Is Trump giving CNN the cold shoulder?
Is the White House purposefully keeping its officials from appearing on CNN?
Neither President Trump's special consultant Kellyanne Conway nor Press Secretary Sean Spicer have hit CNN's Sunday morning news talk shows such as State of the Union in the past two weeks. Meanwhile, both of them, as well as Vice President Mike Pence and Chief of Staff Reince Priebus have appeared on other major networks' shows during that time.
Spicer denied that CNN is being frozen out, when asked about it Monday at George Washington University during an event where he was being interviewed by Frank Sesno, a former CNN correspondent who is now the director of GWU's School of Media & Public Affairs.
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CNN and the White House have gotten off to a contentious start. As president-elect, Trump accused CNN, after it published a story on unsubstantiated allegations about his purported ties to Russia, of being “fake news” and refused to answer a question from the network’s Jim Acosta at a press conference.
State of the Union host Jake Tapper has said on the show each of the last two weeks -- and on Twitter -- that the White House has declined invitations to appear.
A thaw in the perceived cold shoulder treatment came Wednesday when given to CNN recently — no official had appeared on one of its public affairs shows in more than two weeks — when newly-named Deputy Assistant Sebastian Gorka appeared on The Lead With Jake Tapper Wednesday afternoon.
There's no official ban on CNN, but the White House is sending its "surrogates" to outlets that make sense in terms of promoting its agenda, a White House official, who went unnamed, told Politico. The Arlington, Va.-based news outlet reported Tuesday that is "effectively icing out the network from on-air administration voices.
Conway's last CNN appearance was Jan. 11 on Anderson Cooper 360 -- where she and Cooper clashed about the allegations that led Trump to refuse to answer Acosta's question -- and prior to that on Jan. 8 on State of the Union.
"There's not retaliation," Spicer said Monday. "But I'm not going to sit around and engage with people who have no desire to actually get something right."
Similarly, Politico quoted an unnamed White House official saying that "we’re sending surrogates to places where we think it makes sense to promote our agenda.”
The White House Press Office had not returned a request for comment on the situation, while CNN declined to comment.
OnPolitics | USA TODAY's politics blog
Another possible factor: Trump feels betrayed by CNN chief Jeff Zucker, who greenlighted Trump's reality show The Apprentice in 2004 while he served as NBC Universal CEO, suggested Gabriel Sherman in a story last week in New York magazine. Trump wants CNN to cover him as Fox News does, people inside CNN told Sherman.
After the Inauguration, Trump posted a congratulatory tweet to Fox News noting its No. 1 rating among cable news networks for Inauguration coverage. "They were many times higher than FAKE NEWS @CNN - public is smart!"
CNN responded that its 34 million Inauguration day viewers matched that of Fox News.
If the administration is hoping to cut into CNN's ratings by withholding appearances by officials, it hasn't hurt the network yet.
Brian Stelter, host of CNN's Reliable Sources (Sundays at 11 a.m. ET) noted in his Reliable Sources newsletter that a Trump aide had predicted CNN's ratings would drop without administration representation. "I think it's worth noting that the aide's prediction was wrong," he wrote and noted that Reliable Sources on Jan. 29 had its best ratings since the election with 1.3 million viewers.
All of CNN's Sunday morning news shows grew their audiences last month, compared to January 2016, according to Nielsen said Monday. For example, State of the Union's 9 a.m. ET audience (896,000) was up 33%.
Overall, Fox News Channel does remain the most-watched cable news channel -- and is the highest-rated cable network for the total day, period, ahead of No. 2 ESPN (CNN is No. 9). ESPN retains the No. 1 spot for primetime viewing; during that time Fox News drops to No. 2 (CNN is No. 8).
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Follow USA TODAY reporter Mike Snider on Twitter: @MikeSnider.