White House Correspondents Insider

Behind the scenes of the most powerful city in the world — Washington, D.C. — and those who cover it.

President Trump Again Calls Media “Fake News”

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Photo courtesy of Wikipedia.

President Donald Trump again pushed back against highly-reported stories in the mainstream media about West Wing infighting and turmoil.  Trump said his administration is “getting along great, and getting major things done.”

Posting on Twitter, the president said “Don’t let the FAKE NEWS tell you that there is big infighting in the Trump Admin. We are getting along great, and getting major things done!”

Several media outlets, including the Washington Post and POLITICO, have recently written that the White House has been operating in a chaotic state of uncertainty since Trump was inaugurated, with several aides and insider factions struggling to gain the president’s attention.

On Sunday, POLITICO reported that White House chief of staff Reince Prebius is receiving most of the blame for the administration’s missteps so far.  Several stories emerged last week discussing the president’s anger at Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ desicion to recuse himself from any investigations related to the 2016 election.

As White House Tours Resume, President Trump Surprises Visitors With Personal Welcome

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Photo courtesy Pixabay.

First Lady Melania Trump recently announced that White House tours would resume this morning.

“I am excited to reopen the White House to the hundreds of thousands of visitors who come each year. The White House is a remarkable and historic site and we are excited to share its beauty and history. I am committed to the restoration and preservation of our Nation’s most recognizable landmark.”

As the visitors embarked on their 45-minute self-guided tour, one group was surprised when President Donald Trump emerged from behind a screen on the first floor of the White House, near a portrait of former First Lady Hillary Clinton.

Trump welcomed a touring group of grade school children and invited them to pose with him for a photo, which Jack Cornish from Birmingham, Alabama, took the president up on his offer. Before returning to his private quarters, the president told the group of students to “work hard everybody, work hard.”

White House tours are open to the general public and can be obtained by requesting tickets through congressional offices. Tours take place Tuesday through Saturday.

President Trump’s Address to Congress Draws Over 40 Million Viewers

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Photo courtesy likedavid / Pixabay.

According to data provided by Nielsen, President Donald Trump’s initial address to a joint session of Congress reached approximately 43 million television viewers.

Networks such as ABC, NBC, CBS and Fox aired the address live, as did cable news channels including CNN, MSNBC and Fox News.

Comparatively, President George W. Bush’s first address to Congress in 2001 was watched by approximately 39 million viewers, while President Barack Obama’s initial Congressional speech in 2009 averaged approximately 52 million.

More people watched this week’s joint address than President Trump’s inauguration speech, which drew an average of 30.6 million viewers. The inauguration speech was conducted at noon on a Friday, while his address to the joint session was conducted during prime time on Tuesday evening.

The channel C-SPAN is not included in Nielsen measurements, nor does the firm measure viewers that streamed the speech online.

White House Continues to Boycott CNN

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Photo courtesy Gage Skidmore.

On Wednesday, the White House offered numerous news outlets an opportunity to interview Vice President Mike Pence. The primary topic was President Donald Trump’s Tuesday evening address to a joint session of Congress.

CNN was not invited to interview the Vice President.

Jake Tapper, anchor on the network, noted the network being passed over by the Trump administration. He quoted President Trump’s speech, saying the “[t]ime for trivial fights is behind us.”

According to the Vice President’s official schedule, Pence was interviewed by television networks ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox News, MSNBC, and radio hosts Rush Limbaugh, Michael Savage and Sean Hannity.

The administration has had a confrontational relationship with CNN, including President Trump calling the network “fake news,” the network being blocked from an “informal” Q&A session last Friday with press secretary Sean Spicer, and a situation last month wherein the Vice President skipped over the network while providing interviews to all other major Sunday morning news programs.

Vice President Pence will represent the White House alongside Chief of Staff Reince Priebus at the 2017 White House Correspondents’ Dinner.

Major Media Banned from Friday’s White House Q&A

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James Brady Press Briefing Room, 2007. Photo courtesy Wikipedia.

White House press secretary Sean Spicer’s Friday question-and-answer session will occur without major news outlets such as Politico, CNN, the New York Times, BuzzFeed and the Los Angeles Times.

Instead of the standard on-camera briefing in the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room, Spicer instead held an off-camera “gaggle” inside his West Wing office.  Attendees were welcomed to the session by invitation only.

Some major news organizations were also let in, such as ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, Reuters and Bloomberg.

Jeff Mason, the White House Correspondents’ Association president, blasted the situation.

“The WHCA board is protesting strongly against how today’s gaggle is being handled by the White House.  We encourage the organizations that were allowed in to share the material with others in the press corps who were not.  The board will be discussing this further with White House staff.”

The White House has not commented on the situation.

President Trump Asks April Ryan, a Veteran White House Correspondent Who Is African American, to Set Up Meeting with Congressional Black Caucus

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Kevin Liles, Amy Ryan, Hilary Rosen. Photo courtesy Haddad Media.

During yesterday’s Q&A with the media, President Donald J. Trump responded to a question from April Ryan, long-time White House correspondent and author of At Mama’s Knee: Mothers and Race in Black and White by asking her to arrange a meeting for him with the Congressional Black Caucus.

Late in a news conference that lasted over an hour, Ryan – who is African American – asked the president about a campaign pledge to revitalize American urban centers, often referred to by Trump as “inner-cities.”

The president’s response started with him stating that her question was “very professional and very good,” then followed up by Trump stating he received “a much higher percentage of the African American vote than a lot of people thought” due to his focus on this issue.

Ryan then followed up by asking the president if he was going to include the CBC” the Congressional Black Caucus, an organization of African-American Members of Congress, in discussions.

“I’ll tell you what, do you want to set up the meeting? Are they friends of yours?” the president responded.

“No,” Ryan replied, saying she was “just a reporter.”

Trump continued, saying “set up the meeting. Let’s go, set up a meeting. I would love to meet with the black caucus. I think it’s great. The Congressional Black Caucus.”

CBC spokeswoman Kamara Jones said the CBC sent the president a letter on January 19 inviting him to address the caucus, but has not yet received a response.  In a reply on Twitter, the CBC stated:

In a follow-up interview on CNN, Ryan said she would be happy to report on a meeting between the president and the CBC. “But as far as facilitating that meeting or convening that meeting, that is not my place. Every White House has someone to deal with this kind of meeting or this kind of bringing together of people. It’s up to that person in this White House to do that.”

Ryan has been the White House correspondent for American Urban Radio Networks since January 1997 and is also the author of best-selling My Up Close View of Three Presidents and Race in America.

President Trump Ignores Mainstream Media at White House Press Conferences

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Photo courtesy Wikipedia.

At the three most recent press conferences held by President Donald Trump, he has exclusively called on conservative-leaning firms and sites for questions.

On February 10, during a joint conference with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Trump called on the New York Post and Fox Business News.  Three days later when taking questions alongside Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Trump picked Sinclair-Broadcasting-owned WJLA and the Daily Caller to ask questions.  And on Wednesday when appearing with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump chose the Christian Broadcasting News and Townhall.com.

Neither CBN nor Townhall.com asked President Trump about national security advisor Michael Flynn’s resignation or the slew of reports about contacts between the Trump campaign and Russian intelligence agents.

Mainstream media journalists have been locked out from directly asking Trump any questions at all.  CNN’s Jim Acosta voiced a question about Russia, which the president ignored.

Reporters have been blasting the president and Spicer both for avoiding difficult questions by cherry-picking only favorable, conservative sites.

Typically, past presidents have traditionally called on the Associated Press for the first question in a press conference, followed by major news organizations.

Spicer himself has taken questions from some mainstream outlets such as USA TODAY, ABC News and Reuters, although he has called on right-leaning media such as Breitbart, the Daily Mail and the Washington Times, far more frequently.

White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer Prefers Conservative News Outlets

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James Brady Press Briefing Room, 2007. Photo courtesy Wikipedia.

An analysis by the New York Times suggests that White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer has preferred questions from journalists representing non-traditional and center-right news outlets over mainstream journalists in his daily press briefings.

Historically, administrations have prioritized questions from journalists sitting in the first two rows of the briefing room, normally assigned to reporters representing mainstream media such as NPR, Associated Press, Fox News and Reuters. Spicer has avoided this tradition and has focused his attention more on “non-mainstream” journalists elsewhere in the briefing room.

In his first Q&A session on the job, Spicer granted the first question to a New York Post journalist who had written a book critical of the Clintons. His second question came from the conservative website LifeZette, founded by radio personality Laura Ingraham (who was also considered by Trump for the press secretary position). None of his first five questions in his first briefing were asked from the front two rows of mainstream outlets.  He regularly gives priority during briefings to journalists from conservative-leaning titles such as Breitbart, Newsmax and One America News Network.

In comparison, former Press Secretary Robert Gibbs’ first five questions in the initial 2009 Obama administration press briefing went to journalists representing mainstream outlets from the first two rows in the seating chart: Associated Press, CBS News, NBC News, ABC News and CNN.

Speaking with Sean Hannity in January, Spicer defended his decision:

“There are voices and issues that the mainstream media sometimes don’t capture, and it’s important for those issues to get as much prominence as some of the mainstream ones.”

The White House Correspondents’ Association – not the administration — has doled out seating assignments in the Press Room since 1981. Additional reporters with no seat assignment stand in the aisles of the room or sit in empty seats.

Vice President Pence Denounces Media for Lack of “Honeymoon” Period

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Photo courtesy Björn Hermansson / Pixabay.

Vice President Mike Pence blasted the news media on Wednesday for its coverage of the Trump administration, saying “if there was a honeymoon, it was pretty short.”

Blaming the media for a rocky start, Pence told conservative talk radio host Rush Limbaugh:

“I have to tell you that in all of my life, there was always a grace period. Right? New president’s coming in, I think they call it a honeymoon. Right? Where the media, like the others, gives the new administration a chance to come in and start to do what they do. And boy, if there was a honeymoon, it was pretty short. I sure don’t remember that.”

The vice president’s position that the media is taking an aggressive tone against the new administration is far more critical than that of President Trump, who has referred to CNN as “fake news” and has taken an aggressive stance against media stories critical of his actions.