Media Column: The White House Press Corps Got Played
Trump broke the old rules. Legacy media blinked. Now the WHCA is powerless, and the outsiders are in.
WASHINGTON — Our nation’s capital is emptying out fast now that President Donald Trump has returned as its center of gravity. The place still hums with activity, but the buildings feel lonelier than ever.
Voice of America. PBS. NPR. Publicly funded outlets have always had a target on their backs. The ones that push back—trailblazing or not—tend to draw the most fire.
If you sit in the big chair and you’re holding a big stick, there’s a lot you can do, especially if you're not inclined to let the rules stop you.
Congress bickers. Trump might even enjoy the show, apart from the part where he needs them to sign off on funding.
And the courts? Sure, they can issue rulings—but they need the executive to carry them out. If he chooses to ignore them? Let the lawyers figure it out. Trump has been in and out of countless courtrooms over the decades. He knows how slow they move.
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But it’s the Fourth Branch that’s proven most resistant to Trump and DOGE’s pruning shears, so afar. If Trump had his way, the press would serve as a nonstop highlight reel of his greatest hits—best jokes, best quotes, best legislation, best decisions, always the best.
Despite popular opinions otherwise, I don’t think the president is blind his missteps, but he’s perpetually on the defensive, convinced the press lives to tear him down.
Presidents have always had tense relationships with the media. Every White House has tries to control the narrative. The smart ones—Obama, FDR—did it subtly, rarely letting the tension show.
But Trump doesn’t do subtle. He doesn’t care for the art of perception. He swings the stick in full view, and lets everyone see where it lands.
The most significant blow to the press at the White House came early, in a move that gutted the very institution tasked with covering the presidency: the White House Correspondents' Association (WHCA).
During one of the first briefings of Trump’s return, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt announced that her office—not the WHCA—would control access to the Oval Office, Air Force One, the Cabinet Room—everything.
Only the Press Office decides who gets in the mythic Pool Duty. Associated Press? Out. Washington Post? Out. HuffPost? Out. CNN? Out. Not always forever—but out, at least until the Press Office figured out how to rotate access.
Previously, the WHCA handled that rotation. There was a system. It was tight. Legacy media mostly, with the occasional kernel of prestige access to newer digital news outlets. But that system is dead. So has been the WHCA, if we’re honest, which we always should be as press.
White House correspondents have seen AP get shut out of nearly everything. There was a kind of sorrow—almost pity—for a respected, time-honored outlet that refused to substitute “Mexico” for “America” in a report.
Sure, it was petty, pointless, and absurd. But the WHCA’s response? A letter nobody read. The White House might have skimmed it—or laughed at it. And that was that. WHCA grievance received no thoughtful review.
When the Washington Post was under siege, when CNN was smeared as “fake news,” when other outlets were humiliated on camera, correspondents mostly lowered our heads and made sad faces.
Karoline Leavitt smiled through it all and announced yet another policy: the Press Office would now assign seats in the 49-seat Briefing Room. A power that once belonged to the WHCA, gone.
Those who’d gotten comfortable in their assigned spots found themselves suddenly displaced. Upstart media grinned. The WHCA, once powerful, now seemed like a fossil. They sent another letter. No one read it either.
It was pathetic, really, the opportunity missed for every White House reporter to stand united, perhaps refusing to air White House briefings, ignoring live feeds … then we’d have wielded a stick of our own.
Sure, it would’ve cost us. Our coverage depends on the President doing something. But it would’ve cut off his megaphone. It would’ve forced a negotiation. Maybe even drawn a boundary line, one with mutual respect on both sides.
But the moment was too complicated. New media outlets, Migrant Insider admittedly among them, thrilled at the vacuum, glancing enormous opportunities as Leavitt stripped the WHCA of every last vestige of power. Veteran correspondents could only stand by and groan.
Capitalism did its part too—new media figured out how to monetize engagement better than old media ever could. Viewers didn’t want the news. They wanted a product. The WHCA had no real counter offer for the daily news consumer.
Had the legacy press fought back through the association, shown some unity and punished the new regime, they would have been replaced with hungry, arrogant, newfangled news outlets willing to play the game:
Email questions in advance. Praise the President on live TV. Massage numbers until everyone looked good. Access secured. Mission accomplished. Adversaries replaced.
The WHCA, after years of growing inward, cliquish, self-congratulatory, utterly complacent, should have seen this coming. But they didn’t. They stuck to their routines, gave each other journalism awards while coasting through briefings on social media.
When Trump came swinging, the White House press were blown backward by an old man well past his prime. WHCA has finally opened its eyes to find the younger, sharper, hungrier eyes of press outsiders staring back at them.
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