Trump administration tightens its grip on White House press corps

President Donald Trump and his MAGA gang had their political posteriors handed to them this week in elections in Virginia, New Jersey, New York City and California, where a ballot initiative allowing the Democratic state legislature to temporarily redraw congressional maps passed handily. But make no mistake, that doesn’t mean the world is safe.

It means Trump is now a cornered sewer rat fighting for survival. And he’s going to get even nastier.

The election setback came less than a week after the president banned reporters from the “Upper Press” area of the White House, which contains the offices of the press secretary and other senior press officials.

Two sources close to the administration told me independently this week that Trump has further plans to curtail the press, possibly including a total or partial ban of reporters from the West Wing. 

When I asked the White House to respond to this concern, I received this email:

Due to staff shortages resulting from the Democrat Shutdown, the typical 24/7 monitoring of this press inbox may experience delays. We ask for your patience as our staff work to field your requests in a timely manner. As you await a response, please remember this could have been avoided if the Democrats voted for the clean Continuing Resolution to keep the government open. The press office also cannot accommodate waves requests or escorts at this time. Thank you for your attention to this matter.

It was signed “The White House Press Team.”

If you make fun of Donald Trump, he wants you arrested. If you report him in an unfavorable light, he wants you muted. If you take a picture of him he doesn’t like, then he screams and pouts.

The president of the United States acts like a spoiled first grader who thinks he’s a king. And this king doesn’t like bad news, so he takes out his anger on those who provide it. That’s why he persists in calling us “fake news.” In discrediting us, he seeks to turn the American people against the press and use their anger to control us and our coverage, all while exalting himself. 

Media coverage — how to create it and how to control it — is “obviously” a prominent part of Trump’s strategy, say former and current associates. “Of course we talked about the press,” a former White House official told me. “He loves the press.” 

“I think you mean he loves the cameras,” I said. 

“Same thing,” they said flatly.

Those who have worked with Trump and those who still do say he’s dangerous. Then there’s Pep Secretary Karoline Leavitt. To hear her tell it, Trump has never made a mistake and should be seated at the right hand of the Father. 

What Trump doesn’t like is criticism, questions or any hint of curiosity or impartiality. During his last administration, he tried to ban individual reporters he didn’t like. Jim Acosta and I bore the brunt of his attacks, and we had to go to court to keep our press passes. CNN and Acosta beat him and he gave up. He tried the same thing on Playboy and me, and we won three times in court. 

This time Trump is not bothering with individual reporters. He’s going after the companies that hire them and the framework that gives reporters access to real information. He has compromised most corporate media to some degree, if only by dominating most coverage. The depth of his interference in most cases, though, is much deeper.

When he returned to office in January, Trump’s people took over press pool assignments and kicked out the most experienced reporters, banning the wire services from being in the pool. They have dedicated a seat to “new media” in the briefing room to blatant right-wing propagandists and stacked the deck in pool sprays with “secondary” personnel, which is often populated by the new media group.

Trump sued “60 Minutes,” CBS and Paramount for producing an edited version of an October 2024 interview with Vice President Kamala Harris conducted by reporter Bill Whitaker. He knew it was edited because CBS also published a transcript of the entire interview. Donald said the edit made Harris look good. So he sued. CBS settled. That was then.

Bari Weiss, a questionable Trump acolyte with limited journalistic experience but a healthy ego, is now running CBS News as its editor-in-chief. She knows as much about newsgathering as Trump knows about humility. Nonetheless, Donald Trump sat for an interview on “60 Minutes” with Norah O’Donnell this week, just as Harris did with Whitaker. He liked the edit of his interview. He didn’t sue. This is now.

The death of traditional American journalism is complete. We can call it a wrap on its production and move on, though I sincerely wish it weren’t so. There won’t be a funeral for my profession. Too many people from both sides of the aisle are beating a dead horse and blaming each other for trying to kill it. They never figured the horse’s owner killed it for profit. Fewer even know it’s dead.

Meanwhile, Laura Loomer, a proud MAGA activist and conspiracy theorist, is now credentialed as a reporter to cover the Pentagon. Five will get you ten that she can visit Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s makeup room whenever she needs touching up. The legitimate press left in unison after Hegseth demanded they sign NDAs. The propagandists are now arriving to take up space.

Then, on Oct. 31 after 5 p.m., the Trump White House dumped some administration garbage, as memorialized in the “Take out the Trash Day” episode of “The West Wing.” Josh Lyman explained it best: “Any stories we have to give the press that we’re not wild about, we give all in a lump on Friday.” 

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The lump that Trump dumped on Halloween was the news that his administration was banning reporters from the Upper Press area. The email accompanying the announcement said reporters had to be removed from the offices because we had gone wandering off, and had access to information we shouldn’t have.

No one “wanders off” in the White House. The Secret Service does its job very well.  

A short time after the White House released the news, communications director Steven Cheung accused correspondents of “secretly recording” conversations in the West Wing. It’s kind of hard to “secretly” tape anything. Our cameras are rather obvious. Did he mean video from cell phones? What were the circumstances? Most of the press is so busy following the administration’s orders these days that it’s difficult to believe any reporter would risk their access — and job — by attempting such a move. 

Under the guise of transparency, the administration is trying to convince honest Americans that reporters eavesdrop on administration officials, wander off into private areas of the White House  and the Pentagon’s classified areas at will, to routinely harass important people who have important things to do.

What they call eavesdropping is merely observation. UPI’s Helen Thomas spent hours just standing in Upper Press. In the past, presidential officials, staff and the occasional president brought her coffee and donuts. What Trump and his team calls harassment is actually nothing more than reporters asking to talk to sources directly, then or later. The people we want to interview work for our government. We have every right to ask them questions. If you think it’s rude to ask, on behalf of the American people, how our elected officials and their employees are spending our tax dollars, then it’s safe to say you don’t understand how this is supposed to work — or don’t care.

This administration claims we are listening to private conversations in public areas. Then don’t have private conversations in public areas. The answer isn’t to ban reporters because you’ve been so damn sloppy as to discuss things you shouldn’t where you shouldn’t, or because you left classified or sensitive information lying around. That is incredibly unprofessional behavior from any employee of the executive branch. 

Mike McCurry, former press secretary to President Bill Clinton, characterized the loss of Upper Press as destructive not only to the press, but also to the president. “The give and take between reporters and our staff in that room during the Clinton years helped shape policy for the better,” he told me. “We could meet off-camera and talk about issues. We’d say this is what we got, and the press would say ‘this is what we want to ask about,’ then we would do our homework. I still remember President Clinton getting on the phone to cabinet secretaries and telling them we had to have more on an issue. It usually started in those offices. That kind of interaction was very productive.” 

The next move, according to a source close to the White House, is to “probably” ban most of the press from the work space in the West Wing all together. “There have been serious discussions about it,” I was told. “They’re working out details.” 

The likelihood, I’m told, of the press moving out increased after Cheung accused us of chicanery. The question now appears to be what form such an escalation of the press ban would take, and if it does, then when. 

“When” is always problematic in a Trump administration. According to the two sources I spoke with, the holiday season may be ideal to issue further press restrictions. Trump won’t be around much, and neither will the press. Maybe he’ll just make us go away like he did to Congress.

Maybe we’ll find ourselves under lock and key across the street in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. Some say the greater possibility is we will be relocated to larger offices off Lafayette Park. Or maybe nothing changes. Among the considerations, I’m told, is how quickly the presidential pool could set up in the Oval Office. One possibility being considered is for the pool to remain in offices at the White House while everyone else moves out. “There would be plenty of office space (off campus), not like the basement of the West Wing,” one of my sources explained. “But, there have been no [final] decisions made yet that I know of.”

“That wouldn’t be surprising. I remember seeing plans for a big press center on the North Lawn when I first got to the White House,” McCurry said. “That didn’t happen.”

Joe Walsh, the former Republican presidential candidate who is now a Democrat, was quick to question Trump’s press restrictions. “The danger of Trump banning the press from the White House is a President utterly unaccountable to the people. The press is our watchdog. Without the press free to do their job, government rules over the people… He can’t ban the press from the White House. That’s our house, not his.”

For now, the reporters are relegated to lower press — where a wrangler admitted in writing  that they cannot speak  on the record for the administration. That means there is absolutely no chance of meeting sources or gathering information in the White House press office that doesn’t have the stamp of approval from Trump.  

In 1985, I met President Ronald Reagan on my first day at the White House. I had followed UPI’s Helen Thomas and ABC’s Sam Donaldson to meet staffers when a member of the Secret Service walked through the door, telling us to leave because the president was walking over to talk to deputy press secretary Larry Speakes.

Helen and Sam turned and left. I followed several steps behind when I tripped, falling over my own feet. Suddenly I felt the grip of a large hand on my shoulder. I was sure it was the Secret Service kicking me out. I turned and met the gaze of the 40th president of the United States.

“Well, you don’t have to bow in front of me, young man,” Reagan said with a smile.

That was in Upper Press. Today, I can’t even go there.