'Exasperated' officials describe wrangling Trump behind the scenes

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio gestures as U.S. President Donald Trump speaks to the media on the day of a NATO leaders' summit in Ankara, Turkey, July 8, 2026. REUTERSUmit Bektas

On Thursday, White House officials revealed that they had to prevent President Donald Trump from taking more “aggressive measures” against his enemies in the press. According to reporting by the Wall Street Journal, the president’s aides told him that his decision to ban press from the White House would backfire and had to persuade him to change course.

“Behind the scenes,” reports the Journal, “the president has told aides he doesn’t have enough political allies defending him on television and making the case for his second-term achievements, according to people familiar with the matter.” The president’s frustrations grew over the past week, which happened to correspond with the absence of two key advisers: White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles was in Florida, and Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt recently resigned. According to people familiar with the situation who spoke with the Journal, Trump’s decision to ban MS NOW, CNN and Politico from the White House caught many White House officials by surprise.

“One senior administration official reacted with exasperation to the decision, arguing that the move would do little to achieve the president’s goal of improving press coverage,” writes the Journal. “The president has discussed banning news outlets from the White House before, according to people close to the White House. But aides have persuaded him to take less aggressive measures, such as blocking reporters from the Oval Office or limiting their participation in the pool of reporters that covers the president when he conducts events in spaces that are too small for the entire press corps.”

Some Trump allies have expressed disapproval of the press ban openly, like Ari Fleischer, White House press secretary under President George W. Bush and frequent defender of the president, who posted, “Banning them from the WH is not the solution.”

According to the Journal, Trump’s frustration is mounting after a “wave of setbacks,” such as revelations that a Russian oligarch had paid for Donald Trump Jr.’s lavish wedding afterparty in the Bahamas, the Supreme Court’s decision to block his attack on mail-in voting, and the Federal Reserve’s decision to raise interest rates to curb inflation. Trump is also “grappling with falling approval ratings and the prospect of Republican losses in the coming midterm elections driven in part by the unpopular war in Iran, which has further frustrated voters by driving up energy prices.” The Journal reports that “the president has been briefed on the headwinds facing Republicans in the midterms, and advisers have told him that the Iran war is a drag on his conservative base’s enthusiasm ahead of the election.”

In Trump’s estimation, the solution involves having more of his allies pushing his message on TV, even though Republican candidates across the country are rushing to distance themselves from him. Officials also told the Journal that Trump “asked his advisers to look for more foreign policy victories that he could tout ahead of the midterms,” and his address to the United Nations General Assembly in New York and meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping at the White House this week reflect that. According to the Journal, “Though Trump sees foreign policy as a legacy-defining issue for him, polls show that voters are more focused on domestic affairs.”

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