NEW YORK -- Trump Senior Adviser Dan Scavino Jr. called Thursday for the Republican National Committee to bar Hugh Hewitt from its July convention in Cleveland, following the conservative radio host's call for Donald Trump to withdraw his candidacy for president.
On Wednesday, Hewitt urged the RNC to ask Trump to withdraw from the race, or change its rules to prevent him from becoming the party's nominee.
Trump has been under fire the past week after saying an Indiana-born judge of Mexican descent cannot preside over civil fraud cases involving Trump University because of the candidate's extreme position on immigration. House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) described Trump's remarks as "racist," and several prominent Republicans have disavowed the presumptive nominee's statement or even withdrawn their support for his candidacy.
The Trump campaign has denied press credentials during the campaign to numerous media outlets following critical coverage, including BuzzFeed, The Daily Beast, Politico, Fusion, Univision, MotherJones, National Review and The Huffington Post. The campaign has also placed unprecedented restrictions on journalists who are provided credentials and threatened reporters with blacklisting for straying from the "press pen."
Hewitt told HuffPost over email that he will be attending the convention for his radio show and with NBC and MSNBC, where he recently signed on as a political analyst.
It's a good thing for Hewitt that the Trump campaign doesn't get to carry its blacklist to the convention. The congressional press galleries have facilitated the credentialing process at both parties' conventions for nearly a century, and have said that campaigns will not be permitted to ban journalists.
“If a Trump employee told me that I had to credential or had to blacklist someone, I would not listen,” Robert Zatkowski, director of the House Periodical Press Gallery, told The Huffington Post last month.
An RNC spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Hewitt tangled with Trump just prior to serving as panelist for CNN's first Republican debate in September. Trump called Hewitt as a "third-rate announcer" after the candidate stumbled over the host's foreign policy questions on the radio.
Editor’s note: Donald Trump regularly incites political violence and is a serial liar, rampant xenophobe, racist, misogynist and birther who has repeatedly pledged to ban all Muslims — 1.6 billion members of an entire religion — from entering the U.S.
