All was quiet as the press pool stood feet from the White House in Spring 2024 waiting for the president to call us in for his meeting with congressional leaders.
Suddenly, I heard squeals behind me similar to that of sorority girls after completing rush. Members of my fellow press pool bear-hugged the guest who had come up behind them: White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre.
The press gushed over Jean-Pierre: “It has been so long!” “I love your outfit!” “Are you joining us today?”
“Should I be one of you today?” Jean-Pierre joked as the press laughed. “Should I ask for a raise?”
Reporters often walk a fine line between developing sources and making friends in an effort to obtain information. Physically embracing the very person you’re expected to be grilling a few hours later on behalf of the American people seems an obvious crossing of that line. (RELATED: ‘Unemployable’: Media Experts Predict Where KJP Will End Up Next)
On the second day of Trump’s presidency, nearly a year after that incident, a different press secretary walked the White House campus. Fresh off a Fox News hit, Karoline Leavitt passed the line of media tents dubbed “Pebble Beach.” Correspondents swarmed her.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt holds her first news conference in the Brady Press Briefing Room at the White House on January 28, 2025 in Washington, DC. At 27-years-old, Leavitt is the youngest White House press secretary in U.S. history. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
But there were no hugs. No squealing. Reporters were anxious to get information and wasted no time on pleasantries.
When Leavitt reached the end of the White House drive, she didn’t hang around chit-chatting with reporters. She went off to her next obligation.
I’ve heard stories over the years of how the press has cozied up to Democratic administrations. During the year or so in which I covered the Biden White House, I saw firsthand how the press turned a blind eye to the president’s condition, coddled the administration, and outright fell short of holding the people in power accountable.
The legacy media failed. And everyone knows it, especially President Trump and his team. That became evident as Leavitt discussed plans to shake up the briefing room and provide unprecedented access to independent media.
As we waited to enter the Oval Office to see Biden that day, the pool reporters huddled up to discuss coverage for the event. One reporter told the press pool that it was best if we coordinated questions so that just one person could yell them out at the president. Conveniently, the reporter insisted that they get to ask the question we collectively chose, as they were with a TV station and thus the most important.
As it was one of my first times serving as a member of the press pool, I regrettably didn’t push back, worried about making waves. The first question the reporters suggested was regarding Ukraine aide and Speaker Mike Johnson’s cooperation with the president. Another reporter said they wanted to follow up with a question about Alabama and its in-vitro fertilization (IVF) debate.
With that, we headed in.
In the final months of the Biden admin, the briefing room was just about half full.
10 minutes out from @PressSec Karoline Leavitt’s first briefing, correspondents line the sides of the room. @DailyCaller is here and ready for what’s to come. pic.twitter.com/cuMq6WfpmM
— Reagan Reese (@reaganreese_) January 28, 2025
What I don’t regret from that day was disregarding the directive of my fellow poolers. As soon as the president finished his remarks. I began yelling my question as the press wranglers moved us out of the room. No one got a question, which wasn’t at all abnormal during the Biden administration.
I heard my fellow poolers frustrated that their plan hadn’t worked and that someone had started yelling over them. There were demands to know who had strayed from the plan, but I found myself rushing to parse the president’s remarks together for the pool report and skated away.
Similarly, one White House reporter told me of a time colleagues voiced their frustration with him after he dared to question the president about his physical decline and whether he would resign and leave former Vice President Kamala Harris in charge.
The legacy media doesn’t have the opportunity to control the narrative and squash the little guy under the Trump administration.
Just a few hours into his presidency, Trump sat in the Oval Office signing executive orders. In between signing orders, numerous reporters had the opportunity to pepper the president with questions. Sometimes he answered while signing away. Sometimes he looked up and pondered the question before giving a more in-depth answer.
On his second day, the president gave remarks from the Roosevelt Room about a new AI infrastructure deal. He then opened up the floor for questions. For 29 minutes, Trump was asked about his pardons, plans for the future of TikTok, Russia’s war against Ukraine, and more. He chose what reporters he wanted to call on, he shut up the reporters he didn’t want to hear from. There was no coordination among the press as to what stories would be covered or who would get their shot that day at questioning the most powerful man in the world.
This was my first time experiencing a true Trump press conference, but it was something I had often heard about from my colleagues who had covered the White House prior to Biden’s tenure.
A White House reporter once recounted to me their experience covering the Trump administration. They said there were always multiple opportunities to ask Trump questions for a story and rarely would the press go a full day without seeing him.
“It’s night and day,” another reporter remarked to me that day.
And it is, quite literally, night and day. It took Trump just a few hours in office to take more questions than Biden did his entire first week. One of Trump’s first stops after being sworn in was the Oval Office. There, he signed several executive orders while taking 75 questions and follow-ups during the 48 minutes that he sat at the Resolute desk. Biden took just six total questions, some of which had one word answers, during his first week in office.
Though Biden frequently “gaggled” with the press, he often only took one question and his answers were brief. At press conferences, reporters appeared to be pre-selected by the White House communications team. The former president would call on individuals from a list — featuring photos of reporters and the topics they hoped to cover — set in front of him. In his final year in office, Biden even admitted that he would “get in trouble” if he started taking questions from reporters. Less than 100 days in, the former president claimed his staff would scold him if he didn’t take questions from the pre-approved list.
“I’m sorry, I’m going to get in trouble with staff if I don’t do this the right way,” the president said in March 2021.
The press is in a vulnerable position. One White House correspondent detailed how the press corps widely knew the details of several Biden White House stories, but failed to report the scandals. There were occasional flare-ups of interest in some situations, such as the former president’s handling of classified documents or his involvement in his son’s foreign business dealings, but when it came to stories like the potential ousting of Jean-Pierre or rumors of sexual harassment in the first lady’s office, they turned a blind eye.
The press corps is acutely aware of the way their behavior is viewed by the public. But they aren’t afraid to run cover for themselves or a friendly administration.
Under Biden, for example, it appeared they tried to tamp down criticism of the president’s often light, to say the least, schedule. (RELATED: In Memoriam: A Look Back At KJP’s Greatest Lies As Her Time In The White House Ends)
The press office typically calls a temporary “lid” in the middle of the day, which ensures the press that they can leave the White House campus and sneak off for lunch without missing any news. These are typically called “lunch lids.” But during the Biden administration, they adopted a new title: “brunch lids.” The new term reflected the fact that these off-hours would often extend from the morning into the late afternoon. From the top of 2023 until mid July, the Spectator counted a total of thirty-nine lunch lids and forty-two brunch lids called by the Biden White House.
.@RobCrilly: “There’s a new book…saying [Biden] has told aides in private that he felt tired & that explains why there are so few events before 10AM…Is this why we’re seeing brunch lids…[H]as [he] admitted to you…he felt tired.”
KJP blasts it as “a ridiculous assumption” pic.twitter.com/bbyqTjt365
— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) August 30, 2023
I asked the White House a few months later about these “brunch lids” and why they spanned for so long. I never got a real answer to my question, but a Biden official condescendingly encouraged me to speak to the White House Correspondents Association because it sounded like I “didn’t understand” the concept of a “brunch lid” and how they were intended to benefit reporters. (I don’t know a single reporter who needs hours to eat lunch.)
A month or so after that conversation, pool reporters were directed to stop using the term “brunch lid” because it was informal and didn’t belong in a historical account of the presidency.
I will never know for sure if these two incidents were connected, but such a decision, I believe, affects the perception of the president, his schedule and what would later become a massive story: his fitness for office.
The tune among the press has appeared to change as the new Trump administration rolls in. Since Trump took office, Turning Point USA’s associated media outlet, Frontlines, has been admitted into the WHCA. A spokesperson for the organization explained to the Caller that the organization never tried to apply in the past because they already knew it would be an immediate rejection.
“And if anyone says the White House is admitting activists orgs into the WH press corps, my reply is simple: How is that any different than CNN, NBC, or The Washington Post?” the spokesperson told the Caller.
A source also confirmed that One America News Network, a conservative TV outlet, previously had several staffers denied WHCA membership until Trump took office. The network was only invited to press briefings during COVID because they received a personal invite from Trump’s press secretary.
The days of suppressing independent media and outlets across the political spectrum appear to be over. There will be no more gushing over White House staff or going months without seeing a cabinet official.
And there certainly won’t be any more questions about whether the president is going to speak to the press.
“Will the president gaggle – the answer is almost always no,” a Biden official once remarked to me.