The Trump White House has sought to reshape the press corps in its favor this year, and Monday showcased how well the effort has succeeded.
Veteran White House correspondents privately grumbled as a MAGA online personality dominated the Q&A during a photo op with President Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Trump avoided any particularly tough lines of questioning or awkward exchanges with Zelensky. Instead, he was mostly served set-ups for his own talking points.
“This display, especially in front of foreign leaders, is so embarrassing,” a White House correspondent remarked to CNN on condition of anonymity. “Many of the questions aren’t designed to get answers, but to create another confrontation or make Trump look good. That’s not journalism.”
“High schoolers could do a better job than some of these people,” the correspondent added.
At issue: The makeup of the press “pool,” a small group of journalists and camera crews that are allowed into events like Oval Office photo ops, where there is not room for the larger press corps.
For decades, an independent group, the White House Correspondents’ Association, determined the “pool” rotation, giving different networks and newspapers turns on different days, but in February, the Trump administration seized control of the assignment function.
This gave the administration a new form of leverage — and the ability to add explicitly pro-Trump media representatives to the mix.
Monday’s pool, for example, included several conservative news outlets — Fox News, Breitbart and the Washington Examiner — but excluded the wire services that used to be a backbone of the press corps.
Fox’s Peter Doocy asked the pair of presidents five questions. The other primary voice was Brian Glenn, a pro-Trump pundit who works for Real America’s Voice, a MAGA streaming startup featuring shows by Steve Bannon and Charlie Kirk.
Glenn was allowed into the Oval Office event by White House aides despite not being assigned to the pool on Monday.
Glenn infamously called out Zelensky for not wearing a suit during a previous visit to the White House in February. That outfit confrontation teed up a full-fledged outburst from Trump and Vice President JD Vance over Zelensky’s supposed lack of “respect.”
On Monday, Glenn made a reference to that incident, telling Zelensky, now wearing an all-black suit, “You look fabulous in that suit.”
“I said the same thing,” Trump remarked, turning to Zelensky and telling him, “Isn’t that nice? That’s the one that attacked you last time.”
“I apologize to you. You look wonderful,” Glenn said, and as he tried to segue to an actual question, Zelensky quipped to Glenn, “You are in the same suit. I changed, you did not.”
The makeup of the press pool was noticed by some viewers, including Johanna Maska, who worked in the Obama White House press office.
Pointing out Glenn’s highly publicized relationship with a Republican congresswoman, Maska wrote on X, “Marjorie Taylor Greene’s boyfriend and Steve Doocy’s son are dominating what seems to be an impromptu press conference, where the stakes of the meeting are nothing less than ‘peace in our time.’ The absurdity of the moment sometimes belies the seriousness of what’s at stake.”
During the Q&A, Glenn asked Zelensky about the potential for elections in Ukraine before teeing up Trump to rant about one of his favorite topics — the media.
“Do you think the American media really doesn’t even want a peace deal?” Glenn asked. “Because they’ve been so critical of you every step of the way as you lead the charge for peace.”
For nearly three and a half minutes, Trump ranted about the press, claiming he receives no credit for ending “major wars.” He shared a long-winded anecdote about a pro golfer’s son feeling safe to go out to dinner in Washington, D.C., now that he has federalized the city’s policing.
“The level of hatred and animosity” from the media “is incredible,” Trump said. “Not with all — I mean, we have great people up here, we also have terrible people up here that I think are told what to say.”
Moments later, Trump returned to Glenn — one of those “great people” — for another question, this time about a topic unrelated to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
“You pushed out on social media about doing away with mail-in ballots and potentially electronic voting machines,” Glenn said. “Can you expand on that?”
“That’s a very off-topic (question),” Trump acknowledged before launching into another three and a half minute long monologue that touched upon the president’s 2020 election lies, transgender athletes, illegal immigration and DC crime.