chill free speech about him.
"Eventually you'regoing to have everyone justdoing their job the way theyshould do it," he said. "I hate theprecedent of it, and the reasonthat it's happening is thepresident feels the walls arecaving in. It was a terribleweek for him, last week. Everyonearound him knows it."
"You're increasingthe Fed rate," he said about the Federal Reserve increasing the interest rate. It's generally seen as an indication that inflation is a serious enough problem that they're stepping in. "You're having thecourts tell you you can't dothings that you want to do. Youhave a Republican congresswomanshooting an ad, basically sayingwhat Democrats have been sayingabout how he's handlingimmigration."
Cornish added that new polling data shows "Hispanics feel betrayed by how Trump is behaving.
"Like that's bad," Vandehei agreed. "Gas priceshit a new high; diesel hits anew high. Inflation is high. Poll numbers are low.Republicans are in the tank.Generics are bad."
He noted that those who know Trump well and are around him understand that the "worst version of Trump" comes out "when he feels powerless."
"It's kindof a taste of what's to comebecause he is a lame duckpresident, and he has defiedpolitical gravity in ways we'venot seen other presidents," Vandehei said. "Butpolitical gravity is real. Hehas two-plus years left inoffice. Republicans are lookingat those polls. They're thinkingabout survival."
Meanwhile, he said, the media knows it'll long outlast a single president. The courts understand they'll still be there long after Trump is gone, and their careers will not be defined by what a president is upset about regarding a ruling.
At a later part of the discussion, Vandehei mentioned that he thinks the reason that Trump is refusing to regulate AI and step in to pause it is that the U.S. economy is being propped up by AI.
"The presidentjust doesn't want to becausehe's very worried that if youput any limits on artificialintelligence, the entireeconomy could come grinding to ahalt because so much investmentis going into that technology," Vandehei said. "So, what I would say to yourviewers is this is the singlemost important topic you'reprobably ever going to face. Youshould really pay attention toit. You should try to learndifferent dimensions of it,because there's going to be alot of big decisions that thiscountry is going to have tomake, and they're not justgoing to be Trump decisions;they're going to be publicdecisions. They're going to bemedia decisions."