I’m a White House reporter. Here’s the side of the Trump administration you don’t see on TV

When Donald Trump took the oath of office a year ago, I was watching on a laptop screen in the White House briefing room, shielding myself from the senselessly cold air that filled the small space every time someone opened the door.

While I was giving not one but two separate impressive speeches at the Capitol — the first in the traditional post-inaugural address in the Capitol rotunda, followed by a second, much more partisan and unscripted shout-out to supporters seated in the overflow area — I looked up to see a colleague from another news organization who, like me, had been in the White House since the beginning of Trump’s tumultuous first term nearly a decade ago.

The president rolled his eyes and turned to me with a knowing smile as he talked about the various grievances and insults he’s had to endure since losing the 2020 election and fleeing to Florida, where he briefly transitioned from power into exile under the Biden administration.

“Here we go again,” he said.

Those of us who followed Trump’s first administration thought we knew what to expect. Boy, were we wrong.

His first four years in power were a relentless barrage of news that often left journalists exhausted but saturated with copious amounts of leaked information from various camps in the West Wing trying to stab each other, and with less useful and often far less accurate information offered by rotating press secretaries and spokesmen.

Sean Spicer’s speech in his briefing room debut in 2017, in which he castigated the press for reporting on a much smaller crowd attending Trump’s first inauguration compared to Barack Obama’s, more or less set the tone that characterized the next four years. His appearance in the briefing room became so strange that things got even weirder from there – remember the “Holocaust centers”? – Infamously parodied by Melissa McCarthy on Saturday Night Live.

Press briefings have tapered off and intervals have lengthened as Trump has moved from the often combative Spicer to the more affable but equally unhelpful Sarah Huckabee Sanders (now living her best life as governor of Arkansas) and Stephanie Grisham, who hasn’t held a single press briefing in her entire tenure.

Even though Trump’s official schedule doesn’t start until mid-morning, reporters like me have gotten into the habit of arriving at the White House at 7 a.m. because administration officials, mostly Kellyanne Conway, make belligerent back and forth movements with us After appearing on Fox News.

The president himself discovered the briefing room during the Covid-19 pandemic, often spending as much as 90 minutes a day fielding questions from a pared-down press corps while Americans stayed home.

While Trump often likes to attack or belittle particular reporters or outlets, his administration has more or less let us do our job.

We expected more of the same when Trump was sworn in a second time, and on Inauguration Day, as I and other colleagues greeted the Trump II press staff (some of whom we had known from his previous term), one person told me that the atmosphere had a “first day of school” vibe, foreshadowing a smoother ride than last time.

Well, guess again.

Of course, from a beat reporter’s perspective, there are positive differences between Trump I and Trump II. While Trump I press staff were more likely to yell at you than answer a question when you walked into their offices, their second-administration counterparts are generally so cheerful and friendly that it’s more than a little concerning.

Unlike the heady days when Spicer, Sanders, and Grisham ran an amateurish and uncommunicative press shop, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt and Communications Director Steven Cheung are generally professionals behind the scenes, and their underlings actually answer questions on a regular basis.

However, on the whole, this administration was not very similar to the previous ones.

Unlike the leaky ship of Trump I, Trump’s White House is much more disciplined this time around. From a reporter’s perspective, that’s not a good thing.

But the real difference is how Trump’s new-look team puts its combative stance on a free and independent press into action.

In February, Leavitt’s office announced he would take control of a “pool” rotation that included a group of outlets. Independent – Take Trump as he holds court in the Oval Office and travels across the country on Air Force One.

While I and my colleagues from reputable and legitimate news outlets are still taking our turns and dutifully filing reports used by other media outlets to write the “first draft of history,” more and more have joined us, while some outlets (like the AP) selected by the White House and now being considered by the courts have been banned for dubious reasons. S.Just like refusing to accept Trump’s declaration that the Gulf of Mexico should now be called the Gulf of America.

Some of the newcomers come from conservative-leaning outlets that approach their business responsibly and respectably. But honestly, the others are sycophants and clowns who do little to inform the American people.

Leavitt often gave these people pride of place at White House briefings (traditionally the AP’s role) by allowing them to ask the first question in a “new media” chair in a section of the briefing room usually reserved for White House staff.

He once hosted the infamous plagiarist turned MAGA troll Benny Johnson there and allowed him to start the briefing with a made-up story about how he and his family fled Washington after “their house was set on fire in an arson attack” (it was his neighbor’s house that was set on fire, according to the D.C. Fire Department).

Another Leavitt guest, beanie-wearing podcaster Tim Pool, used his time there to complain about how legitimate news organizations characterized him and other “new media” couch dwellers, asking Leavitt to join him in disparaging the mainstream press. Leavitt diplomatically said the administration “welcomes diverse perspectives.”

More recently, I (and others) have been placed on lists written by the White House, which has attacked us for bias in retaliation for reporting accurately about the president’s own words and actions.

My colleagues in the Pentagon press corps and elsewhere in Washington fared even worse.

Last year, they surrendered their press credentials en masse after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth demanded that they sign documents promising not to solicit information about anything from anyone in the federal government or elsewhere, but to publish only pre-approved information (the definition of propaganda).

In the halls of the Pentagon, they have been replaced by a coterie of sycophants and influencers aligned with Hegseth and his vision for his department.

In an attempt at a briefing for the “Pentagon’s new press corps,” seats in the Pentagon briefing room were filled by Laura Loomer, a self-described “proud Islamophobe” and disgraced former Florida congressman Matt Gaetz, who Trump briefly chose as Attorney General before resigning from the House of Representatives to avoid the release of a damning ethics committee report that allegedly found significant evidence that he had sex with a 17-year-old girl. He was also alleged to be in possession of illegal drugs. Gaetz denied both allegations, and the Justice Department’s investigation into Gaetz’s alleged actions with the girl did not turn up any charges.

Just last week, FBI agents searched someone’s home. Washington Post The reporter the government alleges communicated with a person suspected of leaking it — although it is not illegal for a journalist to obtain leaked documents, even classified ones.

Agents seized phones and laptops, ostensibly as part of an investigation into a Defense Department employee who mishandled classified information, but perhaps as a warning to others within the government who might dare correspond with journalists.

Although the President largely avoided the briefing room during his first year back, he sent Vice President J. D. Vance there on more than one occasion; most recently last week, when he came there to berate me and my White House press corps colleagues over coverage of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement shooting of Minneapolis resident Renee Good.

One would think that the Vice President of the United States would have better things to do than yell at a bunch of journalists because he doesn’t like the headlines of a story, but here we are.

And Leavitt wasn’t shy about issuing over-the-top scoldings when cornered with legitimate questions he couldn’t answer. Days ago, he slept with one of my colleagues. Top – a kind gentleman originally from Northern Ireland – for having the audacity to offer an opinion contrary to his own after I asked him to tell me what he thought of last week’s shooting.

He reacted to her honest answer by angrily raising his voice and smearing her as a “left-wing biased reporter” and a “leftist hack” who was “pretending to be a journalist.”

It’s a tactic Trump has used many times, often with women or journalists of color, when faced with tough questions on topics he prefers to avoid.

Yet Trump’s dirty little secret, then and now, is that he actually likes reporters. One of the things he missed most about the presidency was not having the planes or other perks of the world’s most powerful job, but having a “pool” of reporters he could call on whenever he wanted to talk about anything.

For all his talk about “fake news,” he spent years calling journalists and still receives calls from them on his cell phone (and if you’re reading this, Mr. President, you can always ask Karoline for my number).

What’s different and chilling this time is that Trump has surrounded himself with people who truly believe his years of public anti-press rants, but who remain friendly in private.

Trump may occasionally call me and my colleagues “the enemy of the people,” but Vice President J.D. Vance, Hegseth, Attorney General Pam Bondi and others truly believe it.