Shortly after the first Republican presidential debate ended in Milwaukee, reports surfaced that Donald Trump Jr. and Kimberly Guilfoyle were being kept out of the post-debate spin room at the direction of Fox News.

Fox News security blocks Donald Trump Jr. from going into the spin room at the Milwaukee debate.

“It shouldn’t surprise us and it’s also why Trump was 100% right not to go to this debate,” he says. pic.twitter.com/6oZW0JP0xw

— Gregory Korte (@gregorykorte) August 24, 2023

The video starts with Donald Trump Jr. mid-sentence:

...right now, trying to ban people from actually having discourse about politics probably shouldn't surprise any of us, but that's what it is. And I had been told by others that I would be able to go in. So they said we weren't able to go in, then they said we were, and now that we're here, and the candidate that --

After clarifying that a member of building security, who's standing a few feet away in the video, told Trump Jr. that Fox News instructed him to not allow Trump Jr. and Guilfoyle into the spin room, Trump Jr. continued. He accused Fox News of intentionally keeping him out as part of a grand plan to boost other candidates whose debate performance supposedly didn't go as Fox had hoped:

They're telling him. He works for security here, but they're telling him that I'm not allowed to go in there, because the candidates that they've been boosting while simultaneously trying to cut down Trump for the last, what, two years, didn't perform as they had hoped, so they can't have someone who can maybe be a representative of my father, just like a few weeks ago, when I was canceled after the first indictment. I was scheduled to go on, and about five minutes before I'm on, I find out I'm no longer on because apparently, I wouldn't be a great surrogate to talk about my father's indictment. Just so we understand what we're dealing with here.

And it's also why Trump was 100 percent right to not go to this debate. It's beneath him, and when you know that you're walking into a setup because of exactly these kinds of circumstances, you understand exactly what's going on in mainstream media, even conservative.

Guilfoyle, an attorney, chimed in with, "It's very un-American. It's against the First Amendment."

Don Jr. then claims that being kept out of the spin room is just as oppressive as Trump and his associates being prosecuted by Fulton County DA Fani Willis, and Trump being put under a gag order:

I like to knock the one side, but I gotta call balls and strikes. This is no different than what we see from Democrats. It's no different from what we're seeing from the Fulton County DA when they're trying to put a gag order on Donald Trump so he can't defend himself in court proceedings, and more importantly, to function as an intimidation tactic for anyone else who would defend him, where the DA there is then saying, hey, we're gonna add you people to the indictment if you take part in this.

If we're simply calling balls and strikes, then we'll call a few balls and strikes, too.

There is absolutely no similarity between a politically motivated prosecution being carried out by an elected official in which more than a dozen people are at risk of losing their liberty and being jailed for years, and a news organization barring Donald Trump Jr. and his fiancee from entering a media room that organization is controlling for the evening. If anything, it could be argued that the First Amendment was being threatened by the son of a former president, and a leading candidate in the next election, going live with other media outlets in an attempt to intimidate that outlet into giving in to his demands. Clearly, nothing Fox News is doing prevents Donald Trump Jr. from talking about politics in the media, even from the actual debate location.

While Donald Trump announced that he was not going to attend the debate, it's been argued that he didn't qualify anyway since he refused to sign the RNC's loyalty pledge. From that point of view, does Donald Trump Jr. think that surrogates for candidates who didn't qualify for the debate stage should be given spin room credentials, no questions asked?

Also, it was known for at least days that the only way Trump surrogates were entering that room was through an invitation from an accredited media outlet already in that room since only surrogates for candidates who were attending the debate were given automatic spin room credentials. Several Trump surrogates did make it into the spin room:

Don Jr and Kimberly Guilfoyle holding court a few dozen yards away from spin room, denouncing their ban from the spin room. "It's un-American," she says. "It's against the first amendment."

— David Weigel (@daveweigel) August 24, 2023

If Trump Jr. and Guilfoyle were legitimately attempting to get into the spin room as guests of an accredited media outlet and Fox News still asked security to keep them out, that needs to be made known.

Every candidate that was on stage Wednesday night has spoken out to some level in opposition to the lawfare being employed against Donald Trump by Joe Biden's weaponized Department of Justice (and some wacko Soros DA's, too). Some, like Chris Christie and Mike Pence, haven't been very convincing in their opposition, but they know that Republican voters, regardless of their thoughts on Donald Trump personally, vehemently oppose the indictments. That doesn't mean that Trump surrogates get a free pass to not play by the same rules everyone else does.

(EDITOR'S NOTE: This piece was edited post-publication to add information about additional Trump surrogates who were admitted to the spin room.)