Novice here, please help. I made a dynamic page with Custom Post Type UI plugin where the user can input news updates. The information to be filled are date, title, and a link (a clickable button that will bring the user to an external web page).

On page-news.php:

<!-- NEWS LINKS -->
<div class="row py-5">
  <?php
  $loop = new WP_Query(array(
    'post_type' => 'news',
    'order_by' => 'post_id',
    'order' => DESC
  ));
  ?>
  <?php while($loop->have_posts()) : $loop->the_post(); ?>

  <div class="col mb-2 mt-3">
  <?php
    if(has_post_thumbnail()) {
    the_post_thumbnail('full');
    }
  ?>
  </div>

  <div class="col-md-12">
    <p class="mb-1"><small><?php the_field('news_date'); ?></small></p>
    <h5><?php the_title(); ?></h5>
    <a href="<?php the_content(); ?>" class="newsLink pl-2 mb-5 btn btn-sm bg-red text-white" 
    target="_blank">Read more</a>
  </div>

  <?php endwhile;
  wp_reset_query(); ?>
</div>

The Problem:

Wordpress 5 displays an iframe and a blockquote automatically:

<blockquote class="wp-embedded-content" data-secret="eCcoDo7d81"><p><a href="/">1</a></p></blockquote>
<iframe title="“1” — Example" class="wp-embedded-content" sandbox="allow-scripts" security="restricted" style="position: absolute; clip: rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);" src="" data-secret="eCcoDo7d81" width="600" height="338" frameborder="0" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" scrolling="no"></iframe>

What I did to fix it:

On functions.php I added this code

/* Remove WP auto embed */
function remove_embed ($content) {
  if ( is_page('bac-in-the-news')) {
    $content = preg_replace('/@<iframe[^>]*?>.*?</iframe>@siu/', '', $content); // removes iframe
  }
  return $content;
}
add_filter ('the_content', 'remove_embed');

A new problem:

The iframe and blockquote did not displayed anymore but I'm facing a new problem. The anchor tag does not display the href's content.

<a href="" class="newsLink pl-2 mb-5 btn btn-sm bg-red text-white" target="_blank">Read more</a>

Where did I do wrong? Why it can't display the_content() anymore? Please point me in the right direction. Thanks in advance.

- Edit: Here's the picture of the custom post type that I created. The body section is where the user should post the link.