President Donald Trump's ongoing boxing match with the media is escalating, with his spokesperson announcing a major change to how he'll be covered.
Politico White House bureau chief Desha Burns tweeted Tuesday that White House pool reporters will now no longer be chosen by the White House Correspondents' Association (WHCA). Instead, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said that the administration's media team will now decide on which reporters will comprise the press pool.
New York Times editor Jonathan Weisman called the announcement "a big deal," explaining that the White House press pool — which normally rotates journalists in and out — is the primary source of coverage for the administration. Now, that's no longer the case, and Trump is presumed to make sure that only friendly reporters are able to ask him questions.
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"He can now hand-pick the reporters questioning him," Weisman said.
Other journalists also condemned the decision. New Yorker columnist Susan Glasser — who is married to New York Times chief White House correspondent Peter Baker — said the "Trump White House [is] on the way to establishing its own version of a Kremlin press pool, approved media only." ABC 10 News San Diego reporter Adam Racusin said: "The White House should not be allowed to pick and choose who covers them." And high school journalism teacher Garrett Gordon (also a veteran broadcast journalist) summed up Leavitt's announcement by tweeting that the White House was "incentivizing publishing propaganda."
"When you’re doing loads of corrupt, illegal and unpopular s--- you need to make sure the only journalists who can ask questions are in on the grift," Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) tweeted.
The controversial announcement comes on the heels of the White House banning the Associated Press (AP) from the press pool over the outlet's decision to continue referring to the body of water between Texas and Florida as the Gulf of Mexico, rather than the Trump administration's chosen "Gulf of America" designation. The AP argued that the international body of water is still known as the Gulf of Mexico by the rest of the world. Ed Martin, who is the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, slammed the AP in a tweet from his office's official X account, saying they "refuse to put America first."
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