How Far Is Too Far on Trump’s Media Pushback?

His press shakeup was warranted. But there’s a line to be drawn.

Donald Trump, his supporters and detractors agree, is an unusual president.

He’s unusual in not only his policy views, but also his penchant for pouring fuel on the fire of longstanding conflicts. This factor is central to Trump’s appeal with his infamous “base,” and it’s a major reason that opposition to him remains so fierce more than a decade into his political career.

One fine example of this phenomenon, and the one with which I am personally most familiar, is his hostile stance toward the media. As a White House reporter for most of the Biden administration and the first six months of this second Trump administration, I saw it all firsthand inside the West Wing.

Trump’s tirades against the “fake news” and the “failing New York Times” are now familiar, and it was a foregone conclusion that he would continue skipping the annual White House Correspondents Association dinner, at which presidents traditionally mingled in a Washington ballroom with the reporters who cover them.

But just as tariffs on China and a renegotiated NAFTA in his first term have proceeded to an upending of the global economic order in term two, insults and no-shows have given way to concrete action against media foes. Much of this was warranted and in fact overdue. But even the most rock-ribbed and media-skeptical conservatives, perhaps more so than anyone, should recognize that a rebalanced relationship with the press must remain a free and fair one.

Provocation with a Point

I began covering the White House in the fall of 2021, and heard more than one reporter pledge during the early Biden years that if Trump returned to office they would leave the beat, owing to all the headaches he caused them.

They had no idea what they were in for.

Less than a month after retaking the White House, Trump kicked the Associated Press out of the Oval Office and off of Air Force One for its refusal to honor his renaming of the “Gulf of America.”

The White House Correspondents Association dutifully stepped into the fray, issuing two quick statements that went straight for its most unassailable defense. “The White House is seeking to curtail the press freedoms enshrined in our Constitution,” it said, referring to the First Amendment’s prohibition on Congress abridging the freedom of the press. Trump’s team countered: No one has a First Amendment right to be in the Oval Office.

Days later, the administration upped the ante considerably, announcing that it would not only demote the AP but take control of the entire press pool rotation.

Most people probably don’t know what that is, nor should they. But for the WHCA, this act was a seminal moment of betrayal in its relationship with the White House, unceremoniously swiping one of the group’s core powers from its hands.

The rotation determines which journalist will be each day's “pool” reporter, traveling with the president or attending enclosed-space events such as cabinet meetings or Oval Office signings where the hundreds of correspondents who cover the White House cannot fit. This person then sends reports to everyone else, which are also accessible to the general public.

The correspondents’ association previously decided not only the rotation order, but also who got to be in the rotation at all, making itself a powerful gatekeeper of access and prestige in the journalism world. Losing that status was a major blow, and the WHCA issued another statement, this time lamenting that “in a free country, leaders must not be able to choose their own press corps.”

The problem for the WHCA was two-fold. First, the White House correctly pointed out that the building is government-run and taxpayer-funded, and that the prior arrangement was always a voluntary delegation of the president’s power.

Second, journalists from right-leaning outlets, whose closer alignment with the administration could have positioned them best to lead the fight back, often felt less than inclined to do so. Was the WHCA really looking out for its right-leaning members? How often, if ever, did it give one of its prestigious awards to a conservative correspondent? And many of these outlets enjoyed better access after the move than before it.

When the White House took yet another step in March, announcing it could reassign seating in the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room, Republicans who pay attention to such things were thrilled.

Ari Fleischer, the first press secretary to George W. Bush, said pointedly that the decision of who sits where in a government building should be made by the press secretary, not a private organization. He added that such an arrangement was the case until 2006, suggesting that any pearl-clutching over “longstanding traditions” and “norms” was overblown.

Of the 22 outlets who enjoy assigned seats in the briefing room’s first three rows (which typically get to ask the vast majority of questions), just one—Fox News—is right-leaning. The rest may consider themselves objective, but conservatives reading off the names—CNN, ABC, the AP—no doubt see a list of left-leaning news sources that have consistently offered slanted questions and coverage.

What would a briefing divided evenly between conservative and liberal news sources look like? If nothing else, it would make for must-watch news. And at the margin, replacing the twenty-first mainstream media outlet that leans Left with a second that leans Right could broaden the range of issues raised and questions posed.

What the Press Should Want

President Biden’s outright refusal to engage with the press contributed to the mega-scandal of his declining health, revealed for all the world in his June 2024 debate with Trump and still unfolding today.

Biden gave vanishingly few interviews, and the ones he did take were with extremely friendly outlets and outright liberal activists. When he answered questions, his responses were often extremely short, and his aides shouted “thank you press!”—code for “we’re kicking you out”—the second he finished any scripted remarks.

Trump’s team argues that, by contrast, they are expanding access and operating one of the most transparent presidential administrations in history. Indeed, Trump will answer questions for an hour or longer following his prepared remarks. When his aides shouted “thank you press” at the events I attended, my reaction was more often relief than frustration—it meant I’d finally get to sit down after an unfiltered free-for-all in which the president might address all manner of issues at greater length than a Lord of the Rings film.

And while Biden-era news briefings were buttoned-down affairs where beleaguered press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre read scripted answers to reporters sitting in assigned seats, the Trump administration has opened the floodgates. Jean-Pierre’s successor, Karoline Leavitt, has granted hundreds of new reporters access to the White House, making her briefings standing-room-only affairs with as many people as possible crammed into the aisles and spilling down a back hallway into the wider press workspace.

Many of those new reporters are friendly to Trump, to say the least. A cameraman from one outlet spontaneously shouted “Trump 2028!” during a press conference in June. But isn’t that free speech too? Between the Biden and Trump models, which is more aligned with the values embedded in the First Amendment, and the conception of democracy enshrined by the Founders in our constitution?

Drawing the Line

What concerns me are moves that Trump has made beyond rearranging chairs in the West Wing.

While the president has the legal right to control the press rotation, asserting that control does bring with it a responsibility to avoid perverse incentives. If an outlet publishes a story the president doesn’t like, will it be kicked out of the pool? That’s exactly what happened to the Wall Street Journal after it ran a piece on Trump’s ties to Jeffrey Epstein.

When reporters ask friendly questions, will they get better access? Some seem to think so, based on the groveling compliments disguised as questions asked by a few of the right-wing reporters in the room.

Of course, favoritism to friendly coverage is no recent innovation, as the Biden press team’s choice of interviewers made clear. That’s an argument for criticizing the practice harshly, as conservatives have done, not for replicating it. If protecting your own side’s politicians in a supportive bubble made for good politics, maybe playing the same game would be wiser than standing on principle. But recent history has proved the opposite; a political movement benefits from tough scrutiny of its own side when in power, and risks catastrophe when it chases happy headlines and hides from adversarial exchanges. Avoiding the pressure doesn’t prevent the other side from writing what it wants to write, nor does it fool the American people.

By leaving rotations and seating to someone else, past administrations avoided the temptation to give themselves the easy way out. The Trump administration can claim the power if it wants, but then it must exercise restraint and caution. Ideally, a White House would rebalance a pool or front row to be half friendly and half unfriendly, but then would leave the choice of particular outlets to someone else.

Most concerning have been recent actions targeting the bottom lines of major news outlets, which would threaten the existence of smaller ones if deployed against them with equal force. Trump has filed big-money lawsuits against CBS, ABC, and now the Rupert Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal, in the latter case seeking $10 billion. These lawsuits are intended to coerce media organizations and, by radically altering incentives around publication, to abridge speech. Whether this violates the letter of the First Amendment is beside the point; it is inconsistent with the goal of a free press, which all conservatives should consider vital to preserving our liberties and limiting the power of our government. We should also be honest that “the other side” has not, historically, used comparable tactics against conservative outlets—if anything, such outlets tend to be smaller and less well-funded, leaving them more vulnerable to such attacks in the future.

If conservatives were right to oppose the Biden administration’s pandemic-era censorship, we should also oppose any administration’s effort to censor or shut down the press. We should be confident that an adversarial press strengthens our own movement in the long run, regardless of whether progressives choose instead to hide inside a bubble of their own making. We can recognize that what reporters say is often annoying, sensational—and yes, nakedly partisan—and nonetheless defend their right to say it.