Bulwark Takes - BREAKING: Trump Uses Putin-Like Tactics on White House Press Corps

Episode Date: February 25, 2025

Sam Stein and Lauren Egan break down the crisis severity of Caroline Leavitt’s announcement the White House will dictate which news outlets will be able to cover Donald Trump in the press pool.

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Limited time only. Price and participation may vary. Cannot be combined with any other offer. Single item at regular price. Ba-da-ba-ba-ba. Hey, guys. It's me, Sam Stein, managing editor at The Bulwark. I'm here with Lauren Egan.

We are recording this on Tuesday. It's like 2 p.m. White House press briefing just finished, and there was – look, this is inside of baseball. I'm not going to lie. But there was some pretty dramatic news with respect to how the press corps, the White House press corps, will be able to interact with the president. You and I have both been members of the White House press corps. We've both been in the pool, the White House press secretary, announced that instead of the White House Correspondents Association being the person who determines the pool, and we'll get into what the pool is in a little bit, the White House itself was going to determine which outlets were in the pool.

Let's play the clip, and then on the backside, let's talk about the significance of it. As you all know, for decades, a group of DC based journalists, the White House Correspondents Association, has long dictated which journalists get to ask questions of the President of the United States in these most intimate spaces. Not anymore. I am proud to announce that we are going to give the power back to the people who read your papers, who watch your television shows, and who listen to your radio stations. Moving forward, the White House press pool will be determined by the White House press team. All right. First of all, was there an audible whoa? Yes, there was.

I heard that too. Secondly. So I guess they were like all taken off guard. Yeah, I guess. Didn't get as up. Finally, before we get into the nuts and bolts here, I love that she was like, we're going to give the power back to the people who watch your programs. And then she's like, we'll be the tyranny. Right, right.

I guess they're the people. I don't know. Let's start with this. Explain to everyone what the pool is because I don't know. Let's start with this. What is the explain to everyone what the pool is? Because I don't really think beyond. Yeah, I mean, yeah, it is. It is insider baseball, but it does matter. The press pool is a group of 13 reporters that travel with the president. The group's there. Anything he does, they're there. And historically, the White House Correspondents Association, which is like over 100 years old at this point, has determined who is part of that rotation. Because outlets rotate every day who's actually on duty for being a part of the press pool. They report back to the rest of the press corps what the president says, what the president's doing, et cetera, et cetera. And why have the White House Correspondents Association control it as opposed to the White House? Well, unless you want it to be like giving

CCP or giving Kremlin, like you need an independent group of reporters to be the ones that are- To decide, yes. These are the people who will cover the president, not the president's chosen media. Yeah. And I think it's important to note that like it's not just like the new york times and the washington post and the ap that are part of this like new york post is in this uh huff post is like there's a lot of different kinds of new media yeah yeah yeah um daily i'll just say that tragically we're not um um so it's not like it's just like this like group of like, I don't know, you know, like five or six outlets. Like it's kind of a big rotation at this point. And what do you get? What is the benefits of being in the pool?

Well, for one, you, yeah, I mean, you get to like, obviously you get access. You get to be in the Oval Office. You get to travel with the president. I think, you know, you're going to see all this stuff up close and firsthand. All the president's aides get to know you better. You have that kind of interaction. And I think in terms, you know, for like the TV outlets, they get to be right there. They get their cameras right there for their for their new shows and whatnot. It doesn't make a big difference. And especially for places like the AP that are kind of like selling that really fast reaction. As soon as President Trump says something, they blast it out to their subscribers,

the people that pay for their services. That's how they make their money. All right. So the backstory here is the AP refuses to call the Gulf of Mexico, the Gulf of America, because it's an international body of water. They are, we should note, calling Mount Denali, Mount McKininley because it's the U.S. territory. So it's not like they're just totally opposed to Trump. They're just, in this case, using a different standard than Trump wants. Because they're doing that, the White House has kicked them out of the pool or forbid them from coming, I should say, forbid them from coming into the Oval Office and on Air Force One. This was the result of a lawsuit.

It was partially rejected or at least temporarily rejected by a judge yesterday that was declared victory that's what preceded this um now karen levin was like well we'll continue to have members of the five big tv networks we'll continue to have a a wire service reporter no i think she's just doing that because she doesn't want to be seen as being overly blunt well yeah she said like their spots will remain but yes what is that doesn't it to me to me that's just her being like we're gonna it's not too big a deal but we're gonna determine who else gets to come in but that's the big deal is who gets to determine who goes in right like because at any point in time if it's the white

house's prerogative they'll just be like actually we don't like that outlet right it's a chilling effect where like these these outlets are businesses their business model in part relies on them having you know especially like the tv outlets having certain kind of visual access right and like how does that you know affect sort of how they all think about i suppose if they're reporting like yeah if the tv has a pooler at all times and they can share they can share yeah yeah and so like the big deal here is that if you do give the power away from the institution themselves you have what uh essentially what peter baker the new york times was tweeting about today like kind of looks like, well, at least to him, it looks like something he uncovered in Moscow.

He writes, having served as a Moscow correspondent in the early days of Putin's reign, this reminds me of how the Kremlin took over its own press pool and made sure that only compliant journalists were given access. Lauren, you didn't cover that. I'm reassuring. No. It's not good. I'm not happy. I'm not happy that this is the comparison that we're drawing here. And look, while we recorded this, Eugene Daniels, our dear friend, former colleague at Politico, I don't envy him, but he's the president of the White House Correspondents Association. Kind of falls on him to figure out how to push back on

this. He put out a pretty lengthy statement. We'll read it in part. This move tears at the independence of a free press in the United States, suggests the government will choose the journals who cover the president. And free country leaders must not be able to choose their own press corps. It goes on through the history of the White House Correspondents Association itself. It says, to be clear, the White House did not give the White House Correspondents Association board a heads up or have any discussions about today's announcements, but the White House Correspondents Association will never stop advocating for comprehensive access, full transparency, and the right of the American public to read, listen to, and watch reports from the White House delivered without fear or favor. Yeah, so not in the announcement.

And maybe that's just because it's to come as any sense that there's going to be some sort of collective action response to it that I read. Yeah, I mean, I think even if you watch the press briefing, no one brought it up. Like, no reporter pushed back on it. It didn't come up. Kind of wild. Like, I don't know. Like, I get that they were caught off guard, but

still the fact that... To me, that was just a concerning sign. It's like, people are already kind of running scared and like, with the shit happening with the AP, is everyone just just kind of like i'm not going to poke the bear but like the fact that not a single person brought it up was wild so wild to me well let's play this out in theory let's say all the outlets bandied together and they decide, you know what? We, this is just a line we can't, we can't allow. It's our, it's our press pool and we, we need to control who's in it. If the White House is going to take control of that,

we won't send anyone to these pool events. Could that happen? I mean, what does the White House care? Like, I don't know. Like then they get their other agencies. Trump cares enough that he wants the media to. But that's the problem is he'll find someone. They'll find other outlets that will show up.

I think it could work for a minute, but like, I don't know how successful that would actually be. So if they, let's say they do it in the right side broadcasting network. Like, actually, you know what? Fuck you guys. We'll show up and we'll broadcast this stuff. right that defeats the entire boycott yeah i mean like like it's it's also like i think that the association is so it's so much of an institution right like they all care so much about the fact that like you have to have eyes and ears on the president the entire time right i think i

think they'd have a really hard time sort of just like giving that up even if it was just like a let's see what happens over the next 48 hours like so you think ultimately they they value the access in the not just access but the need to be yeah because access yeah that's a bad word then the sort of very important like public service part of it whereas like if we take our eyes and ears off the president even if we're doing it for like you know this greater yeah but that's a slippery slope right because once you start doing this they'll control anything right right because if you do that you're just then agreeing to play by their rules whatever his rules are right yeah and then at that point you're basically saying well i mean this is they're going to control at this point the pool reports too

right or maybe not so the pool reports are the things that are sent out off of an event let's say trump's meeting with macron uh they only are allowing print poolers and not the tv cameras so that's not what happened yesterday but let's in theory, they are print poolers there. He's got a write-up or she's got a write-up exactly what was said in that moment. And they're literally one of four or five people who are in the room to document it. Usually the print pool is sent to the white house correspondence association for dissemination. Right. Am I wrong about that?

That is right. right am i wrong about that correct that is then if in theory the white house is taking over this responsibility the print pool then gets sent to the white house for dissemination potentially we don't know the details yet well the print puller can like send it out directly to all of the people who are part of the white house correspondence association this is a question now is how do you disseminate the pooled events if the white house is the one determining who the poolers are right right yeah it's it's just really really messy and the poor parts like the pool reports i mean they are supposed to serve as this like you know i think we can get like a little too pearl clutchy sometimes about like the role that that the association plays um in setting the

historical record but like you can go back and find pool reports from like years and years ago like they do serve as the the fundamental like they're very important you know they're really important so it's also like okay what outlets are gonna be writing the pool reports now you know like how are we gonna like well i will say i will say I was early HuffPost White House pool in the Obama years and there was a lot of anger within the White House Correspondents Association over my inclusion in the pool because they thought I would write biased pool reports. I don't think I did, but it's possible if you look back. We can all go back and read. Yeah, right on the scale of like one to ten ten being like pretty pretty problematic hair on fire uh one being like uh it's okay we can plow through

this where do you put this one this is in terms of like press just the press it's not like real this is this is this is really bad are you kidding like i was gonna go with an yeah 7.5 to 8 but you know i mean i think we we have to give it like if you let's see if this works out in practice the other thing is it's really expensive to travel yeah the president let's have to pay for that yeah so like that's another you know i don't know if like uh all the all the right wing trumpy outlets are going to be on board for doing all that expensive travel. Yeah. It's a lot of money. Yeah.

Maybe the podcasters are sitting on a lot of real dough there. Okay, cool. This was helpful. A little alarming. Relatedly, you guys can check out the interview I had with Chuck Tata about a week and a half, two weeks ago where we talked about the,

the treatment of the AP Chuck's big thing was collective action has to happen. And it's probably too late. I think Chuck was proven right actually because if they did this today, we're already down the slippery slope. All right, Lauren. Thanks for doing this. Catch you later. If Eugene hits

you up, pitch him. Should we send him some ice cream or something? I don't know. Eugene, we don't feel for you, we love you buddy we do love you alright tune in to the feed guys

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