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- She Didn't Know the Barrel Was Loaded
Around a week ago, this was reported:
Trump is blacklisting a news outlet for using a name he doesn't like. It's that simple. So why aren't more reporters and media outlets speaking out more vehemently to help The AP? In part, I'm told, it's because the WH Correspondents' Association is trying to work out a solution behind the scenes.
— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter.bsky.social)2025-02-19T16:05:52.082Z
My response was "Shush, we're talking behind the scenes, you'll ruin it" is a common response from organizations that aren't doing shit. And here we are:
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt announces that the White House Correspondents' Association will no longer choose the pool reporter.
"Moving forward, the White House press pool will be determined by the White House press team."
The AP still doesn’t have access to all the events other WHCA members do because they won’t use “Gulf of America”. The judge hearing the AP’s lawsuit against the Trump Admin declined to issue a TRO yesterday.
My position on this is that these news organizations should send their lowliest intern to the press gaggles with a list of pre-printed questions in case they get called on, and the rest of the organization should do some reporting. Instead, we have highly paid White House correspondents who are on body watch, and sit around in hopes they’ll get some court gossip from the Trump administration. Thank Jebus Jared and Ivanka aren’t involved in Trump 2.0 or else we’d be hearing about sources close to them.
Trump is a TV guy. Everything that’s going to happen in his administration will either be televised where anyone can watch it, or it’s going to be hidden by Musk in such a way that even the DoJ lawyers don’t have any idea who’s doing what. Some real investigative reporting could be used to ferret out the latter, but not if all the high paid “talent" is on their asses in the press room listening to Trump’s designated liar bullshit them.
This CJR piece was posted a month and three days ago. Whatever the opposite of “prescient” is, this “print reporter” has it nailed:
“Despite his sometimes strident and sometimes even violent rhetoric about the press, he loves talking to us,” the print reporter said. “And his team—they like talking to us, and they know that they’re going to have a huge audience.”
“I actually think the team that’s coming in is not going to be as horrific as people might imagine,” the veteran White House reporter said. “It’s not going to be like the first Trump term, where nobody had any idea what they were doing.”
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