New White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, In First Briefing, Cites “Record Low Trust” In Legacy Outlets, Says New-Media Reporter Will Get Front-Row Seat
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, in her first White House press briefing on Tuesday afternoon, promised greater access for independent journalists, podcasters and social media influencers.
Displaying the results of a Gallup poll on a video monitor showing record low trust in media, Leavitt said that “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.”
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Leavitt said that a seat in the briefing room — previously occupied by the press secretary’s staff — would be designated as the “new media” seat. The first person to occupy it, though, was Mike Allen, co-founder of Axios and a longtime veteran of Beltway media coverage.
Leavitt promised to “work diligently” to restore press passes that were “wrongly revoked” by the previous administration. Policies were changed by White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre after one reporter, Simon Abeta, repeatedly disrupted briefings. The new guidelines were made more stringent, including proof of full-time employment with an outlet that is devoted to news gathering.
Leavitt said that those eligible for the White House passes would be open to “new media voices who produce news-related content and whose outlet is not already represented by one of the seats in this room. We welcome independent journalists, podcasters, social media influencers and content creators to apply.”
There have been previous attempts, during the Biden and previous Trump administrations, to open up the briefing beyond the Beltway, with reporters across the country asking questions virtually. But those efforts were short-lived.
Instead, the spotlight on many of the briefings has been on reporters in the front row, representing the major broadcast and cable news networks as well as the Associated Press.
Leavitt opened her first briefing by running through Trump’s wave of executive orders and actions in his first week — a pretty standard role for a new press secretary seeking to speak for the administration.
But if the first term is any indication, Leavitt is first and foremost playing to an audience of one — Trump. That’s a bit of a balancing act of adopting a bit of Trump’s strongman approach to the media, while remaining credible enough to the reporters in the room that she is up to speed on the president’s thinking and the details of the policies of the administration. Some, like Sean Spicer, struggled in the role. Others, like Kayleigh McEnany, leaned too heavily on media combat, coming off as more of a campaign operative than a spokesperson in a publicly funded government job.
“I commit to telling the truth from this podium every single day,” Leavitt told reporters today. “I commit to speaking on behalf of the president of the United States.” But she also vowed to call out reporters “when we feel your reporting is wrong.”
To that end, Leavitt delivered a message from Trump, an update on the New Jersey drones. The Biden administration had to respond to various theories and even a bit of hysteria as to what the drones were, and Trump, during the transition, himself suggested that news was being withheld.
The new announcement: “The drones that were flying over New Jersey in large numbers were authorized to be flown by FAA for research and various other reason,” Leavitt said, adding, “This was not the enemy.”
The three major news networks carried the briefing, which it also typical at the start of a new administration.
As she answered questions, things got a bit contentious as reporters peppered her with questions about the big news of the day: the new order from the Office of Management and Budget that temporarily pauses all federal financial assistance. It specifically cited “Marxist equity, transgenderism, and green new deal social engineering policies,” but the scope of the order created confusion over what was covered and what was not covered. On Capitol Hill, Democrats hammered the administration, with Chuck Schumer saying that Trump “plunged the country into chaos without a shred of warning.”
In the briefing room, Leavitt claimed that the uncertainty over funding was only “amongst the media,” while saying that individual assistance like Social Security benefits, Medicare, food stamps and welfare was not directly impacted.
While Leavitt defended the policy as in line with Trump’s priorities to cut costs, she seemed to get irritated as she was pressed on whether the order impacted specific programs. When asked about examples like Meals on Wheels, which gets funding through grants, Leavitt said, “I have now been asked and answered this question four times: Individuals at home, who receive direct assistance from the federal government, you will not be impacted by this federal freeze.”
That said, it’s still unclear what will happen to funding that individuals receive through grants to states and nonprofits. OMB, meanwhile, did issue a Q&A to try to clarify some of the confusion.
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