White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt contrasted President Donald Trump‘s media accessibility with former President Joe Biden‘s record of limited press conferences and interviews during his term in office.
Speaking at a media event hosted by Axios co-founder Mike Allen, Leavitt highlighted the difference between the two administrations’ approaches to press engagement. According to an Axios report from July, Biden had conducted only 164 press conferences and media interviews at the same point in his term, compared to Trump‘s 468, making Biden the lowest among the last seven presidents for media engagement.
Allen asked Leavitt about media access, citing the iconic photograph taken by Evan Vucci, the chief photographer in Washington for the Associated Press, after the assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania. “You have tailed access to the ‘Associated Press,’ which reaches half the world’s population every day. The most definitive photo of President Trump, the fight, fight, fight photo after the assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania, was made by Evan Vucci, who’s the chief photographer in Washington for the Associated Press. Do you worry about history being lost with these new restrictions?” Allen asked.
Leavitt responded by defending the administration’s changes to White House press pool access. “There are thousands of outlets that have White House press credentials. There are hundreds that actually show up every day and cover the beat. Why should a single outlet have the privilege of being in that 13-person press pool every single day? And so the changes we’ve made have actually created more transparency, more accessibility, and greater access for a wide variety of outlets and a diversity of journalists, which I think is a good thing,” Leavitt said.
Allen raised concerns from the White House Correspondents Association. “The counter to that is in a White House Correspondents Association’s statement about the White House changes to the position of wire services in the pool. And the statement says the government should not be able to control the independent media that covers it. Do you agree with that statement?” Allen asked.
Leavitt pushed back on the idea that a small group of journalists should dictate press pool access. “Well, I think that a small group of journalists who comprise the board of the White House Correspondents Association should not dictate who gets to go into the Oval Office and who gets to ride on Air Force One. There should be equal access for all outlets,” she said. “And that’s exactly what we’re doing. And if we were trying, by the way, to create positive press for the president, if we were trying to make it easier on him or on the administration, we wouldn’t allow some of these fake news leftist outlets in. But we continue to do that. No one has been restricted. We’ve just given more spots to more outlets and more voices.”
Leavitt emphasized that the administration’s approach reflects the current media landscape. “It’s not about ideology. It’s just about increasing the variety of outlets that have access. And we live in a digital age, and we’re recognizing that at the White House. The president ran a nontraditional media campaign, which propelled him back to the highest office in the land. And we felt it was our responsibility to continue that in our coverage at the White House,” she said.
“I mean, we started this. I think you’re all still getting your news, right? You’re still hearing about what the administration is doing every single day, because we have good journalists who are in that room covering the president every single time,” Leavitt added. The debate over press pool access reflects broader questions about media representation and how White House administrations balance accessibility with management of the press environment.
