Whereas President Donald Trump wreaks havoc within the White Home, considered one of his most trusted cronies introduced plans to introduce new modifications to the briefing room.
In her first press briefing on Tuesday afternoon, White Home press secretary Karoline Leavitt introduced plans to permit “new media voices” to attend her press conferences. Notably, that might embrace anybody starting from TikTok content material creators to podcasters to reporters from conservative information shops that typically don’t problem the president.
“It is a priority of this White House to honor the First Amendment and it is a fact that Americans are consuming their news media from various platforms, especially young people,” Leavitt mentioned. “As the youngest press secretary in history, thanks to President Trump, I take great pride in opening up this room to new media voices to share the president’s message with as many Americans as possible.”
She added that the White Home will now “encourage anybody in this country, whether you are a TikTok content creator, a blogger, [or] podcaster,” who’s creating “legitimate news content, no matter the medium,” to use for White Home press credentials.
We’re already seeing how this would possibly play out. Whereas the primary query throughout Leavitt’s briefing went to a brand new media voice, it wasn’t from a Washington outsider. Axios cofounder Mike Allen requested the primary query, which was about DeepSeek and synthetic intelligence. Leavitt then pivoted to a reporter from the conservative Breitbart web site.
In response to the New York Put up, a number of right-wing media personalities—together with these from One America Information Community, Actual America’s Voice, and Steve Bannon’s Conflict Room—had been additionally among the many first to ask questions.
The modifications introduced on Tuesday come after Trump virtually declared battle in opposition to the mainstream media. Throughout his first time period in workplace, the president castigated journalists who dared to problem him and known as the media the “enemy of the people.”
Throughout his marketing campaign for his second time period, Trump largely eschewed a number of mainstream media shops and as a substitute opted to take a seat for interviews with podcasters and web personalities. Extra just lately, he appointed a brand new chairman of the Federal Communications Fee, Brendan Carr, who just lately revived three complaints levied in opposition to ABC Information, CBS Information, and NBC Information.
Leavitt first introduced her need for brand spanking new voices within the briefing room in December, throughout an look on Fox Information. In response to the Every day Beast, Leavitt then steered that she needed to reward the “podcasters and influencers” who helped Trump get elected to a second time period within the White Home.
By that, she appeared to be referring to the coterie of content material creators, most of whom are white and male, who delivered an unfiltered, pro-Trump worldview to their audiences. Over the previous a number of years, right-wing influencers have come to dominate discuss radio—and people podcasts did certainly assist decide final yr’s presidential election. Within the remaining days of his marketing campaign, Trump appeared on “The Joe Rogan Experience,” one of many most listened-to podcasts on this planet.
And it’s not completely shocking that the brand new Trump administration is throwing a bone at TikTok content material creators, both. The president’s low-rated inauguration was sponsored by the beleaguered app, which was briefly banned after former President Joe Biden signed a legislation final yr that may power the app to close down within the states except it was bought to a different firm.
Along with giving these voices the identical degree of entry that reliable reporters obtain, Leavitt mentioned that, as a part of his second time period, Trump would communicate to all media shops, a few of whom would obtain specifically designated chairs within the press room. She additionally mentioned that Trump’s communications workforce would additionally work to revive the press passes for the greater than 400 journalists whose passes had been “wrongly revoked” by Biden’s administration. This occurred after pointers had been modified for all journalists in search of a “hard pass” for normal entry to the White Home.
“In keeping with this revolutionary media approach that President Trump deployed during the campaign, the Trump White House will speak to all media outlets and personalities, not just the legacy media, who are seated in this room,” Leavitt mentioned. “It’s essential to our team that we share President Trump’s message everywhere and adapt this White House to the new media landscape in 2025.”
In fact, Democrats have courted influencers too. Do not forget that Biden hosted social media influencers within the White Home in August as a part of a Creator Financial system Convention. What makes Leavitt’s announcement extra daunting, although, is the truth that the Trump administration is actually admonishing conventional information media and as a substitute awarding conservative voices who will possible give him preferential therapy.
And as one Trump official predicted to Politico in November, think about a briefing room the place The New York Instances’ Maggie Haberman sits subsequent to Joe Rogan.
