Former President Bill Clinton, 80, told the Clinton Global Initiative’s annual meeting in New York, which opened Tuesday, Sept. 22, 2026, that he had wanted to ban the White House press corps during his own time in office, a jab at President Donald Trump’s barring of news outlets from the building.
“I got news for the people who work in the White House today. There were lots of times when I wanted to ban the White House press corps,” Clinton said. The remark drew laughter from the summit audience.
“And there’s a reason we have a constitution. Because none of us are immune from being pissed off,” Clinton added. He also said: “But I’m glad I never did, and I’m glad I couldn’t. And these people shouldn’t. The law should be what it is.”
Clinton’s press-corps comments came after Trump announced that CNN, MS NOW and Politico would be banned from the White House, saying media outlets should not be able to publish what he described as “FICTION and LIES” about the president and his administration. The three outlets filed a lawsuit seeking to regain access, arguing the action violated their First Amendment rights. On Sept. 24, U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly issued a temporary restraining order directing the White House to restore the outlets’ access, and the outlets have since asked him for a longer-lasting preliminary injunction.
Arch Plan Opens the Speech
Clinton spent his first minutes at the lectern on Trump’s plan to build a triumphal arch between Washington and Virginia. Trump has said the arch would double as a military facility.
As the audience laughed, Clinton said of the arch plan: “I suppose I could take my entire allotted time to discuss the self-evident wisdom of building an Arc de Triomphe in Washington to hold all our drones.” He added: “Some of this stuff — it’s hard to make up.”
Designers have sited the 250-foot structure near Arlington National Cemetery, where it would span the divide separating Washington, D.C., from Virginia. Trump has folded the arch into celebrations marking the country’s 250th anniversary. On Sept. 20, two days before Clinton spoke, Trump said on Truth Social that “at the strong request of the United States Military” he had agreed to make it a “Military Complex/Triumphal Arch,” with drones and snipers stationed on it. Officials said Sept. 29, however, that the arch is not expected to include drones or snipers, and agencies reviewing the project said they had received no plans for a military facility.
A National Park Service historic-preservation review has acknowledged the arch will cause “adverse effects” on the surrounding Memorial Circle landscape that “cannot be fully avoided.” The Great American State Fair ran from June 25 to July 10, and organizers put a mock-up of the arch on display at the National Mall for the duration.
The arch has cleared some federal design reviews. Veterans and a historian have a lawsuit pending, while a federal judge has ordered 48 hours’ notice ahead of any work beginning.
Kennedy Center Fight Unresolved
Clinton also criticized the fight over the name of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper in May ordered Trump’s name removed from the building. New tributes to the president — a “President Donald J. Trump Plaza” among them — were beyond the Trump-picked board’s reach without Congress’ blessing, Cooper ruled on Sept. 15.
Board members voted that same day to shut the building for roughly two years of renovations. Trump, speaking aboard Air Force One the following day, warned that the center would “end up being ripped down” if his administration went unrecognized. The courts have so far barred the renaming of the Kennedy Center.
Clinton dismissed the lettering argument as a small matter that has crowded out weightier ones, and said what happens inside the building — and outside it — counts for more. He asked the audience: “You really think 100 years from now anybody’s going to care very much about whose name’s on what building?”
A Warning on Zero-Sum Politics
The speech also attacked “zero-sum thinking” among U.S. political leaders and took a swipe at his own party. Clinton never uttered Trump’s name. Few assessments of Trump’s presidency from the 42nd president have been as pointed in recent months. Clinton spoke on Sept. 22, the same day Trump gave an address to the 81st session of the United Nations General Assembly in New York.
Clinton returned to a theme he has carried since he ran for president more than 30 years ago: diversity is an asset rather than a liability, collaboration produces better results than conflict, and the world’s problems would be all but solved if the powerful worried less about which of them was praised for the solution.
He said that in the nation’s 250th year, one party’s victory cannot be treated as something that must come at the cost of the other party’s defeat. He allowed that the attraction is clear to him: leaders elsewhere in the world have been showered with rewards for adopting that stance, he said, and nowhere have those rewards been plainer than in the United States. He said there are days he can scarcely believe what is happening in a country he loves, and that he rejects the politics of “brute force.”
“The people in charge have created one set of rules for themselves and another set for everyone else,” Clinton said. “They’ve weaponized government to settle personal scores, prosecute enemies, stamp out free speech. They’ve even made the federal government a new profit center for themselves and their allies.” He said: “That violates the spirit and letter of the Emoluments Clause of our Constitution.”
Democratic socialists and progressives have been racking up primary victories over the past year. Clinton told the gathering: “So here we are at the 250th anniversary of our country, where there seems to be, at the right and left, dueling visions of socialism. Should it be socialism for everybody, or should it just be for the wealthy and well-connected?”
Two Reasons for Hope
Minnesota’s backlash after federal agents shot and killed two U.S. citizens, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, during an immigration enforcement operation in Minneapolis in January was one of two developments Clinton cited as leaving him more hopeful about the country’s direction. The Supreme Court supplied the other when it declined on Sept. 14, for now, to let the Trump administration enforce new restrictions on voting by mail ahead of the November midterms.
He framed the moment as consequential. A lifetime hands anyone only a few decisions that shape both personal history and the history of everyone around us, he told the audience, and this is one of them. The arch and the Kennedy Center, the two fights he singled out, remain unresolved.
