White House Escalates War with African Reporter - He Must Comply with This Demand or Lose His Press Pass
The Biden administration has escalated its campaign against a member of the media who likes to ask tough questions and is now threatening to cancel his press pass entirely.
This week, the Biden press apparatus sent Simon Ateba, a journalist from the country of Cameroon, a warning letter accusing him of “disruptive” behavior in the White House press room.
“If you continue to impede briefings or events by shouting over your colleagues who have been called on for a question, even after you have been asked to stop by a White House employee, then your hard pass may be suspended or revoked, following notice and an opportunity to respond,” the letter read.
Ateba posted the full letter here:
BREAKING: Following @washingtonpost hit piece meant to prevent me from renewing my hard pass, the @WhiteHouse and @PressSec office just sent me ‘A WARNING LETTER.” Here it is:
Mr. Ateba,
We strongly support the important role that members of the press play in covering the White… pic.twitter.com/7EbS9HDpIW
— Simon Ateba (@simonateba) July 11, 2023
Ateba replied in kind on Twitter, blasting the “coordinated vicious attacks against me to assassinate my character and silence me.”
He also noted that the liberal media has it out for him too.
Ateba referenced a Washington Post “hit piece” on him published days before he received the White House warning letter and shared a screen shot of an article calling him a “right-wing celebrity.”
As you may know by now, virtually all left-leaning publications have written about me in the past 24 hours. They claim, as you can read below, that I have become a “right-wing media celebrity” and must be brought down, canceled, booted out. May God help us! pic.twitter.com/q7Z0a6UX5j
— Simon Ateba (@simonateba) July 13, 2023
Ateba’s battle with the White House began during Jen Psaki’s tenure as press secretary as he was forced to stand at the back of the briefing room and rarely called on to ask questions.
Psaki’s replacement, Karine Jean-Pierre, has also butted heads with Ateba.
Simon Ateba is back at it again in the press briefing. pic.twitter.com/4BXTT4gfbw
— Greg Price (@greg_price11) June 26, 2023
Jean-Pierre once stormed out of the press room after a tense confrontation with Ateba when she refused to answer any questions about American diplomacy in Africa.
In another case, Ateba was not interested in the nonsense that Jean-Pierre tried to shovel at the White House press corps when she trotted out the cast of the comedy show “Ted Lasso.”
Instead of playing footsie with the Hollywood stars, Ateba began trying to ask serious questions. But Jean-Pierre blew up at the podium and shut him down. The foolishness caused Ateba to yell, “You’re making a mockery of the First Amendment!” at the visibly agitated press secretary.
Other leftists have also piled on Ateba over his insistence on asking Jean-Pierre hard questions about White House policy. In March, the gaggle on ABC’s “The View” went on a tear against Ateba and said he isn’t a “serious journalist.”
The mistreatment Ateba has received at the hands of the Biden administration has prompted him to seek legal relief.
It has also made him fear for his own safety.
“I don’t know if I’m safe. I don’t know if they’ll kill me. I don’t know what they will do next,” he said in June.
It’s clear that Ateba has become a thorn in Jean-Pierre’s side and the White House would like to shut him up and prevent him from asking questions. So much for the promise of being the most transparent administration in history.
As Biden refuses to tell us who brought cocaine into the White House, pretends his youngest granddaughter doesn’t exist, and laughs off allegations of bribery, the White House busies itself with a campaign to discredit and destroy a journalist he doesn’t like.
I guess it’s pretty transparent after all.
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