‘Report from the sidewalk': MAGA world cheers Trump’s ‘big win’ at appeals court

A federal appeals court on Friday handed President Donald Trump a partial victory in his effort to block the Associated Press from covering him inside key presidential spaces – a move that drew swift cheers from Trump’s MAGA base throughout social media.

The victory lap came after the appeals court reinstated parts of Trump’s ban on AP journalists from areas including the Oval Office, Air Force One, and Mar-a-Lago, Politico reported. But the three-judge appellate panel still kept in place a lower court ruling requiring the AP to be allowed into larger venues like the East Room, the outlet added.

While Politico described the decision as “a setback to the news organization’s efforts to restore its access to the White House press pool,” Trump quickly took a victory lap.

“Big WIN over AP today,” the president wrote on Truth Social. “They refused to state the facts or the Truth on the GULF OF AMERICA. FAKE NEWS!!!”

Others in the MAGA world piled on.

“GOOD!" MAGA internet personality Nick Sortor wrote on X. “The fake news has NO RIGHT to the most sacred office in the world. Report your fake news from the sidewalk.”

“VICTORY!” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt declared Friday. “Moving forward, we will continue to expand access to new media so that more people can cover the most transparent President in American history rather than just the failing legacy media," she wrote. "And by the way @AP, it’s still the Gulf of America.”

"Fake news loses again!" MAGA influencer Paul A. Szypula posted on X in reaction to the ruling.

But Norman Ornstein, a political scientist and contributing editor for The Atlantic, told his followers that what the reporting "fails to note" is that the “2-1 ruling came from two extreme radical Trump judges.”