Should. Three Times.

The president speaks for himself.

After President Trump banned CNN, MS NOW and Politico from the White House, members of his administration rushed to explain that he hadn’t really banned them from covering him. The restriction concerned physical access to the White House.

Vice President JD Vance was explicit: “He’s not banning media outlets.” Trump had merely decided, Vance said, “we’re not going to give you special access inside the White House.”

U.N. Ambassador Mike Waltz made the same distinction. Freedom of the press did not confer “an inherent right to any government facility that you want, whether it’s Langley or the White House.”

The White House itself reduced the argument to a slogan: “White House access is a privilege — not a right.”

In other words: whatever you thought of the policy, the administration’s defense depended on geography. Trump wasn’t trying to prevent these organizations from covering the president. He was deciding who got through the White House gates.

Then the president— the same one those aides had been taking about— arrived at the United Nations.

He spotted CNN’s Kaitlan Collins and said: “I’m surprised that CNN is here covering me. You shouldn’t be here. You should not be here covering me.” Collins pointed out that the United Nations had allowed CNN in. Trump repeated: “You should not be here covering me.”

Should. Three times. That word gives away the game. His aides had argued about where CNN had a right to go. Trump was talking about what CNN ought to be allowed to do. Even after Collins reminded him that the United Nations had granted CNN access, he didn’t retreat to the geography defense. He repeated it: “You should not be here covering me.”

The United Nations, of course, is not the White House. Nor is it a U.S. government facility.

So, as he so often does, Trump cut the legs out from under the people explaining what he really meant. His own words suggest something considerably broader than the rationale his administration had spent the previous days offering: his objection followed CNN beyond the White House gates.

This has nothing to do with location and it has nothing to do with the press. A president must have thick skin, endure countless abuses and maintain equanimity because they make the most consequential decisions in the world. Donald Trump has lashed out at the press before when pressed to explain himself. Those episodes were windows into his temperament. That window is stuck open.

After the interaction with Collins, the president then went inside and addressed the United Nations, where he discussed whether to annihilate Iran if it did not make a deal.