How will Team Trump revise the seating chart or the questioner list at the White House briefing when new press secretary Karoline Leavitt takes the podium in January? Would they dare to put conservative media in the front row? Managing editor Curtis Houck brings all his daily monitoring of the briefings to the table.
People close to Trump have suggested he should dramatically change who is placed in the front rows of the briefing room. Routinely, it has been Fox, the liberal networks, Reuters and the Associated Press. Could Trump put conservative (or less liberal) media outlets in the front row to symbolize the growing trust problem with legacy media?
Currently, the seating chart is determined by a committee of four members of the White House Correspondents’ Association (WHCA) board. But Team Trump could impose their vision.
“It would be a total mess,” one White House reporter told The Hill newspaper. “I would expect people would probably boycott the briefings, though that would put certain outlets in a tough spot deciding if they want to go along with what the Trump people are trying to pull.”
They could leave the briefing room like they left Twitter. But they want to be there to challenge the Trump team, and don't want to give on their flagrantly negative bias, which they imagine is "pro-democracy."
How will Leavitt perform as the youngest press secretary we've seen? It can't be worse than the bumbles and stumbles of Karine Jean-Pierre, who did draw some angry questions from the liberal reporters when Joe Biden reversed himself on granting a pardon to his corrupt son Hunter. Nobody saw a reason to make Karine resign for being left in the dark on this (if she was). There's only a month to go, and the daily briefing is more like weekly since Election Day.
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