Trump Concludes First Term Having Stripped Press Credentials From Journalists Whose Questions He Found Annoying, Resolving Long-Standing Concern That Reporters Were Allowed To Ask Sitting Presidents Questions

The Filing

WASHINGTON. President Donald J. Trump on Wednesday concluded a four-year tenure during which his administration repeatedly revoked, suspended, or declined to renew the White House press credentials of journalists whose questions had displeased him, resolving a long-standing concern within the West Wing that reporters were allowed to ask sitting presidents questions at all.

The administration's approach to press access first drew widespread attention in November 2018, when the White House suspended CNN correspondent Jim Acosta's hard pass following a contentious East Room exchange in which Acosta had attempted a second follow-up question. The action, which the administration initially justified by circulating a doctored video clip implying that Acosta had assaulted a press aide, was subsequently reversed by a federal judge who observed in his ruling that the Fifth Amendment had not been repealed by executive order.

Undeterred, the White House overhauled its press pass system in May 2019, declining to renew hard passes for roughly three dozen reporters who had previously been credentialed under the same criteria used by every preceding administration. Playboy White House correspondent Brian Karem, whose offense had consisted of attempting to ask a question following a Rose Garden event, found his pass suspended for 30 days, a sanction that federal courts also ultimately reversed.

By March 2019, the administration had simply stopped holding the daily White House press briefing altogether, a tradition dating to the Eisenhower era, eliminating the venue at which credentialed reporters had been theoretically empowered to address the executive branch. Briefings resumed sporadically in 2020 under press secretary Kayleigh McEnany, who used several of them to read prepared remarks from a binder before declining to take further questions.

"The President views the White House press corps as one of several free amenities of the office," said one former senior administration official, "alongside the residence, Marine One, and the constitutional ability to ignore subpoenas." The official added that revocations had been "conducted on the merits," and that the merits had varied considerably from one journalist to the next.

At press time, the outgoing President was preparing to depart Washington for Mar-a-Lago, where he intended to continue presidential business at a private club to which the credentialed press was not invited, operate his own social media platform, and file defamation lawsuits against several news organizations he had previously been required to credential.

Who Benefits

§Donald J. Trump personally, who avoided answering questions he found difficult by stripping the credentials of the journalists asking them, and who established a precedent for future personal grievances.
§The Trump Organization, whose private properties became the post-credential-revocation venues for presidential business, beyond the routine reach of the White House press corps.
§Fox News personalities including Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson, and Lou Dobbs, who retained generous access to the President and were never themselves subjected to credential review.
§Sinclair Broadcast Group and One America News Network, whose correspondents received expanded access and frequent presidential call-ins as traditional outlets were squeezed out of briefing rooms that no longer held briefings.
§Future administrations of any party, which inherited a freshly tested precedent permitting the executive branch to selectively deny press access to outlets it disliked.
§Authoritarian governments worldwide, which observed the world's most prominent democracy demonstrate that press credentials could be revoked for editorial reasons without lasting consequence.
§Press secretaries Sean Spicer, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Stephanie Grisham, and Kayleigh McEnany, who were collectively spared the demands of conducting regular daily briefings for the longest stretch of any modern administration.

Sourced to the public record · presented without editorial embellishment